iOS apps see Christmas sales spike shrink in 2012

Distimo just released its statistics on Christmas Day app downloads and revenue growth… and the download spike is far smaller than it was last year. Back in 2011, Christmas Day iOS app download volume spiked 230% above the December average. This year, the increase was just 87% — far below industry expectations. The revenue spike came in at 70%.

[More from BGR: Google names 12 best Android apps of 2012]

Interestingly, iPad downloads increased by 140% this Christmas, implying that the iPhone download bounce was really modest.

[More from BGR: New purported BlackBerry Z10 specs emerge: 1.5GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 8MP camera]

A few weeks ago, AppAnnie released statistics showing that iOS app revenue growth had stalled over the summer of 2012, whereas Android app revenue growth was relatively strong at 48% over a five month period. Both Distimo and Appannie are respected companies and their analytics are closely followed by app industry professionals. Could it be that the pace of iPhone app revenue growth has slowed down sharply from 2011 levels, even if Distimo and AppAnnie numbers aren’t entirely accurate?

This article was originally published by BGR

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: iOS apps see Christmas sales spike shrink in 2012
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Net loss: Brooklyn fires coach Avery Johnson

NEW YORK (AP) — Coach of the month in November, out of a job by New Year's.

The Brooklyn Nets have elevated expectations this season, and a .500 record wasn't good enough. Coach Avery Johnson was fired Thursday, his team having lost 10 of 13 games after a strong start to its first season in Brooklyn.

"We don't have the same fire now than we did when we were 11-4," general manager Billy King said at a news conference in East Rutherford, N.J. "I tried to talk to Avery about it and we just can't figure it out. The same pattern kept on happening."

Assistant P.J. Carlesimo will coach the Nets on an interim basis, starting Friday night with a home game against Charlotte. King said the Nets might reach out to other candidates, but for now the job was Carlesimo's. The GM wouldn't comment on a report that the team planned to get in touch with former Lakers coach Phil Jackson.

King said the decision to dismiss Johnson was made by ownership after a phone discussion Thursday morning. Owner Mikhail Prokhorov had expressed faith in Johnson before the season.

"With the direction we were going we felt we had to make a change," King said.

Johnson was in the final year of a three-year, $12 million contract.

"It's a really disappointing day for me and my family. It's my wife's birthday. It's not a great birthday gift," Johnson said. "I didn't see this coming. But this is ownership's decision. It's part of the business. Fair or unfair, it's time for a new voice and hopefully they'll get back on track."

The Nets have fallen well behind the first-place New York Knicks, the team they so badly want to compete with in their new home. But after beating the Knicks in their first meeting Nov. 26, probably the high point of Johnson's tenure, the Nets went 5-10 and frustrations have been mounting.

"Our goal is to get to the conference finals," King said. "We started out good and then we stumbled. We have to get back to playing winning basketball. It's the entire team. It's not like golf, where Tiger Woods can blame the caddie. It takes five guys on the court and they're all struggling. We have to figure out the ways to get back to winning. I don't know what happened. I'm not sure. But unfortunately, it did happen."

The Nets were embarrassed by Boston on national TV on Christmas, then were routed by Milwaukee 108-93 on Wednesday night for their fifth loss in six games.

Star guard Deron Williams recently complained about Johnson's offense, and Nets CEO Brett Yormark took to Twitter after the loss to Celtics to voice his displeasure with the performance.

King said the change was not made because Williams was unhappy, and he added the point guard himself has to play better.

Johnson also stood by Williams.

"From Day One, I always had a really good relationship with him. I don't think it's fair for anyone to hang this on Deron," Johnson said. "We were just going through a bad streak, a bad spell. It's not time for me to be down on one player. That would be the easy way."

Brooklyn started the season 11-4, winning five in a row to end November, when Johnson was Eastern Conference coach of the month. But he couldn't do anything to stop this slump, one the Nets never anticipated after a $350 million summer spending spree they believed would take them toward the top of their conference.

Johnson has been the Nets' coach for a little more than two seasons. He went 60-116 with the Nets, who moved from New Jersey to Brooklyn to start the season. Johnson coached the Dallas Mavericks to a spot in the NBA Finals in 2006.

"You don't always get a fair shake as a coach," Johnson said. "I'm not the owner. If I were the owner, I wouldn't have fired myself today. But life is not always necessary fair. It's a business and in this business, the coach always gets blamed."

This is the NBA's second coaching change this season following the dismissal of Mike Brown by the Los Angeles Lakers.

Johnson arrived in New Jersey with a 194-70 record, a .735 winning percentage that was the highest in NBA history, but had little chance of success in his first two seasons while the Nets focused all their planning on the move to Brooklyn.

They looked to make a splash this summer when they re-signed Williams and fellow starters Gerald Wallace, Brook Lopez and Kris Humphries, traded for Atlanta All-Star Joe Johnson, and added veteran depth with players such as Reggie Evans, C.J. Watson and Andray Blatche.

Johnson didn't have a contract beyond this season but seemed to have the confidence of Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire who before the season said he had faith in "the Avery defense system."

Some thought the Nets would finish as high as second in the East behind defending champion Miami, and the predictions seemed warranted when the Nets started quickly amid much fanfare. But all the good publicity faded in recent weeks once the losing started.

Williams, who has struggled this season, stirred the waters when he expressed his preference for the offense he ran under Jerry Sloan in Utah before a loss to the Jazz. Williams and Johnson, nicknamed "Brooklyn's Backcourt" and expected to be one of the best in the NBA, have shot poorly and rarely meshed.

The Nets were embarrassed near the end of their 93-76 loss to Boston, when fans exited early amid a chant of "Let's go Celtics!"

"Nets fans deserved better," Yormark tweeted after the game. "The entire organization needs to work harder to find a solution. We will get there."

Not under Johnson, though.

The Nets should be able to entice a big-name coach with Prokhorov's billions and the chance to play in a major market at Barclays Center, the $1 billion arena that has drawn praise in the city and from visiting teams.

Carlesimo has previous NBA head coaching experience in Portland, Golden State and Seattle/Oklahoma City. He has a career coaching record of 204-296 in the regular season and 3-9 in the playoffs.

"Right now, P.J. is our coach and I told him to coach the team like he'll be here for the next 10 years," King said.

___

AP Sports Writer Tom Canavan in East Rutherford and AP freelancer Jim Hague contributed to this report.

Read More..

Well: Too Young to Have a Heart Attack

The foreshadowing escaped me: The night before we left for our summer vacation in Michigan, I accidentally stepped on my Kindle — which, like my heart, I cannot live without — and broke it. Reduced to reading novels on my iPhone, I made the best of it several days later, sitting in a sunroom overlooking Eight Point Lake, where my family gathers each year with friends.

The day before, proving to my teenage sons that 48 isn’t too old for fun, I had hung on for dear life as I zoomed behind a speedboat on a ski tube. The next day, I was enjoying a few moments of solitude in those blissful minutes before the sun goes down, finger-swiping to turn the page of my novel on my phone’s tiny screen, when my left arm started hurting.

You know that childhood feeling when your mother is mad at you, grabs your arm and squeezes it as she drags you away from whatever grief you’ve been causing? It felt like that, times 10, from shoulder to wrist. My chest got slightly uncomfortable, and I started sweating profusely. For the next four or five minutes, I kept to myself. I was incredibly antsy — up, down, sitting, standing, leaning, lying; my arm and I simply couldn’t get comfortable.

I instinctively knew what was happening but wasn’t ready to say it out loud, trying to reassure myself. There was no elephant on my chest; I’m too young – no one in my family has had heart trouble before age 55; I’m 50 pounds overweight but carry it well. Nevertheless, I motioned my husband up from the dock and, cradling my arm, told him something was really wrong.

He rushed to get some baby aspirin he’d seen earlier in the bathroom, which I chewed. I noticed him quietly doing a Google search for “heart attack symptoms” on his phone as family and friends gathered around us, but I was otherwise inside my head, no longer able to focus on what anyone else was doing or saying.

Our friend drove us to the E.R., where my EKG looked normal and the first nitroglycerin pill had no effect. But 10 minutes later, about the time the second and third nitro pill were making the pain dissipate, the doctor showed up with the result of my cardiac enzyme blood test. It’s supposed to be 0, but mine was much higher. And, he said, that weird somersault feeling I was having right at that moment at the base of my throat was actually tachycardia, a rapid heart rate. Before he was even done talking, an ambulance crew was waiting to take me to a bigger hospital 30 minutes away for a cardiac catheterization.

A little balloon angioplasty through the groin? I could deal with that, and maybe I could convince them to let me go back to the cottage in time for dessert. Instead, I woke up the next day, struggling to breathe, wrists strapped to the rails of a hospital bed, hearing the word “surgery.” I was extremely agitated, confused and unable to ask questions because of the breathing tube running down my throat.

This was not the summer vacation I had planned.

It turned out my “tortuous” left anterior descending artery was 95 percent clogged, and the angioplasty effort tore the inner artery wall, making a stent impossible and creating an even more critical situation. While I was still anesthetized, a surgical team was rounded up at 3 a.m. for an emergency heart bypass. In the span of a couple of hours, I went from expecting a teeny balloon in my artery and a little puncture in my groin to having open heart surgery and an eight-inch scar bisecting my chest.

Did I ever expect this? Not really. I’d read enough to know that heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women, that our heart attack symptoms often are radically different from men’s (just ask Rosie O’Donnell, whose heart attack symptoms the same week as mine seemed more like the flu), and that a third of cardiovascular-disease deaths happen to people younger than 65. But this stuff doesn’t happen to us, right?

Not only did it happen to me; it happened to me twice. I was lucky enough to arrange a flight home on a small plane — larger planes have pressure issues, and the doctors wouldn’t let us drive — but 30 minutes into the flight, my left arm started hurting and I started sweating, not to mention crying at the thought of going through this all over again.

We made an emergency landing. Later, after five hours of tests and discussion, a doctor told me it was stress-induced angina: the symptoms of a heart attack without the life-threatening blockage. He wanted me to stay overnight for observation, but finally agreed to let me continue my trip home.

I’d been relatively pain-free in the hospital, but once I was home, the agony of my titanium-twist-tied sternum was startling. I’ve had to take everything — shifting positions, showering, even breathing — slowly. I’m more aware of my heartbeat, which can be a little freaky. And while I won’t be running marathons any time soon, it’s heartening to hear from friends that I look “terrific,” nothing like a person who had a heart attack five months ago.

I’ve learned many things throughout all of this. Among them, that doctors now try to use a mammary artery, from the chest, for the bypass instead of grafting one from the leg because the mammary bypasses tend to last longer. And it’s likely that a lot of my previous complaints over the past few years — extreme fatigue, lack of endurance, poor circulation, jaw pain (not T.M.J., after all), and so many other vague symptoms — were due to this growing accumulation of plaque in my artery, not perimenopause. Even though I’m far from healed yet, I feel amazingly more alert and less muddled than I did before the surgery, and many of those other symptoms suddenly disappeared.

I also quickly learned I have more friends than I realized, as people brought dinners and well wishes for weeks on end (not to mention commiseration about trying to read a book on an iPhone, a heart-attack-inducing event if ever there was one). However, I’m still coming to terms with the idea of a heart-healthy diet here in Wisconsin, the land of aged and artisan cheeses.

Perhaps most important, I’ve learned to relinquish some control. Even if your doctor says you don’t need help walking up the stairs, let your husband or children escort you anyway. When you’ve been this close to death, the recovery is as much theirs as yours.

Read More..

Shinzo Abe Selected as Japan’s Prime Minister

TOKYO — Parliament formally elected Shinzo Abe as prime minister on Wednesday, ending a three-year break from decades of near-constant rule by his conservative Liberal Democratic Party.

The victory puts Mr. Abe, 58, a former prime minister and an outspoken nationalist, at Japan’s helm as it faces the growing burden of its aging population, years of industrial decline and the challenge of an increasingly assertive China. The change in prime ministers is the seventh in six years, a high turnover that is itself a sign of the nation’s inability to escape its long economic funk.

Mr. Abe won the support of 328 members of the 480-seat lower house, a total that included votes from the Liberal Democrats’ coalition partner, a small Buddhist party.

Mr. Abe’s pro-business party won a landslide victory over the left-leaning Democratic Party in lower-house elections on Dec. 16. Earlier on Wednesday, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and his cabinet resigned to make way for the new leader.

Despite Mr. Abe’s vows to strengthen control of a chain of islands in the East China Sea that both Japan and China claim, he has played down any confrontations between Tokyo and its Asian neighbors since the elections, instead focusing his agenda on lifting Japan’s economy out of recession before the upper-house elections next summer.

Mr. Abe has vowed to encourage growth quickly by offering 10 trillion yen, or about $120 billion, in public works and other emergency stimulus spending. He has also promised to force the central bank to move more aggressively to combat deflation and to weaken the value of the yen, actions that would offer relief to beleaguered export industries by making Japanese products cheaper abroad.

The measures are intended to revive the economy ahead of the elections in June, to give Mr. Abe’s party a better chance of winning the upper house and, with it, control of Parliament. Mr. Abe will have to hurry to retain the support of Japan’s weary voters, who have shown themselves quick to turn against leaders who fail to deliver on promises of change.

Immediately after the vote on Wednesday, Mr. Abe began appointing a cabinet filled with relatively young and unknown faces. While many of these appointees are Mr. Abe’s friends, the fresh lineup is also apparently intended to emphasize that the party has changed since it was driven from power three years ago.

Among the few veterans in the cabinet is Taro Aso, 72, a former prime minister, who was appointed finance minister. The post of foreign minister went to Fumio Kishida, 55, a former minister in charge of Okinawan affairs. He is expected to try to smooth ties with the United States that have been frayed by a dispute over an American air base on Okinawa.

Mr. Abe will face other early challenges, like bridging a rift within his party over whether Japan should join a new regional free-trade agreement led by the United States. The pact, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, is supported by business leaders but opposed by farmers, two groups that are among the staunchest supporters of the Liberal Democrats.

Another challenge will be responding to China’s stepped-up efforts to assert its claims to the disputed islands, which Japan calls the Senkaku and China calls the Diaoyu. Chinese ships and, more recently, aircraft now make almost daily incursions into Japanese-controlled waters and airspace near the islands, with no signs of letting up.

Mr. Abe has been vague about whether he will shift his energies to his long-held desire to rewrite Japan’s antiwar Constitution to allow for a full-fledged military.

Mr. Abe and other conservatives say such a step is needed for Japan to stand up for itself in light of China’s growing strength, and to share more of the regional security burden with the United States. However, the move could also be seen as provocative by China and South Korea, two victims of Japan’s World War II-era militaristic policies.

Read More..

Samsung expects to ship more than half a billion phones in 2013

Title Post: Samsung expects to ship more than half a billion phones in 2013
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Denver rolls, keeps top spot in AP Pro32 rankings

NEW YORK (AP) — Peyton Manning and his Broncos are closing in on the playoffs as the top team in the AP Pro32 NFL power rankings.

Denver strengthened its grip on the top spot Wednesday following its 10th win in a row, receiving nine first-place votes and 381 points in balloting by The Associated Press panel of 12 media members who regularly cover the league.

The AFC West champion Broncos (12-3) close out the regular season at home against Kansas City (2-13), 32nd and last in the rankings. The final AP Pro32 rankings will be released next Wednesday.

The NFC South champion Atlanta Falcons (13-2) moved up two places to second with one first-place vote and 363 points. Last week, the Broncos were first by three points over San Francisco, which dropped to sixth after being blown out by Seattle.

"Eleven in a row (after KC this weekend) and primed for a Super Bowl run," Rich Gannon of CBS Sports/Sirius XM said in voting the Broncos first.

"As expected the Broncos have become a scoring machine that also has good pass rushers. Still a chance they are the No. 1 seed in the AFC," Pat Kirwan of SiriusXM NFL Radio/CBSSports.com said.

The Seahawks (one first-place vote) were up two spots to fifth after routing the 49ers 42-13 on Sunday night.

"They have scored 120 points more than their last three opponents and officially have become the team no one wants to play in the postseason," Dan Pompei of the Chicago Tribune said.

Despite the loss, the 49ers still received a first-place vote.

"Admittedly, a HUGE mulligan," said ESPN's Chris Berman in sticking with the 49ers at No. 1.

Green Bay was up three spots to third after its 55-7 rout of Tennessee, while New England dropped a place to fourth after hanging on for a 23-16 win over No. 31 Jacksonville.

"If there's any solace from an unimpressive win at Jacksonville, the Patriots also seemed disinterested in their final two regular-season games last year before reaching Super Bowl," Alex Marvez of Foxsports.com said.

"Yes, the Patriots are hard to figure out, but this isn't: They're always a Super Bowl factor as long as Tom Brady is healthy," Clark Judge of CBSSports.com said.

Indianapolis, which clinched a playoff spot with a win over Kansas City, moved up to 10th in a season in which the Colts started out No. 32 in the first AP Pro32 rankings.

"Can an assistant coach be named the NFL's coach of the year? Colts offensive coordinator Bruce Arians has put himself in that position for his interim work filling in for ailing head coach Chuck Pagano this season," Rick Gosselin of the Dallas Morning News said.

And yes, Arians can win the award.

Minnesota, meanwhile, rose to No. 12 this week, and needs a win over Green Bay to earn a playoff spot. The Vikings started the season 29th.

"Adrian Peterson is finally getting a little help from his friends," Ira Kaufman of the Tampa Tribune said.

Philadelphia began the season No. 8 and dropped three more spots to No. 27 after a 27-20 loss to Washington. The Redskins, meanwhile, went the other way, starting at No. 25 and rising to No. 9 this week.

"It's very simple for the resurgent Redskins: beat the Cowboys on Sunday, and the division is theirs," Bob Glauber of Newsday said. "Would be an incredible finish for a team that looked to be out of it at 3-6."

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

___

Follow Richard Rosenblatt on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/rosenblattap

Read More..

Q & A: Should Older Adults Be Vaccinated Against Chickenpox?

Q. Should a 65-year-old who has never had chickenpox be vaccinated against it?

A. In someone who has never had chickenpox, the vaccine would protect against a disease that is far more serious in adults than it is in children, said Dr. Mark S. Lachs, director of geriatrics for the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System and professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College.

After childhood chickenpox, the varicella virus is never eliminated from the body but lies dormant in nerve roots. Decades later, it may reactivate along the nerve pathway and cause the very painful rash called shingles, and later, in many cases, a persistent pain called postherpetic neuralgia, or PHN.

Therefore, for most people over 60, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the shingles vaccine. It safely reduces (but does not eliminate) the risk of both shingles and PHN in those who have had chickenpox, Dr. Lachs said.

In someone who never had chickenpox, he said, the concern is not shingles but adult chickenpox, which has “fatality rates 25 times higher than in children.”

Such a person should instead be vaccinated against a primary infection with the varicella virus, Dr. Lachs said. The vaccine differs in strength from the one for shingles and is given in two injections, a month apart.

C. CLAIBORNE RAY

Readers may submit questions by mail to Question, Science Times, The New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018, or by e-mail to question@nytimes.com.

Read More..

Toyota Settles Lawsuit Over Accelerator Recalls’ Impact

DETROIT — Toyota Motor said on Wednesday that it would spend $1.1 billion to settle a sweeping class-action lawsuit by owners of millions of vehicles that were recalled for problems with unintended acceleration.

The agreement, filed in federal court in California, was called one of the largest product-liability settlements in history.

If the agreement is approved by the court, Toyota would compensate current and former owners for loss of value on vehicles recalled because of faulty floor mats and other conditions that could cause sudden acceleration.

Toyota has also agreed to install special safety systems on 3.2 million vehicles that were recalled for floor-mat problems.

The class-action suit was filed in 2010 after widespread complaints were made to federal safety regulators about Toyota models that accelerated unexpectedly.

Toyota has since recalled about eight million vehicles in the United States for problems relating to floor mats and sticky accelerator pedals.

After a long investigation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said there was no evidence that electronic systems contributed to unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles.

The law firm representing Toyota owners in the class-action suit said the overall settlement was estimated at $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion.

“We are extraordinarily proud of how we were able to represent the interests of Toyota owners, and believe this settlement is both comprehensive in its scope and fair in compensation,” said Steve Berman, one of the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs.

Toyota said in a statement that it would compensate customers for loss of value of their vehicles, as well as retrofit additional cars with a free safety system that prevents unintended acceleration.

The company said it will take a one-time, $1.1-billion charge against earnings to cover the costs of the settlement and possible resolution of other pending litigation.

“This agreement marks a significant step forward for out company,” said Christopher Reynolds, Toyota’s chief United States legal officer. “In keeping with out core principles, we have structured this agreement in ways that work to put our customers first.”

Read More..

Iran Says Hackers Targeted Power Plant and Culture Ministry

Iran reported a spree of new cyberattacks on Tuesday, saying foreign enemy hackers tried in recent months to disrupt computer systems at a power plant and other industries in a strategically important southern coastal province as well as a Culture Ministry information center.

Accounts of the attacks in the official press did not specify who was responsible, when they were carried out or how they were thwarted. But they strongly suggested that the attacks had originated in the United States and Israel, which have been engaged in a shadowy struggle of computer sabotage with Iran in a broader dispute over whether Iran’s nuclear energy program is for peaceful or military use.

Iran has been on heightened alert against such sabotage since a computer worm known as Stuxnet was used to attack its uranium enrichment centrifuges more than two years ago, which American intelligence officials believe caused many of the machines to spin out of control and self-destruct, slowing the Iranian program’s progress.

Stuxnet and other forms of computer malware have also been used in attacks on Iran’s oil industry and Science Ministry under a covert United States effort, first revealed in January 2009, that was meant to subvert Iran’s nuclear program because of suspicions that the Iranians were using it to develop the ability to make atomic bombs. Iran has repeatedly denied these suspicions.

The latest Iranian sabotage reports raised the possibility that the attacks had been carried out in retaliation for assaults that crippled computers in the Saudi Arabian oil industry and some financial institutions in the United States a few months ago. American intelligence officials have said they believe that Iranian specialists in cybersabotage were responsible for those assaults, which erased thousands of Saudi files and temporarily prevented some American banking customers from accessing their accounts.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta cited those attacks in an Oct. 11 speech in which he warned of America’s vulnerability to a coordinated computer warfare attack, calling such a possibility a “cyber-Pearl Harbor.”

The Iranian Students’ News Agency said the country’s Passive Defense Organization, the military unit responsible for guarding against cyberattacks, had battled a computer virus infection of an electric utility and other unspecified manufacturing industries in southern Hormozgan Province, home to a large oil refinery and container port in the provincial capital of Bandar Abbas.

The news agency quoted Ali Akbar Akhavan, the head of the Passive Defense Organization’s provincial branch, as saying that “with timely measures and the cooperation of skilled hackers in the province, the progress of this virus was halted.” It was unclear from the account whether any Iranian targets had been damaged.

Iran’s Fars News Agency said a cyberattack had also been made against the information center of the Culture Ministry’s Headquarters for Supporting and Protecting Works of Art and Culture, and that the attack had been “repelled by the headquarters’ experts.”

The Fars account said the attack had originated in Dallas and was routed to Iran via Malaysia and Vietnam. It did not elaborate on the significance of that information but noted that a broad array of Iranian targets had recently come under cyberattacks that were “widely believed to be designed and staged by the U.S. and Israel.”

News of the latest cyberattacks came as Western economic sanctions on Iran have been tightening while diplomatic negotiations aimed at resolving the nuclear dispute have remained basically stalled since June. There are expectations that a resumption of those negotiations will be announced soon, possibly next month.

Read More..

Rondo leads Celtics past Nets 93-76

NEW YORK (AP) — Rajon Rondo lost his cool, and any chance at history, in the second quarter when Boston last met Brooklyn.

This time, the second period featured some of the best basketball the Celtics have played this season.

Rondo scored 19 points in his first full game against the Nets this season, and the Celtics won 93-76 on Tuesday in another game with some heated moments between the division rivals.

Rondo, sidelined in the first meeting and thrown out of the second after shoving Nets forward Kris Humphries into the courtside seats, outplayed counterpart Deron Williams and helped the Celtics take control early.

"We moved the ball; we rebounded the ball," Rondo said. "They beat us pretty bad on the glass, so tonight we did an exceptional job on the glass, taking care of the defensive rebounds, and we got stops."

A month after the teams scuffled in Boston, there was another skirmish in the fourth quarter that resulted in four technical fouls. But that was the most fight the Nets put up in a disappointing performance on the national stage of the Christmas opener. They were never in the game after the first 20 minutes, and their fans headed to the exits with under 2 minutes left as a "Let's go Celtics!" chant broke out.

"It was a big game for us. It was a division rival. We were ready for a big game. It just didn't happen," Williams said.

Rookie Jared Sullinger tied a career high with 16 points and Jeff Green had 15 for the Celtics (14-13), who avoided falling under .500 with just their second victory in six games.

The Celtics took control with a 23-5 run in the second quarter of the opener of their four-game road trip. They had 11 assists on 13 baskets and outscored the Nets 34-18 in the period after dropping the previous two meetings.

"It was good to get off to this start. It was good to finally play from start to finish, especially with the way we've been playing against Brooklyn," said Paul Pierce, who had just eight points on 3-of-10 shooting. "So it was a well-balanced game, but I'm happy with the start of the trip."

Gerald Wallace and Brook Lopez each scored 15 for the Nets, who have lost four of five. Struggling to find anything that worked, they played Lopez and fellow center Andray Blatche together with three guards at one point, but Brooklyn shot just 41 percent and committed 20 turnovers that led to 25 points.

Williams had only 10 points on 3-of-7 shooting and Joe Johnson, his partner in a high-priced backcourt, shot 4 of 14 for his 12 points.

"This one hurts. We didn't play our game. They beat us from the opening tip," Wallace said. "We didn't make shots. We turned the ball over too easy. Our defense just wasn't there tonight. We were not ourselves tonight."

Boston's Kevin Garnett had eight points and 10 rebounds on the day he tied Charles Oakley for 15th place on the NBA's career list with his 1,282nd game. He was also front and center when things got testy.

Wallace was fouled with 9:31 remaining and appeared to hold onto Garnett's uniform to balance himself and not fall. Garnett was fine with that but then objected to how long Wallace hung on to his shorts, and they said something to each other as they tried to push themselves free. That led to technical fouls on the two, along with Blatche and Courtney Lee.

Garnett said he asked Wallace what he was doing but got no response.

"I don't know where in America you can (yank) somebody's pants off, or shorts off. I don't know what the hell was going on," Garnett said.

Sullinger delivered a flagrant foul on Wallace a few minutes later, but there was nothing further.

In the Nets' Nov. 28 victory in Boston, Rondo, Humphries and Wallace were ejected.

It was the second quarter of that game where things got away from the Celtics, and Rondo's frustrations soon followed when he shoved Humphries after the Nets forward fouled Garnett. That ruined the point guard's chance to extend what was then a 37-game streak with double-digit assists, tied for second-longest ever, by finishing with three. He had five assists and six rebounds Tuesday.

This time, the second period belonged to the guys in green.

With the Celtics down three, Green had six points in a 10-0 run that made it 36-29. After Johnson's basket, Boston answered with a 13-3 spurt. Jason Terry made a 3-pointer before Rondo converted a three-point play to push the Celtics' lead to 49-34 with 3:56 to go.

The Celtics opened a 21-point lead early in the third quarter and cruised from there. Terry finished with 11 points.

Notes: As with everyone playing on Christmas, players, coaches and referees wore green ribbons in tribute to the families of Sandy Hook Elementary School. ... Humphries was out with an abdominal strain and will be re-evaluated after the Nets return from Milwaukee. He had mostly been a starter but then didn't play at all Sunday against Philadelphia. ... Feeling Avery Bradley isn't ready yet, Celtics coach Doc Rivers decided not to bring the guard on the road trip so he can continue working his way back from shoulder surgery in Boston. Rivers said the shoulder is strong but that Bradley has had only 2½ practices.

Read More..