Apple starts selling iPad mini
Today in more than 30 countries, new iPads -- fourth-generaton 9.7-inch and new mini 7.9-inch -- are available for purchase. In-store sales, direct from Apple and third-party retailers follow a week of pre-orders. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company unveiled both tablets on October 23.
iPad 4 is largely unchanged from its predecessor; the biggest difference being the new A6X processor, which Apple claims doubles performance. The mini is a fresh design and smaller physical size that lowers the entry-level price to $329. The company chose to preserve the larger tablet's user experience, including 5MP rear-facing camera, on its smaller sibling. Big difference, other than physical size, is dramatic lowering of screen resolution -- 1024 x 768 on the mini compared to 2048 x 1536 resolution on iPad 4.
Batchrun gets the job done without the command line
Batch files can be a great way to automate common PC maintenance tasks, but to get the most out them you’ll need an in-depth knowledge of the various Windows command line tools. Otherwise you may not even know that there’s a way to launch programs in a minimized window, for instance, let alone exactly how to do it.
If you’re not really interested in wading through endless discussion of command line switches in the manuals, though, the free Batchrun offers a simpler, GUI-based route to basic PC scripting.
Three out of four smartphones ship with Android
Android's ascension over iPhone reached the figurative stratosphere during third quarter, according to IDC. Seventy-five percent of smartphones shipped with the operating system -- that's up from 57.5 percent a year earlier. By comparison, iOS nudged up to 14.9 percent, from 13.8 percent. That's right, little more than 1 percent. There's a reason that in September I asserted "Android wins the smartphone wars". There's certain appropriateness to IDC releasing the data on Day of the Dead.
Out of fairness to Apple, iPhone unit volumes rose considerably more, 57.3 percent, than market share reflects -- 26.9 million units compared to 17.1 million a year earlier. Android shipments rose 91.5 percent; 136 million, compared to 71 million in Q3 2011. Still, Android volumes in the quarter exceeded that for all smartphones in 2007. My how the market has changed.
So-called technical glitch robs Firefox of 6M to 9M downloads, Mozilla claims
Almost four months ago the European Commission opened an investigation after Microsoft failed to distribute the browser ballot to Windows users. The problem, according to the Redmond, Wash.-based corporation, only affected 10 percent of PCs, but Mozilla says there's more to it than meets the eye. Microsoft claims a glitch, lasting 18 months, caused the ballot to disappear.
Harvey Anderson, who works at Mozilla on business and legal affairs, revealed some numbers that portray the impact on Mozilla Firefox downloads. Prior to Microsoft fixing the problem daily downloads of the popular open-source browser decreased by 63 percent to 20,000 per day. After Microsoft decided to fix the issue the number of Mozilla Firefox downloads increased by 150 percent to 50,000 per day. The European Commission isn't overly excited by what happened, and sent Redmond a "statement of objections". That usually implies that a fine is underway...
MIT engineers may have cracked the smartphone battery life problem
ETA Devices, a Massachusetts company founded by MIT electrical engineering professors Joel Dawson and David Perrault, has designed a new signal amplifier for cellular communications that could result in a massive drop in power consumption.
As our mobile communications technologies progress, our demands for electrical energy have increased, both on the end user side and on the tower side. When a phone is looking for a signal, for example, the transmitter kicks on, the amplifier cranks up its signal, the energy demands increase, the phone heats up, and the battery dies quickly.
This year, Amazon brings Black Friday a bit early
The holidays seem to get earlier every year, with retailers like Wal-Mart rolling out its Christmas decorations before the leaves have even begun to change. With Halloween now behind us and Thanksgiving approaching, Internet retail giant Amazon has gone a step further by bringing early Black Friday deals to customers.
The company today unveiled its Black Friday Deals web site, complete with a Daily Deal starting today. In addition to those daily deals, there is a long list of products being offered at deep discounts, from cameras to toys to computers, and even kitchenware. The store kicked off with a discount of up to 65% on Joss Whedon DVD's including such popular titles as Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Get the Google Nexus 7 calendar app in the Galaxy Nexus
Even though the Asus Nexus 7 and Samsung Galaxy Nexus share the same version of Android and similar display resolutions, some apps are not identical. On the Google-branded Nexus 7 tablet, the Calendar app displays more information, and thanks to the modding community it's now available for the Galaxy Nexus as well.
Instead of the lines in the Calendar app from Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the modded tablet variant shows a text description for each event of the day, making it a bit more useful.
Two modded versions are available at the moment, with the first based on the Calendar that ships with Android 4.1.2 and the second on the one available as a separate download from Google Play. Both can be used, but only the latter allows users to sync events dating back one full year.
Amazon releases Cloud Drive Photos for Android
This morning Amazon quietly pushed out a brand new app designed to let Android devices interface with their popular Cloud Drive storage service. Amazon, of course, has a horse in this race with their Kindle Fire HD tablets that have seen increased sales in recent days, ironically at what appears to be Apple's expense. The app is specifically designed for photos, so let's take a walk though and see what it can do.
First, it's a free install and is available from both Google Play and the Amazon AppStore for Android. Once you have downloaded it to your device you are presented with a sign-in screen that requires you to have, or create, an Amazon account, which is something that the vast majority of people probably already have anyway. Users automatically have 5 GB of free storage, but more can be purchased for prices comparable to those offered by Google Drive or SkyDrive.
Symantec completes VeriSign Japan acquisition, expands presence in strong Asian market
Computer security company Symantec announced on Thursday that its acquisition of VeriSign Japan KK was complete, and as of November first, the Japanese company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Symantec.
Two years ago, Symantec spent an estimated $1.28 billion in cash to acquire Verisign's identity and authentication businesses, including its Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate Services, Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Services, the VeriSign Trust Services and the VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) Authentication Service.
LinkedIn announces most followed 'thought leaders'
Early last month LinkedIn added a new feature which allows users to follow 'thought leaders'. Today, the popular business-oriented social network introduced new features to complement the recently added functionality.
LinkedIn announced that more than four million of its users now follow thought leaders, the latter of which created more than 850 posts. The social network introduced 150 thought leaders a month ago, but the number has been increased and now includes the CEO of Box, co-founder of Reddit as well as others. Users can now sort thought leaders based on a number of criteria such as alphabetical or most followed.
UK judges order defiant Apple to fix misleading Samsung apology
I wondered whether UK judges would kick in the teeth of arrogant Apple lawyers. They'll need dental work now. Today, the Court of Appeal in London delivered a figurative fist to the face in response to Apple posting a court-ordered apology that was anything but -- and actually accomplishes the opposite of its intent.
In July, UK judge Colin Birss ruled against Apple in a case charging Samsung with copying iPad's design. He ordered Apple to post an apology on its website and in major publications, to help offset the public image damage inflicted on Samsung. The American company appealed and lost. That notice, posted last week, defies the spirit of the order, an appellate judge told Apple lawyers today, according to Bloomberg.
Kim Dotcom reveals his Megaupload replacement -- Mega
You’ve got to hand it to Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. Despite living under house arrest, his assets frozen, and facing the prospect of extradition to the United States and up to 20 years in prison if found guilty of copyright theft, money laundering and racketeering fraud, he’s pressing ahead with plans for a new file-sharing site.
Mega, his Megaupload replacement, was revealed yesterday, and despite just consisting of a holding page at the moment, was quickly overwhelmed. "Millions of users hitting at once. I'm delighted by the interest. But servers can't handle it. The new Mega will. WOW!!!" Dotcom tweeted an hour after the news broke.
Answers launches exclusive Windows 8 app: This is more important than you may think
Thursday, question and answer site Answers launched its new Windows 8 application in the Windows Store.
The application is designed in the Windows 8 style, gives users the basic functionality of asking, answering and editing questions, as well as exploring over 8,000 categories and browsing featured content based on interests. The app utilizes the Windows 8 system-wide search functionality, and users can pin Q&A categories as live tiles on the start screen.
Windows Phone 3.0 app for OS X is available now
Three days ago Microsoft publicly unveiled Windows Phone 8. In order to complement the newly released smartphone operating system, the Redmond, Wash.-based corporation first launched the Windows Phone app for Windows 8 and now the OS X version is available as well.
The main role of the application is to sync Macs with both Windows Phone 7 and 8 devices as well as Zune HD media players, but the focus is obviously more on the former considering the recent event. Using the app, media files such as movies, music, podcasts or TV shows can be synced from an existing iTunes library, as well as pictures and videos from iPhoto or Aperture. The app works the other way around too, since pictures and videos taken with a smartphone can be imported to the existing Aperture and iPhoto libraries.
Google Hangouts redesign is about you
If you ever wondered why Microsoft spent $8.5 billion to buy Skype and now tightly integrates the service into new software, Google+ Hangouts is one reason. The search giant has gone far making video group chatting easy, as well broadcasting live streams and posting them to YouTube. Today, Google improves Hangouts, bringing the overall feel in line with other, recent Plus changes. Most importantly, there's more white space, less clutter and clearer notifications. Say, we should Hangout and try it out.
Amit Fulay, Google product manager, explains: "The most important part of a hangout is the people in the room", which aptly describes the redesign's major benefit. Hangouts now consolidates "important items -- like invites, chat, and apps -- into a sidebar that's there when you need it, and tucked away when you don't".
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