Gadget Watch: Electronic fork nags you on eating

originally appeared in The Associated Press:


If you've always wanted a fork that spies on your eating habits, you're in luck: A company has developed a utensil that records when you lift it to the mouth.

The electronic fork is one of the gadgets getting attention this week at the International CES in Las Vegas, an annual showcase of the latest TVs, computers and other consumer-electronic devices.

WHAT IT IS: The HAPIfork is a fork with a fat handle containing electronics and a battery. It's made by HapiIabs, which is based in the land of slow, languorous meals - France.

HOW IT WORKS: The fork contains a motion sensor, so it can figure out when it's being lifted to the mouth. If it senses that you're eating too fast, it warns with you with a vibration and a blinking light. The company believes that using the fork 60 to 75 times during meals lasting from 20 to 30 minutes is ideal.

Between meals, you can connect the fork to a computer or phone and upload data on how fast you're eating, for long-term tracking.

The electronics are waterproof, so you can wash the fork in the sink. If you want to put it in the dishwasher, you have to remove the electronics first.

WHY YOU'D WANT IT: Nutritional experts recommend eating slowly because it takes about 20 minutes to start feeling full. If you eat fast, you may eat too much. The fork is also designed to space your forkfuls so that you have time to chew each one properly. It's like having your mom in a utensil!

WHAT IT DOESN'T DO: The fork has no clue about the nutritional content of your food or how big your forkfuls are. It can't tell if you're shoveling lard or stabbing peas individually.

AVAILABILITY: The company is launching a fundraising campaign for the fork in March on the group-fundraising site Kickstarter.com. Participants need to put down $99 for a fork, which is expected to ship around April or May. Those forks will connect to computers through USB cables.

Later this year, the company plans to start selling Bluetooth-enabled forks to the general public. No price was disclosed for that version.

Apple Closing in on All-Time High

Story first reported from CNN.com

 

Remember all the investor disappointment about Apple's latest earnings report? That's no longer an issue. Shares of Apple were up nearly 1.5% Monday to about $625. The stock has rebounded more than 8% since a 4% pummeling the day after it missed forecasts and guided lower. In fact, the stock is now just 3% below the all-time high of $644 it set back in April.

It appears that any lingering concerns about Apple's rare case of under-performing and under-delivering have been replaced by excitement about new products (iPhone 5 is rumored to be unveiled and go on sale next month) and the upcoming dividend payment to shareholders. As such, several traders on StockTwits believe that it would be a mistake to bet against Apple.

Research firm analyzes 6 million social conversations to conclude:"the launch of the
Apple may one day screw up royally and release a product that nobody wants.

But take one look at the share prices of Research in Motion, Nokia, Hewlett-Packard and Dell and ask yourselves if you think any of them will soon make hardware that's sexier than iEverything? (Or that EL James book it seems everybody but me is reading.) Didn't think so.

Sure, Microsoft, Google and Samsung are all fierce competitors too. But Apple deserves the benefit of the doubt ... assuming there still are any doubts of course.

Apple's $2.65 per share dividend will be paid out on August 16 to any shareholders of record as of August 13. So if you are silly enough to be shorting Apple, it makes sense to cover before the dividend is paid. Otherwise you would have to return (i.e. buy back) the shares you borrowed and also pay the dividend on top of that.

I'm still not sure I believe the stock split chatter though ... even though a split could make the shares even more attractive to retail investors and the people who manage the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

It will be interesting to see what Apple's stock does once the iPhone 5 is released. The next milestone for the company would be exceeding $600 billion in market value.  Apple is currently only about 3% below that level. That may seem obscene. But as I've said repeatedly in Buzz columns, videos and over on Twitter -- aka the thing that Apple is never going to buy no matter what the NY Times and other media outlets are reporting --  Apple remains a cheap stock.

Apple is valued at just 14 times fiscal 2012 earnings estimates -- despite its market dominance, stellar growth prospects (forecasts of 20%+ EPS growth on average for the next few years) and squeaky-clean balance sheet with well north of $100 billion in cash. Now you add on the dividend -- which will yield a relatively 1.7% -- to boot?

I had my colleague David Goldman ask Siri if it's a good idea to short Apple stock. (I merely possess a Siri-less iPhone 4.) Her response? "I cannot help you pick stocks, Dave." That was very diplomatic of her. But trust this lowly carbon-based life form. The answer is no.

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'Black Friday' Golden For Computer, TV Sales

LA Times

The number of items sold was up after Thanksgiving compared with last year, a report says. But customers grabbed bargains and ended up spending less on consumer electronics -- $2.7 billion, down 1.2%.

Holiday shopper Thanety Bunseam was reluctant to buy anything big this year, but a few days ago the 57-year-old factory worker could be seen resting on the curb outside a Best Buy store with his quarry: a 52-inch LCD TV and a new Sony PS3 game console.

"I got it free with the TV," he said, pointing to the PS3. "They have the game with the TV, so now I buy."

Despite tough economic times, consumers like Bunseam are shelling out money this year for big-ticket electronics such as laptop deals and flat-panel televisions.

During the week of Black Friday, a critical period for beleaguered retailers, the number of computers sold rose a whopping 63% over the previous year while LCD TV sales were up 15%, market research firm NPD said Wednesday.

But there was a downside.

The main reason for the increased sales volume was deep discounts -- so much so that overall revenue for consumer electronics was lower than last year, NPD said.

Combined sales totaled $1.2 billion for Nov. 22 through Nov. 28. That was down 1.2% for the Black Friday week in 2008.

At least that was a smaller decline than last year. In 2008, spending was down 3.4% from 2007.

"This year retailers and manufacturers knew it wasn't going to be about increasing revenue," said NPD analyst Stephen Baker. "It needed to be about getting consumers excited to shop and moving those products out of the stores." Consumers were looking for bargains and computer deals.

He expects the spending pattern for electronics to continue through the holidays.

"The overall picture is better than last year," Baker said. "But don't expect to see any sales growth, in dollars, in the industry."

Laptop computer sales were certainly aided by slashed prices. The average price tag on a laptop last year for Black Friday was $638, according to NPD. This year it was $475. That's a decline of a little more than 25%.

But there was another factor.

Both Microsoft and Apple came out with updated operating systems for computers in the last few months.

This made getting new computers or laptops, often with a faster processors and more memory, especially attractive.

"If there was the right product and the right price, consumers were very willing to go out and buy," Baker said.

"There was not a reluctance to spend, there was a reluctance to spend too much."

Shoppers were well aware that they were in the driver's seat.

"This year everything was about value," said Hovik Pogosian, a salesman at the Best Buy store in Atwater Village.

"When shoppers came in, what they wanted to know was: 'What are the best notebook deals I can get?' "

It's A Buyer's Market For Consumer Electronics

Originally Posted at The Wall Street Journal

The recession is quelling consumers' appetite for two of their recent favorites: digital cameras and digital music players. As a result, discounts and deals abound.

J&R Electronics Inc. and Fry's Electronics Inc. are selling point-and-shoot digital cameras from Eastman Kodak Co. and NikonCorp. discounted to below $100. Amazon.com Inc. Wednesday was selling a General Electric Co. 10-megapixel digital camera for $180, down 46% from a list price of $336. Most entry-level cameras sell for an average $129, compared to $146 a year ago, according to IDC, a market research firm.

Digital music players, which can cost anywhere from $15 to more than $400, are also getting their fair share of discounts. Online retailer Newegg Inc. is featuring a Centon Electronics Inc. music player for $17, down 43% from $30.

Apple Inc., which has the largest share of the digital music player market with its iPod brand, typically introduces new models at lower price points instead of cutting prices, says Shaw Wu, analyst with Kaufman Bros. LP. On Wednesday the company launched a new, smaller iPod Shuffle for $79, which amounts to a $30 price increase for the device. This could help raise average selling prices or keep them flat, he adds.

While digital music players and digital cameras were the consumer-electronics industry's top holiday sellers for the past three years. Both categories experienced steep sales drops in the fourth quarter of 2008, even as overall electronics sales stayed flat. Revenue from digital music players plunged 30% to $2.1 billion, while digital-camera sales fell 4% to $2.3 billion, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. And as consumers continue pulling back their spending, both categories are expected to sink more than their peers this year, the CEA says.

Another reason sales of digital cameras and portable music players have slowed is that the U.S. market has reached a saturation point -- 77% of households in the U.S. own a digital camera, up from 55% in 2006, according to the CEA. That means that those consumers generally only buy cameras when their current one breaks or becomes too outdated. The typical replacement cycle on a compact camera is about three years., says Chuck Westfall, technical adviser for Canon U.S.A.

"That [digital camera] category has been challenged and will continue to be," says Stephen Baker, a vice president with market research firm NPD Group Inc. "In the U.S., we are clearly seeing the digital music player segment slowing and becoming a much more saturated product category, as well."

Patching Up Old Devices

Hannah Little, a 21-year-old insurance clerk in Lexington, Ky., almost always used to buy the latest gadgets. However since she graduated from college last summer and stopped receiving an allowance from her parents, she has held off on new tech purchases.

Ms. Little has owned an iPod for the past eight years and an iPod Shuffle for two years. She says she uses her Shuffle at the gym, but for the rest of the time, instead of buying a new iPod, she uses her BlackBerry Curve, which she outfitted with a $3 four-gigabyte memory card that stores music.

"Before I go out and buy something new, I try to patch things up to keep them going as long as they can," says Ms. Little. She adds that her next tech purchase will be new or used laptops, which she uses more than her iPod.

While many people used to chase after the latest gizmos, some now appear to be upgrading only in areas where technology is changing rapidly. Sales of flat-panel television sets and laptop computers remain relatively robust, for instance, as consumers move from old-style cathode-ray TVs and dated desktop computers to the newer models.

Camera makers are encouraging consumers to upgrade as well, hoping they'll trade up from their point-and-shoot cameras to higher-quality digital single-lens-reflex, or SLR, cameras, which are more expensive. Camera maker Pentax, a unit of Hoya Corp., dropped the price of its K20D digital SLR camera last month by $200 to around $800. Consumers get just the body of the camera. Lens kits run another $880 to $1,200. Another high-end offering comes from Canon Inc., which in September introduced the EOS 5D Mark II, a digital SLR camera body that shoots up to around 12 minutes of continuous, full high-definition video for $2,700.

Similarly, makers of digital-music players, such as Apple and SanDisk Corp., are focused on moving their consumers from portable players to multimedia phones, such as the iPhone. In its most recent quarter, Apple's iPod revenue declined 16%, while its iPhone sales increased fivefold.

More and more consumers are turning to the re-built market for high-end electronics like desktop and laptop computers. Refurbished Apple laptops are very popular, along with refurbished Sony laptops.

SanDisk is pushing "slotMusic" memory cards that come pre-loaded with music. Consumers can insert the cards into several multimedia phones, instantly accessing the tunes on their devices.

"We've seen the clouds gathering for a while now," says Daniel Schreiber, a SanDisk senior vice president and general manager. "The entertainment device of the future is the phone."

Waiting to Upgrade

The higher-end cameras and phones are whetting the appetites of some consumers -- but many remain reluctant to buy. Liz Abinante in Davis, Calif., has owned her Samsung Electronics Co. point-and-shoot digital camera for three years. While she covets a more expensive digital SLR camera, the 24-year-old freelance writer isn't opening her pocketbook because she's waiting to see if her landlord raises her rent in the down economy.

"If I weren't in such an 'I don't know what's going to happen in my life,' I definitely would've purchased [a new camera] already," says Ms. Abinante, who recently started attending graduate school. Now, "I would rather wait until I have more money."

Cisco CEO Sees Harder Times Ahead

As posted in the Wall Street Journal:

A 27% drop in quarter-on-quarter profit is not what Cisco System Inc. nor their shareholders were hoping for but that is the most recently posted figure for the networking giant. The announcement comes in the midst of large-scale cutbacks in business technology spending on networking services, colocation services, and data centers.

The big Silicon Valley maker of networking gear said revenue fell 7.5% in its fiscal second quarter, which ended Jan. 24. It also signaled that conditions had worsened, predicting revenue in the current period could drop 15% to 20% from a year earlier.

"It is now clear that we are in a global economic slowdown," Chief Executive John Chambers said Wednesday in a call with analysts. He said it is difficult to make an accurate prediction given the current economic climate, but added that "we will obviously be impacted."

The San Jose, Calif., company is one of the first to report earnings that include January, and its results are a closely watched barometer of corporate technology spending.

Overall, Cisco's orders for the second quarter shrank 14%, but in January orders were down 20% from a year ago.

Cisco's corporate customers have steadily cut the amount they have spent on networking and colocation technology over the last year, though some of those losses have been offset by phone and cable companies, which have bought Cisco gear in order to keep pace with increasing Internet traffic. But in the January quarter these U.S. companies placed 30% fewer orders than the year-ago quarter, Cisco said.

"No one is looking for a turnaround yet," said Jeff Evenson, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. He added that Cisco appears to be doing a good job of controlling its costs, which offsets the decline in sales.

Mr. Chambers has pledged to reduce Cisco's spending by $1 billion this fiscal year by implemented a hiring freeze, reducing travel and similar measures. On Wednesday, Mr. Chambers said some job cuts are likely, though not across-the-board layoffs.

Despite the recession, Cisco has continued to move into new markets. Examples include consumer-electronics, such as a home speaker system unveiled in January, and Cisco is believed to be developing a server system that would take it for the first time into the computer business.

Cisco ended the quarter with about $29.5 billion in cash, and Mr. Chambers has said he sees the downturn as a chance to expand.

Cisco has also used its cash to help finance purchases for its customers. The company says that it provided $2.1 billion in financing for its customers in first half of 2009.

Cisco reported net income in the second quarter of $1.5 billion, or 26 cents a share, down from $2.06 billion, or 33 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue declined to $9.09 billion from $9.83 billion.