Nokia fragments Windows Phone Marketplace with more exclusive apps
At a relatively quiet opening day of the CTIA Wireless International 2012 convention on Tuesday, mobile phone maker Nokia announced its Lumia Windows Phones will receive a handful of exclusive applications that other Windows Phones will not, including apps from ESPN, AOL, and Groupon.
When the Lumia line of Nokia Windows Phones launched, Nokia provided a few solid exclusives, including Maps, Drive, and Music to improve usability and desirability of the devices. These apps are still not available on other Windows Phones in the Marketplace.
Oracle's fight with Google over Android: still no clear winner
In late 2010, information technology company Oracle sued Google for unlawfully using Java to power the Android mobile operating system. Oracle claimed the popular operating system violated seven of its fundamental Java patents, and the two companies began a long courtroom battle which yesterday came to a crossroads over copyrights.
Jurors sitting in on the trial in the District Court of the Northern District of California rendered a partial verdict on Monday, agreeing that Oracle had successfully proven Google's infringement upon the overall structure, sequence and organization of its Java copyrights.
Microsoft's $99 Xbox 360 bundle: what a rip-off!
Last week, we heard rumors that Microsoft would be releasing a Xbox 360 console with Kinect for $99, subsidized by a two-year Gold subscription commitment to the Xbox Live service, in a fashion similar to mobile phone subsidies.
Monday, the offer went live on the Microsoft Store site, and the plan, which got us excited here in the BetaNews news room, turns out to be no deal at all.
HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE picks up where its predecessor left off
In the continuing stream of "sequels" to popular Android smartphones, HTC and Verizon Wireless on Monday announced the Droid Incredible 4G LTE, the follow-up to the popular Droid Incredible, which launched at this time two years ago.
Part of what made the first Droid Incredible a hit was its price-to-performance ratio. For $199, the phone offered a high megapixel camera, a good processor speed, and an acceptable screen. HTC appears to have stuck to this balance with the Droid Icredible 4G LTE, while adding the namesake LTE radio.
What do Yahoo's CEO, MIT's dean of admissions, Miss Virginia and a Buddhist monk have in common?
A: They all lied on their résumés.
Scott Thompson, who was named chief executive of Yahoo at the beginning of 2012, has come under fire for putting false résumé information on documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Samsung unveils Galaxy S III with natural user interfaces, better camera
Leading Android smartphone maker Samsung on Thursday announced the latest installment in its two-year old line of Galaxy S smartphones, the Galaxy S III.
Here are the specs, straight from Samsung:
Windows Live is dead, long live Windows Live
In a blog post on Wednesday, President of Microsoft's Windows division Steven Sinofsky announced the seven-year old Windows Live brand is being retired.
Do not be mistaken, there are more than 500 million users of the various Microsoft services that fall under the general classification of Windows Live. They are alive and well.
Google Play carrier billing now includes music, movies, and e-books
Google on Wednesday announced that it has added carrier billing to the entire selection of content (apps, music, movies, and books) in its Google Play marketplace in seven countries. Participating carriers now let subscribers charge their Google Play purchases directly to their monthly phone bill.
The countries and network operators that will offer total carrier billing include:
The Xbox console will soon be free
Microsoft wonk Tom Warren reports that a new Xbox 360 and Kinect bundle will be offered at $99 with a two-year Xbox Live Gold subcription beginning next week. If this proves true, it will be the first example of a video game console using the mobile phone carrier subsidy model.
According to Warren's sources, the deal will only be available at Microsoft Stores, and it will include the 4 GB Xbox 360 console with a Kinect Sensor. The cost of a two-year Xbox Live Gold subscription is approximately $120.
The long road to a new BlackBerry begins today with alpha launch of new OS
As Ontario, Canada smartphone pioneer Research In Motion struggles to keep its BlackBerry smartphone platform relevant, one of the company's major strategic points is a major operating refresh with BlackBerry OS 10.
At its annual BlackBerry World conference on Tuesday, RIM has released a deluge of information about the "new BlackBerry" with BlackBerry 10, including a developer Alpha build of the platform with a special Dev alpha device, a BlackBerry 10 developer toolkit which includes the BlackBerry 10 Native SDK with Cascades (a native application development toolset that allows developers to build app interfaces in either C++ or QML) and the WebWorks SDK, which lets developers use HTML5 and CSS to build "native-like" apps.
Turn your Android device's camera into a Geiger counter with DARPA-funded app
Image Insight on Monday announced the first free trial release of GammaPix for Android smartphones, an application that loosely measures gamma radiation with the phone's camera.
The GammaPix gimmick is that it can detect radiation in different everyday situations, such as cosmic radiation while flying in an airplane, or gamma radiation in medical waste. You simply pull up the app, and begin taking a reading. Under normal circumstances, the camera can grab a complete reading in about five minutes.
The application uses technology that analyzes video and still imagery for the signature of gamma rays that have hit the image sensor. The measurements themselves indicate the rate of interactions of gamma ray radiation with the particular camera being used, so different phones will yield different results. Image Insight formed in 2010 with the explicit purpose of developing this app under a $679,000 contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Quickoffice, Android's best office suite, adds powerful new features in version 5.5
Quickoffice Inc. on Thursday evening pushed out a major feature update to its popular Android productivity application family which adds a host of new capabilities to its Word, Excel, and Powerpoint document editors, and adds the new ability to annotate and edit PDF files.
The new PDF editing feature tops the list of new additions in Quickoffice 5.5, as it allows users to write directly on PDF files, highlight text, insert shapes, and add and remove comments.
Amazon fixed one of the most broken things about Kindle Fire, now it needs to fix the rest
For a platform that was built to handle text documents, Amazon Kindle's support for non Kindle-formatted files has been nothing short of atrocious.
Wirelessly sending documents to a Kindle required that they be emailed to a Kindle email address where they'd be converted and sent to the user's Kindle library; or they could be uploaded directly to Kindle e-readers or tablets via USB, but with spotty usability.
Facebook opens antivirus download shop to broaden security resources
Popular social network Facebook has partnered with security vendors Symantec, McAfee, Microsoft, Sophos, and Trend Micro in a program to simultaneously improve Facebook's security and broaden the availability of the antivirus software from each of the partners.
Since 2008, Facebook has kept a URL blacklist, and any time a Facebook user posts a link to one of the blacklisted URL, Facebook pops up an interstitial warning page before the browser actually connects off to the suspicious destination. Facebook's parters in this effort included McAfee, Google, Web of Trust, and Websense.
Google Drive: perfect for a 'Nexus Tablet' that takes on Kindle Fire
Google on Tuesday finally rolled out the long-rumored Google Drive cloud storage platform to compete with the likes of Dropbox, Skydrive, Box, iCloud, and all the rest.
But let's put cloud storage competition aside for a moment. When Google Drive was announced, I was immediately reminded of a recent quote in the New York Times:
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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