AOL reinventing its Brands

AOL, the one-time Internet star seeking to reinvent itself as a major media player, is joining the craze for personalized news readers for tablet computers.

The Internet and media firm, which purchased The Huffington Post in February for $315 million to serve as the flagship of its media fleet, launched a free daily news magazine for Apple's hot-selling iPad this week called Editions.

Like other iPad news aggregators such as Flipboard, Pulse, Taptu and Zite, Editions uses algorithms to take a reader's interests into account in serving up their pages.

Editions users customize their experience by indicating their interest in topics such as Top News, Entertainment, Sports, Design, Tech, Business, Family, Health and Fitness, Sports or Travel.

Readers can also link their Facebook, Twitter or AOL accounts to the application, available as a free download from Apple's App Store, to help guide the selection of news sources.

When connected with Twitter, for example, a publication followed on Twitter will become a preferred news source in Editions.

Editions users who plug in their location or zip code receive local weather reports and local news, much of it provided by Patch, AOL's nationwide community news project.

"Once you start reading, Editions will learn what you like (and what you don't)," according to AOL. "The more you read, the better Editions gets at delivering the latest news and information, all tailored to your tastes."

David Temkin, AOL's head of mobile, said Editions is an attempt to "take the best of the online and offline reading experiences and fuse them into a single, sleek magazine.

"By combining custom features with technology that learns about you as you use it, Editions delivers a magazine every day that's full of the things you care about most," he added in a statement.

Wikipedia losing its contributors

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that allows anyone to edit its entries, says it is losing contributors.

Founder Jimmy Wales says administrators are scrambling to simplify what he called ``convoluted'' editing templates that may be discouraging people from writing and editing Wikipedia's entries.

In another effort to encourage volunteers to stay active, Wales says the site has introduced a new feature called WikiLove that lets users post positive feedback.

He was speaking to the Associated Press on Thursday from the website's annual conference, held this year in Haifa, Israel.

The nonprofit organization that runs Wikipedia announced it is encouraging professors in India, Brazil and Europe to assign the editing and writing of Wikipedia entries to students.

Foxconn to replace human with robots

Have we reached the stage where robotic assistance is preferred over human manpower ?? Perhaps its quite early to comment but one thing has been definitely proved by the Taiwanese company, Foxconn that "ROBOTS" are fully geared up to replace humans at least in the manufacturing units as they are cheap, accurate and faster than human.

Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group, known for assembling Apple's iPhones and iPads in China, plans to use more robots, with one report saying the company would use one million of them in the next three years, to cope with rising labor costs.

Foxconn's move highlights an increasing trend toward automation among Chinese companies as labour issues such as high-profile strikes and workers' suicides plague firms in sectors from autos to technology.

Contract manufacturers such as Foxconn, which also counts Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Nokia among its clients, are moving parts of their manufacturing to inland Chinese cities or other emerging markets. They are also boosting research and development investments to lift their thin margins.

"Workers' wages are increasing so quickly that some companies can't take it longer," said Dan Bin, a fund manager at Shenzhen-based Eastern Bay Investment Management, which invests in technology and consumer-related shares in China and Hong Kong.

"Automation is a general trend in many sectors in China, such as electronics. Of course some companies will consider moving their manufacturing overseas, but it's easier said than done when the supply chain is here."

The China Business News on Monday quoted Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou as saying the company planned to use 1 million robots within three years, up from about 10,000 robots in use now and an expected 300,000 next year.

Foxconn, whose listed units include Hon Hai Precision and Foxconn International Holdings Ltd, issued a statement later saying Gou told staff at its campus in Longhua, China, that he planned to move its more than 1 million employees up the value chain beyond basic manufacturing work.

Foxconn, which has been plagued by a spate of workers' suicides in its Chinese factories since last year, plans to use the robots for simple assembly line procedures, the statement quoted its chairman Gou as saying.