Articles by the Betanews Staff

What's Now: Apple covers up its 'FirePod' problem, backs off its Bluwiki threats

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 23, 2009, 9:17 AM

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Apple flambé? Exploding iPod reports hushed up

July 23, 2009 • They got that boom boom OW! -- After years of trouble and seven months of investigation, a report by KIRO-TV reporter Amy Clancy unearthed an 800-page Consumer Product Safety Commission report detailing a disturbing number of iPods that overheated and either burst into flames or started smoking.

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What's Now: Microsoft confirms Windows 7 three-license discount 'family pack'

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 22, 2009, 9:30 AM

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Your reporter has a theory about suicide, which goes: No one knows why the hell anyone does anything. That said, if your employer searches your home, puts you in solitary confinement, and uses "inappropriate interrogation techniques" on you, maybe 25-year-old Sun Danyong's decision to jump off a 12-story building makes sense to you. And if you're the company (Foxconn) and the alleged infraction involves a missing top-secret iPhone prototype, well... A little Foxconn history in a moment, but first, gather the family 'round the PC.

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What's Now: The Yahoo makeover, about a year late

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 21, 2009, 9:16 AM

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Yahoo begins beta rollout of new front page

Tuesday, July 21, 2009 • After what feels like a Google-length testing period, Yahoo is rolling out access to its fresh-and-widgety front page redesign to US users, to be followed within a week or thereabouts with rollouts in the UK, France, and India. The design features a configurable "my favorites" bar with several dozen applications that can fly out and preview content above the main screen, improved localization, slightly smaller type, and the ubiquitous purple.

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Up Front: Patent scuffles, psychos with iPod Shuffles, and earnings kerfuffles

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 20, 2009, 9:16 AM

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Microsoft-Yahoo: Carl Icahn weighs in

Morning of July 20, 2009 • Still no official word on that rumored deal between Microsoft and Yahoo on the advertising front, but Reuters phoned up one of the heavy hitters and asked him for his thoughts last week. It's probably no surprise that principal Yahoo investor Carl Icahn, though not willing to discuss anything current, still seems inclined to make a deal -- even if it wasn't the deal he tried to broker for the two companies in 2008.

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What's Now: Amazon sued, Nokia not skidding so much, and Dell plunges

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 16, 2009, 9:00 AM

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Nokia earnings sequentially up, at least

Morning of Thursday, July 16, 2009 • One of the most wince-inducing earnings calls for reporters in recent months has been Nokia's, but things seem to be a tiny bit brighter at the Finnish phone firm as sales rose 7% in Q2 from the previous three months. They're still down 25% year-over-year, of course, but company officials Thursday said they believe the market for mobile devices to be "bottoming out." (The company still chose to revise its earlier target of raising its market share; now the company says it aims to maintain that share at 2008 levels.) Earnings per share were likewise down year-to-year (65.5%) but up sequentially (233.3%).

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What's Now: Ballmer on Chrome, Google in Labs, and a Twitter novel

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 15, 2009, 9:00 AM

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Ballmer ... reacts ... to Chrome OS

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 • During yesterday's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made his first public comments about Google's Chrome OS -- and to no one's surprised, he's not really moved by it, at least not to any degree he wants people to know about.

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Up Front: A boom for Intel, maybe, but a bust for Dell

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 14, 2009, 9:00 AM

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Here's this morning's piece of analysts' wisdom for you: "Teenagers never use real directories (hard copy catalogues such as yellow pages). This is because real directories contain listings for builders and florists, which are services that teenagers do not require." This from an analyst report with a big financial services name behind it, that's just out this week. Two things here: Kid, ask your girlfriend when you get one about the florist thing, and is everyone else as relieved as your reporter that one generally survives the teenage years? More on that in What's Now; first, it's party time on your BlackBerry.

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What's Now: First rollout of Office 2010 code due today

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 13, 2009, 9:30 AM

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First rollout of Office 2010 code due today

Morning of July 13, 2009 • If you're feeling a bit damp this morning, look around you, because there could be a leak going on. Yes, as fully anticipated, there's clear evidence of a leak in the latest build of Office 2010, which is expected to be officially shipped to certain select Microsoft partners as soon as today. The leak indicates that shipment has already begun, and that Microsoft's "friend" is not cooperating.

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What's Now: Angry day around the Net includes Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Mono

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 10, 2009, 9:00 AM

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Microsoft has known about 0-day vulnerability for months

Since spring 2008 • Really, Microsoft? All the work you've put into getting right with the security community, and this is the result? Computerworld's mighty Gregg Keizer leads the charge on the news that Redmond has known about the recently publicized DirectX vulnerability for years. Years.

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What's Next: Chrome OS will have at least some friends in high places

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 9, 2009, 9:00 AM

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The problem with awful neighbors is that the drama never ends, as South Korea would doubtless be the first to tell you. Officials there, having scanned the code that powered the recent DDoS attacks on that nation (and, apparently, the US), were braced for attacks Thursday afternoon (local time) on seven agencies.

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What's Next: Google throws down the gauntlet, as Chrome challenges Microsoft

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 8, 2009, 9:30 AM

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Google goes for the OS gold chrome

9:37 pm PDT Tuesday, July 7, 2009 > Google's Sundar Pichai (VP of Product Management) and Linus Upson (Engineering Director) posted an announcement that the search giant will be launching a Chrome OS, geared toward netbooks.

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What's Next: Circling the wagons against cell phone exclusivity deals

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 7, 2009, 9:00 AM

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Hey, guess what? Your Social Security number!

Afternoon of Monday, July 6, 2009 • Carnegie Mellon researchers have run the numbers, and with information on just your date and place of birth, they can predict with decent accuracy some or all of the digits of your Social Security number. The problem's especially severe for the 21-and-under crowd, whose numbers were uniformly assigned soon after birth and therefore conform especially closely to certain well-known numbering patterns. The authors of the survey said they were able to ID all nine numbers of test subjects' SSN in fewer than 1,000 tries for 8.5% of that population, making those numbers "no more secure than a three-digit PIN." In smaller states such as Delaware, they could guess 1 out of 20 numbers in 10 or fewer attempts. The research is available at the link above and will be presented today (Tuesday) on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors will also present at Black Hat later this month.

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What's Now: Drenched with 'Purple Ra1n,' iPhone users caught eating 'redsn0w'

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 6, 2009, 9:00 AM

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Drenched with "Purple Ra1n," iPhone users caught eating "redsn0w"

Afternoon of Sunday, July 5, 2009 • If you're a Mac user and you're wondering where those fruit-punch-looking stains on your keyboard are coming from, well, it must be an outbreak of "Purple Ra1n." Last Friday, independent developer GeoHot gave iPhone 3G S users a shower of sorts with his pwnage tool for Windows, enabling iPhone users to install their own apps outside of AT&T's control. Yesterday collaborator Ari Weinstein ported that tool to the Mac, although he also acknowledged that for the "full freedom experience," users should turn to the Dev-Team's "redsn0w" tool, for unlocking their 3G S units from the AT&T network.

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What's Next: Obama gives 'Einstein' the go-ahead, while China gives 'Green Dam' a thumbs-down

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 3, 2009, 9:44 AM

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Seattle nerds are hereby ordered to appear in costume and with a canned-food donation in Fremont at 6:00 pm PDT today (Friday) to help set the world record for largest gathering of lurching zombies. (Zombies and silly world-record attempts: It doesn't get geekier. Xbox 360's even co-sponsoring, for pete's sake. Also, BRAAAAINS!) The pyrotechnicans among us are enjoined to keep safe.

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What's Now: Joost squeezes out employees, Pirate Bay to squeeze out...royalties?

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 1, 2009, 9:00 AM

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Joost so done with the consumer-video space

Afternoon of Tuesday, June 30, 2009 • Once it aimed to compete with YouTube, but that goal has backfired on bigger companies than Joost, which on Tuesday announced that it would be converting to a white-label video hosting service. Joost's CEO, Mike Volpi, is also stepping down in favor of Matt Zelesko, the current senior VP of engineering.

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What's Next: The first signs of improvement for the tech economy

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on June 30, 2009, 9:00 AM

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Pandora silenced abroad, which LimeWire gains an exec

Monday, June 29, 2009 • The strikes and gutters of digital music advanced another frame on Monday, with users in France reporting that their Pandora feed is gone while LimeWire scores an executive fresh from TotalMusic.

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What's Next: Microsoft looks to throw back Razorfish

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on June 29, 2009, 9:00 AM

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Microsoft's advertising over the past three years has focused on this "human element" thing (although that's also Dow Chemical's campaign at the moment), where technology is supposed to empower people to do what people can do best, rather than simply make technology better or more complex or cooler. Well, with the May 2007 purchase of ad agency aQuantive, Microsoft had the opportunity to practice what it preached, since an ad agency is full of people -- not just ordinary laborers, either, but creative folks whose factories are their brains. Just the kind of folks you'd think Microsoft would be eager to employ, right? Nope. For two years, it's been looking to unload the creative baggage from the $6 billion technology package it bought, and this morning it may be closer to dumping its load. That's coming up in What's Next, but first, let's see if the Mythbusters can blow up AT&T all the way from Canada.

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What's Next: Britain rises up against cyber-terrorism, slowly

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on June 26, 2009, 9:00 AM

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On a difficult day for many of us to be talking about high technology and protocols and gadgets, when we'd rather be singing and remembering how lucky we are to be alive and to have friends and people we love, Betanews would like to take a moment -- just one moment -- to ask for blessings for the memory of a lady who used her public platform to make one of the first true public demonstrations that domestic abuse is wrong, and that anyone being abused has the right to fight back, and fight hard. And for giving us the honor of helping her fight her last battle in spirit. Thank you, Farrah. We appreciate you.

The UK's new cyber-terrorism crackdown heads up What's Next this morning, but first, a look at the last 24 hours...

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Up Front: NSA would have central role in military cyber command

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on June 24, 2009, 8:31 AM

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Defense secretary creates cyberspace military command

Morning of Tuesday, June 23, 2009 • As expected, DoD secretary Robert Gates has announced the creation of a new military command dedicated to cybersecurity and focusing on the .mil domain. The Washington Post reports that Gates will recommend that President Obama designate that the post be held by the director of the NSA; that would currently be Lt. Gen. Keith Anderson, who would likely be awarded a fourth star to do the job. Gates wishes the command to be launched by October and under full steam within one year.

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Up Front: DHS shelves domestic spy satellite program

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on June 23, 2009, 9:00 AM

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Privacy advocates on Monday applauded plans by the Obama administration to kill a spy satellite program that would have pointed the cameras at domestic targets. Meanwhile, the company running the nation's biggest "Registered Traveler" program, intended to whisk customers through TSA lines, is out of business.

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