Fionn Oblatt blog

Why Vevo Acquiring MySpace Could Be a Very Good Move

MySpace is still the easiest solution. Furthermore, since Facebook is a massive social network, it's not as if bands are getting the curated exposure they need to get ahead -- unless they're .

Which is why a Vevo/MySpace merger would be so effective. Vevo has the labels and music (it's owned by some heavy-hitting record companies). Launched in , it alreadyas an online music video destination.

MySpace, for its part, has the music as well -- and a much more diverse selection at that. It also has the social element. Together, Vevo and MySpace could turn the former "Place For Friends" into the ultimate "Place for Music."

Image courtesy of Flickr,

What Google Must Do To Make Android Mobile Payments a Success

s mobile payment system are hipster coffee shops within walking distance of the Google HQ campus, it isn't likely to get the sort of momentum it needs to catch on. The more retailers on board, the more convenient it will be, and the more likely users will be to embrace the concept.

Make Sure It Works Smoothly

I have a Chase debit card with Blink technology that allegedly enables me to just swipe my card through the air in the general vicinity of the reader to make payments. So far, my experience has been 50-50 at best. Most of the time I try to just swipe or hover the card on systems supposedly equipped to read it, I end up giving up and just swiping it through the physical strip-reading portion of the device instead. If I were relying on my Android phone and left my wallet and credit cards at home, I wouldn't have that option to fall back on and would be pretty annoyed if the Android NFC payment didn't work.

Secure and Protect Mobile Transactions

This is perhaps the biggest issue of them all. Yes, Google needs to make sure the Android mobile payments work, that retailers have the technology to accept them, and that bank and credit card support is broad enough to include most users. Having addressed those issues, though, Google needs to consider what happens when your Android smartphone--the one that now holds the keys to maxing out your credit cards--gets lost or stolen.

Smartphones are already a hot target, and if the smartphone doubles as a wallet with access to your credit cards you can bet theft of smartphones will spike. Android already has tools to protect the data on the smartphone and lock the device from unauthorized access, but it relies on users to configure it. If Android smartphone thefts start leading to credit card account breaches, users will run the other way rather than embracing the technology.

At this point, it seems that . Outside of the United States, the mobile phone has been used as a means of payment for a variety of things for years, and both Google andin next-generation smartphones. It could be awesome, or it could totally flop--it all depends on how it is handled.

Son of N.Korea leader 'attends Clapton concert'

SEOUL (AFP) – A son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il attended a concert in Singapore this week by British guitarist Eric Clapton, a South Korean intelligence official told AFP Wednesday.

The official, who declined to be identified, confirmed news reports in Seoul of the visit by Kim Jong-Chol, second son of the leader of the hardline communist state.

Jong-Chol, wearing black pants and a T-shirt, was seen cheering and swaying among fans at Monday's performance in the Singapore Indoor Stadium, Chosun Ilbo newspaper said.

TV video footage showed a man resembling Jong-Chol entering the stadium, accompanied by some 20 people including bodyguards and women carrying bouquets. He took pictures in front of the stage and chatted with a female companion.

Jong-Chol and his entourage arrived in Singapore early this month and checked into a smart hotel, Chosun said.

Sporting ear piercings, he toured a Universal Studios theme park and Underwater World and purchased expensive jewellery, it said, adding he flew home via Beijing after attending the concert and buying T-shirts.

Jong-Chol, 30, has been passed over as leader-in-waiting in favour of his younger brother Jong-Un. Their father considered Jong-Chol too effeminate, according to a report by a former sushi chef to the leader.

He reportedly last attended Clapton concerts in 2006 when he followed the British star's performances in four German cities, accompanied by his apparent girlfriend or wife and North Korean bodyguards.

The leader's eldest son Jong-Nam was born to a different woman.

He apparently dropped out of contention as future leader after he was caught sneaking into Japan with a bogus passport in 2001 with a woman and a child believed to be his wife and son.

He reportedly said he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland.

Jong-Nam's teenage son in 2009 was seen among cheering fans who packed a concert in Macau by top South Korean pop star Rain, Chosun Ilbo reported at the time.

Campbell Soup Co. plans to fight hunger, obesity

CAMDEN, N.J. – The Campbell Soup Co. is planning to spend $10 million over the next decade on a new initiative to reduce obesity and hunger among children in Camden, the company's impoverished hometown.

Company officials plan to announce the initiative Wednesday but gave The Associated Press details in advance.

"We want to build hope in Camden," Campbell President and CEO Douglas Conant said. "And we think we can."

The iconic company was founded in Camden in 1869 and has kept its headquarters here even as the city transformed from an industrial dynamo to one of the nation's poorest cities. But the relationship hasn't always been easy: Campbell closed its last canning facility in the city 20 years ago. And as recently as five years ago, the company was considering moving out.

But it decided to stay, expand and upgrade its campus, and take charge of redevelopment of a swath of land nearby. The centerpiece of that effort, a showy new building at the heart of the company headquarters, opened last year.

Conant said that when the company decided to stay, its officials also decided to try to do more for Camden — even beyond the $1 million or so a year the company's foundation regularly gives to various causes in the city.

The hard-luck city, which has seen all its major manufacturing operations close, is made up of low-income neighborhoods. Boarded-up, abandoned houses are common. So is drug-dealing on the streets and prostitution. One national survey regularly finds Camden to be one of the most crime-ridden places in the U.S.

Campbell officials have been particularly struck by problems that revolve around food. The company, long a purveyor of vegetables in its soups and V-8 juices, has made efforts to become — and bill itself as — a prime maker of healthy options. It has reduced sodium in many of its soups and other products and introduced whole-grain Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers, among other health-oriented developments.

The goal of the initiative is to reduce obesity and hunger among Camden's 23,000 children by half by 2020.

The issues of childhood obesity and hunger have gotten more attention lately in part because first lady Michelle Obama has made them her project. But Campbell executives say they wanted to address the problems even before the spotlight shined on them.

Kim Fremont Fortunato, who was hired late last year to head up the anti-obesity efforts, said she recently shadowed a doctor who was treating a 5-year-old Camden boy weighing 125 pounds. She said the doctor warned the boy's grandmother that he would be diabetic by age 10 if his obesity wasn't controlled.

Nearly 40 percent of the city's children between 3 and 19 are obese — well above the national rate of 32 percent, according to research by the Rutgers State Center for Health Policy.

"It's really important to know how urgent this issue is," Fortunato said. "If we don't act now, we're going to lose a generation of kids."

The issues of hunger and obesity seem contradictory, but they often go together, said Jeffrey Brenner, a Camden family doctor and health care advocate.

"If you're worried about affording food, you might be stretching your dollar to get the highest calorie food, which may not be healthy," said Brenner, who is part of the Campbell team working on the issues.

It is pulling in outside experts and groups, including The Food Trust, the Y and the Camden Children's Garden, to work on three main strategies to reach its goal.

The first is increasing access to affordable and healthy food in a city with only one supermarket, and where many people shop at corner stores that don't have a lot of fruit and vegetables. The plans include working with those small stores and starting more community vegetable gardens.

The second is getting kids to exercise more, in school gym classes and elsewhere.

The third is increasing education about nutrition and health.

Campbell also plans to roll out the initiative eventually in other cities where it has facilities, such as Norwalk, Conn., Napoleon, Ohio, and Sacramento, Calif.

Company officials say it will take changing behaviors over the next decade to reduce obesity in Camden.

"This is a big goal for a big problem," Conant said.

U.S. soldier who killed UK hostage "feared for safety"

LONDON (Reuters) – A U.S. soldier who threw a grenade that killed a British hostage in Afghanistan during a U.S.-led rescue operation feared for his safety and had little time to make his fateful decision, a coroner ruled Tuesday.

Aid worker Linda Norgrove, 36, died during the mission to free her after she was abducted last September in a remote part of Kunar province, a lawless region bordering Pakistan.

Initially, U.S. military officials said she had been killed by her captors, believed to be a group allied to local Taliban insurgents with links to al Qaeda. But later, a joint British-U.S. probe concluded a grenade had caused her death.

An inquest held in southwest England heard that visibility on the night of the rescue had been poor and the soldiers had not seen her until she was found dead, media reports said.

A British officer told the hearing that the unnamed U.S. soldier who threw the grenade was the most junior member involved in the mission and was "shattered" by the death.

"What I've drawn from this hearing is that the operative genuinely feared for the safety of the lives of his colleagues and also himself and had to make a critical decision in a fraction of a second, unaware of Linda's presence," the coroner David Ridley said in his verdict.

Norgrove's parents said the inquest had confirmed what they had been told at a military briefing last year.

Her father John told reporters that when the grenade was thrown it appeared all the captors were either dead or dying and only Norgrove was killed by it.

"I think it's very creditable of the American authorities to accept that mistakes were made and to instigate an investigation which we found to be very full and thorough," he said.

"On the actual night in question a series of chance events all went the wrong way, one after another after another. There appears to have been an error of judgment by one soldier in an action which lasted under one minute."

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Mark Heinrich)