Microsoft speeds up Windows Phone 7.5 updates -- to half of supported phones
With the Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango" update successfully installing on Microsoft-powered devices worldwide for over a week, Microsoft has decided to open up the update to half of all eligible phones as of Monday. The company said that it will not yet open the upgrade to all phones as it wished to compile data from its smaller operators to ensure smooth updating.
"I know some of you have questions about how Windows Phones are selected to receive the update," general manager of Windows Phone 7 customer experience Eric Hautala wrote. "Put simply, it’s done totally at random, with absolutely no preference for carrier, model, or country. Random sampling is an important engineering technique to accurately measure quality and pinpoint issues early."
Five years on, Microsoft finally gives up on Zune
It seems like eons ago that the first details of Microsoft's Zune player were leaked right here on the pages of Betanews, but five tortuous years later that effort is over. On the company's official support website, Microsoft let users know that it was finally giving up.
This was a complete reversal from its statements just yesterday denying that its music player was dead. Asymco founder Horace Deidu noted the irony. "Yesterday Microsoft denied that Zune was being discontinued," he mused. "Today it confirmed that Zune has been discontinued."
T-Mobile and Walmart offer dirt-cheap 4G data plan
Aiming to attract the increasing number of data-intensive wireless users, T-Mobile says it will begin offering a new prepaid plan exclusively through Walmart. The plan will feature unlimited data and texting with 100 minutes of voice calling for $30 per month, and is available starting October 16.
As part of the new offering, T-Mobile will also expand its prepaid device lineup to six, including a 4G-capable device. The carrier declined to specify the device to Betanews, only saying that it would be announced "in the near future."
Here's the video game you should buy this holiday season
If you have a gamer in your household, this is a story you might want to read before deciding what to buy them this holiday season.
First person shooters remain hot according to a survey of hotly anticipated upcoming video games, as the top two most sought after games fall in the genre. Research firm Nielsen found that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, available November 8, tops many gamer's wish lists: a quarter of respondents listed the title in their top five holiday games.
T-Mobile joins Verizon to block Apple injunction against Samsung
With Apple's battle against Samsung heating up, T-Mobile is doing its best not to get burned. If Apple is successful in getting a preliminary injunction against Samsung, the nation's fourth biggest carrier could find itself in a bad spot. Verizon has iPhone to fall back on. T-Mobile mostly offers Android smartphones, and Samsung makes the flagship models.
On Wednesday, T-Mobile filed a legal brief with the United District Court for the Northern District of California asking a federal judge to reject Apple's request for preliminary injunction against four Samsung devices: Droid Charge, Galaxy S 4G, Infuse 4G and Galaxy Tab 10.1. A hearing is scheduled for October 13. If granted, Samsung would be barred from offering these Android devices in the United States.
Virtualization makes sense for small and medium businesses
For small and medium businesses (SMB), the cost of IT can be sometimes prohibitive. Budgets are small and resources are thin: virtualization may be an attractive alternative to the server farm as it is easy to set up and less time consuming to maintain. Through virtualization, SMB IT deployments can be much more expansive and comprehensive due to cost savings typically realized as a result.
A recent survey by VMWare validates this. Of the 309 SMB IT managers surveyed using virtualization, nearly 73 percent saw a significant decrease in the amount of time spent on routine IT tasks. Over two-thirds also were better equipped to adapt to the changing needs of their businesses, and nearly the same number were able to significantly reduce their hardware costs.
FCC sued over leaving wireless data out of open Internet rules
Media reform group Free Press has filed suit in the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, asking the courts to review the Federal Communications Commission's "Open Internet Rules." Those policies were passed last December in an effort to create a formal code of conduct for broadband providers following accusations of unfair traffic handling.
These rules force providers to be transparent about how they handle Internet traffic and forbid the favoring of one company's traffic over another. But it's not the same for wireless data.
How does Amazon Kindle Fire compare to iPad 2? [chart]
Amazon's unveiling of the Kindle Fire on Wednesday took the eReader ever closer to becoming a full-fledged tablet device. With the move, Amazon will now have its devices ever-more increasingly compared to tablets rather than other e-readers in its class.
The most obvious comparison is price. At $199, Amazon is clearly aiming to get as many Fires in the hands of consumers as possible. It could see the device as a loss leader, hoping to make up any lost margins on the sales of content from its music and entertainment services.
Google+ market share grows 1,269% in one week
Website traffic analysis firm Experian Hitwise said Tuesday that traffic to Google+ grew some 1,269 percent from the week ending September 17 to the week ending September 24. This was good enough to catapult the site from the 54th most visited site in the Social Networking and Forums category to 8th in just one week.
Research director Heather Dougherty said Hitwise's analysis indicated Google+ had nearly 15 million total US visits in the last week alone, its first since opening up to the public. She also said the company's analysis indicates that a large portion of the services users still remain early adopters.
Apple will announce one iPhone, not two, on Oct. 4th
Patient (or impatient) iPhone aficionados will not have to wait much longer for that highly anticipated iPhone 5: Apple on Tuesday began mailing out invitations to journalists for an iPhone event on October 4, to be held at its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. Apple often drops hints in the graphic elements accompanying the invites about what's coming. The not-so-cryptic message: One iPhone will be coming, contradicting weeks of rumors about two -- the other being the so-called 4S.
It's not clear why Apple chose to have its event on-campus this time versus its typical launch venue, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The YBCA is showing no events for that day. In any case, Apple may be leaning towards a more intimate setting, hoping to maximize press coverage for the device by only inviting the most highly-read news outlets to the event itself.
USPTO denies Apple's 'multi-touch' trademark -- for the final time
Apple has made big brouhaha about its multi-touch user interface on iOS products like iPhone, and has for almost four years been attempting to trademark the term here in the United States. That effort is now for naught as a filing made public on Friday shows that the company's application was denied.
Apple originally applied for the trademark back on January 9, 2007, the same day the first iPhone was introduced at that year's Macworld Expo. Its application was initially denied by a US Patent and Trademark Office attorney on the basis that it was "merely descriptive of the applicants goods," but Apple pressed on.
T-Mobile's Galaxy S II is a beast
T-Mobile won't deny its customers the best. With the AT&T merger in doubt over antitrust concerns, and what appears to be the increasing likelihood that the carrier will not offer iPhone 5 come October when its other large competitors likely will, T-Mobile needs to offer some truly innovative smartphone.
The carrier is showing the best comes to those wait. Its Samsung Galaxy S II variant may be the last to come to these shores, but it is by far most powerful of the three that were launched for Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile.
Google+ sees explosive growth, 50 million-plus users in less than 3 months
All that talk of Google+ becoming a "ghost town" seems premature. Paul Allen, founder of Ancestry.com and self-titled "Google+ unofficial statistician," said his model which attempts to estimate the number of Google+ users by counting unusual surnames shows that the social network grew some 30 percent just in the two days following its opening to the public.
It gets even better than that: Allen estimates that as of Monday ("plus or minus a few days"), the site had reached some 50 million users. Google+ would have achieved this feat in just 88 days. Compare this explosive growth to other services: MySpace took 1,046 days to reach that level; Twitter 1,096 days; Facebook 1,325 days; and LinkedIn 2,354 days. It's clear that Google's social networking service has captured the interest of consumers and continues to grow quickly.
mysql.com hacked and serving malware, stolen data sold on hacker forums
Users visiting mysql.com are being infected with malware, say security researchers. According to security firm Amorize, the hack is delivering malicious code through the use of an iFrame which in turn infects users with the Black Hole exploit.
Black Hole exploits security holes within the user's browser -- including plugins -- to find a hole through which a piece of malware can be used without the user's consent. Users would not need to agree to anything: Amorize found that simply visiting the site will lead to an infection.
Samsung to release its first Windows Phone 7.5 mobile in Italy
Samsung unveiled a new smartphone based on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango," the Omnia W on Monday. The Omnia W is the latest in a line of higher-end Microsoft-powered smartphones from the company, all which carry the "Omnia" brand.
The Omnia W features a 1.4GHz processor and HSPA capable of 14.4Mbps connectivity. The screen is a 3.7" Super AMOLED and features both front and rear facing cameras. It also features built-in Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live, and LinkedIn connectivity through Microsoft's "People Hub."
Ed's Bio
Ed Oswald is a freelance journalist from the Reading, PA area. Although he has written across a variety of subjects, Ed’s passion and focus has been on technology and gadgets. His work regularly appears on tech news sites BetaNews, PCWorld, and Technologizer, and has been syndicated to eWeek, Time’s Techland blog, VentureBeat and the New York Times.
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