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Google Buzz: Another attempt to harness the content firehose
Similar to how Google successfully remolded RSS into a Google tool, the company now wants to remold Gmail into one big Google party
Success: Google's Nexus One shipping support line takes tech support questions
UPDATED Though the support line had been set up for shipping, it now appears Google personnel are happy to hear technical concerns.
Goodnight, moon: What I learned from a space shuttle
Carmi Levy | Wide Angle Zoom: Can the tech sector learn a few lessons from the space program? Certainly, if you believe in learning from someone else's mistakes.
Netflix to FCC: NBCU + Comcast could bypass net neutrality
Weaning itself from the post office as its main means of video transfer, Netflix would like someone to ensure the Internet remains just as unencumbered.
Rhapsody to become an independent company
RealNetworks and Viacom subsidiary MTV Networks have begun the process of spinning off music service Rhapsody into an independent company.
Nvidia debuts new dynamically-switched graphics card technology
Today, Nvidia announced that its Optimus technology for GPU switching will soon be available in a handful of Asus notebooks.
Google lowers 'unusually high' early termination fee on Nexus One
Google has lowered the Nexus One's early termination fees which were twice as high as the norm.
Netgear and Ericsson introduce a mobile broadband hotspot with a twist
It's a mobile broadband hotspot, but it's for use in the home.
Report: Streaming video drove 72% global increase in mobile data consumption
A new study says streaming video is "the single most influential factor driving the need for increased mobile network capacity."
Stymied by continuing Nexus One 3G issues, Google blames the environment
If you're still afflicted with the 3G flip-flop trouble, then you might consider moving. That appears to be the only suggestion Google can give for now.
Wolfram|Alpha makes a strong argument for virtual keyboards
"Answer engine" Wolfram|Alpha has updated its iPhone/iPod Touch app, harnessing the strength of the virtual keyboard.
Goodnight, moon: What I learned from a space shuttle
By Carmi Levy on February 8, 2010, 5:19 PM
21 Comments
Like many nighthawks across the continent, I found myself glued to more than one screen...all right, three. Plus my BlackBerry...as I watched this morning's launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. I observed the spectacle with a curious mixture of excitement and sadness because after the current STS-130 mission, the shuttle program has only four more scheduled flights before it's grounded for good.
It's not the retirement that gets me. Every technology has its day, and it's fair to conclude that a system largely designed in the early 1970s has now served its purpose and should logically be replaced. It's also fair to conclude that this same system was and is too complex to ever be fiscally feasible. Despite the orbiters' reusability, which was supposed to drive down the cost of spaceflight, extensive maintenance in-between missions made the program even more expensive to fly than conventional expendable rockets. The shuttle's inherent design flaws (you'll never see humans riding below any other part of a space vehicle again) pretty much sealed its fate.
Continue reading Goodnight, moon: What I learned from a space shuttle...
Would you pay to read this?
By Carmi Levy on February 5, 2010, 1:08 PM
31 Comments
Everyone's got an opinion surrounding Engadget's decision to temporarily deactivate user comments because of its editors said things had gotten "mean, ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening in some situations." While I find the reaction to Engadget's decision engaging and often amusing (Betanews reader comments, in particular, often make for fun late night reading) I'm a little surprised at the near-universal lack of understanding of how the Internet works in 2010.
I have three fundamental thoughts on Internet publishing that may help put the Engadget brouhaha in perspective:
The iPod touch: Still a category of one
By Carmi Levy on February 1, 2010, 10:39 AM
21 Comments
Of all the short-form conclusions about the iPad, the one that seems to stand out from the crowd is, "iPod touch on steroids."
I'll buy that, since I also concluded much the same thing in a conversation with at least one reporter following the iPad's introduction. At first glance, it extends the same old iPhone-based operating system over a larger form factor that manages to both delight (still-unique industrial design and support for the largest online app inventory anywhere) and annoy (no memory card support, no USB, and supported by only one, less-than-beloved carrier) all at the same time.
Let's stop the iPad whining: It's not about the hardware
By Carmi Levy on January 28, 2010, 2:53 PM
86 Comments
It's almost embarrassing...Correct that, it's big time embarrassing, for me to read some of the public's response to yesterday's announcement of the Apple iPad.
Yes, we know that the name is thematically close to a certain feminine hygiene product. No, we don't need to read the obvious over and over in the comments section of every tech and mainstream Web site, blog, Facebook page, Twitter stream, and (gee, thanks, Brian Williams) nightly newscast. We get it. It may have been funny when we were in the second grade, but now that we're all supposedly adults, it strikes me as needlessly juvenile.
Continue reading Let's stop the iPad whining: It's not about the hardware...
Live from the real world: It's the iPad
By Scott M. Fulton, III and Carmi Levy on January 27, 2010, 11:37 AM
40 Comments
Scott Fulton, Managing Editor, Betanews: We fully anticipate that you'll be following this morning's Apple premiere news from any one of the many gadget blogs with reporters on the scenes, working hard even as we speak to tweak the geek connections on their 3G iPhones. (Or, if they're lucky, on their Droids.) But at some point, you'll want to be able to step back out of the wilderness, as it were, to catch a breath of reality before going back in.
This is why Betanews contributing analyst Carmi Levy and I have opted, just for your sake, to stay behind with you in the real world today, to bring you our thoughts as to what Apple's move today will mean for those of us out here -- people who prefer to improve technology rather than allow technology to try to improve us.
Twitter couldn't save Brangelina
By Carmi Levy on January 25, 2010, 12:05 PM
5 Comments
I'm not one to follow the lives of celebrities. I don't watch TMZ, and the very sound of Entertainment Tonight's Mary Hart's voice is enough to make me nauseous. I turn my head as I walk past the supermarket tabloids in the checkout aisle because I could care less who Jennifer Aniston is dating this week or that Elvis was spotted in a rural Kentucky laundromat. I've got better things to do with my life than wonder how many more kids Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt want to adopt or when she plans on getting another tattoo.
For all my celeb-fatigue, though, I found it interesting this past weekend when I first learned about the Brangelina supercouple's separation not from television, radio, or a newspaper, but from my Twitter feed. After I sarcastically retweeted the supposed news, I heard from a number of friends that they, too, had gotten the news from online sources.
Google's deal with the devil: Declaring war in China while competitors wimp out
By Carmi Levy on January 21, 2010, 4:49 PM
53 Comments
I was just old enough to remember, and appreciate the significance of, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. The iconic image of a dissident standing defiantly in front of a column of People's Liberation Army tanks is as powerful today as it was when we first saw it.
Back then, activists fighting for greater freedom used surreptitiously acquired fax machines to get the word out to the rest of the world. It was an early sign that technology held the potential to undercut control-freak-government efforts to stifle free speech. Now that the Internet has taken over as the platform of choice for Chinese freedom-lovers and freedom-crushers alike, the battleground has shifted irrevocably, and the autocratic Chinese government hardly has enough political officers to keep its spy game machinery in balance.
Continue reading Google's deal with the devil: Declaring war in China while competitors wimp out...
The narrowing divide between the rest of the world and Haiti
By Carmi Levy on January 19, 2010, 11:46 AM
1 Comment
Betanews urges its readers everywhere to contribute to the effort to restore vital services to Haiti, by contributing to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund today.
I'm of two minds as I watch the heart-wrenching disaster unfold in Haiti. On the one hand, technology has been pressed into service in innovative ways to connect victims with their faraway families, to marshal resources from aid-providing nations and organizations, and to make it easier for you and me to help out by texting contributions from our mobile phones. Rescuers are Twittering, albeit haltingly, from the front lines, while Facebook pages are serving as virtual bulletin boards -- all signs that social media continues to come of age as a force for good in a less-than-fair world.
Continue reading The narrowing divide between the rest of the world and Haiti...
Now, the great Facebook security giveaway ...literally
By Carmi Levy on January 14, 2010, 10:58 AM
18 Comments
Facebook wants to be your new security maven.
Go ahead. Have a good laugh. I certainly did, after I first learned about Facebook's plan to partner with security provider McAfee to boost end-user security on the often-attacked social media platform.
Continue reading Now, the great Facebook security giveaway ...literally...
CES 2010: Where did Windows Mobile go, and what will take its place?
By Scott M. Fulton, III and Carmi Levy on January 7, 2010, 3:06 PM
3 Comments
Microsoft's big theme coming out of 2009 was "Three Screens and a Cloud." Thanks to a few power outages punctuating yesterday evening's keynote, there were often more clouds than there were screens. But when the smoke and the steam cleared, it turned out there was one less screen than people were expecting -- in some respects, the biggest screen of all: the small screen.
I discussed the lack of progress on the Windows Mobile front earlier this afternoon with Contributing Analyst Carmi Levy.
Continue reading CES 2010: Where did Windows Mobile go, and what will take its place?...
CES 2010: How soon will Nexus One be eclipsed?
By Scott M. Fulton, III and Carmi Levy on January 6, 2010, 1:25 PM
2 Comments
The reviews are mixed on the Nexus One, the new smartphone -- or, as Google puts it, "superphone" -- announced by Google yesterday. It's an Android 2.1 phone for the T-Mobile network, for now, with availability on Verizon Wireless in April. On Betanews, the decision is split between whether Google has signaled the next revolution, and the revolution having already started without Google. The question today is, how long is Nexus One going to be the model of everyone's dreams, and by "how long," I mean, how many hours? That's the subject of my conversation this afternoon with Betanews contributing analyst Carmi Levy.
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Nexus One: More than a phone, less than a game-changer
By Carmi Levy on January 5, 2010, 11:20 PM
14 Comments
Call me hopeful that Google's announcement of Nexus One Tuesday helps it positively influence the evolution of an open, innovative wireless market. Call me similarly hopeful that Google's move into hardware -- a bold decision that builds on its earlier success facilitating the creation of the Android mobile operating system and orchestrating the Open Handset Alliance's go-to-market plans -- will drive the success of the next truly competitive smartphone platform.
But as hopeful as I am, I'm not yet convinced that one phone can ever deliver all the goods. Nexus One is hardly the earth-shattering, apocalyptic shot that will catapult the smartphone market into next week.
Continue reading Nexus One: More than a phone, less than a game-changer...
Hype this! Apple's marketing puppet show continues
By Carmi Levy on December 31, 2009, 2:16 PM
17 Comments
We segue into 2010 with rumors swirling around the biggest mega product announcement since the iPhone. If Apple's mythical tablet device -- the "iSlate," if insiders and analysts are to be believed -- is in fact announced sometime in January, Apple fans will once again dance in the streets before lining up in the middle of the night, wallets in hand, ready to buy into the latest must-have doodad from Cupertino.
Not that I'm one to make resolutions. They are, after all, pointless promises that are inevitably broken before the last bit of confetti has been swept out of the gutters in Times Square. But if I ever had to make one, it would be to ban the Apple hype machine permanently from our midst. The noise from all this speculation is hurting my head, and I just want it to stop.
Continue reading Hype this! Apple's marketing puppet show continues...
Broken Berry: RIM runs out of free passes
By Carmi Levy on December 28, 2009, 10:57 AM
6 Comments
Like the other over-50% of smartphone-owning people in North America, I'm quite the fan of my BlackBerry. Even in an era when newer kids on the block -- namely Apple's iPhone and Google's Android -- garner more accolades and headlines for having slicker interfaces and cooler (and more) apps, the BlackBerry platform remains the safe, reliable choice that's good enough for most consumers and businesses. Despite analyst predictions that the BlackBerry will someday be reeled in by the upstarts, Research In Motion continues to grow and dominate the market it practically defined a decade ago.
We may want to revisit the "reliable" bit, though. After a week from hell marked by two highly publicized continent-wide outages, BlackBerry users are asking themselves whether this is the new normal, and why BlackBerry devices seem especially vulnerable to this kind of mass outage when competing platforms like iPhone and Android are not.
Continue reading Broken Berry: RIM runs out of free passes...
Shut up and drive: The menace that is mobile technology
By Carmi Levy on December 21, 2009, 7:12 PM
54 Comments
I like my toys behind the wheel as much as everyone else. Between my GPS, iPod, BlackBerry, and DVD player, I've got enough technology to avoid getting lost, stay entertained, stay connected, and keep my seat-belted kids from beating each other silly. I have no idea how my Luddite parents survived the Dark Ages before in-car electronics, and I'm not sure I ever really want to know.
Before setting off on a drive, it takes me about five minutes to get all my doo-dads connected and working. My wife, bless her, usually gives me a small grace period for fiddling before her patience wears thin.
Continue reading Shut up and drive: The menace that is mobile technology...
The hang-up with the Google Phone
By Carmi Levy on December 18, 2009, 10:24 AM
12 Comments
Have you ever noticed that the next great über-device is always something ahead that people want, but rarely -- if ever -- something in front of them that they have? It almost doesn't matter what that device is, just as long as the rumor mill is so overhyped and over-amped that device-tech followers can't focus on anything else. It's almost as if the device is sustained by its lack of existence, by its mythology rather than its technology. As long as it's "out there," rather than right here, it becomes the single focal point for anyone who lusts after it, and fans literally count the days until it hits the shelves and changes their lives forever. "Forever," in this case, being about 38 minutes, until the rumor mill cranks back up again.
It's like a great party, where reality doesn't seem to matter much as long as everyone's having a good time.
The wireless data paradox: AT&T asks you to use less data
By Carmi Levy on December 14, 2009, 4:45 PM
44 Comments
So let me get this straight: AT&T says iPhone users are using too much data. And to ease the resulting strain on its network, the carrier wants to...(ahem)...encourage its customers to throttle back on YouTube, live-streamed radio, and other media-rich apps. A week after playing the good guy with "Mark the Spot," a handy iPhone app that lets users report on coverage dead zones, AT&T is reversing any goodwill gained by warning heavy users they may soon face extra charges for their data gluttony.
Someone please tell me this is little more than a badly thought-out joke.
Continue reading The wireless data paradox: AT&T asks you to use less data...
iTunes gets cloudy: Will a web-ified future save iTunes or kill it?
By Carmi Levy on December 10, 2009, 6:43 PM
22 Comments
I'm not at all surprised that Apple's recent purchase of Lala Media, a previously-ignored music streaming outfit that likely would have flatlined otherwise, is already generating rumblings of impending major change to one of the most pivotal brands in its arsenal. While it was the iPod and iPhone devices that first established Apple's consumer product cred and later sealed its long-term position on the techno-cultural podium, it was iTunes that turned the process of buying, managing and consuming content from a chaotic mess into something that ultimately killed the local record store and permanently changed the entertainment landscape.
If only the world never changed
Continue reading iTunes gets cloudy: Will a web-ified future save iTunes or kill it?...
Not the first, not the last, technology predictions for 2010
By Carmi Levy on December 7, 2009, 8:35 PM
9 Comments
December never fails to make me cringe. I know full well that journalists will be filling my inbox all month long with countless requests to guess what next year's hot technologies will be.
I can understand why they would. Trying to predict what comes next in tech has always been an important way for businesses and consumers alike to make the right decisions about what to buy -- and what to avoid -- in the months ahead. Like the groundhogs who have been doing something similar for generations, we all want to know what's coming so we can plan more effectively for the future.
Continue reading Not the first, not the last, technology predictions for 2010...
See ya later, WinMo: Microsoft's mobile strategy needs a reboot
By Carmi Levy on December 3, 2009, 4:57 PM
14 Comments
There are lots of winners in the wireless wars. Microsoft, unfortunately, isn't one of them. Thirteen years after it first introduced Windows CE, its homegrown OS for small devices finds itself perilously close to oblivion. With market share for Windows Mobile OS in freefall, vendors fleeing and its mindshare in meltdown, now is as good a time as any for the company to dive into a full-on re-think of its mobile strategy.
Or an exit from the market until it can figure out what makes the most sense.
Continue reading See ya later, WinMo: Microsoft's mobile strategy needs a reboot...