Should you go for iPhone?

NEW YORK - The most eagerly awaited cell phone ever is upon us Friday. Should you resist the iPhone's breathless hype, or take the plunge? Unless you're already standing in line outside an Apple or AT&T store, or are prepared to mug one of the first customers to come out after the 6 p.m. launch, the answer, at least for now, will have to be "let me think about it for a week or two."


The level of hype and demand for Apple Inc.'s phone is reminiscent of the debut of the PlayStation 3 game console in November, when minor riots broke out at some electronics stores. However, eBay prices for resold PS3s quickly fell, and two months later the console was in ample supply.

Apparently, much of the initial demand came from people who weren't really interested in getting them for themselves, but counted on being able to sell them to people who were.

It's quite possible that the iPhone will be subject to the same demand bubble. Check with the stores a month from now: If they have iPhones in stock, the bloom may be off the rose.

Hype aside, the iPhone is a radical design, a sliver of a device with a 3.5-inch glass screen and very few buttons. The iPhone differs by being designed to be touched with the fingertips rather than a stylus, making it a greater departure from the PC experience. (There have been several expensive phones with large touch screens before, generally using Windows Mobile software.)

The iPhone does e-mail, Web browsing, music and videos. It comes in two models — $499 for a 4-gigabyte version and $599 for 8 gigabytes of memory — and requires a two-year contract with AT&T Inc.

That's the basics. Here's a breakdown of who might want to consider an iPhone and who shouldn't:

• The music listener — Possibly. The big screen will make it easy to navigate a large music collection. A feature called Cover Flow shows your album covers like they're pages of an open book. However, the storage capacity is smaller than today's full-size iPods. The 4-gigabyte version fits about 800 songs, the 8-gigabyte version 1,800. The memory is not upgradable or expandable with external cards, so the 8-gig version is probably the one to get. Apple puts the battery life at 24 hours of audio playback, which is good.

• The video watcher — Sure, get one. The screen is twice as large as that of the video iPod, and the resolution, at 320 pixels by 480 pixels, is twice as high. The smaller memory capacity is going to mean frequent syncing with a computer, but the bigger screen will make it worth it. Definitely get the 8-gigabyte version, which will fit about 9 hours of video if that's all you keep on the gadget.

The iPhone also can access some YouTube videos, but since it relies on a relatively slow data network, access could be spotty, unless you're using its other built-in wireless technology: Wi-Fi. Other Web video will mostly be inaccessible, since the browser doesn't play Flash content, but that may change.

• The phone chatter — Maybe, but using it mainly as a phone seems like a waste. You can't type in names to quickly bring up someone from the contact list. Voicemail is listed with the caller's name or number, sort of like e-mail. In another neat feature, a sensor turns off the screen when you bring the phone to your face.

The cheapest service plan costs $60 a month for 450 daytime minutes — relatively expensive, since you're paying for unlimited data use. Getting 1,350 minutes costs $100 a month.

• The gamer — No. The iPhone does everything except games. A pity, with that nice big screen. Third-party developers might put something clever together that works in the iPhone's browser, but it's going to be limited. You probably have a Sony PSP or Nintendo DS already, and the PSP, in particular, already has the big screen and some of the iPhone's multimedia functions, so you can complement it with a cheaper phone.

• The corporate road warrior — No. For professional use, you're probably stuck with what the company supports, and for now, that's going to be BlackBerries and Windows Mobile devices like the Samsung BlackJack. Corporate Microsoft Exchange e-mail servers can be configured to send e-mail to the iPhone, but many companies will not take this step. Other features of Exchange, like contact and calendar syncing, are not available.

One possible solution is to forward corporate e-mail to free Web-based e-mail accounts that the iPhone can access, but that raises security issues.

If you're looking for some entertainment from your work phone, Windows Mobile phones like the T-Mobile Wing are already quite capable. A recently released BlackBerry, the Curve, plays music through a standard stereo headphone jack and has a built-in camera.

• The frugal buyer — No, the first-generation iPhone is likely to be followed by something substantially better, like one that uses a faster cellular broadband network and has more memory. It's unlikely that the first iPhone will be upgradable, and in any case, it would require a trip back to Apple.

• The photo buff — Not likely. The iPhone has a 2-megapixel camera, which is decent, and the large screen should make the results easy to appreciate. But phones dedicated to camera buffs also record video and have higher resolutions. The new Nokia N95 has a 5-megapixel sensor and a lens from Germany's famous Carl Zeiss. Unfortunately, it sells for $750, since it isn't subsidized by any U.S. carrier.

• The world traveler — Possibly, but it's not ideal. The iPhone will work overseas, but only at AT&T's roaming rates. Better to have a world phone that has been "unlocked" by the carrier, so you have the option to use a local number and pay local rates.

• The fashionista — Sure. The iPhone is one of the best-looking phones ever. The screen is glass, not plastic, and should be fairly resistant to long fingernails. Goodbye, pink RAZR.

By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer

LEDs move into home lighting market

EVERETT, Mass. - Joey Nicotera's fascination with multicolored light bulbs bordered on obsession when he was a teenager. He framed posters in lights and decorated his own Christmas tree. When he couldn't find a color bulb he wanted, he got paint cans from the basement and made some himself, bathing his second-story bedroom in an eerie glow.

ADVERTISEMENT

"I'd be driving home from work at night, and I could see his room from five blocks away, with all the weird colors and flashing lights," recalls his father, Joe Nicotera Sr.

Joey is now 32 and out of the family home. But a rainbow of ever-changing colors still emanates from his current living space, an 840-square-foot loft condominium in a renovated candy bar factory in Everett, just north of Boston.

Instead of painting light bulbs, Nicotera spent $5,000 to equip his bachelor pad with 54 fixtures containing light-emitting diodes, or LEDs — devices similar to computer semiconductors that convert electricity into light and stream it out of glass domes the size of matchstick heads.

They may be pricey now, but LEDs are being touted as eventual replacements for standard, incandescent bulbs and even compact fluorescents because of their growing efficiency and predictions of increasingly lower costs.

And as LEDs expand their reach into the aesthetic-minded market for home lighting, they boast something traditional lighting sources can't: LEDs can be programmed to emit light in virtually any color without the use of filters, enabling homeowners to design their own living room light shows, or tailor the color of the light to their mood.

"If colored light is needed, now there is a technology that can cater to that," said Nadarajah Narendran, director of lighting research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

Nicotera counts himself among an apparent handful of lighting enthusiasts around the country who have outfitted their homes with large numbers of LEDs. Now, his pad is a popular party spot and a great place to bring dates.

"I wanted a Vegas cocktail lounge look, with a Jetsons flavor to it," said Nicotera, an information technology manager in Boston. "I always figured that George and Jane would have walls that changed color," he said of the old TV cartoon characters.

Narendran says niche applications are already emerging as homeowners install LEDs to light display cabinets and add color to high-end home theaters. But it's hard to say how many homeowners will follow Nicotera's example by installing color LEDs and programming light shows.

"It's a matter of personal preference, like fashions," Narendran said.

Nicotera installed all his LED fixtures himself. Each contains 45 to 75 of the tiny spotlight-producing LEDs, commonly used in on-off indicators for electronics and appliances. He doesn't have any incandescent bulbs and relies on 50 halogen fixtures for overhead light.

He says his 54 LED fixtures together use less electricity than a single 100-watt incandescent and account for just $2 a month on his utility bill.

But it's the light show capabilities that capture Nicotera's interest. He taps controls on a wall switch panel to choose among eight programs or uses lighting control software on his laptop to expand programming options even further. Each program varies the color and brightness of the LED arrays in hanging lamps and the LED strips in backlit wall shelving and kitchen cabinets.

The wall switch and laptop are linked to a flash memory device and a pair of VCR-sized transformers that control the lights from a hallway closet. Shelves and cabinets abruptly shift from one hue to the next or shimmer gradually through the spectrum, bathing the condo's neutral gray walls in light.

Nicotera runs a red-white-and-blue program each Fourth of July, and he can change colors on shelf panels to simulate Tetris, the falling-blocks video puzzle game. When Italy won soccer's World Cup last year, Nicotera displayed Italy's national colors in his first-floor condo, which is visible to nearby traffic.

"It was all red, white and green," Nicotera said. "People who would drive by would honk their horns."

Because of their color advantage, LEDs are being used to light display shelves at jewelry stores and supply ambiance in restaurants. Hotels are installing LEDs to provide splashes of exterior color. And Toronto's CN Tower is being lit this month with more than 1,300 color-changing LEDs running up the 1,815-foot structure.

As for LEDs that cast white light, Narendran expects it will be five to 10 years before such products begin seriously challenging other light sources in homes.

So far, cost is the biggest obstacle, but that should change over the next few decades.

Three years ago, the first 10 fixtures Nicotera mounted in the bathroom ceiling cost $125 apiece. Since then, the cost has come down to less than $75 each. He says he hasn't had to replace or fix any of his LEDs, which are touted to run continuously for 11 years.

Last Tuesday, Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics NV expanded its LED presence by offering $688 million to acquire Color Kinetics Inc., a decade-old Boston company that designed the CN Tower's new lighting and holds patents on systems to control LED color and brightness.

Fritz Morgan, Color Kinetics' chief technology officer, said the semiconductor technology underlying LEDs is becoming more affordable and efficient at a rate on par with advances in computing speed. Today's LEDs are about as efficient as the latest compact fluorescents, Morgan said, and they are improving faster than fluorescents.

"There's been a dramatic increase in just two or three years, where LEDs went from being as efficient as incandescents, to then being as good as halogens, to now being at the level of compact fluorescents," Morgan said.

Nicotera — whose home is equipped with Color Kinetics LED products bought through distributors — is so impressed with the technology that he's put his condo up for sale and plans to build a new home from scratch, equipped exclusively with LEDs.

His condo is being offered at $359,000 — he may throw in the unit's LED lights and controls for a little extra, subject to negotiation.

Although the LEDs may turn off some prospective buyers, Nicotera's mother is proof that there can be rewards to investing in a new technology. She was initially skeptical when her son started planning his condo's design.

"When he started talking about having a wall of lights, I couldn't really imagine what he was talking about," Linda Nicotera said. "I thought it was going to look like a disco, or something on the tacky side.

"But there was a 'wow' factor when I finally saw it. It ended a lot better than I thought."

By MARK JEWELL, AP Business Writer

Breaking News: Henry agrees to Join Barcelona

Thierry Henry says he is quitting Arsenal to join Spanish giants Barcelona on a four-year deal.

"I still must pass a medical on Monday but yes, I have chosen Barcelona," the 29-year-old striker told French sports daily L'Equipe on Saturday.

Barcelona had already revealed that they were close to bringing Henry to the Nou Camp in a £16m deal.

Barcelona vice-president Ferran Soriano told Spanish sports newspaper Marca that talks were at an "advanced" stage.

Soriano added it was "the wish of all parties" for an agreement to be reached for the transfer of Henry.

He also insisted that they waited for the green light from Arsenal before making a move for the striker, who is the club's all-time record goalscorer.

"We don't want to point a gun at anybody," said Soriano. "We have good relationships with the European clubs."

Henry, who only agreed a lucrative new deal with Arsenal 12 months ago, also confirmed his exit in The Sun newspaper.

In an open letter, he blamed the shock departure of Gunners vice-chairman David Dein and continuing doubts over the future of manager Arsene Wenger as the main reasons for his decision to leave.

"Arsene has been part of my life for as long as I can remember," he wrote.

"Unfortunately and understandably he has said that at this moment he will not commit to the club past the expiration of his current deal which finishes at the end of the coming season.

"I respect his decision and his honesty but I will be 31 at the end of next season and I cannot take the chance to be there without Arsene Wenger and David Dein.

"This is solely my decision, no-one has forced me to do anything and I will represent myself in this transaction. I feel it is something I just had to do."

Henry, who has also been linked with European champions AC Milan, has also revealed the reasoning behind his decision to move to the Nou Camp.

"Barcelona are a wonderful club steeped in tradition and play beautiful football. I'm sure I will be very happy there," he wrote.

"But I will miss the Arsenal fans dearly, they have supported me through thick and thin.

"They will always be in my heart, as will all the fans who make the game here so special. I will always have a special bond with Arsenal Football Club."


Henry spent much of last season sidelined because of injury

Henry began his career as a winger with Monaco in 1994 under the supervision of current Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger.

He was in France's 1998 World Cup-winning squad and went on to join Juventus the following season.

But his time in Turin was a largely unsuccessful one and the player was soon heading to north London with Wenger keen to get the best out of the prodigious talent.

The France international has since blossomed into one of the greatest talents in world football.

He helped Arsenal to two league titles and three FA Cups, and led the Gunners to the finals of the 2000 Uefa Cup and 2006 Champions League.

In February 2006, he became the first Arsenal player to score over 200 goals for the club with a strike against Birmingham and has bagged a club record 226 goals in 364 appearances for the Gunners.

His consistency in front of goal has seen him finish as the Premier League's top scorer on four occasions.

He has won the PFA Players' Player of the Year title on two occasions and the football writers' player of the year three times. He has also twice finished runner-up in the Fifa world player of the year.

BBC sport report

External Experts Advice

Lethal mistakes for real estate investors

1. Planning as you go.
Andy Heller, an Atlanta-based investor and co-author of "Buy Even Lower: The Regular People's Guide to Real Estate Riches," says lack of a plan is the biggest mistake he sees new investors make. They buy a house because they think they got a good deal and then try to figure out what to do with it. That's working backward, Heller says. "First, you find the plan," he says. "Then you find the house to fit the plan. Pick your investment model, and then go find property to match that. Don't find the strategy after you find the home."

The problem is that most people look at real estate as a transaction instead of as an investment strategy, says Doug Crowe, a Chicago-based real estate investor and speaker. "People fall in love with a property," says Crowe, who is managing director of Springboard Academy, the nation's only real estate academy for investors. "I say, 'Who cares about the property?' I fall in love with a motivated seller."

The number is the number, and you don't go above that, he says. The best way to solve the problem is to have lots of activity and make offers on multiple properties. Then you don't care which one you get -- as long as the numbers work out in your favor.

2. Thinking you'll "get rich quick."
That kind of wrong-headed thinking is fueled by "these self-appointed gurus who have infomercials and make it sound so easy to get rich in real estate," says Eric Tyson, co-author of "Real Estate Investing for Dummies." It's not easy. It's a good long-term investment, but so is putting your money in a mutual fund, which is a lot easier. "These gurus don't talk about all that hard work. You have to be smart, you have to be willing to work, and you have to understand your risk tolerance."

3. Playing Lone Ranger.
A key to success is building the right team of professionals. At the very least, you need good relationships with at least one real estate agent, an appraiser, a home inspector, a closing attorney and a lender, both for your own deals and to assist with financing for prospective buyers. In the remodeling and maintenance segment of the business, the team includes a plumber, an electrician, a roofer, a painter, a heating and air conditioning, or HVAC, contractor, a flooring installer, a lawn maintenance service, a cleaning service and an all-around handyman. You can't build a business as an investor if you're spending all your time fixing leaky faucets and putting up ceiling fans.

4. Paying too much.
Heller says the biggest reason investors don't make money is simple: They pay too much for the properties. "The profit is locked in immediately once the investor buys the property," he says. "Due to mistakes in the analysis, the investor pays too much and then is surprised later when he doesn't make any money."

5. Skipping homework.
You wouldn't think you're qualified to perform open-heart surgery without years of education and training. Yet many wannabe real estate investors don't think twice about taking their financial lives in their hands without even cracking a book. Educate yourself before you put your family's financial security on the line. Read articles, check out books from the library and look for a local chapter of the National Real Estate Investors Association. Speakers at monthly meetings cover everything from buying foreclosures to screening tenants. If you can't find a local chapter, find out who owns a lot of rental properties in the area, call him up and offer to pay for an hour or two of his time to find out whether this is a good career for you

6. Ducking due diligence.
Investors often have to move very quickly on their deals. That doesn't mean they sign a contract and write a check without plenty of research, though. That's where a lot of newbies trip up, says Houston-based real estate agent Laolu Davies-Yemitan. They don't do their due diligence about the deal, the costs or the market conditions, and they wind up draining their personal savings because the house needs extensive repairs or they can't sell it. "Sometimes, new investors are buying property just based on the idea that the property is going to appreciate," he says. "Usually, they don't have any information to substantiate that."

7. Misjudging cash flow.
If your strategy is to buy, hold and rent out properties, you need sufficient cash flow to cover maintenance. "People think they can get a property manager," Tyson says. But many have never interviewed a property manager and have little idea about how they work. Most managers, for example, are reluctant to take on one single-family home or a duplex, he says, preferring larger complexes, and fees of 7 percent to 10 percent of the monthly rent are common. "It's a huge expense," Tyson says. "I can put my money in a mutual fund and it costs a half-percent a year."

Davies-Yemitan agrees. It's not uncommon for a property to sit on the Houston market for 90 to 120 days before it's leased, he says. Meanwhile the owner has to pay the mortgage, the taxes, the insurance, the cost of advertising and homeowner or condo association dues, he says. If the owner hasn't budgeted for that, an asset can quickly become a liability.

8. Lowering the volume.
If you're working on one deal at a time, Crowe says, you're doing transactions, not running a business. You need a steady pipeline of prospective deals; sufficient volume will weed out the marginal deals and let the good ones rise to the top.

9. Painting yourself into a corner.
Many people buy a property and get stuck with it because they only have one exit strategy. They're going to sell it or they're going to rent it out. What if it doesn't sell? What if the rental market stalls? Always have two, if not three, ways to get out of any deal. For example, if plan A is to rehab the house, put it on the market and resell it, then plan B could be to offer a lease-purchase to a buyer. Plan C might be to hold the house and rent it out. And as a plan D, there is the wholesale option, which would involve selling to another investor at a below-market price. Hopefully, you'll still make a profit, but at the very least, you'll cut the losses you're taking every month in carrying costs.

10. Miscalculating estimates.
Crowe tells his new rehabbers that after they've done their homework, they should double the amount of time and money they think it will take. If they can still make money then and they might be able to rent it out, it's a good deal.

An extract from Bankrate, Inc

Juve 'to bypass Premier players'

By John May, BBC Sports

Former Chelsea boss Claudio Ranieri is unlikely to flex Juventus' spending muscle in the Premier League, according to sources in Italy.

Since the Italian club's return to Serie A, the likes of Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard and Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard have been linked to Juve.

Coach Ranieri has been given a budget of £40m to restore Juventus' fortunes.

Andrea Masala of Gazzetta dello Sport told BBC Sport: "They are more likely to look towards Spain for players."

Their main priority is a central defender and one target is Gabriel Milito, who plays for Real Zaragoza

Gazzetta dello Sport's Andrea Masala on Juventus

Premiership clubs were standing by to repel boarders after Juve won the Serie B title to return to the top flight after a one-season absence.

The Turin club were demoted for their part in a match-fixing scandal that rocked Italian football.

As they were progressing to the Serie B title under Didier Deschamps last season, they were linked with several England stars, including Chelsea pair Lampard and John Terry and Liverpool midfielder Gerrard, who agreed a new Anfield deal this month.

Juve's status and financial backing dictates they are treated with respect but even they would find it difficult to meet the asking price for the Premier League's top stars.

Masala said: "Their main priority is a central defender and one target is Gabriel Milito, who plays for Real Zaragoza."

Milito, 26, is a highly regarded Argentine player.

Despite their relegation in 2006, Juve managed to hold on to a core of their top stars, including strikers David Trezeguet and Alessandro del Piero, Gianluigi Buffon - rated the best goalkeeper in the world - and midfielder Pavel Nedved.

While they will look to bolster their squad in the transfer market, Masala believes Juve also want to ensure their top players stay in Turin.

Juve recently extended Buffon's contract to 2012 and Masala said: "Their next big move will be to try to keep David Trezeguet.

"After that, they will look at signing Nedved to a new contract."