The rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes ...

The rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes, who started Theranos when she was 19 and became the world's youngest female billionaire before it all came crashing down

Avery Hartmans

 14/05/2018

These days, blood-testing startup Theranos is on its last legs.

But in 2014, the billion-dollar company and its CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, were on top of the world. Back then, Theranos was a revolutionary idea thought up by a woman hailed as a genius who styled herself as a female Steve Jobs. Holmes was the world's youngest female self-made billionaire, and Theranos was one Silicon Valley's unicorn startups.

Then it all came crashing down.

The shortcomings and inaccuracies of Theranos's technology were exposed, along with the role Holmes played in covering it all up. Theranos and Holmes were charged with massive fraud, and the company was forced to close its labs and testing centers.

This is how Holmes went from precocious child to ambitious Stanford dropout to embattled startup CEO.

Elizabeth Holmes was born on February 3, 1984 in Washington, D.C. Her mom, Noel, was a Congressional committee staffer, and her dad, Christian Holmes, worked for Enron before moving to government agencies like USAID.


Holmes' family moved when she was young, from Washington, D.C. to Houston.



At the age of 9, Holmes wrote a letter to her father: "What I really want out of life is to discover something new, something that mankind didn't know was possible to do."

When she was a teenager, Holmes started her own business: she sold C++ compilers, a type of software that translates computer code, to Chinese schools.



Holmes was inspired by her great-great-grandfather Christian Holmes, a surgeon, to go into medicine, but she discovered she was terrified of needles. Later, this would influence her to start Theranos.

Holmes went to Stanford to study chemical engineering. When she was a freshman, she became a "president's scholar," an honor which came with a $3,000 stipend to go toward a research project.

Holmes spent the summer after her freshman year interning at the Genome Institute in Singapore. She got the job partly because she spoke Mandarin, which she learned as a teenager.



As a sophomore, Holmes went to one of her professors, Channing Robertson, and said: "Let's start a company." With his blessing, she founded Real-Time Cures, later changing the company's name to Theranos.

Holmes soon filed a patent application for "Medical device for analyte monitoring and drug delivery," a wearable device that would administer medication, monitor patients' blood, and adjust the dosage as needed.



By the next semester, Holmes had dropped out of Stanford altogether, working on Theranos in the basement of a college house.



Theranos's business model was based around the idea that it ran blood tests using proprietary technology that required only pinprick in your finger and a small amount of blood. Holmes said the tests would be able to detect medical conditions like cancer and high cholesterol.



Holmes started raising venture capital money for Theranos from prominent investors like Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Larry Ellison. To date, Theranos has raised more than $700 million.

Holmes took investors' money on the condition that she wouldn't have to reveal how Theranos' technology worked. Plus, she would have final say over everything having to do with the company.

That obsession with secrecy extended to every aspect of Theranos. For the first decade Holmes spent building her company, Theranos operated in stealth mode. She even took three former Theranos employees to court, claiming they had misused Theranos trade secrets.

Holmes' attitude toward secrecy was borrowed from a Silicon Valley hero of hers: Steve Jobs. Holmes started wearing black turtlenecks like Jobs, decorated her office with his favorite furniture, and like Jobs, never took vacations.

Even Holmes's uncharacteristically deep voice may have been part of a carefully crafted image intended to help her fit in in the male-dominated business world.



Shortly after Holmes dropped out of Stanford at age 19, she had been dating Theranos president and COO Sunny Balwani, who was 20 years her senior. The pair broke up in spring 2016 when Holmes pushed him out of the company.



As Theranos started to rake in millions of funding, Holmes became the subject of media attention and acclaim in the tech world. She graced the covers of Fortune and Forbes, gave a TED Talk, and spoke on panels with Bill Clinton and Alibaba's Jack Ma.



Theranos quickly began securing outside partnerships. Capital Blue Cross and Cleveland Clinic signed on to offer Theranos tests to their patients, and Walgreens made a deal to open Theranos testing centers. Theranos also formed a secret partnership with Safeway worth $350 million.



At one point, Holmes was the world's youngest self-made female billionaire with a net-worth of around $4.5 billion.



Around the same time, questions were being raised about Theranos's technology. Ian Gibbons — chief scientist at Theranos and one of the company's first hires — warned Holmes that the tests weren't ready for the public to take, and that there were inaccuracies in the technology. Outside scientists began voicing their concerns about Theranos, too.



By August 2015, the FDA began investigating Theranos, and regulators from the government body that oversees laboratories found "major inaccuracies" in the testing Theranos was doing on patients.

By October 2015, Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou published his investigation into Theranos's struggles with its technology. Carreyrou's reporting sparked the beginning of the company's downward spiral.

Carreyrou found that Theranos' blood-testing machine, named Edison, couldn't give accurate results, so Theranos was running its samples through the same machines used by traditional blood-testing companies.

Holmes appeared on CNBC's "Mad Money" to defend herself and her company. "This is what happens when you work to change things, and first they think you're crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world," Holmes said.

By 2016, the FDA, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and SEC were all looking into Theranos.




In July 2016, Holmes was banned from the lab-testing industry for two years. By October, Theranos had shut down lab operations and wellness centers.

In March 2018, Theranos, Holmes, and Balwani were charged with "massive fraud" by the SEC. Holmes agreed to give up financial and voting control of the company, pay a $500,000 fine, and return 18.9 million shares of Theranos stock. She also isn't allowed to be the director or officer of a publicly traded company for 10 years.



Despite the charges, Holmes has been allowed to stay on as CEO of Theranos, as it's a private company, not public. But the company is hanging on by a thread, and Holmes has written to investors asking for more money to save Theranos. "In light of where we are, this is no easy ask," Holmes wrote.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/companies/the-rise-and-fall-of-elizabeth-holmes-who-started-theranos-when-she-was-19-and-became-the-worlds-youngest-female-billionaire-before-it-all-came-crashing-down/

List of Theranos postings on this blog :

1. Theranos: Scandal hit blood-testing firm to shut
2. Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes indicted for alleged fraud, out as CEO
3. The rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes ...
4. Lesson of Theranos: Fact-Checking Alone Isn't Enough
5. A 31-year-old's fight to disrupt a $75 billion industry
6. TEDMED: Elizabeth Holmes Lab testing reinvented
7. Blood, Simpler: One Woman's Drive to Revolutionize Medical Testing

This post is on Healthwise

50 Foods That Slash Your Cancer Risk

Although there’s no guarantee any of us won’t fall victim to the big C, adding these cancer-fighting foods to your diet is a smart step. Finding out you have cancer can be one of the most distressing and defining moments of a person’s life. 

• 

And, unfortunately enough, the stark picture of doctors forced to break the news is all too common. It is estimated that 39.6 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with the disease at some point in their lifetime.

Fortunately, there are ways to avoid becoming a statistic. Steering clear of excessive use of tobacco and alcohol, getting immunized for certain viral infections like Hepatitis B and HPV, as well as changing your diet are all potent ways to slash your risk of getting diagnosed. And while there’s no guarantee of living cancer-free, replacing fried foods, processed meats, and sugary treats with our 50 foods that are scientifically-proven to cut your cancer risk is a wonderful way to start. Check out the restorative foods below, and then don’t miss our exclusive report on 50 Doctor’s Own Breast Cancer Tips.

http://www.msn.com/en-my/health/nutrition/50-foods-that-slash-your-cancer-risk/ss-AAtn3Ol?ocid=ientp#image=1

'Best yet to come' for Facebook

5 February 2014


By Press Association





Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg said the "best is yet to come" as the internet giant celebrates its 10th anniversary.


The multi-billionaire said he uses the social networking site to share photographs of his "ridiculously cute" dog Beast who has acquired more than one million Facebook fans.


Mr Zuckerberg, who was named Time Magazine's person of the year in 2010, said it is "mind-blowing" to reflect on the success of the website he launched in his Harvard dorm a decade ago, and said "there's always a next move".


"It's been a pretty amazing journey, and you know it's so rare to have the opportunity to touch a billion people's lives," he told the Today programme in the United States.


The 29-year-old added: "It's pretty mind-blowing I think to think about. I remember really vividly having pizza with my friends a day or two after I opened up the first version of Facebook.


"At the time I thought someone needs to build a service like this for the world, but I just never thought that we'd be the ones to help do it. I think a lot of what it comes down to is we just cared more."


The 10 years since Facebook's inception has not always been plain sailing, with legal wrangles, criticism over privacy issues and a rocky start in financial markets - but "there's always a next move" with the internet giant.


"We've just gone through a number of periods where people just didn't believe that we could succeed at what we were trying to do.


"I've spent a lot of late nights pacing around my living room with team mates, just trying to plot out what our next move can be in order to keep pushing forward on this mission, but there's always a next move," Mr Zuckerberg said.


When asked about how he enjoys the wealth Facebook has brought him, he said: "I wear the same outfit, or at least a different copy of it almost every day. I got a new grill recently, does that count? My wife and I love cooking."


Mr Zuckerberg said he tends to just use his phone nowadays, and uses Facebook to share photographs of his pet.


"I almost only use my phone at this point, so I'll write these long emails, or, a lot of the work that I do I'll do just writing on my phone. When people get these 10-page emails they're like 'how did you write that on your phone?'," he said.


Adding: "I definitely have a page for our dog Beast. He actually has more than a million fans. He's this ridiculously cute dog. He looks like a little sheep. He's a sheep herding dog. And he's just this little 30-pound dog, and he's amazing."


While some analysts question Facebook's staying power and have expressed doubt over whether it will be here in another 10 years, Mr Zuckerberg is optimistic.


"I'm just so grateful to have the opportunity that I've had to serve so many people, and I really think that the best is yet to come," he said.


http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/best-yet-to-come-for-facebook




Facebook Inc (FB): Mobile Asia To Drive Future Growth

 

by Vikas Shukla February 04, 2014, 12:30 pm

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is celebrating its 10th birthday today. As growth in the Western markets continues to slow, a big challenge for the world’s largest social networking company is to maintain its growth rate. According to AFP, the company will find its next big growth opportunity in emerging Asian countries, especially mobile users. Facebook was banned in China in 2009. So, most of the company’s future growth in Asia is likely to come from the other populous countries like India and Indonesia.

India to become the biggest market for Facebook this year

Research firm eMarketer estimates that India will overtake the United States as the nation with the most Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) users by the end of this year. Currently, India has about 93 million Facebook users compared to 150 million in the U.S. But the number of Indian users is estimated to reach to 152.4 million, beating the U.S. figure of 151.1 million. Despite immense growth in Asia, the social networking giant can’t afford to sit idle because local competitors are threatening it in countries like Indonesia. Even on mobile, it’s facing stiff competition from WeChat, Line and WhatsApp in Asia.

Facebook India’s chief of growth and mobile partnerships, Kevin D’Souza, says Internet penetration is still low in Asian countries. Only 200 million people in India have access to the Internet. Though more than 400 million Indians own a cell phone, only 5% of them are smartphone users. So, the key to Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s growth in emerging markets is to encourage access to feature phones. Most of the Asian users sign up for the social network on their mobile devices.

Where will Facebook’s next billion users come from?

More than 100 million people around the world are using “Facebook for Every Phone” app that’s especially designed for non-smartphones. And a large number of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s next billion users will be the ones using this app. The app comes preloaded on Nokia Asha 501 feature phone. The company will also benefit from the prominence of English-speaking population in India and the Philippines. About 33% of the the Philippines’s total population has access to Facebook.

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s advertising revenue jumped 76% to $2.34 billion during the fourth quarter. And mobile advertising accounted for more than 53% of its total ad revenue. The company’s mobile daily active users (DAUs) increased 49% to 556 million, and mobile monthly active users (MAUs) went up by 39% to 945 million. Most importantly, the number of Asian monthly active users went up from 298 million to 368 million. Indonesia has 65 million Facebook users.

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) shares surged 1.55% to $62.43 at 9:32 AM EST.

http://www.valuewalk.com/2014/02/facebook-inc-fb-mobile-asia/




Facebook Inc (FB): From 650 To 1.3 Billion Users In 10 Years

by Michelle Jones February 04, 2014, 10:45 am

The first article ever published about Facebook may have run in The Harvard Crimson.

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) started out as a small website exactly 10 years ago today, and Business Insider has discovered what may very well be the first article ever written about it. At the time, the site was actually TheFacebook.com, and the article referred to by BI was published in The Harvard Crimson and focused on Mark Zuckerberg, then a student at Harvard, but now CEO of a company with a market capitalization of more than $150 billion.





“Hundreds Register for New Facebook Website”


That was the headline on the story, and at the time, that probably seemed like quite a feat, but looking back on it now, it certainly seems like an understatement. Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s original website attracted attention because it had gone viral at Harvard, attracting 650 users in a relatively short amount of time. In fact, Zuckerberg told the publication that he expected he would have 900 users “by this morning,” at the time of that article.

Today Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has 1.3 billion users, and it’s monetizing those users while adapting to the changing needs of the Internet as it shifts to mobile usage.


How TheFacebook.com came to be


Zuckerberg said he spent only a week coding the original website, and at the time, it contained some “elements of a standard House face book with extensive profile features that allow students to search for others in their courses, social organizations and Houses.” He created the website because “everyone” was talking about a face book within Harvard, and he said the university was taking too long to do it and that he could do it better and in only a week.


Where Facebook’s first 20 employees are now


Business Insider also took a look at the first 20 employees Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) had and where they are today. Of course Zuckerberg is CEO now, but many of those original 20 employees don’t work there any longer. Some left to join Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) or other major technology companies, while others started their own companies which went on to become hits, including YouTube and Quora.


Like Zuckerberg, most of those original 20 employees are executives now. Interestingly enough, only two of them were women.


http://www.valuewalk.com/2014/02/facebook-inc-fb-from-650-to-1-3-billion-users-in-10-years/

Facebook Inc (FB): Zuckerberg Aims To Revolutionize Tech Industry

February 4th, 2014

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) celebrates its 10^th anniversary on February 4^th. Despite all that Mark Zuckerberg has accomplished for the social media giant in that time, he now wants to revolutionize the entire technology industry. He shared some of those hopes, while talking about some of his efforts to turn the technology world upside down at the Open Commute Project Summit V, held in San Jose on January 28 – 29, 2014.

According to the New York Times, Zuckerberg’s awareness that the “proprietary global computing systems” that other Internet giants like Amazon, Google and Yahoo used, didn’t work for him, forced him to come up with his own system.

It Began With Open Commute

Open Commute started as an initiative to streamline Facebook’s computing infrastructure. Zuckerberg wanted to make it more efficient, and save money through increased efficiency. By embracing crowd-sourcing, which is how Open Commute began, and using open source products, Zuckerberg has saved lots of money, and surprisingly, done it by being green in the process. (Related: Facebook Inc (FB) Isn’t In A Death Spiral)

These accomplishments are even more impressive, considering the project started with three people working out of an electronics lab in the basement of Facebook’s Palo Alto headquarters. Eventually, the team moved to a facility in Prineville, Oregon, and with the help of more people, the group created the customized battery backup systems, power supplies, servers, and server racks.

Facebook’s Vice President of Infrastructure, Jay Parikh explained that over the last three years, Facebook’s use of open source products (through the Open Commute Project,) cut company energy and management costs by $1.2 billion. That saves a huge amount of money, not just for the company, but for investors, too. (Related: Facebook Inc (FB): The Death Of Social Media?)

Consider a server that has to handle everything that Facebook’s many users do in their interacting on the platform every day. That puts a demand of 4 billion operations per second on the systems.

The team got rid of all but the necessities for running their servers, and they found a more efficient and Eco-friendly way to re-circulate air and bring in fresh air from outside. Thanks to these changes and their willingness to overhaul their system to incorporate open-source products, the company now uses 38 percent less energy, and cut costs by 24 percent, while increasing efficiency as it did all this.

Innovations Shown at the Open Commute Project Summit V

The theme of the summit was “The Future is Open.” Before an audience of 3,400 registered attendees, the project showed off some new innovations, among them, cheap cellphone chips that were made into servers. The display also featured examples of networking gear that could potentially cost half of what people pay for traditional networking products.

Nothing is ever enough for Zuckerberg, and as Open Commute Project Chairman and Facebook Vice President for Hardware Design, Frank Frankovsky suggested, the way they approach addressing the market continues to change. Those who recognize what people want from technology are starting businesses to address those wants – especially by giving them more choices, greater flexibility and control.

As Zuckerberg looks to the future, he hopes to connect a few billion more people, and if he has to destroy the achievements of decades of international telecommunications technologies in the process, he’s not afraid to do so. That is one reason he created Internet.org, the goal of which is to make the Internet available to anyone, anywhere in the world. And for Zuckerberg, that’s not just a noble aspiration. He intends to tackle the problem no matter how many obstacles he has to overcome. (Related: Facebook Inc (FB): The Death Of Social Media?)

The Open Commute Project is poised to create whatever technologies new innovations require. In his never-ending quest to bring new content and services to Facebook, Zuckerberg is also working with wireless service providers to find ways to make wireless data transmission more efficient and more affordable. And through Internet.org, he is working with different phone companies throughout the world, hoping to transform wireless technologies everywhere.

Facebook will always face competition, but, as noted in a report from Bloomberg Newsweek, Mark Zuckerberg summed up his goal for the next decade by saying, “We’re looking forward to our next decade and to helping connect the rest of the world.” If the start of 2014 is any indication of how things will go for Zuckerberg, profits from FB growth will continue to soar. (Related: Facebook Inc (FB): The Best Way To Play Its Huge Success)

A gain of $3.4 billion since January 1^st is pretty phenomenal, but what makes it most impressive is that almost all of it happened on January 30, 2014. For small scale, individual investors, technology ETFs (such as Global X Social Media Index – or SOCL,) that have investments in FB stock, may offer a chance to invest in a company with unlimited growth and earnings potential.

By Diana Primavera, ETF Daily News

Complete List Of Global X Social Media Index ETF (SOCL) Holdings (Next Page)

http://etfdailynews.com/2014/02/04/facebook-inc-fb-zuckerberg-aims-to-revolutionize-tech-industry/2/

The following stocks are held by the Global X Social Media Index ETF and have the exposures noted.

The Global X Social Media Index ETF is an exchange-traded fund incorporated in the USA. The Fund seeks to track the performance of the Solactive Social Media Index.

ETF TYPE		ETF
ASSET CLASS		Equity
MARKET CAP		139.010 Million
EXPENSE RATIO		0.65%
LEVERAGED		N
PROSPECTUS		Click Here For Prospectus

You can sort any column of data by clicking on the heading.

Constituent Name  ↑↓	Constituent Ticker  ↑↓	Weighting   ↑↓
Tencent Holdings Ltd		11.08%
Facebook Inc		10.68%
LinkedIn Corp		9.08%
SINA Corp/China		8.49%
TWITTER INC		5.75%
Pandora Media Inc		5.5%
Yelp Inc		5.49%
Yandex NV		4.99%
Gladstone Commercial Corp		4.76%
Granite Real Estate Investment Trust		4.76%
Zynga Inc		4.33%
Dena Co Ltd		4.17%
Nexon Co Ltd		3.17%
Youku Tudou Inc		3.14%
MAIL.RU GROUP-GDR REGS W/		2.64%
Gree Inc		2.39%
ANGIES LIST INC		1.54%
NetEase Inc		1.4%
PCHOME ONLINE INC		1.05%
Nutrisystem Inc		1.04%
Mixi Inc		.94%
Renren Inc		.87%
Jive Software Inc		.85%
XING AG		.66%
Demand Media Inc		.57%
United Online Inc		.42%
Changyou.com Ltd		.28%
CASH		0%

Total Constituents Found: 29

The above data is for reference only and may not be completely accurate as fund holdings may change.

http://etfdailynews.com/2014/02/04/facebook-inc-fb-zuckerberg-aims-to-revolutionize-tech-industry/3/






Facebook Inc: More Room to Run


February 3, 2014
By Ishfaque Faruk


Facebook's  (NASDAQ: FB  )  mobile usage is growing at a rapid rate and its fundamentals are following suit. Facebook's leading position is surging as the company now has more than 1.23 billion users.


And the company's users remain very engaged with roughly 62% of total users using Facebook every day. The company has diversified its social media presence well with Instagram, which now has has an estimated 180 million MAUs, doubling its user base in 2013.


Strong numbers across the board

Facebook enjoyed accelerating revenue growth in 2013, which is rare for a big company. The company's sales stood at $7.9 billion which was a 55% year-over-year increase. Its diluted earnings per share for 2013 stood at $0.60 a huge increase from 2012. Facebook's cash balance grew to $11.5 billion, as the company raised an additional $1.5 billion with an additional offering, and this gives the company more flexibility to pursue inorganic growth opportunities through M&A activity.


The company's margin expansion has led to strong growth in free cash flow, which grew to $2.85 billion in 2013. Facebook's revenue growth from the payments business has not been growing and stood at $241 million last quarter. However, advertising revenue grew by more than 65% in all its geographic segments.


The number of ad impressions on Facebook's platform declined by 8% but were easily offset by a 92% increase in ad pricing. Ad impressions declined because the company shows fewer ads on mobile relative to desktop, but the pricing of ads increased because of higher engagement and click-through rates on mobile devices. Facebook's average revenue per user, or ARPU, grew to $6.81, which represents a 28% increase from 2012.


Mobile growth is phenomenal

The pop of the stock was not only due to the big beat of estimates, but also because of the company's solid growth on mobile devices. Total number of users logging on through mobile devices stood at 77%, which is a big increase from the 59% last year. For the first time in Facebook's operating history, advertising revenue on mobile devices surpassed desktop ad sales.


Twitter (NYSE: TWTR  )  also has a strong foothold on mobile devices. Roughly 76% of Twitter's total user base, (232 million users), access the site through mobile devices. As a result, Twitter earns 70% of its advertising revenue from mobile. On a comparative basis, Facebook earned 53% of its advertising revenue from mobile devices, and should earn more from mobile in the future.


Facebook's quarterly revenue on mobile devices crossed $1 billion dollars for the first time as mobile ad sales grew roughly 306% year over year to $1.24 billion. In the last quarter, Facebook's Mobile MAUs grew 39% year over year to 945 million, and the company's mobile audience is a lot more engaged relative to its desktop members.


Facebook's CFO disclosed that the number of daily users on mobile outnumbered desktop users by roughly 200 million. And the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg seems to be very excited about coming out with more engaging mobile experiences.  In fact, Facebook just announced Paper, which is an app that aggregates and brings together different stories in one layout.


Advertisers are diving in

The number of small and medium businesses with an active Facebook page have surged to more than 25 million, and the company is offering more simplified advertising options to these businesses to convert them into paying marketers.


Facebook is aiding more developers to acquire new customers through mobile app-install ads and it remains a growing revenue stream. In addition, the company is working with various brand marketers and helping them to reach their desired consumer groups. Facebook is testing video ads with select brand marketers to determine the impact on sales and this will likely be rolled out on a much broader scale.


The company's measurement and targeting tools have been crucial for its strong revenue growth in 2013. Facebook's custom audiences product is enabling marketers to choose their target customers in a very precise way and is generating strong ROI for advertisers. Ads placed on the Facebook newsfeed have done very well for marketers on both mobile and desktop. This is appealing to newer advertisers.


Going forward

Facebook's scale and reach has hit unprecedented levels. The social media site is the only platform where more than 750 million users tune in everyday, and this provides the company with a lot of useful data for their advertising clients.


Facebook's strong growth in revenue was driven by more newsfeed ads, higher consumer engagement, and both these drivers are likely to continue to grow. In addition, it still has a number of future earnings drivers like Instagram and video ads that will propel the business. 

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/02/03/facebook-instagram-and-video.aspx

Apple iPhone 5S - most advanced smartphone on the market.

We've got our hands on Apple's latest flagship - the 5S - but does it rule the roost?

Hands On with the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c

MSN Tech's David Phelan gives a hands on review of the new iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c.

Date 19/09/13, Duration 2:40, Views 18711

Video by:  MSN Tech

What is it?

 Apple’s newest flagship phone with a familiar design but new insides

What’s great?

 Super-fast processor, improved camera and a very cool fingerprint sensor

What’s not?

 A new styling would have been even better, battery life same as before

The bottom line:

 The 5S is a powerful, brainy smartphone with an astonishingly fast processor and an outstanding camera. Those with the iPhone 5 may desire a whole new design but the internal upgrades are definitely worth having

Apple iPhone 5S: Review

It’s that time of year again: Apple has announced its new iPhone, which goes on sale tomorrow. Though this time there’s a new wrinkle, a lower-priced polycarbonate phone, the iPhone 5C, which is reviewed HERE. For now, though, let’s concentrate on the flagship, the iPhone 5S, which is the handset that Apple hopes will put it in the lead again in the smartphone races. Will it, and if so for how long?

Apple iPhone 5S: Design and build

Let’s start with the design. It’s near-identical to last year’s iPhone 5. This may be a disappointment to some, but last year’s design was pretty spiffy so it’s no bad thing. If you want to make sure that all your friends see you have the new iPhone, you can opt for the gold colour, now available in addition to the silver and space grey shades. The gold is too subtle to please your average oligarch but won’t suit everyone.

If you do go gold, it’s the edge band you’ll notice, and the gold ring round the home button, which we’ll come to in a moment. Beyond that, there’s little different to spot, though hawkeyes will see the camera lens is different and the flash now has two lights, not one. Other than that it looks the same as the iPhone 5, and is the same size and weight – hey, you can recycle last year’s case.

Apple iPhone 5S: Fingerprint sensor

This is the first phone to have a fingerprint sensor, but as you’d expect from Apple it’s the execution of this feature which is outstanding. It's sublimely easy to register your digits – you can store details for up to five fingers or thumbs – and it works flawlessly. Only when I had water or dust on my finger did it fail to recognise me first time. At first I thought this was going to be nothing more than a show-off gimmick, but the time saved in not inputting my four digit pass code won me over very quickly. Expect rival companies to have similar devices soon.

I have no fear of someone reading my code over my shoulder, and there’s something pleasingly intimate about the experience, knowing that your phone responds to you alone.

Apple iPhone 5S: Performance

The 5S is tremendously fast, from the way apps leap into life to the build-in-an-instant web pages in Safari. This is all down to the Apple A7 processor which is extremely powerful, way more than the phone needs, probably. As apps are developed to exploit this power, expect games with eye-popping graphics and intensive business applications to shine. For now, it’s just very fast and shows off the new iOS 7 software, just out, at its best.

The A7 has a little helper in the form of the M7 coprocessor which monitors movement in the phone’s accelerometer, gyroscope and compass. By analysing this data, the M7 knows if you’re walking, driving or away from your phone. First of all, that means it can save battery by not contacting the network too often if it senses you’re not there. Secondly, it means Maps can seamlessly switch from driving to walking instructions when it realises you’ve parked up and are on foot. And thirdly it will lead to new apps that make the most of this.

That’s really where Apple is better than any other company: at creating a vivid, appealing blank canvas that responds to the ingenuity of app developers. Expect the M7 to be crucial in the near future to incoming apps.

Battery life on the iPhone 5S is pretty good, though daily recharges are definitely necessary. It’s no match for the Sony Xperia Z1, for instance, or the Samsung Galaxy S4. It’s no worse than the iPhone 5, but it would’ve been great to see an improvement.

Apple

Apple iPhone 5S: Camera

The camera on the iPhone five was always pretty decent, though it excelled more for simplicity and ease-of-use van out and out image quality. This camera has the same pixel count, eight megapixels, but it has a larger sensor so the individual pixels are bigger and therefore better at accurately measuring light. The pixels here are 1.5 microns, and only one phone, the HTC One, has bigger pixels.

But what really sets the camera apart on this phone is down to that fast A7 processor which ensures there is absolutely no shutter lag on this phone. Where rival camera phones show a considerable pause before they shoot, this one is instant. It works especially well in burst mode where 10 frames per second are taken.

Other new features include a highly attractive slow motion video mode which shoots at 120 frames per second. There aren’t enough pixels here to zoom in massively without losing useful resolution, as with the Sony Xperia Z1 and Nokia Lumia 1020, but the convenience, speed and f/2.2 aperture make this a highly persuasive cameraphone.

Apple iPhone 5S: Software

The iPhone 5S comes preloaded with the latest operating software, iOS 7. This is the glitzy, colourful software designed by Apple’s Jony Ive. It has a bunch of new features, including FaceTime audio, which works like the video-calling system to route voice calls via a data connection rather than the conventional mobile network. If you have a decent data signal, the call quality is terrific and saves on your minutes if you don’t have an unlimited bundle.

The new OS has radical departures in every direction, not all brilliant. For instance, the Calendar app no longer has the option to show events in a list, or shows today’s appointments under the month’s calendar. But this is a rare exception – most apps are cleaner, more attractive and easier to use.

And then there’s the gorgeous parallax effect which makes the phone look amazing the moment you pick it up. The new iOS 7 is all about layers and the phone now makes the shortcut icons seem to float above the wallpaper in a deeply eye-catching way.

Apple

Apple iPhone 5S: Verdict

Every new iPhone is lambasted by critics for being not enough of a leap forward. It then sells in enormous numbers. At first glance the iPhone 5 S looks just like last years model, but so much more processing power has been squeezed inside that this is genuinely a significant update. The camera is a great improvement but remains simple to use. The central check means this is a real performance phone, but never slows down. And the fingerprint sensor, which could so easily have been an annoying, inefficient gimmick, is wholly persuasive. Easily the best iPhone yet, it’s also the most advanced smartphone on the market.

 

Apple iPhone 5S: Available 20 September - £549 (16GB), £629 (32GB), £709 (64GB)

http://tech.uk.msn.com/mobiles/apple-iphone-5s-review

'World's largest avocado' goes on sale in the UK

  30 August 2013 MSN UK News



Tesco salads buyer Emma Bonny holds the rare 'Avozilla'. Image: Press Association
 

If you're feeling particularly peckish this weekend, the 'Avozilla' might just do the trick. It's reportedly the world's largest avocado, and it goes on sale in Tesco supermarkets tomorrow.

The Avozilla is five times the weight of normal avocados and double the length. But it's incredibly rare: it's grown on just four trees in South Africa.

Unsurprisingly, it won't be cheap - each one will be £3 - but Tesco says this makes the fulsome fruit ideal for "shoppers looking for value for money, especially large families".

It also suggests the Avozilla's skin can be used as a serving bowl for guacamole. Looks like they'd make pretty good doorstops as well.

http://news.uk.msn.com/trending-blog/worlds-largest-avocado-goes-on-sale-in-the-uk/

Is this second-generation Concorde finally on its way?

 27/08/2013 10:15 | By Mark Bursa, contributor, MSN Innovation
 

Aircraft industry experts think we could be getting closer to seeing a replacement for Concorde flying soon

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John Frassanito & Associates

NASA’s view of how a second-generation SST might look

Ten years ago, aviation was about to take a rare backwards step. The end of Concorde services at the end of 2003 meant it was no longer possible to have breakfast in London, lunch in New York and dinner back in England on the same day.

Concorde was a first-generation Supersonic Transport (SST), designed in the 1960s. The airline industry knew the end would come sooner or later, and despite serious proposals for a replacement, such as BAE Systems’ AST concept of 1990, no second-generation SST has ever made it off the drawing board. Instead, the airlines demanded low operating costs instead of speed. The new queen of the skies was the massive Airbus A380 – impressive, but just as slow as every other airliner.

Mark Bursa

BAE’s AST was a 1990 concept by Concorde’s makers to build a 250-seat successor

Changing technology

Why is it so difficult to replace Concorde? A new SST would have to overcome serious technical obstacles, while being cheap enough to operate to satisfy the airline bean-counters.

Concorde had its limits – it could only carry 100 people; it was spectacularly noisy to get off the ground; its sonic booms meant it couldn’t operate over populated areas; and its thirsty engines limited its range – it could manage the North Atlantic, but not greater distances such as trans-Pacific routes. And climate change wasn’t an issue in Concorde’s heyday. Now upper-atmosphere greenhouse gases are another hurdle to overcome.

Technology has moved rapidly since Concorde was developed in the 1960s. So has the aerospace industry found ways to overcome these problems? The answer is yes. Research into SSTs has continued in America, Europe and Japan. And there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic that we might see a Concorde successor in the not-too-distant future.

NASA Michelle M Murphy

NASA is testing this Boeing SST design model in its wind tunnel in Cleveland, USA

Shaping the future

A future SST would have to be much bigger than Concorde – most projects seem to agree broadly on a 200-250 seat airliner with a range of at least 10,000km – which would give it the ability to fly direct from Los Angeles to Tokyo, Seoul or Beijing. The extra capacity would let airlines offer two classes of service, making supersonic travel much more affordable.

The first problem is getting off the ground without earth-shaking noise. Concorde literally blasted off the runway with four afterburning Rolls-Royce-SNECMA Olympus 593 engines. A new SST would have to be cleverer than that.

While Concorde was still in service, Airbus and BAE Systems backed a European project called Epistle, whose brief was to investigate the low-speed performance of fast jets, especially during take-off and landing.

ONERA

The European Epistle project did the ground work for high-lift SST wings 10 years ago

Detailed prototypes

Using advanced modelling and computer simulations, Epistle concluded that it would be possible to develop a smarter wing with advanced leading edge devices that would get a 200-seater “super-Concorde” off the ground without afterburners. Project leader Dr Ulrich Hermann claimed a replacement for Concorde could be “40% quieter and more efficient on take-off”, which would make the aircraft no louder than a Boeing 747-400.

But this would be at the expense of top speed. Rather than travelling at Mach 2, like Concorde, Epistle concluded that a wing optimised to work well at low speeds would not be able to fly faster than around Mach 1.6. That’s 20% slower than Concorde, but still twice as fast as today’s typical jetliner.

The optimum wing wouldn’t be an elegant Ogee delta like Concorde – instead a cranked wing, sharply swept-back toward the front of the plane, but with a less swept-back outer section, was proposed. Canard foreplanes – extra small wings near the aircraft’s nose - would also be used to give extra lift.

Boeing

Boeing’s Sonic Cruiser of 2001 could still form the basis of a future SST

Familiar concepts

If that layout sounds familiar, take a look at Boeing’s 200-seater Sonic Cruiser concept from 2001. This follows all the rules for creating a new SST – except Boeing designed the aircraft to fly at Mach 0.98, just below the speed of sound. That’s 20% or so faster than a subsonic jet, but to many experts it made little sense – the airflow round the plane at “transonic” speeds is especially turbulent, so passengers would be in for a bumpy ride.

Indeed, many believe the Sonic Cruiser was really an SST in disguise, but back in 2001, Boeing was nervous of a negative reaction in the wake of the Air France Concorde crash a year earlier. In the end, the Sonic Cruiser was shelved in favour of the subsonic 787 Dreamliner. However, it’s not been abandoned: last year Boeing applied for some new patents for an aircraft design that looked remarkably like an evolution of the Sonic Cruiser.

More recent research carried out by NASA backs up the Epistle findings. “These future airplanes will be slightly slower, maybe Mach 1.6 to Mach 1.8,” said Peter Coen of NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. “We can make a better engine for take-off and landing noise by flying at Mach 1.8 than we can at Mach 2. And the shape of the sonic boom solution is easier to achieve at those lower Mach numbers.”

NASA Carla Thomas

NASA’s SSBD demonstrator was no looker, but its bulbous nose cut sonic boom noise

Technical implications

Solving the sonic boom problem is vital. The sonic boom isn’t the sound of a plane passing through the sound barrier – it’s a shock wave that’s constantly made while an aircraft is flying at supersonic speeds – like the bow wave of a ship in the water. You can’t eradicate a sonic boom completely – but you can make it quieter, and NASA knows how.

One project, the Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstrator (SSBD), used a Northrop Grumman F-5E jet fighter fitted with a new, bulbous nose. This spread out the sonic boom shock wave – so instead of one big ‘boom’, the aircraft made lots of smaller ones. Tested in 2003-2004, it was very successful – flying at Mach 1.2 at a height of 32,000ft, no sonic boom was heard on the ground as the SSBD passed overhead. The only downside was the ugly profile of the new nose. A new SST will probably be a lot less elegant than Concorde.

NASA Lori Losey

The Quiet Spike extendable nose probe was even more effective at beating the boom

Ground-breaking project

Another project, Quiet Spike, gained even more remarkable results. Made of advanced composite materials, this was a telescopic needle nose that was fitted to a Mach 2 Boeing F-15B jet fighter. The Quiet Spike extended from 14ft in subsonic flight to 24ft in supersonic flight. Tested from 2004-06, the Quiet Spike changed the shape of the sonic boom pressure wave to smoother, more rounded waves. This resulted in a softer sound that was measured as being 10,000 times quieter than the Concorde sonic boom – almost inaudible on the ground.

So it’s clear you can get an SST off the ground, and it should be able to fly over land at supersonic speeds with almost no intrusive sonic booms. But what about engine pollution? Recently there has been a lot of progress in engine design, largely driven by advanced military projects such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

GE

GE’s ADVENT engine promises to be quiet at low speeds and efficient above Mach 1

New forms of propulsion

Engine-maker GE may have the solution. New military-derived ADVENT (ADaptive VErsitile ENgine Technology) engines behave like a quiet turbofan at low speeds, but can be switched in flight to run like a turbojet at high speeds, by diverting air through the turbine, rather than bypassing the turbine through the fan. Combined with advanced intakes, this would allow an SST to ‘supercruise’ supersonically very efficiently at high altitudes, burning less fuel, and emitting less CO2.

By the time a next-gen SST is ready for service, airliner noise regulations will have been tightened up, so the aircraft would have to be a lot quieter than the Boeing 747-400 that the Epistle project used as its benchmark in 2003. But their low-speed ability to run like an efficient turbofan means ADVENT engines should be able to meet future noise rules.

Boeing

This wind tunnel model shows Boeing’s latest design concept for a future SST

Advanced concepts

Recently it has emerged that a number of SST projects have at least reached the wind tunnel stage. NASA has been testing a Boeing concept, while the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has unveiled a design, which it plans to test as a pilotless scale model. Japan has been working on SST designs since 2005, when it announced a joint research project with France, though this failed to yield a final design.

Japan Times

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency plans to flight test this working model SST

A new dawn for aviation?

Realistically, a new SST could be ready by around 2025 – if the airlines can be convinced. And that’s the key. There’s clearly a way – all Concorde’s shortcomings can clearly be solved. But is there a will to make a new SST? For now, airlines are focused on efficiency and costs. But Airbus forecasts the number of airliners on service worldwide will double by 2030, from 16,000 or so at present to more than 30,000. If maybe 500 of those extra airliners were SSTs, the project could be viable.

Much of that demand will come from China, which has emerged as the world’s most dynamic industrial nation in the decade since Concorde services ended. A long-range SST that could bring down journey times to China across the Pacific or over the North Pole could be the trigger to reawaken the supersonic dream, and put that day trip to the Big Apple back on the agenda

 http://innovation.uk.msn.com/tomorrow/is-this-second-generation-concorde-finally-on-its-way