Samsung releases ATIV video ad highlighting the new Windows lineup
Unlike Microsoft that showcased Surface on more than one occasion or Nokia that pitched the Lumia 920 against the iPhone 5, Samsung mostly kept quiet about its Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 lineup. Breaking the silence, the South Korean company introduced a video ad featuring ATIV devices today.
Portraying ATIV devices as crisis-solving solutions, the advertisement introduces the company's Windows Phone 8 smartphone, the ATIV S and ATIV Smart PC (Pro), Windows RT (8)-based tablet as devices suited for active businessmen such as Hunt. Using the latter device he's shown editing a PowerPoint presentation on the go, and also uses the S Pen stylus to add notes. Then the central role is taken by the former device, using the included Office suite allows a colleague to edit an Excel workbook.
Steve Ballmer should pitch more Microsoft products
Microsoft's CEO may be a smart guy who can stand in a room of geeks like one of them. But Steve Ballmer's legacy is marketing. It's what he did before joining Microsoft and for much of his early years with the company. Colleague Mihaita Bamburic calls out a new Windows Phone 8 commercial that Ballmer narrates.
Oh yeah. Don't stop there, Microsoft. The new advert is "Meet Steve. See his Windows Phone". Do a series of "Meet Steve" adverts using all kinds of Microsoft products. People relate to people, and nothing resonates more than those who are hugely successful. Make Ballmer the person other folks aspire to be.
Steve Ballmer narrates Windows Phone 8 ad, hints a new Type Cover color?
Microsoft publicly unveiled Windows Phone 8 yesterday. We know that. But it does not happen everyday for the company's CEO, Steve Ballmer, to star in an ad presenting the company's latest smartphone operating system.
Titled "Meet Steve. See his Windows Phone," the video ad takes the man behind one of the most important companies in tech through various Windows Phone 8 features. There is an emphasis on social networking towards the beginning, as is shown by Facebook tiles. It has to be noted that the latter can be integrated in one's Outlook account, which is a neat feature further presented through a continuously updating Messaging live tile. The Mail app also displays similar behavior when Ballmer mentions "So, so, so much advice." Then there's Bill Gates making a short appearance.
Microsoft details Office on Windows Phone 8
Microsoft released Windows Phone 8 yesterday. It features a new version of Mobile Office, which the company highlighted shorty after the event.
The new smartphone operating system places a great deal of importance on being connected, and the new office suite is no different. Windows Phone 8 allows access to Office content whether it's on SkyDrive or Office 365. Featuring Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and Word, the Office Hub has a new design that touts fluidity and ease of use. It can also display attachments opened in Outlook Mobile and can use "Tap + Send" to share documents with NFC-capable and compatible devices.
Steve Jobs-designed luxury yacht unveiled
Towards the end of Walter Isaacson's authorized biography, Apple founder Steve Jobs talks about a self-designed boat he’s having built for himself and his wife Laurene. He shows Isaacson his models, and architectural drawings, and of course it’s a typical Jobs affair, with obsessive attention to detail: In order to realize the idea of having walls of glass "forty feet long and ten feet high" Jobs gets the chief engineer of the Apple stores to create a special type of glass capable of providing the necessary structural support.
Prophetically he tells Isaacson, after admitting he’s still tinkering with the design even though construction has begun, "I know that it's possible I will die and leave Laurene with a half-built boat. But I have to keep going on it. If I don't, it's an admission that I'm about to die". He did sadly pass away before the yacht was completed, but a year later his creation, named Venus, has been unveiled at a shipyard in the Netherlands.
AOKP Jelly Bean Milestone 1 now available
A week after the last build that introduced Kangerator, the Android Open Kang Project team announced Jelly Bean Milestone 1. It's a stepping stone for the custom Android distribution, and the last one users will see ahead of the version of Android.
Google released Android 4.2 Jelly Bean yesterday, and until it gets pushed to AOSP the team behind the popular project decided not to release further builds. The idea is to incorporate the latest version of the green robot into the AOKP source, which will bring the newly introduced features. Jelly Bean Milestone 1 touts a more bug-free operation, as every bug report received via RootzWiki and Twitter in the last weeks has been closed. As usual of late, a new build doesn't come without new features and changes in the list of supported devices, so let's get to it.
Amazon sees opening, attacks iPad Mini
If you haven't been to Amazon for a day or so, do visit and check out the guerrilla marketing before it's gone. The online retail giant has revamped its ever-changing home page to directly take on iPad mini. A graphic compares iPad mini with Kindle Fire HD -- highlighting differences such as display resolution, HD playback and stereo instead of mono. Of course, the glaring difference is the price -- $329 versus $199, Apple's device being the more expensive.
Last week, Amazon boasted that the day after Apple announced iPad mini, $199 Kindle Fire HD had its biggest sales day ever, implying that many people waited to see the competition and then went for the Amazon product instead.
Google Nexus 10 is ugly, and Nexus 4 has no LTE
Damn, and I had so expected to upgrade.
Surely there's a metaphor here somewhere. Hurricane Sandy blew out Google's Android event, but the news came anyway like a storm raining down on Windows Phone 8's launch. Today, Google debuted the long-rumored Nexus 4 smartphone and Nexus 10 tablet, added a 3G Nexus 7 to the product family and took the wraps off Android 4.2. But in looking over the news, I'm not nearly excited as I expected to be. The new handset is HSPA+, in a LTE world. The larger tablet lacks the design charm that makes Nexus 7 so appealing; Samsung produces what in the photos looks like a stuffed Galaxy Tab with super duper high-resolution display. Maybe I'll warm up before sales start November 13. How unlucky a number is that?
Apple iOS head Forstall is out, but a new division for chips and radios is in
In a statement announcing an executive reorganization, Apple on Monday announced that its senior vice president of iOS software, Scott Forstall, and its head of retail, John Browett will both be leaving the company.
The executive shuffle is being done to "encourage even more collaboration between the Company’s…hardware, software and services teams," according to Apple.
Phillips Hue wireless lightbulbs exclusive to Apple Store, work with Android
Phillips Electronics on Monday announced a new home automation accessory called Hue, which lets its users control home light fixtures wirelessly from a smartphone application.
Hue pairs a ZigBee LightLink local communications network with your home Wi-Fi network and mobile app. The LED bulbs communicate with the "bridge" device via ZigBee LightLink, and the bridge communicates with your router, which in turn communicates with your Wi-Fi enabled smart devices. From the application, users can control the color of their Hue lights in any of 16 million shades, program timers, and schedule settings for optimal light and energy management. A single bridge can control up to 50 individual lightbulbs.
T-Mobile USA moves fast to offer new Nexus and Windows Phone 8 devices
Hurricane Sandy may have dampened Google's plans for a big New York City Android event, but even with that cancelled the company pushed out the news anyway: Android 4.2 and new Nexus devices. That isn't the only mobile news today, though. Microsoft, with an event in San Francisco and safely out of the storm path, launched Windows Phone 8. T-Mobile USA was front and center for both rollouts.
The carrier will be among the first to carry the new devices, including the "Nokia Lumia 810 and the Windows Phone 8X by HTC; the Google Nexus 4 with T-Mobile as a premier launch partner; and the Samsung Galaxy Note II". That's a pretty big lineup for a company that has struggled to compete with giants like Verizon and AT&T.
Meet Android 4.2
Yesterday, when reporting about Nexus 7 32GB showing up on Office Depot shelves, I asked: "Why wait?" Google may have cancelled today's Android event because of Hurricane Sandy, but there are many good reasons to announce anyway -- and stealing thunder from Windows Phone 8's launch is one of them.
Google went ahead, today announcing the long rumored Nexus 4 smartphone, Nexus 10 tablet and Android 4.2. It's no Key Lime Pie but more Jelly Bean. Make no mistake, despite the point-one update and nomenclature, this is a big upgrade.
Google announces its iPad rival, the Nexus 10
Just in case you were thinking it was all about the iPad mini and Surface tablets at the moment, along comes Google with a new Nexus range. The company had planned to make a big announcement in New York today, stealing some of the thunder from Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 launch, but Hurricane Sandy decided to put the kibosh on that (how ironic), so instead the search giant has had to make do with a blog post instead.
There are actually three Nexus devices being announced today, the Nexus 4 smartphone, the new Nexus 7 tablet (which my colleague Joe Wilcox talked about here) and the bigger Nexus 10 -- Google’s 10.1-inch answer to the Apple iPad.
Edit, resize, watermark and share photos from Windows Explorer
Editing lots of digital photos in a single session is generally a tedious and time-consuming business, as most image editors still assume you’ll only ever want to carry out actions on one picture at a time.
Fortunately there are plenty of third-party batch processing tools around who are trying to fill this functionality gap, and COOLTWEAK is the latest, allowing you to resize, watermark or share multiple images (on Facebook, Picasa and Twitter) directly from the right-click Explorer menu.
Windows is doomed
Napier & Son was the most successful British manufacturer of aircraft engines in the 1920s and 30s with their 12-cylinder Napier Lion powering 163 different types of aircraft between 1918 and 1935. Over that 17 year period the Lion grew from 450 to 1350 horsepower and was, for awhile, the most powerful aircraft, boat and car engine in the world, holding world speed records in all three venues at the same time. And then the Napier Lion was suddenly gone -- a lesson from which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer could benefit if he and his company don’t repeat it.
Napier perfected the Lion engine over those 17 years, improving it in every way until it was the best and most efficient engine of its class in the world. Then, seemingly overnight, the class changed as air forces and record setters alike suddenly needed more than the 1,350 horsepower a finely-tuned Lion could deliver. Napier’s Lion gave way to Rolls-Royce’s larger and innately more powerful Merlin and Griffon engines and Napier, for all intents and purposes, was gone.
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