When sales exceed surveys: Could iPhone be ahead of Android in marketshare?

NPD and comScore recently released quarterly research figures over the last few days which suggested that Android was beating out iPhone in the U.S., but some digging into the numbers are showing that might not be the case.

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Carrier billing now available for movies, music, and books through Google Play

Google has announced that they will begin offering direct carrier billing for movies, music, and books in addition to Android apps in the Google Play store. This means that you can buy just about anything from the Play Store, and have the cost tacked on to your monthly cell phone bill through your carrier. It's not available everywhere, but the list of carriers that support direct billing is pleasantly robust --

• Germany: T-Mobile, Vodafone
• Italy: Vodafone
• Japan: KDDI, Docomo, Softbank
• Korea: KT, SKT, LGU+
• Spain: Vodafone
• UK: T-Mobile, Vodafone
• US: AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint

Currently, only KDDI, Docomo, and Softbank in Japan, and T-Mobile in the US allow billing of other media. Other carriers (Sprint was mentioned by name) will be coming on-board soon. This should help users who can't or won't enter credit or debit card information into Google Wallet, and get more media in more phones.

Source: +Google Play, via Androinica

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Samsung S-Pebble MP3 player / accessory hands-on

We're here on the floor at Samsung's "next galaxy" event taking a look at the company's new S-Pebble MP3 player / accessory. Curious about how it works? Head on past the break for our initial impressions.

Gallery: Samsung Pebble mp3 hands-on

Continue reading Samsung S-Pebble MP3 player / accessory hands-on

Samsung S-Pebble MP3 player / accessory hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 May 2012 15:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Toshiba sings NAND Flash's praises, thinks you should too

Have you taken a moment today to stop and thank NAND Flash for existing? No? Well, Toshiba would like to say tsk, tsk. Today the company launched a full-scale campaign to promote this storage technology -- and by full-scale we mean a dedicated "25 Years of NAND Flash" website, a "NAND Flash Deprivation Experiment" video series, new Facebook and Twitter accounts and a Toshiba Excite 10 giveaway. We must have missed the memo that NAND was dangerously underappreciated, because we're still trying to figure out why it needs a marketing campaign of its own. Toshiba has a slew of laptop refreshes and the Excite 7.7 and 13 tablets just around the corner -- and that interim period between announcement and launch date can be killer -- but somehow talking up NAND Flash doesn't seem the right course of action. Take a look at the campaign's first video below the break and decide for yourself.

Continue reading Toshiba sings NAND Flash's praises, thinks you should too

Toshiba sings NAND Flash's praises, thinks you should too originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 May 2012 02:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Blind Chinese activist makes dramatic escape from house arrest

Chen Guangcheng is now sheltering in the US embassy.

Chen Guangcheng's blindness was a help and a hindrance as he made his way past the security cordon ringing his farmhouse.

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He knew the terrain ? he had explored his village in rural China as a blind child and moved as easily in darkness as in daylight. He was alert for the sounds of people, cars and the river he would have to cross.

But he stumbled scores of times, arriving bloody at a meeting point with a fellow dissident ? the first of an underground railroad of supporters who eventually escorted him to safety with U.S. diplomats.

RECOMMENDED: Six famous Chinese dissidents

A self-taught lawyer who angered authorities by exposing forced abortions, Chen is now presumed to be under U.S. protection, most likely in the fortress-like American Embassy in Beijing. Details of his improbable escape ? making his way last week through fields and forest, then being chased by security agents in Beijing ? are emerging in accounts from the activists who helped him.

Chen and his family had been harassed and kept under house arrest since the summer of 2005, except for a four-year period when Chen was jailed on charges of disrupting traffic and restrictions were eased on his wife and daughter. The couple's young son lives with his mother's sister.

After Chen's release in September 2010, the family was again placed under house arrest, their movements severely restricted, with even 6-year-old daughter Kesi subjected to searches when she came home from school. Chen and his wife, Yuan Weijing, were beaten several times.

The 41-year-old activist hatched his escape plan months ago with a simple idea ? he would just lie still, said Bob Fu, founder of the Texas-based rights group ChinaAid and one of a handful of people to speak to Chen since he fled his village.

For weeks on end, Chen stayed in bed, saying he was too feeble to rise.

In fact, Chen wasn't well; his stomach was bothering him as it had for years. But he exaggerated his condition to lull the guards into a sense of complacency.

The ruse worked. The guards didn't look in on him constantly, assuming he was still bedridden, and when he escaped under cover of darkness, it took three days for them to notice.

"He did a darn good job. ... He prepared for months, at least two months," Fu said. "He didn't really move much, just laying in bed and making the impression that he couldn't move."

The night was cool with just a sliver of crescent moon in the sky on April 22 when Chen slipped out of his farmhouse in eastern China's Shandong province. Blinded by fever as a child, Chen grew up exploring the nearby cornfields and dirt paths sightless, so he had his bearings.

It wasn't the first time he had run away from Dongshigu village and his bitter, nearly decade-long feud with local officials.

In 2005, Chen, his wife and a friend made a dash out of the village, running through a cornfield to evade guards. He and his friend got all the way to Beijing, where they met with diplomats and journalists, but his wife was captured. Days later, Chen was seized by security guards on the streets of the capital and returned to house arrest.

On that brief escape he had been helped by his sighted friend; this time Chen was alone.

He followed a path to a field and from there took a road he knew would lead him to a narrow river. After crossing it, he entered a wooded area that gave way to less familiar territory, ground that continually tripped him up. He fell at least 200 times, he would tell his supporters.

He walked for hours, trying to put as much distance between himself and his heavily guarded home as possible before daring to slip a battery into his mobile phone and call He Peirong, a Nanjing-based English teacher-turned-activist who had promised to help. She was waiting with a car.

When she finally found him, Chen was wet, covered in mud and blood, and had numerous cuts and bruises.

"He was in very unbelievable shape when he was picked up," said Fu, citing a conversation with He. Chen "was trembling, was physically weak. ... But he was determined to escape from that miserable condition."

Fu said Chen took a few days to recuperate before making a video appeal.

Uploaded to YouTube and Boxun.com five days after Chen's escape, it showed the blind activist wearing a Nike windbreaker and his trademark black sunglasses, looking relaxed and sounding strong. In it, he pleaded with Premier Wen Jiabao to punish the local authorities who had subjected Chen and his family to 20 months of house arrest, repeatedly beating them.

It was apparently taped in Beijing after He drove Chen north and handed him off to another activist, who brought him to the capital.

He herself was detained Friday by police. Hours before, she told The Associated Press she had been in contact with Chen's relatives, who told her that when the local village chief discovered Chen was gone, "he was furious."

They beat Chen's wife, his brother and his adult nephew, she said.

In Beijing, Chen was mainly aided by Guo Yushan, founder of a think tank set up in 2007 in the capital's university district.

He also met with prominent activists Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan, posing for smiling snapshots with the couple ? pictures they later posted to Twitter. They discussed Chen's plan, saying he wanted "justice and freedom," and insisted he had no intention of leaving China.

Zeng said he seemed thinner and his hair was grayer than she remembered it, but that he was full of conviction.

"He was very certain and very clear," Zeng said. "He wants justice for his case and his family and he doesn't want to go abroad, doesn't want exile."

Despite his desire to stay in China, Fu now says China and the U.S. are close to a deal that would see Chen and his family given asylum in the United States. It could be announced within days, he said Monday.

Several others besides Guo helped Chen in Beijing, but Zeng and Fu declined to name them for fear they would be rounded up by security agents.

He, the former schoolteacher, has not been heard from since her detention Friday; Guo was detained and released but did not respond to a request for an interview. Colleagues said it wasn't "convenient" for him to talk, suggesting he is under pressure from authorities to stay silent.

Zeng and her husband also were questioned, with Hu spending 24 hours in custody.

The only tidbit Fu dared to offer about Chen's experience in Beijing was that he was involved in a car chase by security officials while being driven by a fellow dissident. But the agents were after the driver and didn't even know Chen was in the car.

"If they had known Chen was there, they probably would have shut down all of Beijing's traffic," Fu said.

RECOMMENDED: Six famous Chinese dissidents

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Would You Rather Battle Your Neighbor With a Samurai Sword Or a Chainsaw? [Qotd]

In Australia, a disagreement between two next-door neighbors over noise escalated into a unbelievable bloody battle, where one's finger was hacked off with a Samurai sword and the other's arm was nearly severed with a chainsaw. More »

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Idaho case shows midwife tension with hospitals

This April 23, 2012 photo shows The Baby Place, the birthing center in Meridian, Idaho, owned by Coleen Goodwin. Goodwin and her daughter, Jerusha Goodwin, had their licenses to practice midwifery suspended by the Idaho Board of Midwifery after three babies died. A former employee says the Goodwins' hostile relationships with doctors at a local hospital caused them to delay transporting mothers and babies during emergencies. (AP Photo/John Miller)

This April 23, 2012 photo shows The Baby Place, the birthing center in Meridian, Idaho, owned by Coleen Goodwin. Goodwin and her daughter, Jerusha Goodwin, had their licenses to practice midwifery suspended by the Idaho Board of Midwifery after three babies died. A former employee says the Goodwins' hostile relationships with doctors at a local hospital caused them to delay transporting mothers and babies during emergencies. (AP Photo/John Miller)

In this April 18, 2012 photo, Rachel Rabey and her children, 3-year-old son Owen, left, and 3-week-old daughter Hadleigh sit in Ann Morrison Park in Boise, Id. In 2010, Rabey, in the throes of a difficult birth, let paramedics drive past two nearby hospitals to a third facility in Boise, adding precious minutes to a journey that ended in the death of her newborn child. Conflict between doctors and the Baby Place, the midwifery business Rabey used, is said to have preceded the death of Rabey's child and two others. (AP Photo/The Idaho Statesman, Chris Butler) MANDATORY CREDIT

In this April 18, 2012 photo, Rachel Rabey holds her 3-week-old daughter Hadleigh at Ann Morrison Park in Boise, Idaho. In 2010, Rabey, in the throes of a difficult birth, let paramedics drive past two nearby hospitals to a third facility in Boise, adding precious minutes to a journey that ended in the death of her newborn child. Conflict between doctors and The Baby Place, the midwifery business Rabey used, is said to have preceded the death of Rabey's child and two others. (AP Photo/The Idaho Statesman, Chris Butler) MANDATORY CREDIT

MERIDIAN, Idaho (AP) ? Midwives and doctors are longtime rivals in the politics governing where women should give birth: Home or hospital.

But that tension, typically played out privately between pregnant women and their health care providers, was laid bare this month in the case of two Idaho midwives suspended by the state after three babies died during a 14-month period between 2010 and 2011.

The Baby Place in Meridian remains open, but its midwife owner, Coleen Goodwin, and her daughter, Jerusha Goodwin, are barred for now from practicing, in part over decisions allegedly influenced by their distrust and frayed relationships with doctors in hospitals where they felt mistreated or disrespected.

A former employee who trained at The Baby Place said hostility the Goodwins developed for doctors ultimately led to delays in emergency transports to hospitals.

Dani Kennedy told The Associated Press this antagonism caused them to make decisions against the best interests of mothers and babies, broadening the historic midwife-doctor divide to a wide gulf ? with tragic consequences.

Coleen Goodwin "did hesitate to transport, and that was really upsetting to me," said Kennedy, who trained at The Baby Place between 2007 and 2010. She left to open a practice in Hawaii, in part over these concerns.

"I wanted to work in an environment where I was able to make my own decisions about the care of my clients," she said.

Kennedy was interviewed by Idaho investigators who began scrutinizing the Goodwins after one of the three mothers who lost babies lodged a complaint with the state.

The Goodwins, whose website indicates they've helped 1,400 women give birth, declined interviews, including on Monday. A receptionist who answered the phone declined to say who is providing services to women following the Goodwins' March 23 suspensions.

St. Luke's Health System spokesman Ken Dey in Boise declined to comment specifically about the Goodwins' interactions with doctors at the hospital's facilities in Meridian or Boise.

"The message we want to get across is, we're not anti-midwife," Dey said. "Women have the option to choose where they have their babies. But we want to make sure all the safety regulations are in place."

OB/GYN Associates, the Idaho business that provides doctors to St. Luke's, didn't return phone calls seeking comment.

Though more than 99 percent of U.S. women give birth in hospitals, home births are increasing, accounting for 0.72 percent of deliveries in 2009, up from 0.56 percent in 2004, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Significantly more Idaho women have a midwife-assisted birth or home birth than the national average. About 3.2 percent of the 92,000 total births between 2008 and 2011 were midwife-assisted, either at birthing centers or home birth.

Given that, remedying feuds like the one Kennedy said influenced the Goodwins' decision-making is growing more important, said Oregon State University professor Melissa Cheyney, a medical anthropologist and certified midwife.

Midwives often feel disrespected by the medical establishment, Cheyney said, while doctors' objections to out-of-hospital births may harden with every traumatic transport.

This comes on top of the already-existing divide between the two views of childbirth, with midwives emphasizing the safety of natural births in a familiar, comfortable setting, while the American Medical Association contends women are best off in a hospital, where life-saving technology is nearby if something goes awry.

"You're having this compulsory interaction between two value systems," Cheyney said. "A transport means these two systems have to come together ? and work together."

The Idaho Board of Midwifery probe that preceded the Goodwins' suspensions highlights numerous instances where investigators said that didn't happen.

In August 2011, Jerusha Goodwin waited 11 minutes to call paramedics after a baby was born "limp, unresponsive and pale," investigators wrote. The mother labored for more than 48 hours, prompting the Meridian Police Department to launch an ongoing criminal negligence investigation after the baby died.

"There were some questions about the length of labor," Deputy Chief Tracy Basterrechea told the AP.

On Oct. 11, 2010, a student midwife improperly cut an infant's umbilical cord, resulting in significant blood loss before the baby died. Jerusha Goodwin failed to provide medical personnel at St. Luke's Meridian Medical Center with relevant records, investigators wrote.

And on June 30, 2010, Coleen Goodwin delayed paramedics from entering The Baby Place for four minutes. When they were finally allowed in, Coleen Goodwin instructed them to drive past two nearby hospitals to St. Luke's in Boise, adding precious minutes to a journey that ended in the infant boy's death.

The mother, Rachel Rabey, said in an interview Coleen Goodwin whispered to her, "If we go to Meridian, they won't let me stay with you." Rabey said she was perplexed.

"I didn't care where I went, or if Coleen could stay with me," remembers Rabey, who recently had her third child, a girl, at St. Luke's in Boise. "All I cared about was getting to a hospital."

The Baby Place's web site does indicate negative feelings toward hospitals, with one employee writing in a testimonial to prospective clients that she began her midwife studies after a hospital birth where she felt "cheated out of the birth experience."

The Goodwins do have troubled relationships with doctors, said Alison Hunter Stucki, who planned her eighth child's delivery at The Baby Place in 2007 but was forced by complications to transfer to nearby St. Luke's Meridian Medical Center.

Stucki said her family witnessed hostile doctors force Coleen Goodwin from the delivery room.

Still, Stucki, an ardent Baby Place supporter, doesn't believe those experiences led Goodwin to endanger women or their babies.

"What I've experienced is nothing but professionalism," said Stucki, who gave birth to her ninth baby at The Baby Place in 2009. "I do believe the doctors are upset with her. Every baby she delivers in her birthing center is one baby they don't get."

In addition to the three babies that died, the Goodwins were hit by a separate 2010 lawsuit, filed by the parents of a baby that suffered permanent brain damage. Last week, the midwives agreed to pay $5 million to Adam and Victoria Nielson, the couple that sued.

The Nielson's attorney, Eric Rossman in Boise, said he pursued the case pro bono because he couldn't "in good conscience dismiss the case as long as they continue to practice in this facility."

Objective measures of Idaho's midwife-doctor relationships ? and their impacts on babies ? are difficult to come by, because the state doesn't keep comprehensive records of the outcomes of midwife-assisted births requiring hospital transports.

A private effort, the Idaho Perinatal Project run by St. Luke's, documented 138 instances between 2005 and 2011 where mothers who planned a home birth were transported to a hospital.

Though its records are also incomplete ? reporting is voluntary; there are no reports for 2012 ? they do point to the trauma that accompanies a planned out-of-hospital birth where something goes wrong. There were at least nine cases where infants died at or before arriving at the hospital and several instances of birth asphyxia, fractures, post-partum hemorrhage and unexpected twins.

For many doctors who don't see the cases of successful home births, these tense interactions add to already deep misgivings about midwifery.

"There were also 34 cases which had no infant outcome listed," said Dr. Scott Snyder, medical director of St. Luke's Newborn Intensive Care Units. "The data is not an overestimation of what we're seeing. It's an underestimation."

Snyder does believe standards set by Idaho's midwife licensing that took effect in 2010 have fostered communication between most midwives and doctors, despite problems investigators found at The Baby Place. Midwives now visit St. Luke's, attending some staff meetings. Doctors' appreciation for midwives' services has grown, he said.

Snyder is also hopeful when the Idaho Legislature reviews the state's midwife rules in 2014, when the existing licensing law expires, they'll make it mandatory for midwives and doctors to track outcomes of transfers.

Associated Press

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