RIM CEO sees new BlackBerry powering growth

WATERLOO, Ontario (Reuters) – A new line of BlackBerry 10 devices will provide Research In Motion with a framework for growth over the next decade, offering long-term value for unhappy shareholders, Chief Executive Thorsten Heins said on Wednesday.

In an interview with Reuters, Heins said RIM had identified $ 800 million of the $ 1 billion of savings it promised for the financial year ending in early March, and was confident of finding the rest as it gets ready to launch the new phones.

RIM is betting that the new smartphones will help it claw back the market share it has lost to the likes of Apple Inc’s iPhone and devices powered by Google’s Android operating system.

Both consumers and corporate customers have abandoned the BlackBerry in droves, even though the devices offer security features that rivals have been unable to match.

“There’s this high-level security that you cannot walk away from, and then there’s ‘good enough’ security,” Heins said in an interview at RIM’s Waterloo, Ontario, campus, a sprawl of low-rise buildings.

But analysts remain skeptical, especially after the botched 2011 launch of RIM’s PlayBook tablet computer, which the company had hoped would compete with Apple’s wildly popular iPad. The PlayBook had top-of-the-line hardware, but its software was far from complete at the launch and needed multiple updates.

RIM delayed the roll-out of the BlackBerry 10 phones to the first quarter of 2013 so as not to repeat the errors that surrounded the PlayBook launch.

Heins said the delay was the correct decision – the way to ensure the BB10 phones are a high-quality product rather than a rushed one that would not meet customer expectations.

“I think it’s all lining up. Sometimes you get the feeling that the universe is in disarray, and with BlackBerry 10 coming, I see the stars lining up,” Heins said.

SLEEK DEMO MODELS

Sleek demo models of the new phones look much like the high-end smartphones in the market today, and company executives proudly showed off a touch-screen version and a version with the miniature QWERTY keyboard popular with many BlackBerry users.

Users flick a thumb or finger to maneuver from one program to another and can sneak a look at an incoming email while browsing the Internet or using other applications, a multi-tasking ability that RIM says rival devices lack.

Personal and business profiles can be kept separately, something RIM calls BlackBerry Balance. Corporations can erase only their share of the data on a device if they need to do so for security reasons, leaving personal photos, contacts and emails untouched.

The app library available at launch will not match the vast number available on other devices. Heins said RIM had chosen to focus on providing those apps needed in different regional markets. It expects some 100,000 apps to be ready at launch.

The developer community has been broadly enthusiastic about the devices. But financial analysts have mixed views on their likely reception in an ultra-competitive market.

Pacific Crest analyst James Faucette warned last week that BlackBerry 10 is likely to be dead on arrival – with an operating system that gets “a lukewarm response at best,” due to the unfamiliar user interface and a shortage of apps.

SHAREHOLDER VALUE

Heins insisted morale was high at the company, despite 5,000 job cuts and a rapidly sliding market share ahead of the launch of the new phones.

RIM’s share price is down more than 90 percent from a 2008 peak of about $ 148. It has fallen even after Heins, a former Siemens AG executive, took over in January. The shares on Wednesday closed at $ 8.49 on Nasdaq.

“The message to our shareholders is that we understand this is and has been a difficult time for them and for us,” the tall, bespectacled CEO said. “But with the development of the BlackBerry 10 platform we are truly convinced that we will create long-term value for RIM’s shareholders and investors.”

RIM has already given the demo phones to developers and to carriers, and its new BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10, which runs the devices on corporate networks, is in beta testing with 20 key customers — both government agencies and corporates.

Next month, the company will give more than 50 top enterprise customers technical previews of both BES 10 and the devices.

Heins said the feedback he is getting from the customer base “is very encouraging.”

With the erosion of RIM’s base particularly strong in North America, there has been speculation the company could choose to launch the new phones in a region where the phones remain popular. Heins said that would not be the case.

“We cannot launch every carrier and every country on the same day, but what we have defined is a set of waves in the various regions,” he said. “It is going to be a global launch. There isn’t one preferred region. We are managing and planning it as we speak.”

(Reporting by Euan Rocha and Janet Guttsman; Editing by Frank McGurty and Leslie Adler)

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ellen Throws Keira Knightley a Bridal Tea Party

In light of Keira Knightley's engagement to Klaxons keyboardist James Righton, Ellen DeGeneres has a refined surprise for British actress on her next show.

PIC: Knightley 'Doesn't Mind' Going Topless

The TV host throws Knightley a bridal tea party as a celebration of her upcoming wedding, which the Anna Karenina star admits she hasn't put much thought into.

"The problem is ever since [our engagement] everyone keeps going, 'So when is it going to happen and what's they dress like?'" explains Knightley, who announced her engagement in May. "I'm just not one of those girls that's had the kind of fantasy wedding thing, so we haven't planned anything and it's all quite terrifying and I sort looked up on the Internet, 'if you're getting married what should you do?'"

RELATED: Knightley Engaged to Indie Rocker

In addition to her future nuptials, Knightley also discussed her topless Allure cover, which came out to her liking.

"I know that sometimes you have not been happy with the way your breasts have appeared in certain things and you're happy with this?" Ellen asked.

Knightley responded, saying that she sometimes doesn't appreciate the alterations made in past shoots to make her breasts seem bigger.

"You know, I'm happy with them -- with the size they are," said Knightley. "I'm alright with it unless they make them really droopy. Then I kind of think, 'Okay, if you're going to invent that fact that I have big t--s any way, could they at least be perky ones?' It seems a little unfair to go from nothing to a big droop. So that's when I get quite unhappy about it."

Catch Knightley's entire interview Thursday, November 15 on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Check your local listings.

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Base boot for general busybody

The social-climbing military groupie at the center of the David Petraeus sex scandal has been banned from MacDill Air Force Base.

Jill Kelley — who played unofficial hospitality hostess to Gen. Petraeus, Gen. John R. Allen and a stream of top military brass at the powerful Tampa, Fla., Central Command base — lost her unfettered base access after her claims that she had received threatening e-mails from Petraeus’ mistress, Paula Broadwell.

“She did have base access but does not currently because of her involvement in an ongoing investigation,” a military official told the Tampa Tribune.

Getty Images

FASHION PLATE:David Petraeus pal Jill Kelley (above) hobnobbed with top brass at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida and flaunted her honorary “diplomatic” status.

The vivacious Kelley — who met Petraeus and his wife, Holly, when the general arrived at Central Command in 2008 — was allowed to travel around the base under a “Friends of MacDill” program for high-profile locals.

Kelley acted as the base’s unpaid “social liaison,” and with her surgeon husband, Scott Kelley, hosted glamorous parties with string quartets, free-flowing champagne and lavish food spreads. Their guests were a parade of military brass.

Kelley also was a “self-appointed” go-between for Central Command officers with Middle Eastern government officials, according the Washington Post.

One officer told the Washington Post that Kelley’s “made-up” titles appeared to be “a polite way of saying ‘rich Tampa socialite who likes to hang with four-star generals.’ ”

Kelley is also an honorary consul general of South Korea, a symbolic post that means she helps set up meetings between Tampa businessmen and South Korea’s US ambassador.

The Philly-born daughter of Lebanese immigrants embraced her role — and got a specialized license plate for her Mercedes that reads: “Honorary Consul 1JK.”

Officials are investigating how Kelley qualified for the plate. Applicants must show they are members of the Honorary Consular Corps to receive one, a state DMV spokesperson said.

Kelley made several calls to police this week regarding the media outside her $1.5 million waterfront manse.

“You know, I’m an honorary consul general, so I have inviolability,” Kelley said in one call. “I don’t know if you want to get diplomatic, uh, protection involved as well.”

jeane.macintosh@nypost.com

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Steve Wozniak, Chris Hughes share tales with Coconut Grove audience

Co-founders from two of Silicon Valley’s most innovative companies gave a South Florida audience a glimpse into the early days of developing the technology that would reshape the world.

Steve Wozniak, of Apple, and Chris Hughes, of Facebook, were back-to-back speakers for the three-day Americas Business Council’s Continuity Forum that wrapped up Wednesday at the Ritz-Carlton in Coconut Grove.

The conference brought together innovators, activists, and thought leaders in entrepreneurship and philanthropy and also showcased 32 emerging social entrepreneurial ventures from around the Americas.

On Wednesday afternoon, both men relayed plenty of stories.

As a teenager, Wozniak used to hole up in his bedroom on the weekends, designing a computer on paper.

And he made a game of it — every weekend he would try to make a machine that would work just as well or better but cost a little less than the last design.

That engineering mentality to build things more efficiently as well as the desire to learn never left him, he told the audience. “I would buy my college books on a Friday and be halfway through before the first class on Monday.”

Then he met Steve Jobs, and began working with him on a variety of projects. “Steve Jobs was a hippie with no money. I was an engineer with no money. We had to think creatively. I designed projects for fun, and he would figure out how to make money,” Wozniak recalled as he told how he invented the Apple I and Apple II that started it all and the company’s ups and downs through the years. He called the iPhone the greatest product ever.

As one of the Facebook co-founders that lived in the famous Harvard dorm room, Chris Hughes said the movie The Social Network got a lot of things wrong.

“Our dorm wasn’t like a luxury condo, there was no sex in the bathroom, as far as I know. An alcohol-fueled hackathon, while it looked like a lot of fun, didn’t happen.”

Hughes told the real story of Facebook and described his roommate Mark Zuckerberg as “highly analytical and very skeptical of conventional wisdom.” What the movie did get right, Hughes told the crowd: “Facebook is the defining example of American ingenuity and entrepreneurship of the 21st century.” And at the core: “There’s a new universal respect for the entrepreneur.”

Hughes, now owner and publisher of The New Republic, also talked about his current passion: How to use mobile and social technologies to support serious long-form journalism into the 21st century.

“Conventional wisdom says this kind of journalism isn’t sustainable. Cynics say the golden age of journalism has past,” said Hughes.

Yet, over the past six months Hughes said it is the long, in-depth New Republic stories that have gone viral.

“Folks are reading just as much news today, if not more. ... We have an opportunity to deliver it across a limitless number of devices. [These trends] all come together to suggest … we are entering a true golden age of journalism.”

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Metrorail worker who was struck and killed by train identified

George Andrews, a Miami-Dade Transit employee who was killed Monday near Earlington Heights station when a moving train struck him, was walking on the tracks after parking his train on a side track because it had been malfunctioning, the director of MDT, Ysela Llort, said Tuesday.

“He had a train that was not functioning correctly and central control told him to park the train in what we call a pocket, north of Earlington Heights. He then was walking back to the station and was 30 yards from the station.”

Llort declined to give further details saying the case is still under police investigation. Miami-Dade police detectives, who are investigating the incident, said they will not provide all details until the investigation is completed.

Jeffrey Mitchell, vice president of the Transport Workers Union Local 291, which represents Metrorail operators, said walking on the track after parking a disabled train is normal procedure for MDT. What is unclear, he added, is why the train hit Andrews while he walked on the track.

A train operator who parks a train on a side track and then begins to walk on the track must advise his position to central control and technicians there must warn all trains, said Mitchell.

"The problem is that the trains are not like cars," said Mitchell. "The operator of the train that hit him may have seen him on the track, and may have applied the brakes immediately, but the train does not stop immediately."

Llort's explanation of the incident departs from the original explanation released by county police.

“According to investigators, the decedent, a Miami-Dade County Transit employee, was working on the Metrorail tracks when he was struck by the moving train. He died on the scene,” the police statement said Monday.

According to Llort, Andrews was operating a Green Line train between Dadeland South station and Palmetto station when the tragedy occurred.

Llort said Andrews was a highly valued employee of MDT. He was 47 and would have turned 48 on Friday. His family could not be reached Tuesday.

“He was a very beloved family member, and very well thought of by the transit family,” said Llort. “This is a tragedy to the transit family and we are in mourning.

Llort said she had ordered that every employee receives counseling if desired.

Andrews began working as bus operator trainee on Nov. 23, 1987, said Llort. Then he became a Metrorail operator full time in the summer of 2003.

Metrorail has two routes, the Green Line from Dadeland South to Palmetto station and the Orange Line from Dadeland South to Miami International Airport (MIA).

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AMF Bowling rolls gutter ball

Amf Bowling Worldwide, the world’s largest bowling alley operator, yesterday filed for bankruptcy protection for the second time in 12 years, saying recent economic weakness has cost it business and left it with an unmanageable debt burden.

The Mechanicsville, Va.-based company said it has agreed on a plan to significantly reduce its debt and turn over control to its lenders, enabling it to emerge from Chapter 11 before the end of April 2013.

AMF and 15 affiliates sought protection from creditors. The company said it had between $100 million and $500 million of both assets and liabilities.

AMF said it operates 270 bowling centers in the United States and Mexico — more than three times as many as its nearest rival. It also said it has more than 20 million customers a year and employs about 7,000 people.

AMF Chief Financial Officer Stephen Satterwhite said in a court filing the company has been unable to sufficiently reduce costs to combat falling revenue, amid a 36 percent decline in large US bowling league memberships since 1998. Efforts to sell assets were unsuccessful.

AMF said it has lined up $50 million of financing to keep operating now and that customers should see no difference.

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No touch screen? Stick with Windows 7

Q. I recently had to replace my 9-year-old Windows XP computer, and am having trouble adapting to Windows 7.

What are the advantages, if any, for me to upgrade to Windows 8, which I’ve read has touch-screen capability and works with other equipment besides desktop computers? Since I don’t have a touch screen, I’m wondering if there is any point in upgrading.

Peter Robinson Chaska, Minn.

Different versions of Windows 8 are being offered on PCs, tablet computers and smartphones. But in every case the new operating system is primarily aimed at people who are using touch-sensitive screens.

So unless you’re planning to buy a touch-screen device in connection with upgrading to Windows 8, you’re probably better off continuing to use Windows 7. By most accounts, using the touch-screen-oriented Windows 8 with a mouse and keyboard is more difficult than using previous Windows versions with a mouse and keyboard.

In addition, if you find the changes in Windows 7 to be challenging, I suspect you won’t enjoy the more radical changes embodied in Windows 8 (i.e., much different start screen.)

I’m not saying you should never upgrade to Windows 8; just let Microsoft deal with some of these usability issues first.Q. I disagree with your warning to never click the unsubscribe link to put a stop to spam emails. Totally inundated with spam, I began unsubscribing and cut my spam down from more than 50 a day to one or two.

Some spam senders were more difficult to shake than others. I threatened a nonexistent Florida corporation that I would go to their state attorney general’s office, but never heard from them again. I gave a dental company a taste of their own medicine until they finally stopped sending me email. Others just took me off their lists pronto. It has been well worth the effort.

Deborah Gray Mitchell North Miami

Your strategy will work with legitimate companies and with spammers who can be located and threatened with legal action.

Unfortunately, most spam producers are neither legitimate nor traceable. When you respond to their emails, you confirm that yours is a working email address, and therefore fair game.

At the same time, you’ve essentially challenged some spammers to a duel, a risky business because they know your email address. Make sure you have a strong email password to prevent tampering.

Congratulations on your success, but I can’t recommend your approach to others.

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South Florida disaster team heads north to help after Sandy

The 52 colorful quilts were neatly folded into a red duffel bag and hand-carried to New York City on Monday, where a local fire department will distribute them to victims of Hurricane Sandy.

The gifts from the East Sunrise Quilters Guild were brought north by nurse and educator Debra Hauss-DeJesse, one of 42 members of the South Florida Disaster Medical Assistance Team who left from airports in the region for two-week deployments in the Northeast.

Read the full story at  Sun-Sentinel.com.

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One Direction on What They Look for in a Girl

Ellen DeGeneres is holding her biggest outdoor concert ever with British pop sensation One Direction on Thursday, and we have an advance clip.

RELATED: One Direction Plays Catch with Super Bowl Champ

During the sit-down portion, the boys answer the crucial questions: Which members are single and what do they look for in a girl?

"I like someone that's cute. Someone I can have a laugh with. And I also like people that are American. And you all qualify," said Niall Horan, 19, sending the crowd of teenage girls into frenzy.

Tune in to The Ellen DeGeneres Show November 15 for the full interview and concert. The band's sophomore studio album Take Me Home is available now.

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Friends in grief

It’s victims helping victims.

Families that lost loved ones when Flight 587 crashed in the Rockaways in 2001 are taking up a collection for residents of the battered shorefront community still struggling to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Sandy.

The poignant gesture will raise thousands, not millions. Most donors will be Dominican-Americans of modest means.

But an official of the Committee in Memory of Flight 587 said the contributors aren’t focused on the money.

“We just want to give them something, you understand?” said Belkis Lora, 45, who lost her 44-year-old brother, José. “We want them to know we are with them.”

Tomas E. Gaston

POIGNANT: Angeline Celestino, 10, yesterday lays a flower for the father she never knew, Angel Celestino, who died 11 years ago on Flight 587.

The two communities bonded after the doomed American Airlines flight to the Dominican Republic went down following takeoff from Kennedy Airport with 260 people aboard. Five others died on the ground.

Lora said people in the Rockaways cleaned the memorial of storm debris after Sandy struck.

Mayor Bloomberg yesterday officiated at the 11th-anniversary memorial service for the victims, five of whom were from the Belle Harbor section of the Rockaways. But for the first time, the event was held at the Holy Spirit Catholic Church in The Bronx, and not at the memorial site itself, because of Sandy.

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