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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.
E-book readers will be in short supply this holiday season
By Tim Conneally on November 20, 2009, 2:02 PM
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Black Friday is just a week away and the demand for ebook readers looks to already be too great.
Earlier this week, Sony said its 3G-connected Daily Edition Reader may not arrive in time for the holidays. Preorders for the device began on Wednesday, but it will not ship until some time between December 18th and January 7th, and it is not expected to land in stores until after the holidays.
Continue reading E-book readers will be in short supply this holiday season...
Sony looks to finally open a single storefront for downloads
By Tim Conneally on November 20, 2009, 11:12 AM
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Sony yesterday discussed its plans to open a download shop similar to iTunes or Amazon Digital Downloads.
Reportedly given the tentative name "Sony Online Service," the online store would make the many different types of Sony digital content available in a single place. The company has a number of content portals already, but each is geared toward a related piece of hardware and run by a different business unit of the giant Sony conglomerate.
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Live report: Will Google Chrome OS change Linux?
By Tim Conneally on November 19, 2009, 12:02 PM
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Google announced its open source Chrome OS last July and it has been a little more than a mystery to the wondering public since that time. Now, an official first look is mere hours away.
At 10:00 am PST (1:00 pm EST), Google will present a live webcast of Chrome OS, the search giant's attempt to "rethink what operating systems should be." Speakers this afternoon will include Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management and Matthew Papakipos, Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS.
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AOL's spinoff from Time Warner to shed 2,500 jobs
By Tim Conneally on November 19, 2009, 10:02 AM
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As Time Warner continues the process of spinning AOL off into a separate, independent company, AOL will lose a third of its workforce. The spinoff is expected to be completed on December 9. In filings with the Securities and Exchange commission earlier this month, Time Warner said the split will cost more than $200 million in restructuring charges.
Today, AOL has reportedly instituted a voluntary layoff program, asking for 2,500 employees to give up their jobs in exchange for severance packages. If this number cannot be reached, AOL will begin laying off people anyway. The soon-to-be spun off company is looking to reduce its operating expenses by $300 million.
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Nokia re-affirms its commitment to Symbian, sort of
By Tim Conneally on November 18, 2009, 5:06 PM
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Nokia has always been solid on its dedication to the Symbian platform, but a report from an N900 event yesterday cast some doubt on Symbian's future in certain branches of Nokia's product line, specifically the high-end N-series of smartphones.
I reached out to Nokia to find out exactly what is going on with Maemo and Symbian in the N-series, and received equal parts affirmation and denial.
Continue reading Nokia re-affirms its commitment to Symbian, sort of...
Gartner: SMS-based money transfer will be bigger than mobile browsing, search
By Tim Conneally on November 18, 2009, 4:36 PM
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Technology market research company Gartner Inc. has released a report which predicts what the top ten mobile applications will be in 2012 based on current activity in the smartphone field, including such factors as consumer and industry interest, potential revenue, and existing business models.
Based upon this information, Gartner predicts the number one "killer app" that everyone will have on their mobile device will be one that is currently uncommon in the United States, but available elsewhere in the world: Money Transfer.
Continue reading Gartner: SMS-based money transfer will be bigger than mobile browsing, search...
Don't forget to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 beta 3 today
By Tim Conneally on November 18, 2009, 2:35 PM
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Download Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 for Windows from Fileforum now.
Here's what happens when our beloved Scott M. Fulton, III is away from his test machine while covering PDC 2009: you get a Firefox beta announcement with none of the scores, charts, or metrics you're accustomed to getting. Instead you just a plain old "Go download this!" message from yours truly.
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Spectrum crisis is just a part of the problem for universal broadband, says FCC
By Tim Conneally on November 18, 2009, 1:58 PM
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Early in October, Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski said there is a wireless spectrum crisis approaching, and that our wireless broadband consumption is growing so explosively that it would take more than 50 years to deliver the necessary spectrum at our current pace.
But an FCC task force has concluded that this is only a single part of the problem if we want to provide America with robust and affordable broadband. Over the last few weeks, the task force has identified critical gaps in policymaking, government programs, and trade practices in all corners of the broadband ecosystem.
Continue reading Spectrum crisis is just a part of the problem for universal broadband, says FCC...
Nokia's N900 arrives in U.S., bodes the death of Symbian on N-series phones
By Tim Conneally on November 18, 2009, 11:56 AM
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Nokia's intriguing N900 "pocket computer" has officially launched in the United States. The device, a smartphone that evolved out of Nokia's Mobile Internet Device (MID) family, signifies a new era for the Finnish mobile tech leader.
Vice President of Nokia retail sales, Alessandro Lamanna summed it up in a prepared statement today: "Consumers from every segment of the population are looking for more out of their mobile device - more power, more ability, more connectivity." So in order to deliver these results, Nokia paired the 600MHz TI OMAP 3430 chipset with the Linux-based Maemo platform, and locked it up inside a 3G phone with a 3.5" touchscreen and QWERTY keyboard.
Continue reading Nokia's N900 arrives in U.S., bodes the death of Symbian on N-series phones...
Beta of Opera 10 for Windows Mobile available now
By Tim Conneally on November 18, 2009, 10:07 AM
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Today, Opera Software has released the beta version of Opera Mobile 10 for Windows Phones, with support for touchscreen- and keypad-driven Windows Mobile 5 (PPC), 6.0, 6.1, and 6.5 devices.
The keywords with this release are: speed, simplicity, and compatibility.
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With YouTube Direct, now users can yank videos from big media
By Tim Conneally on November 17, 2009, 3:10 PM
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Google today announced YouTube Direct, an open source platform that lets media organizations directly connect with YouTube users to request and rebroadcast their YouTube clips.
The application allows custom YouTube uploaders to be built into another site, so users can submit their videos directly and track the viewing metrics in their own profile. Google highlights the rise of citizen journalism as a major reason for the program.
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Pirate Bay closes down torrent tracker
By Tim Conneally on November 17, 2009, 10:58 AM
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After months of legal controversy which were followed by months of uncertainty about the future of the service, the Pirate Bay's popular torrent tracker has been shut down for good.
But it wasn't a court-ordered takedown or the result of regulatory shuffling, the old Pirate Bay torrent tracker simply became obsolete. As a result, the Pirate Bay is no longer running its old tracker, and has switched over to listing "magnet links," a method for locating DHT (Distributed Hash Table) or PEX (Peer Exchange) nodes.
Adobe releases AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 betas
By Tim Conneally on November 17, 2009, 10:22 AM
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Today, Adobe has made the betas of AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 available for download for Windows, Mac and Linux.
The big features in AIR 2 were shown off at Adobe MAX in October, and they include: Support for USB mass storage devices, support for multi-touch and gesture-based input, improved support for local peripherals and native application processes, improved performance, and peer to peer and UDP networking.
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Twitter to abandon 'politically biased' suggested user list
By Tim Conneally on November 16, 2009, 5:02 PM
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Twitter reportedly will be abandoning its suggested user list following some unfavorable attention it received last month.
When a new user signs up on Twitter, the site offers him a long list of suggested users he may be interested in following. The list consists of about 500 prominent users in various fields, including politics.
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Windows Marketplace for Mobile launches on WinMo 6.0 and 6.1
By Tim Conneally on November 16, 2009, 2:16 PM
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Windows Marketplace for Mobile launched exclusively with Windows Mobile 6.5 in October, and unified the vast Windows Mobile application ecosystem under a single umbrella.
Prior to launch, Microsoft announced that users running Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 would eventually have access to the new app marketplace, but did not provide a specific date.
Continue reading Windows Marketplace for Mobile launches on WinMo 6.0 and 6.1...
The Internet can still be a positive force, World Wide Web Foundation says
By Tim Conneally on November 16, 2009, 12:27 PM
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Former Senior Vice President of AOL and political activist Mark Walsh makes a convincing argument that the Internet is broken. He believes that as soon as people started making money on the Internet, things changed for the worse.
"We really thought that the Internet, or the 'interactive services business' as we called it back then, was going to change the world," Walsh said in a recent TED talk. "And we thought it was important that that sense of community, that sense of transparency, that sense of empowerment was really a set of core principles that all of us believed in...it really was a perfect time. But then the money showed up, and things changed...The internet is broken because of that money."
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Samsung releases another Android: where will it fit in with Bada approaching?
By Tim Conneally on November 16, 2009, 10:41 AM
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Samsung today officially announced the long-rumored Galaxy Spica (i5700,) the company's fourth Android smartphone and sequel to its Galaxy handset from early 2009.
Like the original Samsung Galaxy, this 3.2" touchscreen smartphone is not likely to hit the American market, and will be released in select markets in Europe and Asia. This 3.6Mbps HSDPA 3G device is equipped with the basic Google-friendly Android 1.5 distro, a 3 Megapixel camera, and an 800MHz application processor. It's actually considerably less feature-rich than the Behold 2 which came to T-Mobile in October.
Continue reading Samsung releases another Android: where will it fit in with Bada approaching?...
Blockbuster's way down, but poised for a comeback
By Tim Conneally on November 13, 2009, 7:22 PM
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Yesterday, U.S. movie rental chain Blockbuster Inc. reported a third quarter net loss of $116.8 million, some $96 million worse than last year. Overall sales were $910.5 million, down from the $1.15 billion it made in the same quarter last year.
Numbers notwithstanding, Blockbuster may be in a better position now than it was earlier this year.
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iTunes Preview doesn't go far enough to create Web-based option for store
By Tim Conneally on November 13, 2009, 2:50 PM
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Yesterday, Microsoft launched Windows Marketplace for Mobile's Web component, a version of the store fully accessible through any browser.
I lamented that Apple had not yet created a similar face for the iTunes App store, even though it is the most popular download shop among the smartphone competitors. Users who want to browse the contents of the iTunes store, be it music, videos, or applications, must have the iTunes desktop software installed or otherwise browse it on their iPod Touch or iPhone (in which case they're almost guaranteed to have iTunes installed on their PC anyway.)
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Dell's first smartphone aids the Android onslaught
By Tim Conneally on November 13, 2009, 11:46 AM
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Now that it's finally been launched in at least some parts of the world today, Dell is working to keep its new Mini 3 smartphone device closely associated with Dell's computers, calling it "The world's most compact Dell" directly on its packaging.
"Our entry into the smartphone category is a logical extension of Dell's consumer product evolution over the past two years," Ron Garriques, President of Dell Global Consumer Group said in a prepared statement today. "We are developing smaller and smarter mobile products that enable our customers to take their Internet experience out of the home and do the things they want to do whenever and wherever they want."
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