Week Ahead: Apple Earnings, Housing Data

Earnings reports will browbeat subsequent week’s mercantile calendar, not slightest Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) quarterly formula that could establish a instruction of that company’s stock.
All U.S. bonds markets are sealed on Monday for a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
Apple will news on Wednesday and investors will be looking for another record-breaking quarter. So will analysts, a infancy of whom trust a Cupertino, Calif.-based tech and consumer gadgets association had a best entertain ever.
Apple’s batch has been slipping in new weeks, descending good subsequent a all-time high of $705 available in September. The batch sealed down $2.68 on Friday during $500.
Analysts contend a association will need another blowout entertain to get that ceiling movement operative again.
A sum of eleven components of a Dow Jones Industrial normal will be reporting.
Among a bellwether companies scheduled to news subsequent week embody Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Travelers (NYSE: TRV), Johnson Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) and Verizon Communication (NYSE: VZ) on Tuesday;  McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) and Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) on Wednesday; ATT (NYSE: T), Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY)  and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) on Thursday.
Also due subsequent week is housing data, including a news on Tuesday associated to existent homes sales for December. Sales of previously-owned homes rose in Nov to a top turn in 3 years.
And on Friday monthly new home sales for Dec is due. New home sales were also adult in November, a top in dual years.

Moving a Small Business Community Forward

Just like President Barack Obama campaigned on relocating a republic forward, America’s tiny business village stands prepared for a strong devise that moves them forward. We see signs of this already: It has been a good week for America’s smallest businesses as Washington stepped adult and will yield a new IRS filing choice for a home bureau taxation deduction. Beginning with a 2013 taxation season, those who have a home bureau will be liberated from stuffing out a severe IRS home bureau taxation reduction that even a IRS suggests will take 44 hours to complete. As my colleague, Keith Hall, recently blogged, “Sometimes, only sometimes, Washington gets something right!”
The new 113th Congress immediately faced hurdles ducked by a predecessor, including many big-ticket mercantile equipment from appropriation a sovereign supervision to lifting a debt extent to sequestration. And notwithstanding an eleventh hour understanding on avoiding a mercantile precipice late final year, Americans will still see their taxes go adult with a death of a payroll taxation holiday and new health caring remodel law taxes. It’s not startling that many tiny business households continue to be changeable about their futures since of both a gridlock in Washington and a solemnly rebuilding economy.
As a republic prepares for a presidential inauguration, a bulletin of a smallest businesses — a self-employed and micro-businesses — contingency sojourn a high priority. As a mercantile engine of a country, tiny businesses yield a fuel that keeps a economy running. In further to a new IRS filing option, there are a series of pivotal policies Congress and a boss could immediately take movement on that would assistance a self-employed and micro-businesses. For instance, return a self-employment taxation reduction on health insurance, enhance Health Reimbursement Arrangements to concede self-employed business owners to accept a same advantage as employees, and titillate states to exercise Self-Employment Assistance programs as partial of their pursuit training and work mandate for stagnation benefits.

Moving brazen means policies like these that concede for new business expansion and assistance stream business owners keep their doors open and expand. The bottom line: They have combined a pursuit for themselves and as a result, are contributing to a economy by taxation revenue, pursuit origination and innovation. It’s simply not adequate to use them as props in a speech; they need to be upheld with genuine policies that assistance them pierce forward.
President Obama will take a promise of bureau during a time when many Americans have tiny or no faith in a ability of a lawmakers to put their differences aside and come together for a good of a country. This is positively no opposite for a nations’ self-employed who all too mostly see their issues left on a slicing room floor. Our country’s entrepreneurs simply can’t means 4 some-more years of bipartisan contention and inaction.
As we postponement to applaud a democracy, a members and millions of tiny businesses opposite America — like many Americans — anxiously wait a future. Their summary to President Obama and Congress is clear: Mr. President and Members of Congress, now is a time for problem-solving, not domestic posturing. Now is a time for we to make a tough decisions as we do each day to grow a business, support a families and minister to a communities. Now is a time for we to do a pursuit we inaugurated we to do — to reconstruct a economy and strengthen a nation. Then, we will pierce brazen together as a nation.

Intel CEO: The PC is shape-shifting into a tablet

In a arise of stating diseased increase today, Intel CEO Paul Otellini couldn’t repeat adequate that “radical” new PC designs will subsume a inscription experience.
Here are some of Otellini’s comments that advise that Intel and a PC partners are aggressively going after the
tablet marketplace with newfangled
Windows 8 devices. Most of these comments came in response to analysts’ questions.
Radical transformation:

We are in a midst of a radical mutation of a computing knowledge with a blurring of form factors and adoption of new user interfaces. It’s no longer required to select between a PC and a tablet. Convertibles and detachables total with Windows 8 and hold yield a 2-for-1, no-compromise computing experience.”

‘Haswell’ afterwards ‘Broadwell’ expostulate radical new designs:

In a initial entertain we launch Haswell. The singular largest generation-to-generation battery life alleviation in Intel history…We have a line of steer into what a business are conceptualizing around Haswell, that is this year’s innovative Core [processor] product, and Broadwell, that is subsequent year’s. I’ve seen a prototypes of a industrial designs. They’re unequivocally sparkling products. Our business have not had this turn of opening in this kind of form cause before. 10-plus-inch [screen size] forms of product are going to be some-more classical PC turn of performance, enabled by these convertible, detachable form factors that will usually get thinner when Haswell and Broadwell come on.

Competition from ARM:

We’ve looked during a [new] A15 [ARM chip]. We know a possess silicon in terms of Bay Trail and Clover Trail+ and we’re really gentle we can say a opening lead here. These inclination are simply apropos really tiny computers, and that’s what Intel is well-developed at.

Note: Clover Trail+ is Intel’s ascent of a Clover Trail Atom chip used in now shipping tablets. That comes after in a initial half. Bay Trail is a finish redesign of a Atom processor, slated for late this year.
Foundry business: Would not capacitate a competitor:

We are really meddlesome in being a comparison foundry manufacturer for certain customers. We don’t see ourselves as a general-purpose foundry or competing with general-purpose foundries. We would not take business that enables a competitor. We have a crawl-walk-run strategy. We’re still in a yield stage.

Note: A chip foundry is a agreement manufacturer of chips for other companies. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) now is deliberate a largest general-purpose foundry. There was a gossip now that Cisco was now an Intel foundry customer. Otellini did not criticism on a rumor.

Bucket from Osprey smashes by roof of business nearby Marine base

Marine officials are questioning an occurrence in that a five-gallon bucket fell from an Osprey aircraft and crushed by a roof of a business nearby a Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego.
The bucket apparently fell Wednesday night when a business, a automobile restoration firm, was closed. The hole in a roof was detected Thursday. No one was injured.
Marine officials on Thursday went to a business to consult a repairs and start last restitution. Hazardous-materials specialists from a San Diego Fire-Rescue Dept. examined a repairs and dynamic a glass was not dangerous.

Terry Lee, Utah Business Owner, Says Obamacare Forced Firings; Obama …

A business owners in Utah has turn a latest employer to censure President Obama’s health caring remodel check for layoffs and has doubled down on his open contempt for a stream administration by revelation he singled out Obama supporters.
Terry Lee, owners of Cedar City-based Terry Lee Forensics, told a Salt Lake Tribune that he was so tender by a Vernal, Utah, smoothie bar’s process of seeking magnanimous congregation to compensate more, that he, too, took movement to replenish waste he pronounced were incurred by Obamacare.
George Burnett, owners of we Love Drilling Smoothie Juice Bar, pronounced recently he is seeking magnanimous business to compensate an additional dollar for their beverages.
Lee posted a commiserating criticism on The Tribune’s smoothie bar story this week:

Love it. We had to let dual employees go to cover new Obongocare [sic] costs and increasing taxes. Found dual Obongo supporters and gave them a news yesterday. They wanted a simpleton in a Whitehouse [sic], they reap a benefits.

When contacted by a paper, Lee pronounced it was ideally within his rights as owners to take an employee’s domestic leanings into comment during employing and banishment deliberations. The Tribune reliable that this was in fact a case.
AOL Jobs records that many employees in a United States can be dismissed for any reason, incompatible matters regarding to a employee’s race, color, religion, sex or inhabitant origin. California, New York, Connecticut, Colorado and Mississippi are a usually states that have additional laws prohibiting firings formed on domestic affiliation.
In November, a CEO in Las Vegas, Nev., done inhabitant headlines when he dismissed 22 of his 114 employees as a approach outcome of Obama’s reelection. The pierce — technically authorised — was a pointer that “elections have consequences,” a CEO said.
Meanwhile, Burnett’s smoothie markup calls to mind comments done by Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter, who claimed Obamacare would cost a association some-more per pizza and competence even lead to firings.

Fresh twist to the DNA story signals major cancer breakthrough

But now researchers have found that human DNA can naturally wrap itself into a different shape – a quadruple helix – in a breakthrough that could point the way to new cancer treatments.
The new structure, which is composed of four strands wrapped around each other, was confirmed by scientists from Cambridge University – the place where Crick and Watson made their famous discovery.
The quadruple DNA helix appears to be more common in cells that are rapidly dividing, indicating that it could be important in determining whether or not a cell becomes cancerous.
Professor Shankar Balasubramanian, who led the study published in the journal Nature Genetics, said: “It is quite a distinct structure to the double helix. It’s a beautiful four-stranded helix that we know little about, but we are convinced it exists naturally.
“The quadruple helix DNA structure may well be the key to new ways of selectively inhibiting the proliferation of cancer cells. The confirmation of its existence in human cells is a real landmark.
“We are seeing links between trapping the quadruplexes with molecules and the ability to stop cells dividing, which is hugely exciting. The research indicates that quadruplexes are more likely to occur in genes of cells that are rapidly dividing, such as cancer cells.”
The DNA double helix was one of the greatest discoveries in science because it laid the foundations for understanding how genetic information is passed from one generation to the next, and how this information controls the biochemistry of the body.
Although scientists had known that DNA could form other unusual structures in the laboratory under artificial conditions, this is the first time that scientists have been able to show that it also forms a quadruple helix within living human cells.
Dr Julie Sharp, the senior science information officer at Cancer Research UK, which helped fund the work, said: “It’s been 60 years since its structure was solved but work like this shows us that the story of DNA continues to twist and turn

This research further highlights the potential for exploiting these unusual DNA structures to beat cancer. The next part of the pipeline is to figure out how to target them in tumour cells.”
The huge DNA molecule contains all the genetic information necessary to make a human being, encoded in the sequence of four chemical units or “bases”, abbreviated as C, G, A and T, that make up the primary molecular structure of the chromosomes.
Professor Balasubramanian and his colleagues discovered that when there is a high proportion of the guanine base, the G unit, the double helix breaks down into the quadruple form, which forms a tight knot within the DNA molecule.
When the scientists used small drug-like molecules to trap these quadruplex structures, they discovered that they could interfere with the process of cell division, suggesting that the quad helix is somehow involved in the replication of cells – and hence the uncontrolled replication seen in cancers.
“We have found that by trapping the quadruplex DNA with synthetic molecules we can sequester and stabilise them, providing important insights into how we might grind cell division to a halt,” Professor Balasubramanian said. “There is a lot we don’t know yet. One thought is that these quadruplex structures might be a bit of a nuisance during DNA replication, like knots or tangles that form… The possibility that particular cells harbouring genes with these motifs can now be targeted, and appear to be more vulnerable to interference than normal cells, is a thrilling prospect.”
Shankar Balasubramanian was born in Madras (now Chennai), India, in 1966 and came to Britain with his parents a year later. He grew up just outside Runcorn in Cheshire where he attended local schools.
He graduated from Cambridge University in 1988 and stayed on to do his PhD. He is now the Herchel Smith Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and also works at the Cambridge Research Institute – a collaboration between the university and the charity Cancer Research UK. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society last year.

Apple results could show high-flying profits have succumbed to gravity

Apple prefers surprises. Speculation – often informed – is always rife before the company makes its latest announcements, but the computer giant itself never comments. On Wednesday, Apple boss Tim Cook may have another surprise in store, although it has been predicted by many – the tech firm’s first decline in profits for nine years.
Things have been difficult for Apple recently. Its shares have lost 20% in the last three months and they closed on Friday at $500, down from an all-time high of $705.07 when the iPhone 5 launched last September.
Shares in Apple have been largely on the slide since that launch, marred by an unpopular decision to drop Google Maps for the company’s own own botched version that left navigators three times more likely to get lost, according to one survey. Executive heads rolled.
There was speculation last week that the company had cut back on suppliers – suggesting that iPhone sales had slipped. Apple changes suppliers often and may, according to other rumours, be planning to use new glass technology on its devices. With no comment from the company, Apple’s shares slid again.
And yet, for all these issues, Apple is widely expected to have sold close to 50m iPhones last quarter – another record – and fans can’t get enough of its iPad and iPad Mini. The company remains the most valuable on the planet.
This is a tale of two Apples. One, fans argue, is set to continue to redefine business in the way companies like General Motors and IBM did in their heyday. The other, for critics, is an over-hyped phone manufacturer which is about to be caught up by reality.
Walter Piecyk, analyst at BTIG, is firmly in the latter camp. He downgraded Apple’s stock to neutral from buy last April – a move that looks like smart timing now. Piecyk predicts Apple will have another record setting quarter in sales for the company and close to an 80% increase in iPhone sales from the September period, when sales were hit by customers held off in anticipation of the new phone.
But it’s not this quarter’s sales that worry him. What worries Piecyk is Apple’s “compressed product cycle”. The company could once rely on growing sales for its hit products even after their hype-fueled launches. The Apple fever is still there – huge lines formed at Apple stores around the world for the iPhone 5 and the iPad Mini. But there are now worrying signs that Apple has lost the ability to build on the momentum of those launches.

Apple launched its iPhone 3Gs in June 2009. In the June quarter it sold 5.2m iPhones, in the September quarter it sold 7.4m, in December 8.7m and another 8.7m in the quarter after that. The pattern repeated itself with the iPhone 4, launched in June 2010. In the September quarter Apple sold 14m iPhones, in December they sold 16.2m and in March 18.6m.
Apple is selling far more iPhones these days in more markets but sales are falling after launch. When the iPhone 4S was launched in late 2011, sales hit 37m in the December quarter – up nearly 120% from the preceding period. Sales then dropped over the next two quarters.
“It is selling in more markets than before and sales fall off more quickly than before,” Piecyk said, adding: “Frankly they have no choice.”
For a while Apple had the smartphone and the tablet locked up. Now Samsung, HTC and others have products that generate as much buzz. “They can’t wait now. If you wait you are selling an old phone,” Piecyk said.
Early sales tend to be less profitable for the company as returns are higher due to teething issues. But Apple can no longer rely on mounting sales to set off those costs. The speed of launches and level of competition is only increasing and for Piecyk, Apple is the likely loser.
Horace Dediu, an Asymco analyst, has roughly the same numbers as BTIG but he couldn’t disagree more. There are technical reasons that the quarter may underwhelm – this quarter is a week shorter than last year’s comparable quarter and the company had two launches to contend with – but fundamentally, he says, Apple remains a stellar performer with room to grow.
“The global appetite for devices is measure in billions of units,” he said. “The numbers of units Apple is shipping remain relatively small.”
He expects that Apple will launch a new series of iPhones aimed a more cost-conscious buyers. It’s a model Apple has pursued before, with the iPod, and one that it looks to be following with the iPad. “Samsung has 37 smartphones,” he said. A new family of cut-price Apple phones could bring a Apple a massive new market.
Apple’s problem, he believes, is one of perception. “What Apple does – make hit, blockbuster products – is seen as unrepeatable,” he said. “The iMac is not repeatable, the iPod is not repeatable, the iPhone, the iPad. See the pattern?” He predicts that Apple will come up with other “unrepeatable” products. TV is the most often touted target.
The company has not launched an entirely new product since the death of its founder, Steve Jobs. For a company whose share price has been driven by anticipation of a new blockbuster, that is an issue. Cook is in need of some new surprises, ones that prove Apple hasn’t lost its spark.

Instagram boasts 90 million active users

So much for scaring off users over its controversial terms of service.
For the first time, photo-sharing site Instagram shared statistics on its user base, boasting 90 million monthly active users who upload 40 million photos per day.
"Instagram continues to see very strong growth around the world," says co-founder Kevin Systrom in a statement. "With many of the product and internationalization improvements we've made, we've been excited to see these efforts resonate with users globally."
Among some of the other statistics revealed by Instagram: photos receive 8,500 likes and 1,000 comments per second.
The statistical breakdown follows speculation into whether the photo sharing service was losing users in the wake of concerns over its updated terms of service.
Last month, Instagram introduced new terms with language suggesting user photos could end up in ads on the site. "To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you," read the original update.
The company has since backtracked, sticking with terms the site has used since launching in October 2010. They take effect on January 19.

How businesses can use Facebook's Graph Search

With Facebook's introduction of Graph Search on Tuesday, businesses are naturally curious to find out how they can take advantage of the tool, even though it's currently only in limited preview for English audiences. Facebook has naturally made it a point to explain what businesses should be doing.
Facebook says Graph Search will make it easier for people to discover your Page and learn more about your business. Whether that will indeed be the case remains to be seen, but if you want to stay ahead of the game then you should take the new feature seriously.
Aside from doing the usual maintenance to ensure your Page is complete and up-to-date, Facebook recommends the following:
--The name, category, vanity URL, and information you share in the "About" section all help people find your business and should be shared on Facebook.
--If you have a location or a local place Page, update your address to make sure you can appear as a result when someone is searching for a specific location.
--Focus on attracting the right fans to your Page and on giving your fans a reason to interact with your content on an ongoing basis.
The first two points are pretty straightforward: the more information, and the more accurate information you put on Facebook, the more likely your Page will show up in a search. The third one shows that Facebook will be taking growth into account when surfacing Pages, not just current popularity.
Facebook gives a few examples of queries it expects its members to use with Graph Search: "sushi restaurants that my friends have been to in Los Angeles," "hotels near the Eiffel Tower," or "TV shows my friends like." The second one is your typical Google search, but the first and third are clearly meant for Facebook, and that's an important thing to remember here.

Why Nokia's 3-D printing move braces future

Nokia has just done something pretty unusual: it's invited its users to effectively tailor an element of its smartphone hardware to their individual needs.
As a Friday present for its more enterprising fans, the Finnish firm announced the release of what it calls a '3D-printing Development Kit', or 3DK, for the back shell of its Lumia 820 handset. Here's how Nokia community and developer marketing manager John Kneeland described it:
"Our Lumia 820 has a removable shell that users can replace with Nokia-made shells in different colors, special ruggedized shells with extra shock and dust protection, and shells that add wireless charging capabilities found in the high-end Lumia 920 to the mid-range 820.
"Those are fantastic cases, and a great option for the vast majority of Nokia's Lumia 820 customers. But in addition to that, we are going to release 3D templates, case specs, recommended materials and best practices — everything someone versed in 3D printing needs to print their own custom Lumia 820 case."
This makes Nokia unique among major handset manufacturers, at least so far. Yes, there are many 3D-printing schematics out there for iPhone cases, for example, that use Apple's official specifications. However, they are not part of the iPhone.
Embracing inevitability
What Nokia has done here is to invite a certain type of user to build a component of its product. In doing so, the company is hewing to its historical course of openness – you know, the one it was so keen on before the Microsoft partnership, when it tried to accelerate development of the Symbian platform by open-sourcing it. That was all about software, and Nokia messed up by not being timely in its code releases.
This is about hardware, and Nokia can rightly claim to be in the vanguard here. Bear in mind that Lumia smartphones run the closed Windows Phone platform — by partnering with Microsoft rather than Google, Nokia sacrificed openness on the software side. By releasing the 3DK (a neat term, by the way), the company is reintroducing that customizability in its hardware and potentially stimulating a whole new ecosystem that may actually feed back to its own internal development efforts.
Nokia is effectively outsourcing rapid prototyping to its customers. As Kneeland puts it: "You want a waterproof, glow-in-the-dark phone with a bottle-opener and a solar charger? Someone can build it for you — or you can print it yourself."
But there's another aspect to this that Kneeland doesn't mention. If you view the mass adoption of 3D printing as an inevitability – whether it be through people all owning their own 3D printers or, more likely, paying by usage at a local 3D-printing store – then it follows that many more people will start ripping out and replacing static components of various devices, such as smartphones.
If that happens, then many less skilled practitioners of the art will start messing up said devices with parts that just don't fit as well as they should. Nokia's 3DK release should reduce that risk for customizers of Lumia 820 phone shells, making it more likely that they will remain satisfied with the overall product experience. It's like releasing a solid SDK, only for hardware, and it's a smart move on many levels.

National Rifle Association launches shooting game for mobiles

The US National Rifle Association has launched a target range game for the iPhone and iPad, a month after the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy.

The game, which simulates a shooting practice, has been approved for children as young as four.
US Vice-President Joe Biden is expected to make recommendations on gun control to the White House on Tuesday.
President Barack Obama has announced he will lay out his plans for tackling gun violence later this week.
There have been calls for gun law reform after 26 children and teachers died at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
NRA: Practice Range, billed as the NRA's "new mobile nerve center," says it "strikes the right balance of gaming and education" and delivers a "one-touch access to the NRA network of news, laws, facts, knowledge, safety tips, educational materials and online resources".
The player can practise shooting at targets, including some in the shape of coffins, and has a choice of nine firearms. Some of the guns can be upgraded for $0.99 (£0.62) each. The game is available in the UK.
The NRA was unable to be reached for comment.
The tragedy reignited debate over gun control in the United States, and Mr Obama asked Mr Biden to head a government task force to look at ways to reduce gun violence.
'Scapegoating' Last week Mr Biden met with video game makers to discuss gun violence in popular media.
The video game industry has defended the use of gun violence in its games, saying that any attempt to regulate digital media was futile.
In open letter to Mr Biden, the Entertainment Consumers Association's vice-president Jennifer Mercurio wrote: "With the recent tragedy on everyone's minds, some people are looking for a cause and culprit other than the shooter.
"Unfortunately some are blaming media, including video games, for violent behaviour in individuals. We know this isn't the case; banning or regulating media content even more won't solve the issue."
International Game Developers Association chairman Daniel Greenberg also said the government should not be "scapegoating" the video game industry for society's ills.
"The US government did irreparable damage to the comic book industry in the 1950s by using faulty research to falsely blame juvenile delinquency and illiteracy on comic books. The comic book industry never recovered in sales to this day," he added.
"Censoring violent comic books did not reduce juvenile delinquency or increase literacy, it decimated the production of one of the few kinds of literature that at-risk youths read for pleasure. Censoring video games could have similar unintended consequences that we cannot currently foresee."

Java still contains security flaws, experts claim

Oracle issued an emergency update to its widely-used Java web software on Sunday, but experts say it still contains security flaws.

Last week the US government advised users to disable it because of a bug that leaves computers vulnerable to being hacked.
Security specialists claim the fix has not done enough to make PCs secure.
Oracle says that more than one billion people use Java, and some games like Minecraft are built around it.
The bugs can make a computer open to infection by viruses. Last year net security specialist Kaspersky said that 50% of hacks carried out by seeking out software bugs were done via Java.
"We don't dare to tell users that it's safe to enable Java again," Adam Gowdiak, a researcher with Poland's Security Explorations told Reuters.
In a blog about the "unscheduled" update, Oracle says it has changed Java's default security settings to "high" which it says means users will be notified of any extra applications which start running while they are browsing.
Oracle says the vulnerability applies to the latest version of the software, Java 7. It has declined to comment.

China mobile users warned about large botnet threat

Two Czech game developers arrested on suspicion of spying while on holiday in Greece have been released on bail.

Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar, who work for games firm Bohemia Interactive, were arrested in September 2012 on the island of Lemnos.
They were accused of flouting locals laws that prohibit people from taking pictures of military bases and installations.
The pair denied the charges and said they were visiting as tourists.
The decision to release them came as a direct result of diplomatic work by both the Greek and Czech governments, said a report on a webpage set up to co-ordinate the campaign to get the men released.
Czech newspapers said the pair would be able to return home on payment of bail of 5,000 euros (£4,160).
The two men got into trouble while on Lemnos for shooting video and taking pictures of a military airbase and were accused of spying by Greek authorities. If found guilty, Mr Buchta and Mr Pezlar faced spending up to 20 years in jail.
The two men are thought to have been arrested because their employer, Bohemia, has got into trouble with Greek authorities for taking pictures and shooting video for use in its games.
Bohemia is famous for producing games, such as Arma 3, which use very detailed and realistic virtual worlds. The disputed images and video shot in Greece were going to be used to help build one of its game worlds.
Despite this, Mr Buchta and Mr Pezlar said they were on Lemnos as tourists when they were arrested. They said they wanted to visit the island after getting to know it on earlier visits as part of the Bohemia data-gathering team.
The release of the two men does not mark the end of the case. They will have to return to Greece later in 2013 when it comes to court. It is not known when that will happen because many Greek court cases are being delayed because judges in the country have been on strike.

UK troops to assist Mali operation to halt rebel advance

The UK has agreed to help transport foreign troops and equipment to Mali amid French efforts to contain rebels.

France has attacked militants in Mali to support the Malian government, and has attempted to rescue a French hostage in Somalia, in recent days.
The UK is to provide two transport planes but No 10 stressed no UK troops would be deployed in a combat role.
Minister for Africa Mark Simmonds has indicated British personnel could play a role in training the Malian army.
He said the UK was only providing "very limited strategic tactical support" in the form of two C-17 transport planes, in response to a French request.
"There are no plans to extend the UK's military at the moment but there are discussions that are taking place that we're waiting for scrutiny from Parliament to, through the European Union, provide training support for the African Union and Ecowas [Economic Community Of West African States] to enable them to give the training they require to push the Islamists out of the northern part of Mali," Mr Simmonds told the BBC News Channel.
'International security' The move to transport foreign troops and equipment was agreed in a phone call between Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande, Downing Street said.
"The prime minister spoke to President Hollande this evening to discuss the deteriorating situation... and how the UK can support French military assistance provided to the Malian government to contain rebel and extremist groups in the north of the country," a spokeswoman said.
"The prime minister has agreed that the UK will provide logistical military assistance to help transport foreign troops and equipment quickly...
"We will not be deploying any British personnel in a combat role. They also agreed that the peacekeeping mission from West African countries needs to be strongly supported by countries in the region and deployed as quickly as possible.
"Both leaders agreed that the situation in Mali poses a real threat to international security given terrorist activity there."
The government's National Security Council (NSC) will discuss the situation when it meets on Tuesday.
Hostage attempt Meanwhile, President Hollande has ordered security is stepped up around French public buildings and transport following the operations in Mali and Somalia.
French troops were deployed in Mali on Friday after its army lost control of a strategically-important town to Islamists who were advancing south. The rebels took control of a huge swathe of northern Mali last April.
The central town of Konna has since been recaptured, the Malian government says.
Then, French commandos went into action in Somalia, swooping on the town of Bulo Marer in an attempt to free Denis Allex, who was kidnapped in July 2009.