Google reportedly ‘actively exploring’ the smartwatch market

In October, Google (GOOG) was granted a patent for a smartwatch with a flip-up display, however it was assumed that the concept, like most patents, would never move beyond the drawing board. A new report from Business Insider claims that the company is now “actively exploring” the idea of producing its own smartwatch and is even looking into ways it could market such a device. Information is slim and it is unclear what size the device would be or if it would even run the company’s Android operating system. Business Insider cautioned that the project is still in a “very early stage” and “it remains to be seen if Google will actually end up bringing a smart watch to market.” As the Pebble has shown, however, there is clearly a market for smartwatches.

[More from BGR: Unlocking your smartphone will be illegal starting next week]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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'Fruitvale,' 'Blood Brother' win Sundance Awards

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — The dramatic film "Fruitvale" and the documentary "Blood Brother" won over audiences and Sundance Film Festival judges.

Both American films won audience awards and grand jury prizes Saturday at the Sundance Awards.

"Fruitvale" tells the true story of Oscar Grant, who was 22 years old when he was shot and killed in a public transit station in Oakland, Calif. Twenty-six-year-old first-time filmmaker Ryan Coogler wrote and directed the dramatic narrative.

"Blood Brother" follows a young American, Rocky, who moved to India to work with orphans infected with HIV.

The Cambodian film "A River Changes Course" won the grand jury prize for international documentary, and a narrative film from South Korea, "Jiseul," claimed the grand jury prize for dramatic world cinema.

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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

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Hackers take over sentencing commission website

The hacker-activist group Anonymous says it hijacked the website of the U.S. Sentencing Commission to avenge the death of Aaron Swartz, an Internet activist who committed suicide. The FBI is investigating.

The website of the commission, an independent agency of the judicial branch, was taken over early Saturday and replaced with a message warning that when Swartz killed himself two weeks ago “a line was crossed.”

The hackers say they've infiltrated several government computer systems and copied secret information that they now threaten to make public.

Family and friends of Swartz, who helped create Reddit and RSS, say he killed himself after he was hounded by federal prosecutors. Officials say he helped post millions of court documents for free online and that he illegally downloaded millions of academic articles from an online clearinghouse.

The FBI's Richard McFeely, executive assistant director of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, said in a statement that “we were aware as soon as it happened and are handling it as a criminal investigation. We are always concerned when someone illegally accesses another person's or government agency's network.”

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Bell's city clerk is first to testify in corruption case

More than two years after the Bell corruption case erupted, the prosecution called its first witness Friday in an effort to show that the leaders of the small, working-class city became some of the highest-paid city politicians in California by serving on boards that sometimes met just so they could approve further pay hikes.

Rebecca Valdez, Bell's city clerk who has been granted immunity in exchange for her testimony, testified that it was her job to take notes at council meetings, including marking the start and end time of the various boards on which council members served, such as the Solid Waste and Recycling Authority.

"Were there City Council meetings where only some of the authorities met?" Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward Miller asked.

"Yes," Valdez said.

"Were there City Council meetings where none of the authorities met?"

"Yes."

Valdez testified that when she was promoted to city clerk, the council would adjourn after each board met, but that in 2008 it changed so that there were no longer any distinct breaks between the meetings. During a 2011 preliminary hearing, Valdez said she had no idea what the purpose was of some of the boards and commissions.

The city clerk is considered a key prosecution witness in its effort to convict six former Bell council members of misappropriation of public funds by taking huge salaries to serve on board and commissions that rarely met and did little, if any, work.

Miller spent most of the day asking Valdez to verify dozens of documents, including a series of resolutions that showed that all of the defendants at one time had been appointed — not elected — to the council. Valdez herself was appointed city clerk in 2004.

Valdez also verified salary documents for former council members. One listed former Councilwoman Teresa Jacobo's monthly salary as $7,666. Another showed an increase that bumped her salary to $8,083 a month.

In contrast, he then showed the most recent contract for Lorenzo Velez, who was on the council when the salary scandal broke. Velez, the lone council member not charged in the case, was appointed to the council in 2009 and given a salary of only $673.

"Did you prepare this document?" Miller asked Valdez.

"Yes," she said.

"And did somebody give you instructions on how to prepare it?"

"Yes."

"Who was that?"

"The then-City Manager Robert Rizzo."

"Is the city manager an elected official?"

"No."

"How does he get the job?"

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Dr. Phil to interview alleged girlfriend hoaxer

NEW YORK (AP) — Dr. Phil McGraw has booked the first on-camera interview with the man who allegedly concocted the girlfriend hoax that ensnared Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o.

A "Dr. Phil Show" spokesperson confirmed on Friday the interview with Ronaiah Tuiasosopo (roh-NY-ah too-ee-AH'-so-SO'-poh), the man accused of creating an online persona of a nonexistent woman who Te'o said he fell for without ever meeting face-to-face.

The ruse was uncovered last week by Deadspin.com, which reported that Tuiasosopo created the woman, named Lennay Kekua, who then supposedly died last September.

No further details of the "Dr. Phil" interview, including its airdate, were announced.

This interview follows the first on-camera interview with Te'o conducted this week by Katie Couric.

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99 Cents Only Stores' family management team departs

99 Cents Only Stores Inc. said its family management team has left the deep discounter, one year after the family-run business was acquired.

Los Angeles private equity firm Ares Management and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board bought the retailer in a deal that closed in January 2012 and took the firm private. When the chain announced the deal, valued at about $1.6 billion, it said the family management team would remain in place.

But the City of Commerce company said this week that Chief Executive Eric Schiffer, Chief Administrative Officer Jeff Gold and Executive Vice President of Special Projects Howard Gold "are no longer employed by the company."

Reached on his cellphone, Jeff Gold said he could not comment on his departure or the changes at the company.

Richard Anicetti, who has served on the board of directors for eight months, has been named interim CEO. Michael Fung, former chief financial officer for Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s U.S. operations, is joining the company as interim chief administrative officer.

Anicetti also previously served as president and CEO of Food Lion grocery stores.

"The board of directors thanks Eric, Jeff, Howard and the rest of the Gold/Schiffer family for their contribution and is looking forward to working with Rick, Mike and our dedicated '99ers' to continue our growth trajectory while providing our customers with excellent value as well as a fun and exciting shopping experience," David Kaplan, chairman of the 99 Cents Only board and senior partner at Ares Management, said in a statement.

The company, founded in 1982, has benefited from bargain-hungry shoppers during the tough economy. The management changes were made to "execute on the company's previously announced accelerated growth strategy," the discounter said.

99 Cents Only Stores operates 311 stores in California, Texas, Arizona and Nevada. That's 22 more than when the acquisition deal was announced. For the quarter that ended Dec. 29, the discounter said net sales rose to $439.5 million, up 8.8% from the same period a year earlier. Same-store sales, a common industry measurement of sales at stores open at least a year, rose 4.3% when "calculated on a comparable 13-week period," the company said.

andrew.khouri@latimes.com

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Annual Tet parade will take place in Little Saigon after all

The nation's only Tet parade, staged in the heart of Little Saigon, will go on after all.

After being told that the city of Westminster could not help pay for the annual Lunar Day parade in the nation's largest Vietnamese community, organizers hurriedly raised $60,000 in just two weeks.

"We knew we could not lose this opportunity to promote the beauty of our culture," said Ha Son Tran, vice president of the Vietnamese American Federation of Southern California. "Everyone put in a lot of energy, and there's a lot of pride. Finally, we can show others that we were able to meet the challenge" of fundraising.

Nghia X. Nguyen, president of the federation, appeared at the City Council meeting Wednesday night, presenting two cashier's checks, one for $35,000 and the other for $25,000.

An official from the city's community services and recreation department will oversee the funds, said Councilman Sergio Contreras, who grew up in Westminster and started marching in the parade when he was a high school student.

"I think it's amazing," he said. "Two weeks. I haven't been in a situation where we challenged a group to come up with the money in that short amount of time, and they made it happen. Now the event that we're waiting for will happen."

The parade, scheduled for Feb. 10, is expected to draw thousands and be televised on Vietnamese cable channels here and aboard,

Peter Trinh, a father of two from Huntington Beach, said he plans to attend.

"I heard so much about it and I want my kids to be exposed to our community," he said. "I think it's a good chance for them to see our culture up close, and of course, we'll bring the friends we always go out with. Can't wait."

anh.do@latimes.com

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Samsung puts lid on capex for first time since financial crisis

SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics Co turned cautious on spending for the first time since the global financial crisis, keeping its annual investment plan unchanged at 2012 levels, as demand for computer chips wanes and the smartphone market slows.

Samsung, one of the industry’s most aggressive spenders, has ramped up capital expenditure every year since 2004 except 2009 to meet soaring demand for its array of consumer electronics and mobile devices. It sold a record 700,000 smartphones a day in the last quarter.

But with the personal computer market shrinking for the first time in 11 years, the global smartphone market growing more slowly, and Apple Inc moving to buy fewer of Samsung‘s microprocessors used in the iPhone and iPad, the South Korean IT giant is now forced to keep a lid on spending.

“Overall its earnings momentum remains intact, and smartphone shipments will continue to grow even in the traditionally weak first quarter, as Samsung’s got a broader product line-up and Apple appears to be struggling in pushing iPhone volumes aggressively,” said Lee Se-chul, a Seoul-based analyst at Meritz Securities.

Samsung, which reported a record quarterly and annual profit on Friday, said it would keep 2013 capital expenditure unchanged from 2012.

“The key word for us in investment in 2013 is flexibility. We’ll decide as the market demand dictates,” Robert Yi, head of Samsung’s investor relations, told analysts.

Data from the company shows Samsung started to slow down planned investment in the last quarter.

Samsung said it spent 4.4 trillion won in October-December, pushing its 2012 investment to a record 23 trillion won ($ 21.5 billion). But the company said in October that it was on course to spend 25 trillion won in 2012.

Analysts had expected a 4-20 percent cut in Samsung’s 2013 capital spending.

By contrast, Taiwanese rival TSMC is planning to raise its capital expenditure to $ 9 billion this year, aimed in part at winning Apple orders away from Samsung.

Shares in Samsung fell 2.1 percent as of 0250 GMT, lagging a 1.1 percent decline in the wider market.

RECORD EARNINGS

Samsung had poured money into factories to boost production of chips and panels used in Apple products and its Galaxy range devices, pushing its operating profit to 8.84 trillion won in the last quarter. The 89 percent increase from a year earlier was in line with its earlier estimate.

Profit at its mobile devices division, which makes phones, tablets and cameras, more than doubled to 5.44 trillion won in the quarter from a year earlier, lifted by a broader offering of smartphones – from the very cheap to the very expensive.

The division accounted for 62 percent of Samsung’s overall fourth-quarter profit, up from 55 percent a year earlier.

Samsung is also seeing strong sales of its Note phablet, which analysts expect to help Samsung get through any seasonal weakness better than rivals.

Samsung, which doesn’t provide a breakdown of smartphone sales, is estimated to have sold around 63 million smartphones in the last quarter, including 15 million Galaxy S IIIs and 7 million Note IIs.

The company also said 2012 operating profit rose 86 percent to an all-time high of 29 trillion won.

SAMSUNG VS APPLE

Samsung sold 213 million smartphones last year and enlarged its share of the global market to 30.4 percent from around 20 percent in 2011, a report by market research firm Strategy Analytics showed on Friday. The sharp increase reflects Samsung’s aggressive marketing of its wide product range.

Apple’s share of the market shrank slightly to 19.4 percent from 19.0 percent in 2011, according to the report.

Globally, sales of smartphones surged 42.7 percent last year to 700 million, Strategy Analytics said.

Samsung said on Friday it expects the global smartphone segment to shrink in January-March from the seasonally strong fourth quarter, and that growth of the overall handset market will slow to the mid single-digits this year.

The forecast is in line with industry estimates, with signs of a slowdown having already emerged.

Apple shipped 47.8 million iPhones in the three months ended December, a record that nonetheless disappointed many analysts accustomed to years of outperformance. The Cupertino, California-based company also missed Wall Street’s revenue forecast for a third straight quarter as iPhone sales lagged expectations.

Apple shares have dropped by more than a third since mid-September as investors fret that its days of hyper growth are over and its devices are no longer as ‘must-have’ as they were.

By contrast, shares in Samsung have risen 12 percent in the same period as the company once seen as quick to copy the ideas of others now sets the pace in innovation.

At the world’s biggest electronics show in Las Vegas this month, Samsung unveiled a prototype phone with a flexible display that can be folded almost like paper, and a microchip with eight processing cores, creating a buzz that these may be used in the next Galaxy range.

“It’s very probable to us that the Exynos 5 Octa (processor) will find its way into the Galaxy S4,” UBS analyst Nicolas Gaudois wrote in a recent note.

“It also looked as if the curved display is close enough to finished product. We came away even more convinced that displays will provide significant differentiation to Samsung devices, and application processors will materially grow over time,” Gaudois said. ($ 1 = 1066.2000 Korean won)

(Reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Ryan Woo)

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Voice of Te'o prankster? Couric plays voicemails

NEW YORK (AP) — The person Manti Te'o says was pretending to be his online girlfriend told the Notre Dame linebacker "I love you" in voicemails that were played during his interview with Katie Couric.

Taped earlier this week and broadcast Thursday, the hour-long talk show featured three voicemails that Te'o claims were left for him last year. Te'o said they were from the person he believed to be Lennay Kekua, a woman he had fallen for online but never met face-to-face.

After the first message was played, Te'o said: "It sounds like a girl, doesn't it?"

"It does," Couric responded.

The interview was the All-American's first on camera since his tale of inspired play after the deaths of his grandmother and girlfriend on the same day in September unraveled as a bizarre hoax in an expose by Deadspin.com on Jan. 16.

Te'o's parents appeared with him for part of the interview and backed up his claim that he wasn't involved in the fabrication, saying they, too, had spoken on the phone with a person they believed to be Kekua.

Couric addressed speculation that the tale was concocted by Te'o as a way to cover up his sexual orientation. Asked if he were gay, Te'o said "no" with a laugh. "Far from it. Faaaar from that."

He also said he was "scared" and "didn't know what to do" after receiving a call on Dec. 6 — two days before the Heisman Trophy presentation — from a person who claimed to be his "dead" girlfriend.

The first voicemail, he said, was from what was supposed to be Kekua's first day of chemotherapy for leukemia.

"Hi, I am just letting you know I got here and I'm getting ready for my first session and, um, just want to call you to keep you posted. I miss you. I love you. Bye," the person said.

In the second voicemail, the person was apparently upset by someone else answering Te'o's phone.

The third voicemail was left on Sept. 11, according to Te'o, the day he believed Kekua was released from the hospital and the day before she "died."

"Hey babe, I'm just calling to say goodnight," the person on the voicemail said. "I love you. I know that you're probably doing homework or you're with the boys. ... But I just wanted to say I love you and goodnight and I'll be ok tonight. I'll do my best. Um, yeah, so get your rest and I'll talk to you tomorrow. I love you so much, hon. Sweet dreams."

Couric suggested the person who left those messages might have been Ronaiah Tuisasosopo, a 22-year-old man from California, who Te'o said has apologized to him for pulling the hoax.

"Do you think that could have been a man on the other end of the phone?" she asked.

"Well, it didn't sound like a man," Te'o said. "It sounded like a woman. If he somehow made that voice, that's incredible. That's an incredible talent to do that. Especially every single day."

Tuiasosopo has not spoken publicly since news of the hoax broke. The Associated Press has learned that a home in California where Te'o sent flowers to the Kekua family was once a residence of Tuiasosopo and has been in his family for decades.

Also on Thursday, the woman whose pictures were used in fake online accounts for Kekua said Tuiasosopo confessed to her in a 45-minute phone conversation as the scheme unraveled.

Diane O'Meara spoke with The Associated Press in a telephone interview. She said Tuiasosopo told her he'd been "stalking" her Facebook profile for five years and stealing photos.

O'Meara's attorney, Jim Artiano, said they had not decided on whether to take any legal action.

The 23-year-old O'Meara, of Long Beach, Calif., said she knew Tuiasosopo from high school and he contacted her through Facebook on Dec. 16. She said that, over the next three weeks, Tuiasosopo got in touch with her several times, attempting to get photos and video of O'Meara. She said he made up a story about wanting them to help cheer up a cousin who was injured in a car crash.

O'Meara learned her identity had been stolen on Jan. 13 when she was contacted by Deadspin.com.

The next day she got in touch with Tuiasosopo.

"When I contacted Ronaiah I got a very bizarre vibe from him, he became very nervous, he wasn't asking the questions I expected. He was asking 'Who contacted you? What did they say?'" O'Meara said.

Later that day, he confessed, O'Meara said. She said she asked Tuiasosopo why he didn't simply stop the hoax.

"He told me he wanted to end the relationship," O'Meara said. "He said he wanted to stop the relationship between Lennay and Manti, but Manti didn't want Lennay to break up with him ... He said he tried to stop the game many times."

When news of the hoax broke a few days later, O'Meara said she received a text from Tuiasosopo asking her to call him as soon as possible. O'Meara said she didn't respond.

___

Associated Press writer Tami Abdollah contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

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