Boxee adds Windows support, Ubuntu users get 1080p
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Popular and sometimes controversial, media center software Boxee was, until recently, only available for OS X and Ubuntu users. Now the majority of the computing world will be able to get its hands on the freeware social media center as the alpha version for Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 has been added (build number 0.9.12.6570). This alpha period will last until later this year, when the first working beta is expected to be released.
Verizon fiddles with FiOS tiers, brings Compaq netbook to US
The United States' largest fiber-to-the-home deployment, Verizon's FiOS Network will be receiving a speed boost and a bump up in price.
The entry-level FiOS tier formerly offered 10 Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream for $34.95 with a one-year contract, and $39.95 for month-to-month. Now it has been bumped up to 15/5 Mbps down/up for $44.99 with the annual contract and $54.99 monthly.
The iPhone finally gets AT&T's Navigator
With the iPhone's 3.0 software update, Apple's iconic touchphone finally has access to AT&T Navigator, the carrier's branded GPS software solution provided by TeleNav, and the first turn-by-turn GPS app for the iPhone.
AT&T Navigator debuted at CTIA Wireless last year, and launched with the Motorola Z9 as well as a number of BlackBerry devices. The carrier severely lagged behind Verizon Wireless, which first began offering the service (labeled as VZ Navigator) nearly two years before, in 2006. In April of this year, VZ Navigator Global launched, which brings the turn-by-turn navigation service to more American countries, as well as half a dozen Western European nations.
Qik turns Android phones into live webcams
Qik, a streaming mobile video services that has gained considerable traction over its last year in beta, has unveiled support for the Android Platform today.
The live "phonecasting" service previously supported S60 and Windows Mobile devices and dabbles in iPhone OS X, but does not yet offer support for Apple's mobile device. Now, users of Google's open source mobile OS have a chance to stream live video from their devices.
Is Gateway's 11.6-inch netbook not a netbook?
The average size of those little PCs that we love so much has been slowly increasing to include full-sized keyboards, yet they retain their usual slim profile and low power demand. These larger devices are beginning to fall somewhere between the category of Netbook and Notebook.
Today, Gateway launched its first "full keyboard netbook": the 11.6" LT3100 series, one of these in-between devices.
'The Android Family' grows with myTouch 3G
We first began to see this device only four months after the G1's launch, as the HTC Magic for European Markets, and then again as
1M iPhone 3G S sold over weekend, Jobs claims lead
According a statement from Apple today, between Friday's launch of the iPhone 3GS and Sunday evening, its third full day on the market, more than one million units were sold, and six million customers downloaded the iPhone 3.0 software.
Apple's ailing but soon-to-be-returning CEO Steve Jobs said, "Customers are voting, and the iPhone is winning. With over 50,000 applications available from Apple's revolutionary App Store, iPhone momentum is stronger than ever."
Steve Jobs recovers from liver transplant
Now that the next iPhone launch is at least a solid year away, the truth behind CEO Steve Jobs' six-month medical leave has finally been released to the Wall Street Journal.
In January, Jobs said he had been diagnosed with a hormone imbalance, and the public speculated it was actually intestinal cancer. Tonight, it was revealed that the "hormone imbalance" was an issue with his liver. According to the WSJ report, Jobs underwent a liver transplant two months ago in Tennessee, and has been in recovery since that time. A statement from Apple to the paper said the CEO is still looking forward to a return to work at the end of the month.
Big changes to cellular networks to be demonstrated next week
Next Tuesday at the Femtocells World Summit in London, chipmaker picoChip, packet core vendor Starent Networks, and Continuous Computing will give the first live demo of a new 3GPP standard critical to the deployment of IP Radio Access Network-based femtocells.
What's that again? 3GPP is the Third Generation Partnership Project, the international consortium that lays down specs for telecommunications standards. Femtocell is a system for increasing 3G cellular coverage with small, indoor distributed antenna systems. They are sort of like tiny cell towers, hence the femto- prefix which denotes 10-15, making the name roughly mean "really really small cell."
Apple iPhone lines: No longer the social event of the season
For fanatics of anything, camping out in line for the latest product or event is a chance to show off their loyalty and devotion to whatever their chosen obsession may be. Waiting for hours in unforgiving conditions creates a real camaraderie between folks, and helps soften a person's judgment of the product they waited for.
I think back ten years when Star Wars: The Phantom Menace came out, when dozens of people I knew, Star Wars geeks or not, waited in a line that extended literally six blocks down the street from Baltimore's Senator Theater just for a ticket to any showing. After we witnessed that cinematographic abomination, we held our tongues and told ourselves it really wasn't that bad. Even harsh critics I knew who I'd followed out of theaters mid-movie in the past gave the movie a longer consideration than it deserved.
Tricky AT&T iPhone 3.0 tethering
It didn't take long for crafty users to figure out how to enable tethering on their newly-updated 3.0 iPhones, irrespective of carrier regulations. Apple community MacMegasite posted its own method for tethering, and BenM.at's iPhone Help Center provides not only an iPhone-formatted config site for activating tethering, but also a rudimentary means of activating MMS as well.
Betanews is awaiting comment from AT&T on the subject, which may be forthcoming. In the meantime, check out our tethered iPhone speeds and let us know how yours compare.
EU regulators call for tighter privacy provisions on OpenID, Facebook
The Article 29 Working Party, the same group that fought with Google over its search log data, could take similar action against developers that utilize open identification platforms such as Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, and Microsoft Live ID, which use open identification protocols such as OpenID and OAuth.
According to an "unpublished opinion paper" that Financial Times got its hands on, the group believes third-party developers building apps that use data from sites such as Facebook and Twitter should be subject to tougher privacy and data protection regulations.
New Motorola Bluetooth headsets will cancel more outside noise
Quick question: What's cooler, a guy with a Bluetooth headset, or a Secret Service agent? If your answer was "neither," you might want to divert your eyes from Motorola's new Endeavor HX1 bone conduction Bluetooth headset. The not-yet-available Endeavor HX1 is Motorola's first attempt at marketing a Bluetooth headset with a bone conduction microphone in addition to its typical noise-canceling audio microphone.
Naturally, when a person speaks, his vocal chords vibrate and disrupt the air, and those disruptions are registered by a microphone, which converts them into electrical signals. With bone conduction, the microphone is not measuring vibrations in the air, but rather vibrations taking place within the speaker's head. It eliminates the need to pass the vibrations through the air, where they'd be subject to noise interference.
What Apple will not be delivering on Friday with its iPhone 3G S
If you're an Apple fan, you could also be a ritualistic line-waiter. Cupertino metes out the information, and the rumor mills churn like crazy, causing people to queue up, sometimes completely spontaneously, in hopes of receiving something new and brilliant from the Infinite Loop.
Tomorrow morning, all 211 US Apple Stores and more than 2,200 AT&T corporate stores will begin slinging the new iPhone 3G S to customers eagerly waiting to sink their teeth into a juicy new Apple phone. But if you aren't one of the thousands of pre-order customers, you might want heed the pundits' chants of "evolutionary, not revolutionary," and sleep in your own bed tonight instead of on the sidewalk. Here's why:
Are cell towers ugly? Ericsson may have an alternative
Where wireless communications company Ericsson usually deals in products meant to be unseen, it has taken a different approach with its new Capsule cell site, and designed a mobile broadband base station that is meant to be seen without standing out.
Even though mobile broadband coverage is in increased demand, property owners and communities are often less than thrilled to have cell towers erected near their homes and places of business. Companies have tried to make the giant towers less obtrusive by hiding them in fake foliage, or in creative architecture, and in urban areas, they're frequently put up wherever there is free space.
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.
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