Psystar wants to get your Apple questions answered
You know why there are so many Apple rumors? Because they don't talk to the media. So when someone is guaranteed to have an audience with Apple where the company is legally bound to answer the questions, it's a golden opportunity to learn about the tight-lipped company's strange and wondrous ways.
Stouthearted Mac clone maker Psystar announced that it will have its turn to depose Apple in its litigation over the company's unauthorized use of OS X on its PCs.
Verizon completes 4G LTE trials in Boston, Seattle
Just as Verizon has predicted since late 2007, the company has completed its first trials of LTE (Third Generation Partnership Project's Long Term Evolution), the as-of-yet non-standardized 4G wireless technology.
Verizon was able to make calls in the 700 MHz spectrum based on the 3GPP's Release 8 LTE standard in trial deployments in Seattle and Boston. The company was able to stream video, upload and download files and browse the Web, but most importantly, it was able to complete voice calls.
Surplus of applicants for federal broadband stimulus money triggers a delay
Everybody is scrambling for his or her broadband stimulus money.
5:00 p.m. EDT today was scheduled to be the deadline for funding applications under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but because of overwhelming traffic on the government's servers, the deadline has been extended to next Thursday, August 20.
Qik: Yet another brilliant service crippled on iPhone
Mobile video streaming site Qik, which was introduced last year is leading the charge into the next generation of the Web. Think of it as a real-time YouTube where a user's mobile phone is paired with an online channel that broadcasts live video streamed from his handset camera over 3G. The service's value for citizen journalism is undeniable.
Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Android all have the ability to stream live video to Qik, and the iPhone 3G S just got an app for the service for the first time yesterday.
Looking forward to September with Apple
For the last four years, Apple has reserved the September back-to-school season for upgrading its line of iPod media players. Rumors attributed to "music industry executives" this week indicate that this September will be no different.
A keynote in September gives the company the opportunity to hype up the latest generation of iPods while reminding parents that college kids can get one free if they buy a Mac.
AT&T and Apple hit with class action over iPhone MMS promises
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Apple and AT&T in the Eastern District of Louisiana on the grounds that Apple's "print and video advertisements [for the iPhone 3G S] in and on television, the Internet, the radio, newspapers, and direct mailers all touted the availability of MMS," but the functionality remains unavailable.
The complaint, filed one week ago, says "Millions of customers, including Louisiana residents, purchased the 3G and 3G S waiting for the day in June 2009 when the new application would be available which would allow MMS. Unfortunately, after downloading the new 3.0 software update application, MMS still did not work on both the 3G and 3G S...The only excuse offered by AT&T and Apple is a mouse-print disclaimer on the Web site, in barely readable font, which reads 'MMS Support from AT&T coming in late summer.'
How to turn off Palm Pre's 'Big Brother' data collection
Debian developer Joey Hess this week pulled the covers off of Palm's WebOS, and showed some interesting things going on in the background. Apparently, Palm Inc. collects daily samples of the user's location, which apps he has installed and his usage of them, and app crash logs.
As expected, many have panicked at the thought of both Sprint and Palm harvesting their usage data. But Palm appears to be working within the realm of its Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, and the company's data-sharing policy has actually been a known issue since the Pre's release.
Sony to dump proprietary DRM in eBooks
This morning, Sony announced that it intends to "take the confusion out of digital book formats" and put all its weight behind the EPUB format. By the end of 2009, Sony will only sell EPUB books in its store, and will have dropped its proprietary DRM entirely in favor of Adobe's CS4 server side copy protection.
"A world of proprietary formats and DRMs creates silos and limits overall market growth," Steve Haber, president of Sony's Digital Reading Business Division said. "Consumers should not have to worry about which device works with which store. With a common format and common content protection solution (DRM), they will be able to shop around for the content they want regardless of where they get it or what device they use."
Zune HD: Finally, it's official
Though the device has been leakier than a rowboat made of Swiss cheese, Microsoft has at last given the final word on the Zune HD's availability, and It's up for pre-order today.
Microsoft's multi-touch, HD radio packing MP3 player can be pre-ordered today on Amazon.com, Best Buy.com, Walmart.com, and the Microsoft store, (though as of 3:30am EST, only Best Buy had an active page.)
$1 rentals are not too cheap: Redbox sues 20th Century Fox
In the second suit of its kind, DVD rental kiosk maker Redbox is suing 20th Century Fox in US District Court in Wilmington, Delaware, for allegedly intentionally delaying shipments of its DVD releases to Redbox.
In the first such suit at the end of 2008, Universal Studios Home Entertainment allegedly attempted to limit the availability of its titles in Coinstar-owned Redbox movie rental kiosks. The studio wanted its DVD releases to be off limits to Redbox for the first 45 days after release. The studio believed Redbox's $1 rentals have a devaluating effect on DVDs.
Android app updates support for Office documents
Just as Microsoft and Nokia announced Office will be coming to Symbian S60, the mobile software company that makes Office-compatible readers for Symbian UIQ and S80 released a new productivity app for Android.
DataViz DocumentsToGo 2.0, released yesterday in the Android Market, is a portable productivity suite that lets users view, edit, and create new Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents and supports a number of formats including the latest Adobe .PDF files.
Microsoft and Nokia join forces to take on BlackBerry
Nokia's Symbian S60 today became the first non-Windows Mobile platform to receive support for the Microsoft Office Mobile suite of applications and services. Microsoft and Nokia today announced their long-term partnership to collaborate on the design, development, and marketing of mobile productivity solutions.
Beginning next year, Nokia's E-series handsets will ship with Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile built in, and later, other Office applications and software will be added to the Symbian platform, such as mobile versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote, as well as SharePoint Server and Microsoft System Center.
US sale of Microsoft Word threatened by court injunction
The US District Court in Eastern Texas, the hotbed of patent litigation where everyone from Apple to Nintendo has been found guilty, has granted an injunction on Microsoft Word on account of willful infringement upon patents held by Canadian software company i4i.
That's right. Judge Leonard Davis yesterday said that Microsoft can no longer sell Word 2003, Word 2007, or "Microsoft Word products not more than colorably different from Microsoft Word 2003 or Microsoft Word 2007," and must pay $200 million in damages to i4i.
On second thought, Tr.im stays open
Just shy of two days after announcing it couldn't afford to keep URL shortening site Tr.im open, The Nambu Network says public demand for the site is far too great to simply shut down.
Tr.im will stay alive instead.
Firmware upgrade may be required for Seagate half-terabyte drives
At the beginning of 2009, Seagate had to deal with a firmware bug affecting 21 different hard drive models which caused widespread failure. For the second time this year, a Seagate internal HDD is causing problems that may necessitate a firmware upgrade.
The model in question is the 500 GB Seagate Momentus 7200.4 hard drive (model# ST9500420ASG), which causes the system to pause for as much as 10 seconds as the drive audibly hiccups.
Tim's Bio
Tim Conneally was born into dumpster tech. His father was an ARPANET research pioneer and equipped his kids with discarded tech gear, second-hand musical instruments, and government issue foreign language instruction tapes. After years of building Frankenstein computers from rubbish and playing raucous music in clubs across the country (and briefly on MTV) Tim grew into an adult with deep, twisted roots and an eye on the future. He most passionately covers mobile technology, user interfaces and applications, the science and policy of the wireless world, and watching different technologies shrink and converge.
© 1998-2025 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. About Us - Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy - Sitemap.