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PDC 2009: What have we learned this week?
There was the freebie that no one will forget, the heebie-jeebies courtesy of Scott Guthrie, and a teensy bit clearer picture of how this cloud thingie should work.
Live report: Will Google Chrome OS change Linux?
The mysteries of just what Chrome OS is, and how much of an operating system it truly is, may be resolved today.
PDC 2009: Microsoft cares about Web browser performance
The effort to give users of the world's dominant Web browser the impression of quality, is a personal one for the man who leads that battle.
Nokia re-affirms its commitment to Symbian, sort of
Maemo won't necessarily be replacing Symbian in the Nokia N-Series, but that's definitely a place where it will be found.
E-book readers will be in short supply this holiday season
E-readers are hot this year, and a lot of compelling new products have been released, but are there enough electrophoretic displays to go around?
Sony looks to finally open a single storefront for downloads
Sony has had many different download portals for movies, music, e-books, and games, and now it's looking to make a single shop for all of it.
Tuning out the tablet: Time to give the endless speculation a rest
Wide Angle Zoom: Wishing and hoping and thinking and praying....won't put an iTablet on the market.
Five improvements for IT managers in 2010
If businesses are to improve their efficiency for next year, they need to stop and reassess the basic tenets of their job.
AOL's spinoff from Time Warner to shed 2,500 jobs
As AOL moves toward become an independent company again, it will cut nearly a third of its workforce.
Gartner: SMS-based money transfer will be bigger than mobile browsing, search
Gartner issues its predictions for the 10 things our phones will be doing in 2012.
Don't forget to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 beta 3 today
Mozilla has released the latest beta its Firefox 3.6 browser software, just over one week after beta 2.
Ubuntu attracts the lion's share of LinuxWorld's smaller crowds
By Michael Hatamoto on August 7, 2008, 6:04 PM
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Download Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) Alpha 3 from FileForum now.
Even though attendance was a bit sparse during this year's LinuxWorld Conference & Expo when compared to previous years, the Canonical booth -- where the latest Ubuntu Linux software was being shown off -- still managed to draw a crowd.
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LinuxWorld shows off the latest data center-in-a-truck
By Michael Hatamoto on August 7, 2008, 5:18 PM
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Talk about your portable servers. Rackable Systems brought its ICE Cube Modular Data Center to LinuxWorld, demonstrating how companies can literally ship their data centers from city to city, even overseas, in cool comfort.
SAN FRANCISCO (BetaNews) - Self-contained, fully portable, modular servers are becoming more popular because they help reduce data center costs, and these all-in-one data centers can be moved from location to location with ease. Over the past few years, at least two companies have created their modular centers in shipping containers that can be transported by road, rail or air.
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Could open source be the solution to the e-voting debacle?
By Michael Hatamoto on August 7, 2008, 3:01 PM
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The chaos from the 2000 presidential election in Florida, and subsequent e-voting controversies, has left voters skeptical. So a former engineer from Intel and Borland has designed a new, open system to give voters peace of mind.
SAN FRANCISCO (BetaNews) - Engineer Alan Dechert and his team have created the Open Voting Consortium, an organization aimed at creating and offering open voting systems that can be trusted by voters. Rather than attempt to tinker with a voting machine already in use, Dechert and company created their own voting system from the ground up.
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More Linux promotion than Linux adoption evidenced at LinuxWorld
By Michael Hatamoto on August 6, 2008, 6:29 PM
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While open source phones have been the talk of this year's LinuxWorld, a majority of attendees and vendors we saw were typing away on their iPhones and BlackBerrys -- neither of which is nearly as open as, say, OpenMoko's NeoFreerunner.
SAN FRANCISCO (BetaNews) - Although LinuxWorld is one of Moscone Center's smaller events, especially compared to the Apple's Macworld or Oracle's OpenWorld conference, it's typically a good place to gauge the state of the Linux community. One look around the place will tell you that there's more talk about Linux adoption than there is actual adoption.
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Open source mobile platforms converge on LinuxWorld
By Michael Hatamoto on August 6, 2008, 4:22 PM
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During this year's LinuxWorld, it was more obvious than ever before that open source technology is finding a place in mobile phones. But some hurdles stand in the way, including the sheer number of competing platforms in this space.
SAN FRANCISCO (BetaNews) - A major problem standing in the way of mobile developers is the wide variety of different companies competing in the mobile platform space. Although this may sound like more of a blessing than a problem, some of these platforms' supporters find themselves allied with some projects and opposed on others -- which has already led to some friction.
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Three new IBM / Linux partnerships aimed at a 'Microsoft-free' world
By Michael Hatamoto on August 6, 2008, 2:45 PM
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At the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco this week, IBM strengthened its ties with the open source community by announcing partnerships with Canonical, Red Hat and Novell.
SAN FRANCISCO (BetaNews) - IBM hopes adding its software to distributions of Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Suse Linux will help consumers transition to become "Microsoft-free."
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Japanese iPhone provider reduces its data plan fees
By Michael Hatamoto on August 5, 2008, 5:17 PM
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The third largest mobile phone operator in Japan, Softbank Mobile, announced it will reduce the data subscription rate for its Apple iPhone service later this month to as low as ¥2,990 ($27) per month from ¥7,280 ($67) per month.
At the minimum rate, prices for data packages will then be staggered depending how much data a user sends and receives, though Softbank will make sure subscribers cannot pass the $67 maximum data cap.
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Freescale, others join open source mobile Linux effort
By Michael Hatamoto on August 4, 2008, 2:26 PM
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In an effort to effectively battle competitors and make a Linux-based operating system available for mobile phones, the Linux Mobile Foundation (LiMo) announced it has added several new members.
The most significant additions to the organization are Telecom Italia, Freescale Semiconductor, and PacketVideo, although Cellon, Escmertec, Loncheer Holdings, MIZI Research, Movial Corporation, SK Innoace, VirtualLogix, and ZTE also joined the effort.
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Next-generation FireWire finalized, but USB 3.0 will be faster
By Michael Hatamoto on August 1, 2008, 4:03 PM
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The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recently approved IEEE 1394-2008, a faster version of the standard known to most simply as FireWire and used for connecting PCs with digital video devices or external hard drives.
"The new standard includes all of the amendments, enhancements and more than 100 errata which have been added to the base standard over the last 12 years," IEEE chair of the working group Les Baxter said in a statement. "This update provides developers with a single document they can rely upon for all of their application needs."
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Sun's stock drops sharply after 73% drop in profit
By Michael Hatamoto on August 1, 2008, 3:09 PM
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A slowing economy has led computer server and software manufacturer Sun Microsystems to post a 73 percent drop in net income for its fourth fiscal quarter. So far in 2008, the company's stock has lost almost half of its value and most recently dropped 13 percent down to $9.24 per share.
Sun's share price hit a high point in October at $25.04, but has suffered a sharp decline since then. It bottomed out at $8.63 in the middle of last month, but had climbed to nearly $11 before Friday's earnings call.
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Scrabulous returns to Facebook as 'Wordscraper' with circular board
By Michael Hatamoto on July 31, 2008, 2:41 PM
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After being officially removed from Facebook less than two days ago due to a legal threat from Scrabble maker Hasbro, Scrabulous has returned to the social network site with a new name and visual changes.
Dubbed "Wordscraper," the Facebook application is technically a new word game, but it retains certain similarities to the now defunct Scrabulous.
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British hacker who broke into Pentagon may finally be sent to US
By Michael Hatamoto on July 30, 2008, 4:31 PM
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A British hacker who admitted hacking into Pentagon and NASA computers searching for evidence of extraterrestrial life has lost his latest extradition appeal. After fighting the case for more than six years in UK courts, the British House of Lords officially dismissed his appeal.
Gary McKinnon, 42, admitted to illegally accessing around 100 U.S. military and government computers while living in his north London flat from Feb 2001 to March 2002. While roaming around the systems, he was caught after downloading an image that he thought could have been an alien spacecraft.
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Hackers take out EA's Scrabble after Scrabulous removed from Facebook
By Michael Hatamoto on July 30, 2008, 4:02 PM
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After a legal threat from Hasbro, Scrabulous has been taken down from Facebook. But EA's official Scrabble game went up only to be promptly taken down by attackers.
The drama between Electronic Arts and Hasbro against Scrabulous and Facebook closely mimics that of a daytime soap opera, and it only continued this week as Scrabulous has officially ended service to North America.
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Nvidia adds PhysX engine to new line of video chips for notebooks
By Michael Hatamoto on July 29, 2008, 4:38 PM
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Nvidia has unveiled a new generation of notebook video cards based upon the Ageia PhysX physics engine, which Nvidia acquired last year.
There are five new Nvidia GPUs available, with the GeForce 9800M GTX, GeForce 9800M GTS, and GeForce 9800 GT serving as the three higher-end cards. The GeForce 9700M GTS and GeForce 9700M GT are the two mid-range cards for mainstream notebooks the average customer will purchase.
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Nokia E71 reaches US with hopes to take on BlackBerry, iPhone
By Michael Hatamoto on July 29, 2008, 3:31 PM
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Nokia has made its E71 smartphone available to North American consumers, in the company's latest attempt to successfully crack into the smartphone market outside of Europe.
The E71 has a full QWERTY keyboard, 2.4-inch LCD display, built-in 3.2-megapixel camera, microSD memory card slot, and a multimedia player. It connects both to HSDPA and GSM networks, and has WiFi and GPS connectivity. Most notably, the E71 is only 0.39-inches thick, which makes it the thinnest full-QWERTY device available to consumers in North America.
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Usernames and passwords to San Francisco network exposed in court docs
By Michael Hatamoto on July 28, 2008, 3:13 PM
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San Francisco again has control of its own FiberWAN network, but as it compiles evidence to keep distraught network administrator Terry Childs in jail, the city could have opened itself up to a slew of new security problems.
The San Francisco District Attorney's office entered up to 150 usernames and passwords into Exhibit A of the ongoing legal case against Childs. Each account is said to be sensitive and private, and the city has gone through a lot of work to get the accounts back, only to enter them into the public domain through the courtroom filings.
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End of an era: Gateway stops selling PCs directly to customers
By Michael Hatamoto on July 28, 2008, 2:57 PM
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Computer maker Gateway has moved entirely to an indirect sales model in which it will stop selling PCs online through its own Web site, only offering PCs through retail channels.
After being founded in 1985, Gateway pioneered direct-to-customer computer sales, and enjoyed big success until the dot-com era began to erode. It quickly lost ground to competitors like Dell and HP. The Gateway brand, which is now a subsidiary of Acer, launched its own stores in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but the retail channel was not receptive of the stores.
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Scientists turn car exhaust into electricity, twice as efficiently
By Michael Hatamoto on July 25, 2008, 5:27 PM
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Scientists from Ohio State University have created a new material called thallium-doped lead telluride, which has been designed to convert car engine exhaust heat into electricity.
The research team led by Joseph Heremans said the material could also be used to help power generators and heat pumps. The new material is reportedly able to convert the wasted heat into energy without causing pollution, and do so more efficiently than was previously possible.
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After legal fight, 11-year-old ordered to turn over Narnia.mobi domain
By Michael Hatamoto on July 25, 2008, 4:32 PM
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An 11-year-old Scottish boy who received a dream birthday present that later turned into a legal quagmire must now turn over his narnia.mobi domain name back to the estate of C.S. Lewis.
Comrie Saville-Smith, who lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, is a fan of the C.S. Lewis Narnia novels, and his parents decided to give him the narnia.mobi dobmain once it became available in September 2006.
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China now counts more Internet users than the US
By Michael Hatamoto on July 25, 2008, 4:10 PM
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Even though the government places heavy restrictions on the Internet with censorship and routine crackdowns on cyber dissidents, China has finally surpassed the United States for the most online users in the world.
The China Internet Network Information Center compiled the numbers that indicate China now has 253 million total Web surfers, with the United States coming in at an estimated 223 million users. China has a total population of more than 1.3 billion people, compared to the United States' 301 million.
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