Latest Technology News

This morning, Google began deploying an over-the-air software update for its Nexus One phones, including the addition of true pinch-to-zoom multitouch and synchronization features for Google Maps, as well as a purported fix for poor 3G connectivity for at least one version of the phone's firmware. In the early minutes after deployment, there appeared to be some hope as some users of Google's support forums reported improved signal strength.

But that was in the early going. As the hours passed, customers were correcting their existing reports, and others were adding new reports, of only marginally improved 3G speeds at best. Connectivity appears to have improved for some -- getting at least some 3G where there was none before -- but that's not a complete solution for them yet. What's more, troubles with 3G signals being completely dropped when the phone is touched by human hands -- a problem reported by a minority of users, but still a sizable number -- seemed to continue.

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Somebody at Microsoft should be fired for laying off Don Dodge. The list of reasons why his layoff was stupid gets longer by the day. Yesterday's Dodge blog post, "From MSFT evangelist to Mac enthusiast -- the other side of the road," adds another reason. This Silicon Valley insider, who for five years evangelized Microsoft, has taken on the true tone of conversion -- a man filled with new Apple and Google religion. His conversion to the new faith is nothing short of tech evangelism disaster for Microsoft.

In my late-December post, "10 things Microsoft did wrong in 2009," "laid off Don Dodge" ranked No. 3. What seemed bad for Microsoft then is suddenly much worse.

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Though it seems like streaming TV services are getting more diverse and robust by the week, Parks Associates today said the number of people who consider them a viable replacement to their cable or satellite subscriptions is actually shrinking.

According to the consumer research firm's "All Eyes on Video" study, the percentage of broadband-connected homes that would consider canceling their pay TV subscriptions in favor of online video has steadily declined for the last two years.

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Microsoft shouldn't let Google set the Internet Explorer 6-ending agenda. Google services will stop supporting the browser, starting on March 1. It's Microsoft 's browser and responsibility for putting this antiquated technology -- and all Internet users subsequently affected by malicious and criminal activity -- out of misery. Save the Web! Stop Internet Explorer 6 now!

If security really is Microsoft's top priority -- and I say that it's not --  IE6 shouldn't be used by anyone anywhere. Microsoft bears the blame for the IE6 scourge. High IE6 usage is more than a situation of users clinging to older technology. Microsoft created this problem by:

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Since well before Motorola released even its first Android device, a render of a seafoam green and silver slider phone called "Calgary" was floating around the Android blogs. It wasn't until today that Motorola officially announced this phone. Now known as Devour, the new Android device will be available on Verizon Wireless in March.

Looking like the slightly smaller cousin of the popular Droid, Devour is Verizon's third Android phone, and first that carries Motorola's trademark MotoBLUR interface (built upon Android 1.6). In many respects, Devour looks quite a bit like the Droid, except with specs a little lighter to encourage affordability. The display, for example, is a 3.1" HVGA capacitive touchscreen with 320 x 480 resolution instead of 3.7" (480 x 854); and the camera is 3 megapixels instead of 5.

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Download Opera 10.5 "Pre-alpha" for Windows from Fileforum now.

This week marked Google's first release of a development build browser called Chrome 5, which contains some not-yet-fully-implemented features including the browser's first personalized security settings. In recent months, Chrome's dev build has been the standard-setter for performance in Windows, with scores in Betanews tests that rise by as much as one point -- one relative quantum of IE7/Vista horsepower -- per month.

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A new software update for the Nexus One Android phone will finally offer the famous "pinch to zoom" functionality found in other "superphones" such as the Apple iPhone, Palm Pre, and HTC HD2. This news came from Google earlier today.

The famous multitouch gesture has been present on Android phones outside of the US (including the Nexus One) but due to unspecified reasons, the American version of Android has not fully supported it.

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Just over two years ago now, Facebook began deploying a behavioral tracking service it called Beacon, which automatically enabled the tracking of Facebook users' behavior, but shared that data with advertising partners. It wasn't an "opt-in" service by anyone's definition, and after Facebook took down most of the service, customers filed a class-action suit against the social network.

In a proposed settlement last September, Facebook is opting to use its own money -- some $9.5 million -- to establish a fund for the creation of a foundation to help make Web users more aware of their privacy rights, and how they can improve their online safety. It's what the law calls a cy près settlement, named for an old French phrase that literally means, "the next best thing."

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Windows PC vendors can effectively raise selling prices -- not that it will be easy, particularly as long as they sell netbooks. One Windows PC OEM shows the way. Today, Sony announced new E-series laptops packing Intel i3 and i5 core processors and boasting, brashy colored exteriors. The $799.99 price is about $326 more than the average selling price of laptops sold at US retail in fourth quarter, according to NPD data.

The $500-$1,000 price brand also is where Apple doubled its US retail unit share year over year in fourth quarter. Similarly, Apple unit share for retail PCs selling in the premium price brand -- more than $1,000 -- rose from 79 percent to 90 percent. Both segments are where the margins are.

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Popular gadget blog Engadget has been forced to turn off comments for an undetermined period because the posters have gotten a bit overzealous with poor-form commentary.

In the post announcing the temporary ban today, Editor-in-Chief Joshua Topolsky said, "What is normally a charged -- but fun -- environment for our users and editors has become mean, ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening in some situations... and that's just not acceptable. Some of you out there in the world of anonymous grandstanding have gotten the impression that you run the place, but that's simply not the case."

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Late yesterday afternoon, right on schedule, Microsoft announced the "general availability" of Windows Azure, its cloud-based hosting service for .NET applications. With a release like this, "GA" is somewhat peculiar, especially since the service has actually been in operation for several months. But it does mean that a ribbon has been cut, and from now on, new accounts are being signed up as commercial licenses. Old accounts are being given the warning to either convert or jump ship.

From this point on, prospective Azure customers will be given the opportunity to experiment with a limited amount of storage and transaction bandwidth, for a limited time. From now until July 31, testers will be allowed free access to 25 hours of a small compute instance with 500 MB of storage, and 10,000 transactions on one SQL Azure database (which will only be free for the first three months). Usage above that level will be charged at the regular rate of $0.12 per hour plus $0.15 per GB per month storage, and $9.99 per month per 1 GB database.

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Just short of one year after the Bluetooth 3.0 specification was unveiled, we are just now beginning to see designs that take it into consideration.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) posted a Core spec 3.0 "qualified design listing" yesterday for a new Samsung Mobile phone going by the name GT-S8500, a 3.1" OLED touchscreen device.

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Since the development of X, one of the first windowing UIs for UNIX, and as evidenced by Apple's early experiments with Lisa, the forerunner of Macintosh, software designers have been intrigued by the concept of a document-centric computing environment. More like a physical desktop, such a system would center not around the programs you launch but the work you do. The functions and applications pertaining to that work would pop up in the margins, but most of the time would stay out of the way.

That's the old-fashioned idea that the designers behind the Chromium OS project -- the open source team whose work feeds into Google's Chrome OS -- are now publicly experimenting with. With only a few crude mockups to show off today, the crew appears to be considering an environment that's scalable to any size tablet, where the document consumes the entire screen, but the functions and apps are tucked away either outside the margins or through zoomable context menus.

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Today, mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson announced a new smartphone called Aspen which is the first officially-announced Windows Mobile 6.5.3 device.

It's certainly not the big "Zune phone" or "Project Pink" announcement that we are expecting from Microsoft's mobile division this month, but it is nonetheless an important step for Windows Mobile.

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Apple today has issued a firmware upgrade for problematic 27" iMacs which are widely reported to be plagued with screen problems such as an erratic flicker or yellow patches in the screen.

An internal document from Apple support last week said that owners of yellowing 27" iMacs may have to arrange for a replacement LCD panel. For flickering, however, users can install the graphics firmware update from December 21, and then today's display firmware update.

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