Netflix blames Amazon for Christmas Eve outage

An outage at one of Amazon's web service centers hit users of Netflix Inc's streaming video service on Christmas Eve and was not fully resolved until Christmas Day, a spokesman for the movie rental company said on Tuesday.
The outage impacted Netflix subscribers across Canada, Latin America and the United States, and affected various devices that enable users to stream movies and television shows from home, Netflix spokesman Joris Evers said. Such devices range from gaming consoles like the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3 to Blu-ray DVD players.
Netflix, which is based in Los Gatos, California, has 30 million streaming subscribers worldwide, of which more than 27 million are in the Americas region that was exposed to the outage and could have potentially been affected, Evers said.
Evers said the issue was the result of an outage at an Amazon Web Services' cloud computing center in Virginia and started at about 12:30 p.m. PST (2030 GMT) on Monday and was fully restored before 8:00 a.m. PST Tuesday morning, although streaming was available for most users by 11:00 p.m. PST on Monday.
The event marks the latest in a series of outages from Amazon Web Services, with one occurring in April of last year that knocked out such sites as Reddit and Foursquare.
"We are investigating exactly what happened and how it could have been prevented," Evers of Netflix said.
"We are happy that people opening gifts of Netflix or Netflix capable devices can watch TV shows and movies and apologize for any inconvenience caused last night," he added.
Officials at Amazon Web Services were not available for comment. Evers, the Netflix spokesman, declined to comment on the company's contracts with Amazon.

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Number of e-book readers increasing in United States: survey

The popularity of electronic books is increasing in the United States, with nearly one-quarter of American bibliophiles reading e-books, according to a survey released on Thursday.
The number of e-readers aged 16 years and older jumped from 16 percent in 2011 to 23 percent this year, while print readers fell from 72 to 67 percent in 2012, in a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.
"The move toward e-book reading coincides with an increase in ownership of electronic book reading devices," the organization said. Its report analyzed reading trends among the 75 percent of Americans who read at least one book in the last year.
"In all, the number of owners of either a tablet computer or e-book reading device ... grew from 18 percent in late 2011 to 33 percent in 2012."
E-book owners increased from 4 percent in May 2010 to 19 percent in November 2012, while people with tablets jumped from 3 percent to 25 percent during the same period, according to the report.
People most likely to read e-books are well-educated, 30- to 49-year-olds who live in households earning $75,000 or more.
More women, 81 percent, read books, compared to 70 percent of men, and the number of readers declines as people age. The trend toward e-books impacted libraries, which stocked and loaned more e-books.
"The share of recent library users who have borrowed an e-book from a library has increased from 3 percent last year to 5 percent this year," according to Pew.
Even awareness that library stock e-books has grown, from 24 percent late last year to 31 percent now.
The findings were based on a telephone survey of 2,252 people, aged 16 years and older, across the United States and a similar poll the year before. It had a 2.7 percent margin of error.

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Analysis: Amazon's Christmas faux pas shows risks in the cloud

 A Christmas Eve glitch traced to Amazon.com Inc that shuttered Netflix for users from Canada to South America highlights the risks that companies take when they move their datacenter operations to the cloud.
While the high-profile failure - at least the third this year - may cause some Amazon Web Services customers to consider alternatives, it is unlikely to severely hurt a fast-growing business for the cloud-computing pioneer that got into the sector in 2006 and has historically experienced few outages.
"The benefits still outweigh the risks," said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.
"When it comes to the cloud, Amazon has got it right."
The latest service failure comes at a critical time for Amazon, which is betting that AWS can become a significant profit generator even if the economy continues to stagnate. Moreover, it is increasingly targeting larger corporate clients that have traditionally shied away from moving critical applications onto AWS.
AWS, which Amazon started more than six years ago, provides data storage, computing power and other technology services from remote locations that group thousands of servers across areas than can span whole football fields. Their early investment made it a pioneer in what is now known as cloud computing.
Executives said last month at an Amazon conference in Las Vegas they could envision the division, which lists Pinterest, Shazam and Spotify among its fast-growing clients, becoming its biggest business, outpacing even its online retail juggernaut. Evercore analyst Ken Sena expects AWS revenue to jump 45 percent a year, from about $2 billion this year to $20 billion in 2018.
The service has boomed because it is cheap, relatively easy to use, and can be shut off, scaled back or ramped up quickly depending on companies' needs. As the longest-running player in the game, Amazon now boasts the widest array of datacenter products and services, plus a broader stable of clients than rivals like Google Inc, Rackspace Inc and Salesforce.com Inc.
Outages such as the one that took down Netflix and other websites on the eve of one of the biggest U.S. holidays are part and parcel of the nascent business, analysts say. Moreover, outages have been a problem long before the age of cloud computing, with glitches within corporate datacenters and telecommunications hubs triggering myriad service disruptions.
COMING SOON: POST-MORTEM
Amazon's latest service failure comes months after two high-profile outages that hit Netflix and other popular websites such as photo-sharing service Instagram and Pinterest. Industry executives, however, say its downtimes tend to attract more attention because of its outsized market footprint.
Netflix - which CEO Reed Hastings said relies on AWS for 95 percent of its datacenter needs - would not comment on whether they were pondering alternatives. Analysts say the video streaming giant is unlikely to try a large-scale switch, partly because all cloud providers experience outages.
"Despite a steady stream of these service outages, the demand for cloud services offered by AWS, Google, etc. continues to escalate because these services are still reliable enough to satisfy customer expectations," said Jeff Kaplan, managing director of consultancy ThinkStrategies Inc.
"They offer cost-savings and elasticities that are too attractive for companies to ignore."
But "Netflix and other organizations which rely on AWS will have to reexamine how they configure their services and allocate their service requirements across multiple providers to mitigate over-dependency and risks."
AWS spokeswoman Rena Lunak said the outage was traced to a problem affecting customers at its oldest data center, run out of northern Virginia, which was linked also to the June failure.
The latest glitch involved a service known as Elastic Load Balancing, which automatically allocates incoming Web traffic across multiple servers in order to boost the performance of a website. She declined to provide further details about the outage, saying the company would be publishing a full post-mortem within days.
AWS has traditionally been used by start-up tech companies and smaller businesses that anticipate rapid growth in online traffic but are unwilling or unable to shell out on IT equipment and management upfront.
The company has more recently started winning more and more business from larger corporations. It has also set up a unit that caters to government agencies.
Regardless, Amazon's clientele would do well not to put all their eggs in one basket, analysts say.
"Service outages do occur, but they are not common enough to cause users of these services to abandon today's Cloud service providers at significant rates. In fact, every major Cloud service provider has experienced outages," Kaplan said.
"Therefore, organizations that rely on these services are putting backup and recovery systems and protocols in place to mitigate the risks of future outages.

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Amazon most satisfying website to shop: survey

 Amazon.com Inc remained the best website for shopping online while JC Penney Co Inc suffered the largest drop in customer satisfaction of any major online retailer this holiday season, according to a survey released on Thursday.
Flash sale sites Gilt.com and RueLaLa.com were among the worst performers in online shopping satisfaction this season, according to ForeSee's Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index.
"The importance of satisfying them and giving a great consumer experience is going to pay back huge dividends in terms of profitability for these retailers," said Larry Freed, president and chief executive officer of ForeSee, which measures customer satisfaction for companies, including retailers.
Amazon has held the highest score in each of the eight years of the index, due in part to the wide variety of merchandise it offers and a site that is easy to use.
"They've really done a great job in setting the standard for everybody else," Freed said of Amazon.
Amazon's score was again 88 out of 100, while Gilt.com and Fingerhut.com shared the lowest score of 72. LLBean.com had the second-highest ranking, 85, up 4 points from a year earlier.
A score of 80 or higher is considered strong, Freed said.
JC Penney's score fell to 78 from 83.
"They've struggled a lot in their stores as they've tried to reinvent themselves a bit and that's carried over a little bit to the website," Freed said.
Other retailers that saw their ForeSee satisfaction scores drop included Apple Inc - down to 80 from 83 - and Dell Inc, which fell to 77 from 80.
At Apple, as the popular tech company has brought out more products, navigating the site has become more of an issue, said Freed. Improving the functionality of the site would give it the biggest boost, he said.
No. 1 U.S. retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc, which is trying to grow its online sales, scored a 78 for its Walmart.com website, down from 79 in 2011. Rival Target Corp's website scored 79, up from 76 last year, when it had some struggles after taking over control of the site from Amazon.
As for those flash sale sites coming in at the low end of the scores, Freed noted that some are trying to grow beyond the premise of flash sales, which offer a limited amount of marked down merchandise at specific times.
"It works for some kinds of consumers, it's not going to work for every kind of consumer," said Freed. "Their models today are going to work and they're going to have a chance to be successful, but at the end of the day it's not the right answer for everybody."
ForeSee's 2012 report was based on more than 24,000 surveys collected from visitors to websites of the 100 largest online retailers from Thanksgiving to Christmas, up from 40 retail sites in prior years.

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Original Samsung Galaxy Note Getting Jelly Bean Update

If you bought one of the original Samsung Galaxy Note smartphones and have been kicking yourself for not waiting for the Galaxy Note II and all its Jelly Bean-powered features, you can stop feeling bad. The first Note will be getting Jelly Bean very soon.
Samsung posted details about the Note's Premium Suite update on the product website. Enabled by an upgrade to Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean," the feature suite includes many of the abilities the Note II boasts, such as dual-window multitasking, pop-up Notes, the ability to cut and paste just part of an image and the improved S Note app.
[More from Mashable: Jelly Bean Arrives on Some Global HTC One S Devices]
SEE ALSO: Sh*t People Say About the Samsung Galaxy Note [VIDEO]
The upgrade also includes the regular Jelly Bean sweetness of Google Now, Android's personalized search-and-information service, and the improved animation that makes onscreen movements smoother.
[More from Mashable: Flipboard: Now Available on Your Android Tablet]
The site doesn't say when the Note will be getting the Premium Suite, and the Note we have here doesn't indicate a software update is ready. We contacted Samsung, but company reps said there is so far no date set for the update in the U.S.
Did you buy a Samsung Galaxy Note earlier this year? How much does this update mean to you? Let us know in the comments.

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He's not running, but Italy's Monti has a plan

For someone not running for political office, Premier Mario Monti has an awfully detailed plan for how to fix Italy's financial woes and bring the country and the rest of Europe back to economic health. And by Monday, not only had centrist leaders who want him as premier endorsed it, but so did the head of the Catholic Church in Italy.
Monti issued a 25-page agenda to "Change Italy, Reform Europe" late Sunday after announcing he had ruled out campaigning for February elections but would consider leading the next government if politicians who share his focus on reform request it.
Monti outlined the steps Italy must take to finish the reforms launched by his 13-month-long technical government to reign in Italy's public debt, spur economic growth and bring Europe's No. 3 economy out of recession.
"In a word, he will be the non-candidate candidate," commentator Massimo Franco wrote in leading daily Corriere della Sera on Monday.
Some of Monti's priorities include attracting greater foreign investment, investing in research, capitalizing on Italy's cultural treasures and fighting tax evasion and corruption. He called for incentives to hire women and young workers to help reduce the 36.5 percent youth unemployment rate. He said Italy's public administration — tarnished by recent embezzlement scandals — needed to be more efficient and transparent.
In an open-letter to Italians introducing the agenda, Monti said he wanted to contribute some ideas for Italy's future to help orient Italy's political leaders as they embark in what is expected to be a bitter two-month campaign before Feb. 24-25 elections.
"To those forces who show a convinced and credible adhesion, I would give my appreciation, encouragement, and if asked, my guidance," Monti wrote.
Italy's centrist leaders, who had sought Monti as their candidate for premier, discussed the document Monday morning and enthusiastically endorsed it, according to the ANSA news agency, citing sources within the movement.
And Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the head of the Italian bishops' conference, also gave it a thumbs-up, praising Monti's "innovative" proposals. Support from the church is considered vitally important for a government in largely Roman Catholic Italy, and the Vatican has made clear its admiration for Monti, a practicing Catholic.
"Mario Monti has presented a path, a way forward that is being offered to the serious and honest reflection of all," Bagnasco told state-run RAI radio.
Monti, a respected economist, was tapped last year to head a technical government after Silvio Berlusconi was forced to resign as premier amid market turmoil over his inability to pass necessary reforms to save Italy from Europe's debt crisis.
Berlusconi's People of Freedom party, Parliament's largest, had supported Monti's reforms, which included painful tax hikes and an increase in the retirement age. But Berlusconi yanked his support earlier this month, prompting Monti to resign and force elections about two months early.
Monti remains premier of a caretaker government. In an end-of-the-year press conference Sunday, he made clear his distaste for Berlusconi's antics, refusing the scandal-tainted ex-premier's offer to run on a center-right ticket.

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S&P cuts Egypt rating on political strife

 Standard & Poors' cut Egypt's long-term credit rating on Monday and said another downgrade was possible if deepening political turbulence undermines efforts to prop up the economy and public finances.
Egypt's popular uprising two years ago drove away tourists and foreign investors alike, helping push its budget deficit into double digits as a percentage of national output and worsening its balance of payments.
A divisive battle over a new constitution this month has also prompted the government to delay urgent austerity measures and put a crucial $4.8 billion IMF loan on hold.
S&P reduced Egypt's long-term sovereign rating to 'B-' from 'B', but left its short-term rating at 'B' for both foreign- and local-currency debt. It kept its negative outlook on the rating - suggesting it sees another cut as the most likely next move.
"A further downgrade is possible if a significant worsening of the domestic political situation results in a sharp deterioration of economic indicators such as foreign exchange reserves or the government's deficit," S&P said.
Some Egyptians have said recently they had withdrawn funds from banks out of concern that they would be frozen by the authorities.
Seeking to quell what it called these "public rumors", the central bank on Monday said it was taking all steps needed to safeguard deposits in Egyptian banks whether denominated in local or foreign currencies.
Egypt's domestic debt was equivalent to 69.7 percent of gross domestic product as of the end of September while its foreign debt was 13.1 percent of GDP, according to the finance ministry.
Egypt reached an initial accord with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last month for a financial support package, but later put on hold a series of austerity measures deemed necessary to secure IMF approval.
The government then asked the IMF to delay until January a meeting to approve the loan, which looks increasingly vital to prop up government finances but requires it to take unpopular measures on taxation and spending.
The measures included increases in sales tax on goods and services ranging from alcoholic beverages, cigarettes and mobile phone calls to automobile licenses and quarrying permits.
President Mohamed Mursi withdrew them within hours of their being announced after criticism from his opponents and the media.

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Monti urges debate on Italy election as rivals open fire

 Outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti posted his reform agenda online on Monday, urging Italians to join a debate on their country's future as potentially bitter election campaign gets underway two months before Italy goes to polls.
Following weeks of hesitation, Monti declared his availability on Sunday to lead a reform-minded centrist alliance to seek a second term to complete the economic reform program begun when he took office just over a year ago.
The former European Commissioner, appointed at the head of a technocrat government to save Italy from financial crisis, has now thrown off his mantle of neutrality and entered a race that will be dominated by his tough reform agenda.
Even if he confirms his entry into the campaign, Monti appears unlikely at this stage to return to office but his involvement could strengthen a centrist alliance and help shape the agenda of the next government.
The center-left Democratic Party (PD), which has pledged to maintain Monti's broad reform course while giving more help to workers and pensioners and emphasizing growth more, is favored to win but may have to strike a coalition deal with the center.
In an open letter to Italians posted online and accompanied by a 25-page policy program, Monti said he hoped that the agenda would lead to an "open reflection" that would help shape the debate ahead of the election on February 24-25.
He urged a mix of budget rigor and structural reform as well as measures to crack down on corruption and get more women and young people to work.
However the tone of the campaign has inevitably moved away from calm debate and into the murky and sometimes treacherous territory of Italian party politics, where Monti is a novice.
GLOVES COME OFF
At a news conference on Sunday, he attacked left-wing trade unions for resisting reform but reserved special criticism for his scandal-plagued predecessor Silvio Berlusconi, whom he picked on repeatedly for his "bewildering" changes of position.
Speaking to one of his own television channels, the 76 year-old media billionaire responded by saying it would be "immoral" for Monti to fight the election after governing as an unelected premier with the support of the main parties.
One of Berlusconi's chief lieutenants, Fabrizio Cicchitto, parliamentary floor leader of his People of Freedom (PDL) party, indicated that Monti's international standing and the respect he enjoys among Italy's European partners would count for little.
"He's taken aim at the PDL, which obviously has no choice but to respond in kind," he said.
Monti, a Life Senator who does not need to stand for election to parliament, has not said exactly what forces he could support but the centrist parties he has been linked with greeted his announcement with great enthusiasm.
"We're not forcing Monti but obviously if it happens, the value it adds to our project will be enormous," Pierferdinando Casini, head of the centrist UDC party, which is close to the Catholic church, told the daily La Repubblica.
A small number of centrists from both the two main parties, including former Foreign Minister Franco Frattini announced they were leaving their parties and would support Monti, whose reform agenda is strongly backed by Italy's business establishment.
However the centrist group lags both the center-left Democratic Party (PD) and the PDL as well as the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement in opinion polls and without Monti, it has little chance of making any significant gains.
Even with the respected economics professor at its head, a centrist alliance including the UDC and other smaller parties including a new group created by Ferrari chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, appears likely to struggle to pass 15 percent.

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TSX closes lower as U.S. budget fears linger

 Canada's main stock index ended down after a quiet, shortened Christmas Eve trading session on Monday, as oil prices extended their retreat on worries about U.S. 'fiscal cliff' budget measures, pulling energy shares lower.
With U.S. lawmakers suspending talks on the spending cuts and tax increases that could send the economy back into recession until after Christmas, the market was cautious.
Rick Hutcheon, President and Chief Operating Officer at RKH Investments, said uncertainty around the U.S. fiscal cliff was weighing on the market.
"We have to get past the fiscal cliff. That's obviously a negative," he said.
World oil prices fell for a third straight session as the budget dispute threatened to hurt demand by the United States - the world's top oil consumer. Energy was the most influential negative sector, closing down 0.7 percent.
There is no set date for budget talks to resume, and the two sides have only a few days between Christmas and January 1, when $600 billion in spending cuts and tax increases start to take effect.
But Hutcheon also cautioned that markets were quiet: "There is very little volume - you can't read too much into the transactions that are occurring today."
"It's extremely quiet," said John Kinsey, Portfolio Manager at Caldwell Securities. "There's just nobody around."
Kinsey, like most political experts and economists, expects a U.S. budget deal of some sort will come after Christmas.
"They have been through this before and they usually just kick the can down the road," he added. "Something's going to get down, not probably what I would like to see, but something is always done."
The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> closed down 0.12 percent, or 14.90 points, at 12,370.80.
Canadian and U.S. equity markets closed early, shutting at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) ahead of Tuesday's Christmas holiday. Canadian markets will remain closed through Wednesday's Boxing Day holiday.
Financial stocks closed little changed, up 0.03 percent. The materials sector edged down 0.13 percent as copper slipped. The Thomson Reuters-Jefferies CRB Index <.trjcrb>, which tracks commodity prices, was down 0.35 percent.
Canada Life, a unit of insurer Great-West Lifeco Inc , is close to a deal for state-rescued insurer Irish Life, a source familiar with the talks said on Sunday. On Monday, Great-West rose 0.5 percent to C$24.30.
Chevron Corp's Canadian unit said it would buy a 50 percent stake in the Kitimat liquefied natural gas project and the proposed Pacific Trail Pipeline from EOG Resources Inc and Encana Corp . Encana fell 2.3 percent to C$19.66.
After Friday's close, SNC-Lavalin Group Inc said a client had given notice that it would terminate an engineering, procurement and construction contract. But SNC said it did not anticipate a material impact on fourth-quarter earnings. Its shares closed up 0.8 percent at C$40.21.
Outside the index, Sears Canada Inc rose 1.6 percent to C$10.83 after it said its chief financial officer would resign effective January 4. The company, majority-owned by Sears Holdings Corp is pushing for a turnaround after several quarters of precipitous declines in same-store sales.

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Yields at Egypt auction of 5-year bonds

 The maximum yield at an auction of 500 million Egyptian pounds of five-year bonds edged up to 14.37 percent on Monday from 14.25 percent two weeks earlier, the central bank said.
Bond yields climbed after a political battle that broke out over the country's new constitution last month threatened to undermine the government's efforts to prop up the economy and public finances.
"Rates are climbing due to the elevated economic and political risk," said a Cairo-based fixed income manager.
Standard & Poors' cut Egypt's long-term credit rating on Monday and said another cut was possible if the political turmoil continued.
The yield on the five-year bonds, which mature on November 13, 2017, ranged from to 13.90 percent to 14.37 percent compared to 14.00 to 14.25 percent at an auction on December 10.
The ministry of finance, which normally provides average yields, did not release a figure on Monday. The average yield on five-year bonds at a December 10 auction was 14.163 percent.
Settlement for the bonds will take place on November 13. The central bank sells the bonds on behalf of the finance ministry.

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