Global Internet for Robots Comes Online:

• By Damon Poeter

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European researchers last week launched a global Internet for robots called Rapyuta—an online database of information designed "to help them cope" with the confusing world of humans,according to BBC News.

Rapyuta is the work of the European RoboEarth Project, which describes its mission as the development of "a giant network and database repository where robots can share information and learn from each other about their behavior and their environment."

Last week's launch of Rapyuta represents the first phase of a project that aims to build a large-scale, cloud-based resource for robots of all kinds which would serve as both an informational database and a calculating engine for jacked-in androids. Such a network of information would give massively more useful information to robots which currently rely on their own onboard memory banks and processing power to deal with real-world situations on an individual basis, project researchers said.

"[T]he goal of RoboEarth is to allow robotic systems to benefit from the experience of other robots, paving the way for rapid advances in machine cognition and behavior, and ultimately, for more subtle and sophisticated human-machine interaction," the RoboEarth Web site states.

The use of Rapyuta could also make it far cheaper to produce more mobile robots, since they wouldn't require as much onboard storage and processing power, Dr. Heico Sandee, Robo Earth program manager at the Dutch University of Technology in Eindhoven, told BBC News.

"On-board computation reduces mobility and increases cost," he said, adding that as the network evolves "more robotic thinking could be offloaded to the Web.

The wirelessly accessible database currently serves as a fount of information for "software components, maps for navigation (e.g., object locations, world models), task knowledge (e.g., action recipes, manipulation strategies), and object recognition models (e.g., images, object models)," according to researchers.

Information in the database comes from both robots and humans and is presented in a machine-readable format in a "Cloud Robotics infrastructure which includes everything needed to close the loop from robot to the cloud and back to the robot."

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KlaasKids 3.0 – Happy Birthday Polly:

Today we should be celebrating Polly’s 32^nd birthday. Instead we are honoring her memory by introducing powerful new technology and philanthropic programs to the world that were inspired by her brief life.

2013 also represents the 20th year of our advocacy on behalf of America’s children. We can think of no better way to acknowledge that milestone than by providing 21^st century solutions that put the power of prevention and pro-action in the hands of families, neighborhoods and communities.

We have forcefully engaged the public policy arena for the past 20 years because we believe that public safety is Governments fundamental duty.  Every citizen has the right to walk on safe streets, to send their children to safe schools and to live without the fear of violence or victimization.

In the early 1990’s, when America was experiencing an epidemic of crime, we supported truth in sentencing, the assault weapons ban, and criminal accountability. We championed Megan’s Law so that communities would be aware of registered sex offenders in their midst. In the new millennium we spoke out loud and often for Jessica’s Law, and defended every effort to undermine California’s 3-Strikes & You’re Out Law. KlaasKids was one of the first organizations to acknowledge that the United States supplies much of our own human trafficking demand, and have worked diligently to educate the public and rescue underage victims of human trafficking. These past few years we have labored to update Megan’s Law into the 21^st Century by including internet identifiers as a component of the registration process.

But now, all of that work is coming undone, because of apathy and government incompetence. And those who will suffer the consequences are the very people government is entrusted to protect.

In recent years California’s Department of Public Health has ignored Jessica’s Law and paper screened tens of thousands of potential sexually violent predators like John Gardner back onto our streets.

In October 2011 Governor Brown’s prison realignment program reassigned the responsibility for housing and monitoring tens of thousands of so-called non serious, non-violent, non-sexual prison inmates from the state to the Counties. This is a responsibility that the counties were ill equipped to accept or handle, and as a result serious, violent and sexual crime rates have soared.

California voters overwhelmingly passed the 3-Strikes & You’re Out Law in 1994, and by 2012, you were half as likely to be a victim of violent crime as you would have been in 1993. Yet, a cleverly worded proposition has modified that law to the point that it is no longer worth the paper it was written on and we will soon be releasing third strikers back onto our streets. How do you think that is going to work out for all of us?

In 2011 we worked the halls of the California State Legislature to include Internet identifiers as a component of sex offender registration, only to run into a brick wall at every turn. In response we fought for Proposition 35, the CASE Act, on the November 2012 ballot and the people voted overwhelmingly to enact the policies that our politicians refused to ratify. More than 81% of voters agreed that internet identifiers should be included as a component of the sex offender registry. Yet only a few weeks ago the ACLU challenged the constitutionality of Prop 35 in the Superior Court of the State of California with false claims and phony arguments.

All of this tells me that we need to take responsibility for our own safety. I’m not suggesting that we arm ourselves to the teeth with handguns, rifles, assault weapons, or rocket propelled grenade launchers as some horrible old men in legislatures throughout the United States have been hinting at in response to Connecticut’s Sandy Hook massacre. Instead, we need to arm ourselves with knowledge, technology, and philanthropy. There are numerous child-safe technology solutions in the marketplace. Some work, and some don’t. However, all of them existed in a vacuum until today.

For more than a year now, the KlaasKids Foundation has been working with vendors, inventors and visionaries to produce a comprehensive suite of technology and funding tools to address the challenges faced by America’s small children and their families. Today, I’d like to introduce you to the fruits of our labor.

Cocoon for KlaasKids uses Cloud Technology to protect children from predators and abusive marketers. Polly’s Guardian Angel is a parent initiated missing child alert smart phone application. It provides the direct support of the KlaasKids Polly Center response team. The LEO Wristwatch is GPS, cell phone technology that cannot be as easily discarded as Sierra LaMar’s GPS enabled cell phone if your child has been stolen. And finally, the Klaas Family Housing Fund provides a new and innovative way to assist the families of missing children with housing expenses.

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KlaasKids To Introduce New Online Tools To Keep Kids Safe

KlaasKids To Introduce New Online Tools To Keep Kids Safe - Milpitas, CA Patch

On Thursday in Morgan Hill, the Foundation will announce a new technology-based child safety
agenda.

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The Internet Turns 30 This Week, Kind Of:

The Internet turns 30 this week — kind of - Technology on NBCNews.com

As the ball dropped in Times Square in New York City and New Year's greetings went out on Twitter, Facebook and other networks, the Internet itself was celebrating an important milestone of its own: its 30th birthday.

Well, kind of.

January 1 marked the 30th anniversary of the switchover of all computers on ARPANET — the Internet’s predecessor —to a technology called TCP/IP. TCP is short for “Transmission Control Protocol," and IP “Internet Protocol.” Together these two
technologies work together to route Internet data traffic — or “packets” — from one Internet-connected computer to another.

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Joe Trippi - The Soul & Technology of Politics:

Joe Trippi on the Soul and Technology of Politics | MIT Technology Review

New technology could deliver text messages via contact lens

By Laura Shin | December 9, 2012

 Liquid crystal displays are no longer just for TVs, computers and other gadgets.

Researchers at Ghent University in Belgium have developed a new technology that allows LCD displays to show text on the spherical, small circle of a contact lens. And it can project images using wireless technology.

This means that you could someday receive text messages via contact lens — just the way they do in sci-fi films.

“Now that we have established the basic technology, we can start working towards real applications, possibly available in only a few years,” Professor Herbert De Smet told The Telegraph.

Other possible applications are to create contact lenses that are made of one pixel that fully covers the lens so the lenses can act as adaptable sunglasses. Or, the lenses could be used to give directions, or to help protect damaged irises by controlling the amount of light that enters the retina.

The contact lenses could even be used for cosmetic purposes: to change the color of the iris.

Watch the video below to see the contact lens and its display in action.

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Europe vs tech giants: Wants Google, Amazon to pay more taxes:

FIRSTPOST.

TECHNOLOGY

Europe vs tech giants: Wants Google, Amazon to pay more taxes

Paris: A storm is brewing in Europe as nations try to force Internet powerhouses like Google and Amazon to pay more in taxes.

Governments, hungry for money to prop up their struggling economies, are accusing the technology giants of incorporating themselves in low-tax countries so they can avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars to countries such as Germany, Britain and France — where most of their European income is derived.

In Britain on Monday, a lawmaker pushing to tighten laws said the multinationals’ ability to escape corporate taxes “is outrageous and an insult to British businesses and individuals who pay their fair share.”

According to court documents, French authorities raided Google’s offices in Paris over the summer and seized documents in a tax dispute. More recently, according to a published report, the French government presented Google with a €1.7 billion ($2.18 billion) tax bill; Amazon acknowledged one for $252 million. Facebook is also in the line of fire.

A storm is brewing in Europe as nations try to force Internet powerhouses like Google and Amazon to pay more in taxes. AFP

In Italy, the undersecretary of the Economy Ministry revealed during questioning in parliament on Wednesday that the tax police inspected Google’s books, adding that it found millions in undeclared income and unpaid sales tax.

The politicians are cracking down on US-based multinational companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, claiming they pay paying little or no tax in Europe in spite of generating billions in revenue there.

But there is nothing illegal to the multinationals’ actions. Thanks to the way the European Union is run, companies operating in Europe can base themselves in any of the 27 member countries, allowing them to take advantage of a particular country’s low tax rates.

By setting up overseas headquarters in low-tax jurisdictions such as Ireland or Luxembourg and shifting the profits out of the countries they’ve done business in, the online companies have managed to keep down both sales taxes and corporate income taxes on their overseas income.

Google’s British chief, Matt Brittin, said last week that the company “plays by the rules set by politicians.”

“The only people who really have choices are politicians who set the tax rates,” he told the UK’s Channel 4 News.

The fact that the methods are legal hasn’t stopped resentment brewing among governments, other brick-and-mortar businesses, and households feeling ever higher tax burdens.

The British Parliament’s public accounts committee said Amazon, by accounting for the profits made in the UK elsewhere in the EU, paid 1.8 million pounds ($2.9 million) in British tax in 2011, on revenue of 207 million pounds. In Italy, the government said tax police determined Google had undeclared earnings of €240 million ($311 million) from 2002-2006 and had not paid value added tax of €96 million in the period.

Philippe Marini, the French senator who leads the country’s finance commission, estimated France is missing out on some €1.3 billion in taxes from Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. And, Marini noted, that amount would pale in comparison to what they likely owe Germany and Britain where sales figures are even higher.

“A bakery across the street is easier to control,” Marini said. “And households can’t relocate to Ireland just like that.”

The companies say they comply with the law and are cooperative in countries where they operate, but do not elaborate. Even people critical of their tactics say ultimately the job of an accountant is to keep a client’s tax bill as low as possible. The companies also stress that they do pay some taxes – contributions to their employees’ social security, for example.

France, however, is going after the tech companies aggressively: On June 30, tax authorities raided Google’s Paris offices, according to court documents posted online after Google contested the seizure of its files. The tech giant has denied receiving a €1.7 billion bill from the French government and says it pays all legally required taxes.

Taxes fall under French privacy law, so specific amounts are not made public. But the raid on Google’s Paris offices is a sign the French government believes the tech company has more than just incidental support staff in the French capital. France’s budget minister, Jerome Cahuzac, said “a certain search engine needs to regularise its situation in France”.

Facebook, Amazon and Apple have come under similar French scrutiny, according to published reports and public filings. Marini said French law is lagging behind, but hopes to catch up. Tech companies differ from, say, a grocery store in that their product is stored on servers and not on a shelf. And unlike a family, the companies can essentially locate — and re-locate — anywhere.

Both Amazon and Google are contesting the French actions, though Cahuzac said he’s confident the government will win in court.

Britain and Germany have joined France in aggressively targeting the tech giants and, officials say, are coordinating against what one official calls “stateless income.”

The G-20 meeting in Mexico earlier this month showed a measure of international support for tightening the rules. The UK. Treasury chief George Osborne and German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble called for a common front “to strengthen international standards for corporate tax regimes.”

“Governments have to keep up in the race,” said Marini, the French senator. “Companies have a much faster pace than either national or European law.”

Helping the governments keep tabs on the tech multinationals is the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Originally set up in 1948 with the aim of stimulating world trade, the OECD now is taking the lead role in fighting tax evasion, said Pascal Saint-Amans, director of the organisation’s Center for Tax Policy since February.

The OECD has established a locked database detailing some of the world’s most sophisticated tax schemes to allow government tax authorities to privately share revenue-shifting schemes they encounter.

The main problem, for Saint-Amans, is that tax havens within Europe such as Ireland and Luxembourg ease the process that allows multinationals to send profits even further offshore to places like Bermuda. That makes it harder for the countries with the most staff and sales to track. Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook have international headquarters in Ireland; Amazon’s international offices are in Luxembourg. But the biggest European markets for all those companies are Germany, France and Great Britain.

“At some point again you’re back to the basics, which is where is the real activity? And that’s something that we may have lost sight of,” said Saint-Amans. “The low-tax regimes are more the consequence than the problem.”

Saint-Amans, who previously worked on ending bank secrecy regulations, believes the problem of taxing “intangibles” can be similarly resolved in a year or two with a concerted effort from all the governments involved, including in the US. In the short-term, he said, the coordinated approach of France, Germany and Britain serves as a warning to multinationals trying to avoid taxes, as is the secure OECD database.

Governments, including in the US, have long tinkered with effective tax rates in order to attract and keep businesses. But there are signs of change even in the US, where all the major tech companies got their start.

“The ability not to pay tax on income that’s booked offshore is now the single biggest corporate tax loophole in the code,” said Reuven Avi-Yonah, an international tax expert at the University of Michigan who has testified before Congress.

The amounts booked offshore are considerable: For Apple, 61 percent of revenues come from outside the US — and fully a quarter of that from Europe alone. “Apple doesn’t have a single store in Ireland,” Avi-Yonah said.

In a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Apple said it had set aside $713 million for its 2012 foreign tax bill on overseas pretax earnings of $36.8 billion — a provision of almost 2 percent of what it made.

Google’s overseas revenues accounted for 54 percent of its total, including more than 10 percent in Britain alone. Meanwhile Google is tackling government action on another front. German politicians are considering imposing a so-called Google Tax — a levy that would require search engines to pay each time they link to media content like newspaper articles or photographs.

According to a Senate committee memo from September, Microsoft used aggressive asset shifting to avoid $4.5 billion in American taxes from 2009 to 2011.

Avi-Yonah estimated the effective tax rate on overseas income at around 2 or 3 percent for multinational tech companies: Both in the US and abroad, he said, “there’s a general sense that these companies pay too little and don’t really contribute their fair share.”

AP

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Highly flexible touch sensors are appearing in a range of gadgets:

Highly flexible, film-based touch sensors are entering the smartphone and tablet markets.* They are also extending touch capabilities into a range of new consumer and industrial products. Using roll-to-roll metal mesh technology, they provide a high-performance alternative to existing touch sensors. Larger, lighter, sleeker, curved and edgeless designs can now be developed for handheld devices. Thinner sensor stacks with flawless touch performance, excellent optical clarity, low sheet resistance and low power consumption are enabling designers to turn unique, futuristic concepts into functional designs at lower total system costs compared to previous market alternatives.

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Calgary cops, missing kids advocates link up with new technology:

BY NADIA MOHARIB ,CALGARY SUN

FIRST POSTED: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012 04:45 PM MST | UPDATED: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012 05:29 PM MST

Nineteen years ago when Judy Peterson’s daughter went missing she was armed with posters, tape and hope police would find her child.

Monday, she was in Calgary at the launch of a partnership between Calgary police and the Missing Children Society of Canada kicking off a national program to recruit corporations to help find youth who vanish.

“When Lindsey vanished nearly two decades ago, I went all over town on my own with posters and a roll of Scotch tape,” Peterson said.

“I believe that if this type of technology existed, we may have been able to find her or have answers.”

To date, the mother, whose then 14-year-old daughter, Lindsey Nicholls vanished from Courtenay, B.C., has neither.

“I feel like if it may be too late for us, but I hope CodeSearch will help other families,” she said.

Apache, WestJet, Tervita and Enmax are signed up— poised to quickly mobilize staff with an alert on mobile phones from police about a missing child in their area.

Petroleum Services Association of Canada is also on board with CodeSearch which recruits help coast-to-coast to be on the look-out or search for missing youngsters.

Police chief Rick Hanson, said while Amber Alerts are a good tool it comes with strict criteria — including a belief a child has been abducted or at risk of serious harm or death and must come with information on an associated vehicle.

CodeSearch only requires that a child be missing to mobilize partners.

“I can tell you, there is nothing more terrifying than for a family to realize their child is missing, no matter what we do it can never be enough,” Hanson said.

“The more eyes and ears on the look-out, the greater the chances we can quickly locate a missing child.”

Missing Children’s executive director, Amanda Pick, said the initiative will be rolled out nationwide.

Last year, 45,000 children were reported missing in Canada.

In Calgary, there were 3,840 missing person reports — of those, 2,391 were aged 12 to 17 and 193 under age 12

The bulk came home safe.

The www.valuablenetwork.ca site is a way citizens can help find missing kid, those signed up getting automatic postings to Facebook or Twitter accounts when one goes missing in their area.

nadia.moharib@sunmedia.ca

On Twitter: @SUNNadiaMoharib

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Digital Strategy at the Department of Justice:

Digital Strategy at the Department of Justice

August 21st, 2012 Posted by Tracy Russo

 

On May 23, 2012, the White House released the Federal Digital Strategy that outlined the use of “modern tools and technologies to seize the digital opportunity and fundamentally change how the Federal Government serves both its internal and external customers–building a 21st century platform to better serve the American People.” That means making sure information and services are easily accessible on the internet anytime, anywhere, and on any device. It means you will be able to find and share information that is important to you, your family and your community.
In the past few years, the Department of Justice has taken many steps to make the department’s information more available and accessible. We’ve added hundreds of data sets to data.gov, have begun using social media to bring information directly to you, and added more information to our website than ever before. But we know we can do more. As we begin to formulate our digital strategy, we want your input on which information and services you’d like us to prioritize and make more tech and mobile-friendly. There are two areas where we’d like your input:

• What Justice Department information would you like to be able to access on mobile devices?
• What Justice Department information, data, or applications would you like to us make available via APIs (Applied Programming Interface)?

Send us your thoughts on digital strategy at opengov@usdoj.gov.
We’ve come up with a few possibilities for each area. You can see the list on our Digital Strategy web page, justice.gov/digitalstrategy.
We welcome your feedback on the possible candidates for improvement, or other opportunities we may have overlooked. Your feedback, combined with other internal and external conversations, will guide our digital plan in the coming months and years.
Read more about how we are participating in the Digital Government Strategy and Open Government at our website.

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Apple's iPhone 4S Hits Stores:

By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER, ANTON TROIANOVSKI, IAN SHERR and JURO OSAWA

Apple's latest iPhone arrives in stores Friday in the U.S. and a half-dozen countries, as the company hopes to cement its position as the world's leading smartphone maker. Mark Gongloff discusses on Markets Hub.

Apple Inc.'s latest iPhone arrived in stores Friday in the U.S. and a half-dozen countries, as the company hoped to cement its position as the world's leading smartphone maker.
As has become the custom for Apple product launches, throngs of eager customers lined up in front of Apple's retail stores to be among the first to get their hands on the new phone, dubbed the iPhone 4S. The handsets go on sale at 8 a.m. local time in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, France, Germany and Japan.
By 7:30 a.m. Friday morning on a street in Brooklyn Heights, New York, lines of several dozen iPhone hopefuls snakes outside the AT&T and Verizon stores on the same block.

As anticipation builds for the latest iPhone, Apple fans have been waiting outside the company's flagship New York City store for 17 days- in a friendly competition to be the first to get their hands on the iPhone 4S, when it goes on sale on Friday.

Europe shows it is as enthusiastic about the iPhone 4S as the rest of the world. Tech Europe editor Ben Rooney, discusses the new phone and if Google's growth is sustainable.

Apple's new iPhone 4S makes its global debut in Australia and Japan. Courtesy of Reuters.

At the head of the AT&T line: Michael Adesida, 24, and Jamel Hicks, 23, who had arrived at 11:45 pm Thursday and waited out a stormy night. To reserve their place in line during the overnight downpours, the two said they left their Popeyes dinner at the door of the store.
Across the street at a Sprint authorized retailer store, spirits sank a few minutes before 8 a.m. when store associates informed the waiting crowd of about 10 that the store had no more iPhone 4s's for sale. Marques and Shentel Sanders, who had woken up at 4:30 a.m. and trekked down from the Bronx, took a cab over to the bigger Sprint store on the Fulton Street mall where, about an hour later, a store worker broke the news to the people waiting in line that this store, too, had sold out of the latest version.
In Texas, bleary-eyed fanboys and suburban moms flocked to the Apple store at Houston's Memorial City Mall in the pre-dawn night, eager to grab the latest creation of late company co-founder Steve Jobs.
Most of the dozens in attendance said they had made up their minds about buying a new iPhone months ago, well before Mr. Jobs' passing, and were showing up as early as possible because their own personal anticipation had been building for months.
"He was an amazing man and his loss is tragic in many respects. But he sold us long ago," said Carolyn Panebianco. She was waiting in line to get a new phone for her 17-year-old daughter, a gift she had postponed since her daughter turned 16 more than a year ago, because she had wanted the newest white version available.
The procession was remarkably sedate, as company staff and customers clutching lawn chairs had honed the Apple launch madness to an orderly science.
"I thought it would be much crazier than it is," said Jill Reese, 31, a computer programmer who said she had been painfully using a bad pre-paid phone for months after returning to the country from Australia as she waited for the new iPhone. "The buildup was much more dramatic than the reality."
Apple has already said first-day preorders for the iPhone 4S, which began a week ago, topped one million units, beating the company's own expectation and sales for earlier models. Smartphones are not only one of the fastest-growing parts of the technology sector, but have since 2007 also become Apple's single-largest product category.
For retailers for Sprint Nextel Corp., which is getting the iPhone for the first time on Friday, the last two weeks have been a scramble.
"Apple—they're very controlling, very proprietary, they want things done their way," said Jeff Cutillo, a Sprint preferred retailer based in Midlothian, Va. "It's been a learning curve."
Mr. Cutillo closed his 13 stores in Virginia and North Carolina early on Thursday to give his employees time to redecorate and install new displays. On Friday, the stores were opening two hours early, and it's all hands on deck—Mr. Cutillo himself plans to be behind the counter at his store in Midlothian, outside of Richmond, Va. For Mr. Cutillo, the iPhone is a key opportunity to win customers away from Sprint's competitors.
"Talking with my store managers, they've fielded just as many calls from Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile customers as they have from our own," Mr. Cutillo said.
In Japan, the iPhone 4S became the first iPhone to be sold by multiple mobile carriers. Ever since the iPhone debuted in Japan in 2008, Softbank Corp. had been the only carrier of the handset, until Friday, when rival carrier KDDI Corp. also started selling the iPhone 4S.
Though there was some excitement, particularly at KDDI, the mood was calmer than at previous Apple launches.

Related News

• Softbank Server Glitch Damps 4S Launch in Japan

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Zuma Press

A man held up an iPad as more than 100 customers lined up in front of the Apple Store in the Ginza district in Tokyo the night before the iPhone 4S went on sale.

At a KDDI design showroom in Tokyo's trendy Harajuku neighborhood, the company distributed its first 50 iPhone 4S handsets, and dozens of people who had picked up numbered tickets the day before lined up outside the showroom early Friday morning, waiting for the doors to open at 7:45 a.m. Japan time.
"I'm so excited to be the first one to get this," said Honami Shinkawa, a 20-year-old student, who arrived at 6:30 a.m. local time and was the first in line. Ms. Shinkawa, who currently uses the iPhone 4 with Softbank, said she is switching in part because she thinks KDDI offers better telecommunication infrastructure than Softbank.
Kenta Kanazawa, 26, who was also waiting in line, came from Niigata Prefecture in northern Japan, where he works at a hotel owned by his parents at a major ski resort. "This will be my very first iPhone," said Mr. Kanazawa.
"Getting the iPhone 4S isn't like getting a new mobile phone," he said. "It's like adding a whole other computer" to the Mac he already uses, he said. Mr. Kanazawa, who uses his Mac to design the hotel's Web site, said the iPhone 4S will make his work a lot easier.
At a Softbank store nearby on the fashionable Omotesando Avenue, a line of Softbank iPhone loyalists stretching into the hundreds waited patiently on the sidewalk. In a festive, clubby mood, some even dressed in Halloween costumes. Still, the crowd was noticeably smaller than for the iPhone 4 launch in summer 2010.
There was no long line at the Apple store that faces Paris's Opera House but a continuous influx of fans, as bunches of flowers paying tribute to Mr. Jobs were wilting by the threshold of the shop.
"The new iPhone 4S is absolutely revolutionary!," said Dennis Dewall, a 28-year-old Austrian model-agency manager. "Apple is always a step ahead. As soon as a new model is out, you want to have it. You can't live in the past," he added, saying that the Siri new voice-assistant program seduced him.
By late Friday morning in London, people were still queuing for the new iPhone4S at Apple's flagship store on Regent Street.
Vu Thac, who was queuing with a friend to get the new iPhone4S, said it was a "better device" than its predecessor. Plus, he can sell his old iPhone for around £200 online to offset Friday's purchase.
A young Norwegian couple and their daughter, who were on holiday in London, also queued to get two of the new phones after hearing about the product's release in London.
In Frankfurt, Alfonso, a 50-year old broker from Mannheim who declined to give his last name, left the city's Apple store with three iPhones for himself and family members.
While initial interest in the iPhone 4S looks promising, Apple still faces numerous challenges, including an ever-growing list of competitors offering similar devices and services. Companies including Samsung Electronics Co. are pumping out handsets using Google Inc.'s touch-operated Android operating system, which has quickly grown to become the most widely-used smartphone software in the world.
Other competitors, however, are facing their own challenges. Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry service went offline for many customers around the world this week, with full service restored on Thursday. Apple has been targeting RIM's base of business customers with corporate-friendly features of its own, as well as lower price points on older models.
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.
Some customers have said they are drawn to this particular iPhone launch because it is the last device that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs marshaled to market. Mr. Jobs died on Oct. 5, a day after Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S.

Apple is negotiating with Hollywood studios for deals that would let people watch streaming versions of movies on Apple devices such as iPads or iPhones without manually transferring them. Ethan Smith reports on Digits.

Some analysts and bloggers expressed initial disappointment that the iPhone 4S features the same industrial design as its predecessor, and sports a name – the 4S -- that suggests it is only a slight improvement. But some initial customers and early reviewers say the phone's new features, including a better camera, faster chips and advanced voice-activated software, merit an upgrade. In the U.S., Apple is charging $199 for the entry-level iPhone 4S, which is available for the first time with three carrier partners including Sprint Nextel Corp., Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster estimates Apple will sell 25 million handsets in the current quarter, up from 22 million iPhones he estimates it sold in the recently ended September quarter. Apple is set to announce quarterly earnings next Tuesday.
The iPhone 4S goes on sale Friday at Apple's own retail outlets, stores run by carrier partners as well as select retailers including Best Buy Co. Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
—Miguel Bustillo, Martine Pauwels, Lilly Vitorovich and Harriet Torry contributed to this article. Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com, Juro Osawa at juro.osawa@dowjones.com and Anton Troianovski at anton.troianovski@wsj.com

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