MySpace's relative stability in mobile usage attracts potential buyers
In the first month of 2011, Myspace CEO Mike Jones confirmed that News Corp was looking to spin off or sell his social media and entertainment site. According to reports on Friday, more than 20 parties have already expressed interest in MySpace.
Silicon Alley Insider on Thursday posted a chart concisely titled "The Utter Collapse of MySpace," which showed how the social-network-turned-entertainment-site dropped from 70 million unique views to 45 million uniques between 2010 and 2011. It's a sharp decline, but MySpace has been bleeding users for more than five years, illustrated by Quantcast's estimates below.
Xoom Corp. sues Motorola for obvious reasons
We're pretty confident you know what Xoom is by now. Stories we've run about the upcoming Android 3.0 tablet from Motorola Mobility have been some of the most popular items of the last three months.
Yesterday, just before all the advance reviews were published, law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius filed a trademark suit with the US District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of San Francisco-based money transfer company Xoom Corporation.
Android Market e-books goes live; music and movies to follow?
The Android Market has never had any specific ban on carrying and selling straight up text documents, and users could search through the market and find apps that were, in effect, standalone e-books. Now, however, there is a section dedicated specifically to e-books which currently features around 500 titles from publishers such as Simon and Schuster, Macmillan, W.W. Norton and Co., Hachette, and more.
The URL for the site, market.android.com/books, was discovered by Android Guys last week, and the site noted that URLs for /music, and /movies worked and resolved to the Android Market.
IE9's 'Do Not Track' features could become Web standards
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C,) the standards body responsible for HTML5, accepted and published Microsoft's member submission for standardized privacy features on Thursday.
Last year, the Federal Trade Commission endorsed a framework for consumer privacy which suggested a persistent browser setting to protect users from services that collect and harvest browser data without users knowing about it.
Apple previews mobile-inspired Mac OS Lion to developers
Last October, Apple gave the public its first look at OS X 10.7 "Lion", illustrating Cupertino's vision of mobile-inspired future versions of the Mac operating system. Thursday, the company has released its first developer preview of the OS to members of the Mac Developer Program.
Since the launch of the iPhone, Apple has shifted its strategies to focus squarely on the mobile computing paradigm, and CEO Steve Jobs has repeatedly stressed the importance of "leaving the past behind" as computing in the "mobile era" matures. Leaving the past behind has involved shifting the focus onto new mobile standards in HTML5 and abandoning support for legacy technology like Adobe Flash, ending the company's nearly decade-old line of servers, and now phasing features from its mobile operating system into its operating system for PCs.
Democratic Senators move to block GOP from dismantling net neutrality rules
Four Democratic Senators on Wednesday sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, urging them to quash the GOP-led House Resolution to overturn the Federal Communications Commission's new net neutrality rules with either the appropriations process or the Congressional Review Act.
The letter, drafted by Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), and Al Franken (D-MN), says, "Such action aims to strip the FCC of its legal authority over modern communications and hand control of the Internet over to the owners of the wires that deliver information and services over them."
Microsoft yanks Windows Phone 7 update for Samsung devices
The minor update to Windows Phone 7 that started rolling out on Monday has been problematic for Samsung devices running the OS, and Microsoft has stalled the update process.
The update, according to Michael Stroh in the Windows Phone Blog, was "designed to improve the software update process itself."
Bicycle computer maker Velocomp launches iPhone telemetry solution
Florida-based sports tech company Velocomp on Tuesday launched an iOS telemetry solution for cyclists called iBike Dash Cycling Computer. The solution is, in effect, a software version of the company's dedicated bike computers called iBike Power.
It consists of a bicycle mount for an iPhone or iPod Touch, a wireless speed sensor, and an associated software application that gauges speed, heartrate, windspeed, trip distance and time, elevation, and power, and includes programmable workouts, and turn-by-turn navigation.
Heads up Microkia watchers, LightSquared gets $586M for new LTE network
LightSquared, the company building a hybrid LTE and Mobile Satellite wireless network that will be sold as wholesale bandwidth to the major U.S. networks, announced Tuesday that it has closed a $586 million loan led by Swiss investment bank UBS AG and JP Morgan. Over the last seven months, the company has raised more than $2 billion in debt and equity to build its ambitious new network.
For as huge an undertaking as building an entirely new network is, LightSquared is moving along at a steady clip. In August, the company's wireless licenses consolidated to allow MSS/ATC to operate in the L-band, then in November, it put its first satellite in orbit, and just under a month ago, it got FCC clearance to sell network bandwidth to other carriers. The money it has secured from UBS and JP Morgan will be put toward "general corporate purposes" and construction of its terrestrial LTE network.
Update here: Windows 7 SP1 RTM now available for download
As expected, Microsoft made the complete, release to manufacturing (RTM) version of Windows 7 SP1 available for download Tuesday.
The RTM build is listed as (7601.17514.101119-1850) and it is expected to be pushed to Windows Update and the Windows Service Pack Center later today. However, for those eager to get the update downloaded and installed right away, we're hosting it for download in FileForum today.
"Smart": the next soon-to-be outdated tech buzzword
The different epochs of consumer computing are marked by catchphrases that coincide with the great money-making technology of the time. At the dawn of the twenty-teens, we're already well into the generation of "smart devices." Let's take a look at what brought us to this new age of smartness.
In the 8-bit computing era, everything was "micro." From microprocessors were born microcomputers, and from there we had a whole slew of products, brands, and companies using the prefix in their name: Microprose, Microsoft, Microware, Microvision, BBC Micro and its related TV show Micro Live, Micro-Star International (MSI), and Micronics.
The Hype vs. the Science of digital eyewear
Maintaining skepticism is good practice for consumers, but even moderate consumer skepticism can play serious hell with a company that pushes its product too hard. This is especially true among tech adopters. Betanews' Tim Conneally takes an objective look at Gunnar Optiks and the value of their "digital eyewear" against the skepticism it elicits.
Anyone who spends enough hours on the Web will eventually learn to recognize targeted marketing; but people who follow cutting edge technology face an especially large amount of product marketing and sales pitch hyperbole.
Look no further, the world's fastest iPhones are in Israel
Ookla Net Metrics' free network speed test speedtest.net is so widely used that even the federal government has recognized it as a reliable tool for measuring wireless network conditions. Friday, the company published results of some 57,000 user-initiated iPhone speedtests in the U.S., which showed users on the AT&T network getting average speeds substantially higher than iPhone users on Verizon Wireless.
After publishing the data, the story got some good coverage pitting iPhone against iPhone. But it should have come as no surprise to anyone who knows wireless technologies that HSPA was faster than EV-DO rev. A. On paper, HSPA's theoretical max speed is 7.2 Mbps, and EV-DO rev. A's is only 3.1 Mbps. It's pretty widely accepted.
Twitter defensively blocks BlackBerry, Android apps from growing threat UberMedia
Popular microblog Twitter has blocked third-party mobile Twitter apps Twidroyd and UberTwitter on Friday, citing unspecified policy violations.
"Every day, we suspend hundreds of applications that are in violation of our policies," the Twitter Help Center blog said Friday. "Generally, these apps are used by a small number of users. We are taking the unusual step of sharing this with you because today's suspension may affect a larger number of users."
Opera starts new codenaming trend with first 'Barracuda' browser snapshot
Opera software has taken a cue from Ubuntu and will be giving its browser builds "more exciting" public code names starting this year. Thursday evening, the company released a snapshot of the browser formerly known as Opera 11.10, now known simply as "Barracuda."
This version updates the browser core to version 2.8.99, which adds the implementation of the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) to the browser's current list of supported web font formats which includes: TrueType/OpenType TT fonts (.ttf), OpenType PS fonts (.otf) and SVG.
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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