Online reviews of products and businesses should be taken with at least a few grains of salt, since it’s usually not clear if real customers have actually posted their honest assessments. Now, a new report shows how one company compensated customers for good reviews.

As described in a story published Thursday in The New York Times, a company named VIP Deals received rave reviews online about its Vipertek black leather case for the Kindle Fire tablet on Amazon. Out of 335 reviews, 310 gave the case five stars.

‘Totally Off-Base’

Following reports that VIP Deals was offering the case for free in exchange for writing a product review, the company issued a denial. The Times quotes a representative as saying via e-mail that such charges were “totally off-base.”

But three customers revealed a VIP Web notice that sold the $59.99 case for $10 plus shipping. When the product arrived, an included letter offered to “refund your order so you will have received the product for free,” in exchange for writing a product review for the Amazon community.

The letter did not explicitly require a five-star recommendation in order to get compensation, but it strongly hinted it wanted such a review. “We strive,” the letter said, “to earn 100 percent ‘FIVE-STAR’ scores from you!” The customer received the product for free, regardless of what the review actually said.

VIP Deals does not have a Web site, and its street address is a mailbox drop. Possibly as a result of the adverse publicity, the product is no longer being offered on Amazon. The Vipertek Stun Gun, also made by VIP Deals, has similarly been taken down — and which similarly had a plethora of five-star reviews.

Lucas Fayne

Federal Trade Commission rules require disclosure if there is a connection between an endorser and a seller. The FTC’s associate…

Ex-Apple guru Jon Rubinstein came out of retirement to run Palm. Now he’s leaving Hewlett-Packard, the company that acquired Palm for its webOS mobile operating system.

Rubinstein had high hopes for an HP-owned Palm, saying at the time of the acquisition that he was confident webOS would “reach its full potential” with HP’s backing. Perhaps it didn’t turn out the way he expected.

AllThingsD is reporting that Rubinstein left the company on Friday with no immediate plays. His exit comes after the fulfillment of a commitment to stay with the technology giant for 12 to 24 months after the acquisition.

“Jon has fulfilled his commitment and we wish him well,” HP spokeswoman Mylene Mangalindan said.

Rubinstein said, “I am going to take a well-deserved break after four-and-a-half years of developing webOS.”

Rubinstein Unhappy?

HP bought Palm for $1.2 billion in April 2010. At the time, Todd Bradley, executive vice president of the Personal Systems Group at HP, said Palm’s webOS operating system was the ideal platform to expand HP’s mobility strategy and create a unique HP experience that spanned multiple connected devices.

Rubinstein came on board as senior vice president and general manager of the Palm global business unit at HP. He soon rolled out the Palm Pre 2 and webOS 2.0, which offered true multitasking. HP then got out of the mobile handset business and tried its webOS luck with the HP TouchPad, which was a dismal failure.

In July, HP shifted its webOS strategy. HP announced plans to accelerate the global expansion of webOS and moved Rubinstein off the project. HP appointed Stephen DeWitt as senior vice president and general manager of the webOS business unit and shifted Rubinstein over to a product innovation role within the company’s Personal Systems Group.

But the ultimate deal breaker for Rubinstein may have been HP’s move earlier this…

It’s been a tough year for game giant Nintendo. Sales of its 3DS portable gaming platform were disappointing and its top-selling but flagging Wii console is now caught between the groundbreaking, motion-sensing version introduced in 2006 and the refreshed Wii U due sometime this year.

That has led to sagging figures for the Kyoto, Japan-based company, which reported its first loss this week since it began reporting numbers in 1981. For the fiscal year ending in March, Nintendo expects to be down $264 million, according to Bloomberg news. The company forecast $9.8 billion in revenue, revised downward by 16.5 percent from October projections.

Time For Something New

In mid-2011, Nintendo said it lost about $327 million in the quarter ending in June, and it cut the price of the first-of-its kind 3D-enabled handheld game, successor to the DS, from $249.99 to $169.99. This week the company lowered its projection of 3DS sales from 16 million to 14 million, and lowered its Wii projection from 12 million to 10 million for the fiscal year.

The downturn likely has much to do with soaring sales of smartphones and tablets, which can download hundreds of thousands of game offerings. But it’s also a question of content offerings by Nintendo, which has failed to keep up with rivals Sony and Microsoft in third-party game titles and hasn’t enhanced its online user experience much.

Now, the company thinks it has an answer in the Nintendo Network, which will allow users to download content, create online profiles and play with other users online, like Microsoft’s Xbox Live and Sony’s PlayStation Network. It will be available for users of the Wii and 3DS, both of which are Wi-Fi enabled.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata told investors Friday that the Nintendo Network was coming soon, but did not announce a date. It will…

Global smartphone shipments climbed 54 percent to a record 155 million units in the final three months of 2011, Strategy Analytics said Friday. What’s more, Apple reclaimed the lead from Samsung as the world’s No. 1 smartphone vendor by shipping 37 million iPhones in the quarter.

Still, Samsung Electronics nearly kept pace with Apple by shipping 36.5 million smartphones during the same period, and on an annual basis led the 2011 field with 97.4 million unit shipments and a 20 percent global market share, said Strategy Analytics Executive Director Neil Mawston.

“With global smartphone shipments nearing half a billion units in 2011, Samsung is now well positioned alongside Apple in a two-horse race at the forefront of one of the world’s largest and most valuable consumer electronics markets,” Mawston said.

Apple shipped 93 million iPhones during 2011, and other industry analysts believe the coming iPhone 5 will help Apple maintain its explosive unit growth rates this year.

“Apple and Samsung continue to run neck and neck in global smartphone shipments, setting up a tight battle for leadership that will continue throughout 2012,” said IHS iSuppli Senior Analyst Wayne Lam.

Nokia Loses Handset Share

In the global handset market overall, Samsung grew market share by more than one percentage point year-over-year to 21.3 percent, Strategy Analytics said. By contrast, Nokia’s longtime leadership declined from 30.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 25.5 percent in the final three months of last year.

“Volumes were buoyed by the sales of Nokia’s low-end dual-SIM models in emerging markets like Southeast Asia, but were a little soft overall, as initial shipments of Lumia phones could not offset declining Symbian sales,” Mawston said.

Though Nokia said fourth-quarter shipments of its new Lumia smartphones, based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, exceeded 1 million units, that milestone was dwarfed by the…

Apple is breaking records with its earnings, but it’s also getting some bad publicity in the wake of a New York Times report that painted a picture of the workers in China who assemble iPhones, iPads and other devices, often in harsh labor conditions.

Specifically, The New York Times cites employees who work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. The paper also reports workers who claim they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk, as well as advocacy group reports that Apple’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records and have little regard for worker health.

CEO Cook Speaks Out

Apple CEO Tim Cook responded to the Times reports in an e-mail to employees that was obtained by 9to5Mac.

“As a company and as individuals, we are defined by our values. Unfortunately some people are questioning Apple’s values today, and I’d like to address this with you directly,” Cook wrote.

“We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us. As you know better than anyone, accusations like these are contrary to our values. It’s not who we are.”

Cook said Apple inspects more factories every year, raising the bar for its partners and going deeper into the supply chain. He stressed that the company has made a “great deal of progress” and improved conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers. He said he was convinced that no one in industry was doing as much as Apple in this regard.

“We will continue to dig deeper, and we will undoubtedly find more issues,” Cook wrote. “What we will not do — and never…

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Coming off a great 2011, with a 25 percent jump in software revenue, SAP is ready to set the bar even higher for the year ahead. The German-based enterprise-software maker plans to focus aggressively in the database and cloud computing market for business users, competing head on with Oracle.

On Wednesday, the company held a news conference in Frankfurt to outline a plan building on its success and targeting new opportunities.

ERP for HANA

SAP said it will support an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) module for its HANA in-memory database platform by the end of this year. The new module will include programs for financials, human resources, and operations. It will be offered as part of SAP’s Business Suite product family, which is also being developed for HANA.

HANA, which uses memory to store data instead of disks, has been an instrumental part of the company’s successful 2011 year. The HANA acronym stands for High-performance ANalytic Appliance, and refers to a system of hardware from third-party vendors that is optimized to work with SAP’s advanced HANA technology. SAP reports that HANA’s high-performance capabilities enable companies to crunch data faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Going Head to Head

Traditionally, SAP has been the king of ERP, with 24 percent of the market in 2010, followed by Oracle at 18 percent. From this position of strength, SAP said that it will use ERP on HANA as a key driver in its goal to become the leading database company.

But that is, indeed, an ambitious goal. According to industry research firm Gartner, Oracle had 48 percent of the 2010 database market, while SAP had only about 2 percent.

SAP’s co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe told news media that in-memory database technology — like that used in SAP’s HANA appliance — is changing the database market, and will spearhead…

Coming off a great 2011, with a 25 percent jump in software revenue, SAP is ready to set the bar even higher for the year ahead. The German-based enterprise-software maker plans to focus aggressively in the database and cloud computing market for business users, competing head on with Oracle.

On Wednesday, the company held a news conference in Frankfurt to outline a plan building on its success and targeting new opportunities.

ERP for HANA

SAP said it will support an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) module for its HANA in-memory database platform by the end of this year. The new module will include programs for financials, human resources, and operations. It will be offered as part of SAP’s Business Suite product family, which is also being developed for HANA.

HANA, which uses memory to store data instead of disks, has been an instrumental part of the company’s successful 2011 year. The HANA acronym stands for High-performance ANalytic Appliance, and refers to a system of hardware from third-party vendors that is optimized to work with SAP’s advanced HANA technology. SAP reports that HANA’s high-performance capabilities enable companies to crunch data faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Traditionally, SAP has been the king of ERP, with 24 percent of the market in 2010, followed by Oracle at 18 percent. From this position of strength, SAP said that it will use ERP on HANA as a key driver in its goal to become the leading database company.

But that is, indeed, an ambitious goal. According to industry research firm Gartner, Oracle had 48 percent of the 2010 database market, while SAP had only about 2 percent.

SAP’s co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe told news media that in-memory database technology — like that used in SAP’s HANA appliance — is changing the database market, and will spearhead SAP’s effort to…

On one hand, Google’s new unified privacy policy will make it easier for users to know where they stand: They only have to read the small print once.

On the other hand, critics say, it’s the latest in an effort to catch members of the public off-guard and opt them unwittingly into sharing details of their lives.

The new terms, which cover 60 services with one document and take effect March 1, make clear just how integrated that Google’s many services, from search to Maps to social networking via Google+ and photo sharing via Picasa, are, and how behavior on one affects the other.

Share and Share Alike

As the Mountain View, Calif., search giant works to spread adoption of its Facebook-rival Google+, it has begun adding updates to users’ search results, to the consternation of critics who say the posters didn’t intend for their updates to be shared outside the network, even with people they are connected to.

Google will launch an e-mail campaign to inform users about the changes and has already launched an ad campaign to educate the public about online privacy.

But authorities in Europe expressed wariness over the changes, and James Steyer, CEO of San Francisco-based Common Sense Media, said the announcement “is pretty frustrating and potentially frightening from a kids and family and teenager standpoint and an overall consumer privacy standpoint,” according to The Washington Post. The paper also said the Federal Trade Commission, which has been locking horns with Google and Facebook over privacy concerns, would also look at Google+, according to its sources.

‘Make Services Even Better’

The stakes are high as not only Google and Facebook, but other major players in modern technology vie to be the primary portals to the Internet both at home and on-the-go. At the end of the rainbow is a multibillion-dollar advertising…

In the battle between AT&T and Verizon, AT&T has topped its rival, albeit in an undesirable area. After Verizon posted a $2 billion fourth-quarter loss earlier this week, AT&T has followed up with a whopping $6.68 billion fourth-quarter loss.

But AT&T expected the bad news after the failed T-Mobile acquisition. AT&T had to shell out $3 billion in cash-based kill fees and $1 billion worth of spectrum, as well as roaming fees, to the smaller carrier after the deal fell through. AT&T also took a hit on employee pension benefits. AT&T’s monumental fourth-quarter loss compares with a $1.1 billion profit in the year ago period.

“We knew these penalties were going to hit AT&T pretty hard. It’s money that they can’t use to build out their infrastructure, and they are undergoing one of the largest infrastructure change-outs in the company’s history,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group. “This will slow them down a bit because it will cut the resources they’ve got to improve services. Other than that, it is a one-time charge.”

CEO Cites Momentum

That said, AT&T is hardly faltering. The telecommunications giant saw fourth-quarter revenues rise 3.6 percent to $32.5 billion, beating analyst expectations. AT&T posted record sales, strong wireless network performance and improved wireline revenue trends. Enderle said AT&T’s financials don’t show any major competitive threat that’s doing damage – -the firm is fiscally strong.

Much like Verizon, AT&T posted its best-ever smartphone sales quarter. AT&T smartphone sales were up 60 percent over the year-ago period. In fact, AT&T set a record with 9.4 million smartphones sold in the fourth quarter. That’s nearly
double the number sold in the third quarter and 50 percent more than the previous quarterly record.

“We had a tremendous year in terms of execution, and we have excellent momentum across our growth platforms,” said…