point

An American hedge fund billionaire has called for the breakup of Sony, in a bid to tighten its focus on the electronics division.

The call on Tuesday came from Daniel Loeb, founder and CEO of hedge fund Third Point, known for its role in ousting Yahoo's former CEO Scott Thompson and enlisting Marissa Mayer from Google to run the company, the New York Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Sony's entertainment arm includes one of the biggest film studios in Hollywood and one of the largest music labels in the world.

Loeb also signaled he would … Read more

If your phone is your go-to business gadget, you absolutely need a way to view PowerPoint presentations. PowerPoint Reader lets you read them, but you won't be able to watch them as a slideshow. You can't make any edits or changes to them either.

Before you can actually read documents with PowerPoint Reader, the app has to convert them to PDF. That means you can't view the animated slideshow, transitions, or annotations. PDFs are usually larger than the original documents, as well. Make sure you have space on your phone before you convert. Annoyingly, the app drops … Read more

Businesses that perform sales transactions need a system to track and manage items and pricing. For those who do not have a dedicated system for transactions, Copper Point of Sale Software for Mac performs well, but lacks a few critical features.

Download of Copper Point of Sale Software for Mac completed quickly, but setup required acceptance of a lengthy user agreement. Users must also enter information on their company and provide a name, address, phone number, and password for settings and receipt printing. A help link to an instruction manual on the developer's Web site is available. For those … Read more

It would be easy to think that no one, no one was buying BlackBerrys right now.

Somehow, the brand -- at least in the U.S. -- appears to be enduring a soporific phase. Why, only the other day, some highly unreliable research suggested that it was the phone that people least wanted to buy.

BlackBerry, though, believes bigger and brighter days are ahead. Recently, it hired Alicia Keys as its creative director.

Some pointed out, to BlackBerry's discomfort, that Keys was an iPhone user with an iOS app.

Just as that information reverberated, Keys was seen tweeting from … Read more

Two California men have been indicted for allegedly hacking point-of-sale terminals at Subway shops to steal at least $40,000.

Prosecutors accused Shahin Abdollahi, aka "Sean Holdt," and Jeffrey Thomas Wilkinson of hacking at least 13 point-of-sale (POS) terminals to install software that fraudulently loaded at least $40,000 onto Subway gift cards, according to an indictment unsealed in Boston on Friday (see below). The pair then allegedly used the cards to make purchases at Subway shops and sold them on eBay and Craigslist.

Abdollahi owned a Subway franchise in Southern California from 2005 to 2008 and later … Read more

Field Trip (Android|iPhone) helps you find out more about your current location by sending you notifications when you're near landmarks, restaurants, historical sites, and other noteworthy spots. The app draws information from several sources, including Arcadia, Historvius, Food Network, Zagat, Atlas Obscura, Daily Secret, and others to enrich your experience of locations you wouldn't know were uniquely interesting otherwise. You can use it as a personal tour guide or share interesting locales over Facebook and Twitter.

The app also lets you set the frequency of notifications from none to an Explore mode that gives you all the … Read more

LAS VEGAS--When the company behind the gesture technology in the Kinect came to CES a year ago to show how its 3D sensors can enable people to control their TVs with simple gestures, its execs talked about how their sensors eventually would be embedded in mobile devices, opening up a range of possible applications.

At CES 2013, that company, Israeli-based PrimeSense, showed off the tiny sensor it says will soon make that a reality.

PrimeSense's new 3D sensor, called Capri, is 10 times smaller than its current sensor and, according to the company, the smallest in the world. The … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Touchless gesture control may soon be possible on Apple's iOS devices, thanks to a startup that will be releasing a software development kit enabling the technology.

For some time, Israeli company PointGrab has been making its technology -- which allows users to control activity onscreen with little more than a wave of the hand -- available on a series of platforms, namely Windows 8, Android, and Linux. And next month, Apple's iOS will join the party.

In a demo at CES here today, Assaf Gad, PointGrab vice president of marketing and product, showed CNET how the technology … Read more

When you come down from on high and mix with us, les miserables, it can be a touch depressing.

For though you try to take us seriously, we may not feel the same way. And, well, social media allows us to express our feelings without fear of permanent damnation.

Pope Benedict XVI, famously a recent convert to Twitter, is discovering that mixing with us isn't always pretty.

His Holiness -- and his almost equally holy advisers -- surely believes that one has to speak to the faithful through every available channel.

And yet this entails encountering the unfaithful too: … Read more