Android dominates smartphone market but consumes tons of data
Market research company Nielsen has released its smartphone market share figures for the first quarter of 2011 which show that Android has risen to both the top of market share and data consumption.
Android's meteoric rise can be seen quite clearly when comparing Nielsen's first quarter 2010 numbers with those it just released.
Nvidia improves performance, not power, ahead of E3 with new notebook GPU
Next week in Los Angeles, the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo -more familiarly known as E3- begins. Graphics company Nvidia chose Computex in Taipei this week to unveil its new GeForce GTX 560M mobile graphics processor for notebook PC gaming.
Nvidia has two lines of mobile processors, GT and GTX, respectively designed for lower and higher performance gaming. The GTX 560M that Nvidia launched this week is a semi-upgrade to the high performance line that offers a 1550MHz Processor Clock, a 775MHz Graphics Clock, 192 CUDA Cores, and up to 3GB of 192-bit 1250MHz GDDR5 RAM. Nvidia says it has better performance per watt than all previous generations of its notebook GTX GPUs, which means higher frame rates with similar battery consumption.
Acer shows off Windows Phone Mango handset, MeeGo tablet
Taiwanese PC maker Acer took a rather sudden hit last April when Gianfranco Lanci resigned as CEO of the company, saying it should have been focused on competing with HTC and Apple in the mobile space instead of with HP in the PC space.
At the Computex trade show in Taipei, Acer this week has shown off its scattershot approach to covering the mobile device market, which will include, among other things, a 10" tablet running Intel's MeeGo operating system, and a Snapdragon-powered smartphone running Windows Phone 7 "Mango."
Maybe Steve Jobs should reconsider the iPhone radiation app after all
Now that the World Health Organization and The International Agency for Research on Cancer have classified mobile RF radiation a Class 2B carcinogen, it might be time for Steve Jobs to reconsider his interest in tawkon, the cell phone radiation gauge he personally rejected from the iTunes App store.
Israel-based Tawkon Ltd. has devised an application that turns a smartphone's RF baseband processor data into an an easy-to-read graph that tells you roughly how much radiation your mobile phone is emitting. Though the developers had several "encouraging" meetings with Apple executives, and the app was already available both for BlackBerry and Android, the app was ultimately rejected by Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
Mobile phones are as cancerous as HPV, engine exhaust, says WHO
The World Health Organization on Tuesday reclassified radio frequency electromagnetic fields generated by radio, television and wireless telecommunications as being possibly carcinogenic to humans.
A working group for The International Agency for Research on Cancer met over the last four days in May to assess and classify RF electromagnetic fields as a potential carcinogen, and the group found there to be positive, but limited causality between exposure to RF electromagnetism and glioma (glial cell tumors) and acoustic neuroma (intracranial tumor).
SanDisk unveils 128GB mobile tablet module
Currently, a mobile tablet is likely to offer on-board storage in one of three sizes: 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB. At Computex in Taipei today, SanDisk revealed a new SATA III SSD for mobile tablets and ultraportables that bumps storage up to the 128GB generation.
Sandisk's i100 drive is part of the company's integrated storage device series (iSSD) especially designed for tablets and ultrathin notebooks, which debuted last year. Claiming to be the world's smallest, fastest 128 GB SATA III BGA SSD, SanDisk says these units require as little as 10mW of power when their parent device is in sleep mode.
Nokia gives 3 reasons 2011 won't go as well as hoped
Finnish mobile telecommunications giant Nokia on Tuesday said it has lowered sales projections for its Devices and Services division, and because of this it has dropped its prior full-year projections altogether.
Nokia gave three clear reasons for dropping its net sales outlook to a figure "significantly lower" than its original EUR 6.1 billion to EUR 6.6 billion projection for the second quarter 2011.
Registration begins for 15th annual QuakeCon gaming fest
Registration for QuakeCon 2011, the annual PC gaming convention and LAN party is now open, and seats are filling up quickly.
QuakeCon is considered one of the United States' largest bring-your-own-computer (BYOC) PC gaming festivals and it grew from an event with fewer than one hundred attendees to one with just under ten thousand. The focus of the convention has always been the id Software franchise Quake, and since 2008, most of the convention's gaming events have centered on Quake Live.
If Windows Phone fails, Microsoft can still profit from Android's popularity
One year ago, Microsoft announced it had signed a licensing deal with Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC where Microsoft would receive royalties for every Android phone HTC made.
This week, a report from Citigroup analyst Walter Pritchard said that royalty fee amounts to $5 per Android phone.
Hollywood's 28-day delay for Redbox and Netflix is now Blockbuster's only advantage
National video rental chain Blockbuster went bankrupt because of the high price of running video stores when its principal competitors were shipping DVDs by mail, streaming movies online, or operating out of tiny, ubiquitous kiosks.
After being sold off to Dish Network, Blockbuster announced on Friday it is switching its pricing model to one nearly identical to competitor Redbox.
AT&T and T-Mobile merger: No way to resurrect competition once it's gone
The House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet met Thursday morning to examine the effects a merger between AT&T and T-Mobile would have on wireless competition.
AT&T, the United States' second largest wireless network, is looking to obtain federal approval to acquire the fourth largest network, T-Mobile USA in a deal that could fundamentally change the wireless telecommunications industry as it transitions into the 4G era and beyond.
This IE9 graph speaks for itself (in 93 languages)
Microsoft today more than doubled the number of supported languages in Internet Explorer 9, bringing its total to 93.
The IE9 team released the chart pictured above to illustrate how this update has helped Internet Explorer move from fourth place to first, ahead of Firefox, in terms of language support.
Amazon drops cost of ad-supported 3G Kindle as e-readers near generational shift
In a veritable repeat of the events of 2010, Amazon on Wednesday dropped the cost of its 3G-equipped Kindle with Special Offers to $164 after new, cheaper Kobo and Nook e-readers were debuted by its competitors.
Kobo, the e-reader brand associated with Borders and Indigo bookstores debuted a new 6" touchscreen e-reader on Monday called Kobo eReader Touch Edition. The new device cost $129.99, and last year's Kobo model dropped in price to $99.
Twitter acquires TweetDeck in battle for Twitter power users
After a couple of days of rumors, microblogging service Twitter has officially come forward and announced that it has acquired popular third-party Twitter dashboard TweetDeck.
"TweetDeck is a great example of a third-party developer that designed tools for the incredibly important audience of Twitter power-users and, in turn, created value for the network as a whole," Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said on Wednesday. "As Iain's [Dodsworth, TweetDeck founder] journey suggests, there is significant opportunity for developers who deliver insights that foster a more engaged Twitter user base."
We can run Android apps in Windows, says newly-funded BlueStacks
After working for nearly three years on a solution for delivering Android applications on systems with x86-based processors, Silicon Valley company BlueStacks today has officially "opened for business" with $7.5 million of series A funding.
BlueStacks started simply enough. After playing with her father's Android phone, the child of one of BlueStacks' founding engineers asked if she could get those apps on her MSI netbook.
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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