Rooney urged to learn from Sachin

The British media has lavished praise on iconic batsman Sachin Tendulkar and according to a column written by former England cricketer Ed Smith, Manchester United star Wayne Rooney should learn how to turn expectations into inspiration.

In an article headlined ‘Sanctuary of crease lets Tendulkar reveal genius,’ Smith had written, “Twice last week, sportsmen have proved me spectacularly wrong. First, Sachin Tendulkar reached 14,000 Test match runs. And that’s not the amazing part.

“It took him fewer innings to get from 13,000 to 14,000 than any other 1,000-run chunk of his career. A case could be made that he is at his best now, at 37,” the newspaper noted.

The article said Tendulkar and Rooney were destined for rare greatness, even from teenage. Tendulkar has gone on and done it.A year ago, Rooney looked placed to do the same. But now, as never before, there are real doubts that he will become the player we once assumed he would be.

“Make no mistake, Tendulkar’s career has not been as serene as it might look, there have been arguments with coaches and match referees, an unsatisfactory spell as captain and long phases when the muse has deserted him.

“Tendulkar has had countless moments when frustration could have overwhelmed him. He has never blown his top, never lost his dignity. Instead, frustration has inspired him.”

“Above all, his career has been played out under the shadow of phenomenal expectation. Footballers in England have to deal with being heroes. In India it is even worse: they are meant to be Gods.”

“According to the report Tendulkar has come to the conclusion that there is one place where he is free from the hassles of fame. There is one realm where he cannot be pestered. It is called the crease.

“With the bat in his hands, Tendulkar is the conductor of his own life, not just a participant in a soap opera. There, out in the middle, no one can stop him being himself — not a restless media, not overly demanding fans or greedy agents.”

“It is the ultimate irony: the greatest actors are never freer than when they’re on the stage. That is the way for Rooney to find the way out of his present difficulties — he must have the bravery to express himself on the pitch, to make it his sanctuary.”

“If he allows himself to become embittered and resentful, he will not only become estranged from his fans, but also from his talent. No wonder the ball is bouncing off him at the moment; he probably would like to repel the whole game.

“Instead, he must learn to love it again. Shamed by alleged events off the pitch and embarrassed by events on it, Rooney could be forgiven for feeling sorry for himself,” the report said.

“It would be a normal thing to feel. But he doesn’t aspire to normality, but to greatness. And greatness, as Tendulkar has showed demands a superhuman degree of resilience and emotional dexterity. Rooney must locate his inner Tendulkar, a genius who got even with his critics by scoring hundreds.”“For Rooney, in every sense, it’s time to turn the pressure into goals.”

Apple in line to become world's most valued firm

As Apple prepares to announce its fourth-quarter results tonight, analysts are forecasting that it will have sold another 5m iPads, and around 12m more of the iPhone 4 it released in June.

If the numbers are good, then it is quite possible that the share price will jump further above the $300 (GBP190) mark that it broke last week — and the company could become the most valuable in the world measured by market capitalisation, surpassing the oil group ExxonMobil. It would cap a remarkable rebirth under the aegis of founder Steve Jobs.

Though at the end of last week the gulf in valuations seemed large — Exxon’s $331bn, against Apple’s $274bn — the gap has been closing for more than a year. Even if tonight’s results are not enough to propel Apple to the top spot, many on Wall Street think it is only a matter of time. Its profits will get another boost in January when Apple will begin selling iPhones through the largest network, Verizon, as well as AT&T, its partner since 2007.Apple is forecast to show revenues of around $19bn for the quarter and $5bn of profit — with the iPhone and iPad, products you could not buy four years ago, generating about $10bn of sales.It is a dramatic reversal from May 1997, when Jobs — who had recently rejoined the company after been fired in 1985 — was manoeuvring to take over again as chief executive. The share price put a total value on the company of just $2bn, “reflecting Apple’s loss of market share in an increasingly Windows-dominated world”, as analysts put it. Jobs told a team of software coders at the time: “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back to the technology — not the other way around.” He drove out the dead wood, his new recruit from PC-maker Compaq, Tim Cook (now the chief operating officer) streamlined its supply chain, and the company did as Jobs suggested, focusing relentlessly on its customers.He also set targets — such as surpassing Dell. Asked in October 1997 what he would do in Jobs’s position, Michael Dell retorted: “What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.” Jobs chastised Dell privately — and then celebrated with an email to staff when in January 2006, with a value of $72.1bn, it did finally pass Dell. In May this year, Apple achieved a huge milestone, passing Microsoft in market capitalisation, at GBP222bn against GBP219bn.

Apple’s computer business has steadily improved, coming third behind HP and Dell in the personal computer market in the U.S. in the three months to September, according to research firm Gartner, although it still has a relatively small share of the global market.But it has been the newer products that have driven growth. Apple took ownership of the MP3 market with the iPod, where the integration of hardware and the iTunes software proved to be a success and baffled those who had expected Microsoft to at some stage overwhelm it with an “iPod killer” — based on software from one company, hardware from a second, and music from a third.

Then in January 2007 Jobs unveiled the iPhone, and Apple began to eat into the smartphone market — previously the sole preserve of Nokia, Research In Motion (with its BlackBerry) and Microsoft, with Windows Mobile. Sales took off again, and Jobs’s comparatively modest target of 10m phones sold by the end of 2008 was easily surpassed, with 13m sold by September of that year.iPad to keep lead in tablet computer segment’

The latest hit is the iPad. Launched in April, analysts think it could sell 25m in 2011. Gartner has made dramatic forecasts for the growth of the tablet computer market, which it said would triple in size next year to 54.8m units. The technology research firm is predicting that the market will grow to 103.4m in 2012 and 154.2m units in 2013. Despite the intensifying competition, Gartner reckons the iPad will keep its lead until then.Apple’s longtime rival Microsoft (presently still valued at GBP219bn) became the largest company in the world by market capitalisation for two years, in the late 1990s during the PC boom. At the time, Microsoft did not pay dividends, though it does now. Apple still does not pay dividends but if it does reach the top, it might have to find some other way to make its stock look more attractive than simply the chance that it will keep rising in value.

Apple will come under increasing pressure to do something with its enormous cash pile of roughly $50bn, which was a necessary buffer when times were lean, but now looks like wasted opportunity. “Apple needs to do something with all of that capital,” said Toan Tran, an analyst at financial research house Morningstar. “I could understand wanting to have something in reserve, but $50bn is such a ridiculous number that they should seriously consider returning some of it to shareholders in the form of share buybacks.” If Apple does surpass Exxon, it would mark a changing of the guard in the Standard & Poor’s 500, where the top spot has been shared by companies including General Electric, General Motors, AT&T (before it was broken up in a monopoly investigation), and — 20 years ago — by IBM, which was also hit by antitrust investigations.With suggestions that the world is approaching “peak oil” and increasing concern over the role that fossil fuels play in climate change, Exxon looks set to be replaced by perhaps the most potent symbol of the digital age.

Facebook apps ‘leaking details to advertisers’

Many applications on Facebook can pass on information that personally identifies users and friends to advertisers and “internet tracking agencies”, the Wall Street Journal reports, saying it can affect people even with the strictest privacy settings enabled.A Facebook spokesman told the news organisation on yesterday (17OCT) that the social media site is moving to “dramatically limit” the leaking of users’ personal information, as it breaks the site’s own rules.The report says that many apps grab a user’s ID number, which is unique, and can then pass them on to internet advertising companies. It says that all of the 10 most popular apps did so, including Zynga’s FarmVille, Texas HoldEm Poker and FrontierVille. Three of the top 10, including FarmVille, also transmitted personal information about the user’s friends to external companies.Your unique IDs are like beacons

The data transmitted - the “Facebook ID” - is unique to each user, and can be used to look up your name even if your profile is set at its strictest setting. It also reveals any data that has been set to be visible to “everyone” on the site - which in fact means visible across the web.

For Facebook, it is the latest in a long line of privacy concerns, but one which the site may also be concerned about - because if internet advertising companies can extract value from Facebook about user IDs, it might make them less likely to buy advertising on the site. In that way, the leaching of Facebook IDs, and of people’s “social graphs” - who they are linked to - will be of great concern to Facebook, which derives its value from being able to act as the go-between for highly targeted advertising served to its users.

The WSJ said that the apps were sending Facebook IDs to at least 25 advertising and data firms, which build profiles of people by tracking them online.The row over what data can safely be made available - and to what extent advertisers and tracking companies could and should be able to identify people from their browsing - is longstanding. In the 1990s the activities of the advertising company DoubleClick caused concern when it was realised that it could target people because it provided “cookies” on each site that they visited, and target ads at them. DoubleClick is now owned by Google.

Facebook IDs on sale

More recently it has been Facebook, with its 500 million users, which has come repeatedly into the privacy spotlight.

The WSJ says “one data-gathering firm, RapLeaf Inc, had linked Facebook user ID information obtained from apps to its own database of internet users, which it sells. RapLeaf also transmitted the Facebook IDs it obtained to a dozen other firms, the Journal found.” Rapleaf told the paper: “We didn’t do it on purpose”.Collecting user and friends’ IDs would let companies build up individual profiles of people who it could cross-match against other data collected from censuses and public information to create detailed profiles of people. While advertisers argue that that means better-targeted information, it concerns many people who are unsure what data is held about them personally by such companies.

Earlier this month (OCT) the Guardian showed that many people’s phone details are retained on Facebook without their knowledge following uploads from their mobile phones or external email systems - and a BBC investigation found that even people who were not signed up to the site would be identifiable to it, based on details supplied by their friends, as soon as they provided an email address.