Latest Technology News

Sorry, Apple, but your decision to delay introducing iPads internationally doesn't wash. Your excuse -- that US demand was unexpectedly high and, as a result, you had to prioritize customers stateside until production could catch up -- is about as shallow and transparent as a Petri Dish full of Joost's good ideas.

I don't believe Apple's flimsy excuse and I don't believe anyone else should, either. If you think that Apple, master of the consumer electronics zeitgeist, was unable to accurately predict epic interest in a tablet whose existence was first speculated upon prior to the Battle of Hastings, I've got a bridge to sell you. (It's in Saskatoon, but it's a nice one.) And if you think Apple was somehow precluded from filling its global supply chain with as many iPads as its magic wand could conjure, I suggest you chuck the Kool-Aid and find yourself a tall glass of juice. Prune juice, maybe.

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In a news release today from Wellington, New Zealand, the site of the latest round of worldwide negotiations over terms for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the European Union announced it has gotten its wish: Negotiators have unanimously agreed to reveal the terms of their latest draft to the general public, not necessarily for comments but certainly for general inspection, in an official release next Wednesday.

That draft, the EU said, should contain no trace of a controversial provision compelling governments to impose "three strikes" legislation (also known as graduated response) for accused intellectual property infringers, similar to legislation still being tried in France even after courts there declared them unconstitutional.

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Pundits are chattering about some, ah, aggressive moves by Apple with customers and partners over the last couple of weeks. Rather than opine on the subject, I'd like to ask you to do so. I'm looking to write a future post with Betanews reader reactions about Apple's recent actions and to a surprisingly active CEO Steve Jobs -- he sure sent out lots of email responses lately; from iPad, perhaps, :).

I'm most interested in responses from developers and content creators, which are two groups most affected by Apple's action. I ask anyone who wants to comment anonymously but to be taken seriously -- or those people wanting to open a larger dialog -- to contact me by email: joewilcox at gmail dot com. Everyone else, please feel free to comment below.

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In what may have, by now, become an exercise in the airing of corporate dirty laundry (or, in some cases, not even dirty), Viacom yesterday released more evidentiary documents from its court battle with Google. This second round of what was promised to be three public releases (though there could be more to come) includes confidential Google executive presentations from the period prior to its acquisition of YouTube, when the company was considering instead bolstering Google Video to become more competitive.

Rather than being incriminating, the documents paint Google executives to be cunning, shrewd, and eager to assume the mantle of the moral high ground. But they also reveal instances where the company considered pressing its high-ground position to its advantage, with prospective PR campaigns and likely incentives to the press that would encourage the viewpoint that media companies such as Viacom (parent of Paramount Pictures and MTV Networks) were behind the times, inflexible, and unwilling to open up their content vaults for fair use.

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Download Silverlight 4 RTM for Windows from Fileforum now.

In recent years, most Web applications in widespread use have been developed with Web browsers as their platform. Here, one imagines Java advocates are already composing their complaint letters. But with Web resources bound to URLs, for most developers, it's made sense to utilize the functionality most commonly associated with URL-bound resources: HTML, JavaScript, and now its rapidly maturing derivative, AJAX.

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Last month I asked: "Will the smartphone replace the PC in three years?" The answer looks more like five years, or about a half-decade sooner than predicted by Pew Internet in December 2008. I also asked Betanews readers: "Has your smartphone changed your life?"

In preparation for readers' answers (coming in another post), I offer something meaty: Three indicators about what might happen by 2015 -- from the Morgan Stanley "Internet Trends" Webinar, Intel Developer Forum and the Nokia "Everyone Connect" event; all three conferences happened this week. If you're one of the iPhone-obsessed, either open your mind to fresh ideas or read something else. This post probably isn't for you.

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At the 99% Percent conference in New York City today, HTC officially took the wraps off of its latest Android handset, called the Droid Incredible on Verizon Wireless.

The device was accidentally leaked by Verizon Wireless, which posted a Web site showing the device and its availability earlier this week, so not much of today's announcement was a tremendous surprise to fans of HTC's smartphones.

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A long-planned hearing on Capitol Hill to discuss the Federal Communications Commission's Broadband Plan took on new meaning yesterday, a week after the DC Circuit Court ruled the Commission lacked the authority to implement net neutrality regulations. With a coalition of Internet business interests pleading with the FCC to declare itself the "cop-on-the-beat" for net neutrality under a different provision of US telecom law than it had been using, now Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D - WV), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, says the FCC may not need to take that step.

In his remarks yesterday, Sen. Rockefeller told his committee he's ready to begin the long, and undoubtedly arduous, process of changing the law to give the FCC the authority that the Broadband Plan assumed it had to begin with.

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Last February, at the time Google completed its purchase of On2 Technologies, the video technology patent holder and maker of the VPx series of video codecs, the Free Software Foundation posted an open letter urging Google to release the latest version, VP8, to the open source community. Though Google has been pretty vocal since then about what it has perceived as the bright prospects for On2 under its wing, the volume was turned down to low on Tuesday, immediately after the digital television news service NewTeeVee cited anonymous sources as saying Google intends to do just as FSF asked.

Google declined official comment on the story to Betanews, but the tone of the spokesperson's declination speaks volumes, especially from this characteristically forthcoming company: "We're excited to be working with the On2 team to continue to improve the video experience on the Web, but we have nothing to announce at this time."

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PC shipments are briskly growing again, in yet another small sign that economic recovery is possible. Today, Gartner and IDC both released preliminary shipments for first quarter. Gartner put shipment growth at 27.4 percent year over year, while IDC growth figures came in a little lower at 24 percent.

But the numbers are mixed, surprisingly. While sales soared in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) and Asia-Pacific "the U.S. and Latin America were slightly lower than what we had expected," Mikako Kitagawa, Gartner principal analyst, said in a statement. Respectively, PC shipments grew by 24.8 percent, 36.9 percent, 20.2 percent and 35.4 percent. China posted strongest growth -- 45.4 percent.

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Though the news is relatively fresh that Palm Inc. has been negotiating with China's Huawei Technologies about a possible buyout, the word from Investors' Business Daily sources is that these negotiations have actually been ongoing for at least two months. That nothing has come of them since February may be the most important, and potentially distressing, news of all.

In light of that realization, Palm is suddenly in need of yet another comprehensive makeover to save its flagging image. Suggestions from the field include relatively simple ones from Betanews contributor Carmi Levy -- that it should keep its Pre Plus and Pixi Plus hardware, and focus on building up its applications base -- and the completely opposite suggestion from widely respected industry analyst Dr. Gerry Purdy, who has published his viewpoints on mobile technologies in what's now called the MobileTrax newsletter, since 1986.

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Expectations are a very dangerous thing indeed. As a user, if you expect a new device to do something -- however unrealistic that expectation may be -- you are bound to be disappointed when you find that it doesn't.

With Internet tablets, it's not really clear what users should expect when they pick one up for the first time. A couple of years ago, they were built on truncated versions of desktop operating systems, so users based their expectations on their desktop experience. Now, tablets are being built upon mobile operating systems, and expectations are shifting.

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What saved Intel's neck during the worst part of the last economic downturn was the Atom processor, the heart of netbooks that started selling well as consumers' budgets tightened. Now that the 2008-09 dip is over, and even businesses' budget belts are loosening, the company's attention returns to the server side of the equation.

In Intel's quarterly conference call yesterday evening (Betanews thanks Seeking Alpha for the transcript), CEO Paul Otellini pointed to cloud computing and virtualization as trends that are empowering a resurgence in business sales...and helping the company to overcome an apparent tapering off in consumers' interest in netbooks.

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Spring Design's Android-based, dual-screen e-reader named "Alex" made a sudden and noticeable splash when it was announced one day before book retailer Barnes & Noble debuted its Android-powered Nook e-reader, and then Spring Design sued them over it.

We had a look at a pre-production model of Alex at CES last January, and Spring Design started taking orders for the $399 e-reader in February.

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Last week's staggering defeat to Comcast in a landmark DC Circuit Court decision left the US Federal Communications Commission stripped of any "ancillary authority" it thought it had to regulate the practices of Internet service providers. As of now, it isn't exactly clear just which government agency does have that authority.

Rather than wait for Congress to make a decision on the matter -- an event which may, arguably, never happen at all -- a coalition of major Internet stakeholders, including Skype, Google, eBay, Amazon, Netflix, TiVo, and Facebook are calling on the FCC to take action. Quite literally, they want the Commission to convene a hearing declaring its intention to fill the gap left by the court's removal of FCC authority...with FCC authority.

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