Latest Technology News

For Google to emerge as a true contender in just the field of netbook operating systems as soon as 2011 will require it to have smoothly and swiftly cleared an immense obstacle course first. But just the fact that Google will make the attempt will underscore a hard new reality facing Microsoft, one which my friend Carmi Levy pointed out on Monday: The rules of the game for operating systems and applications are changing rapidly, and their underlying principles are being rewritten.

Now, we can adopt Google's quaint little prophecy and sing praises -- perhaps to the tune of "It's a Small World After All" or, if you prefer to go really over the top, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" -- to the notion that "The Web is now the platform." In our hearts, we may hope for that to be true; in our minds, we all know that's rubbish, holding as much water as Intel's and Microsoft's 1980s notion that x86 architecture "is the platform." There is no single platform for online applications, and whether there ever will be is still a matter of some debate. At this rate, it's not happening.

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July now has a third major independence day. Canada on the first. The United States on the fourth. Google on the seventh.

July 7 is the day Google declared independence from Microsoft dependence. It is the day one Google blog post fired the first shot heard at Lexington and Concord. The post might as well be the first paragraph of the US Declaration of Independence:

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To accompany the shots purported to be Sony Ericsson's first Android phone, a powerful 1 GHz Snapdragon-equipped touchscreen device code-named "Rachael," a video claiming to be the device's custom Android UI has emerged.

Like the Sense UI debuting on HTC's Hero in Europe this month, Rachael's UI retains the three-panel "shade and drawer" Android layout, but completely overhauls the graphics and widgets.

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Sony Corporation's Chief Executive Officer Sir Howard Stringer made statements at the Allen & Co. Conference yesterday affirming the company's pricing strategy for its PlayStation 3. If the video game console got any cheaper, Reuters quotes Stringer as saying, "[I'd] lose money on every PlayStation I make, how's that for logic?"

Last month, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotik went on the attack against Sony, saying, "They have to cut the price [of the PS3], because if they don't, the attach rates are likely to slow...If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony."

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AT&T and an associated group of telecommunications companies under the name "National Emergency Number Association" (NENA) released the results of a June survey which concludes that Americans need to have an emergency communications plan based around a landline connection.

"A big part of this is knowing about the options available for dialing 911," NENA Chief Executive Officer, Brian Fontes said in a statement. "The more choices you have to reach 911 in an emergency, the better, and a corded landline phone should be one of those options. It provides the security of a home phone line connection to 911 so that in most cases first responders know your home address."

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Download AOL Instant Messenger for Windows 7.0.5.30 Beta 2 from Fileforum now.

I feel old. Looking at AOL's new Lifestream service, which lets you see all your pals' Facebook and Twitter and FriendFeed status updates in addition to whatever they're up to on AIM, I'm thinking, isn't this how we got those services in the first place, when we all decided that status messages were the most useful aspect of instant messaging clients?

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Google goes for the OS gold chrome

9:37 pm PDT Tuesday, July 7, 2009 > Google's Sundar Pichai (VP of Product Management) and Linus Upson (Engineering Director) posted an announcement that the search giant will be launching a Chrome OS, geared toward netbooks.

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Well, this answers the question about why no Android for netbooks. In a stunning announcement late Tuesday evening, the company that for years had been suspected of developing an operating system but which had never entirely denied the claim, has come out with it: Yes, Google is making a Linux; yes, it's for netbooks (at least for now); no, it's not Android.

"Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android," reads yesterday's company blog post from VP Sundar Pichai and Engineering Director Linus Upton. "Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the Web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google."

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Online search engines have proven themselves a boon to topical research... and to sticky-note sales, when you finally hit the mother lode of great sites you want to remember without condemning them to the unfiltered pond that is your bookmarks list. Yahoo on Tuesday released Search Pad, a search companion meant to snip, store and annotate useful items; Google Labs last month unveiled Google Squared, which also aims to help parse and organize online information.

Yahoo Search Pad, a close spiritual relative to Yahoo's 2005-era "My Web" search-saving tool, entered beta back in February. It's designed to stand by while you search on that site and, when it detects that you're following a train of thought, to keep track of the sites you find.

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The proprietors of online streaming radio, including Pandora's Tim Westergren, are finding themselves surprised today to be cheering an agreement with performance rights holders that has them paying as much as 25% of their revenue in royalties. But that's better than all of their revenue, which was a literal possibility in 2007, and better than 70% which Pandora and other services were paying at this time last year.

Under the new deal announced today, webcasters are being offered a so-called "alternative set of rates and terms" by SoundExchange, the organization responsible for managing performers' royalties in the US. Those that agree to SoundExchange's terms must adopt a new and more rigorous reporting schedule for reporting their revenues right down to the dollar -- the reporting system that SoundExchange insisted upon two years ago. It's an even more rigorous reporting system than what the US Copyright Royalty Board agreed to last January, when it made a reluctant U-turn in favor of revenue-based royalties accounting.

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On Independence Day weekend, I was faced with a fourteen-hour drive and a long outdated, standalone GPS unit. The Garmin Nuvi GPS that I received as a gift two Christmases prior had begun to prompt me to pay for a map update every time I started it up. Consequently, I didn't use it very much, and stuck to using Telenav Navigator or Google Maps on my phone in the frequent instances when I have become truly, hopelessly lost.

As we were packing up the car, I started to wonder just how necessary the Garmin's map update actually would be. I mean, how often do roads really change, right? Presuming the poles of the Earth don't suddenly reverse, an outdated GPS is at least going to give you useful map coordinates and tell you what direction you're driving.

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Download Google Chrome for Windows Beta 3.0.191.3 from Fileforum now.

With Web pages having evolved into Web sites and moving on to become Web applications, we find ourselves frequently revisiting the question of what a Web browser tab should represent. In researching a topic for multiple stories during the course of a day, I often find myself with as many as a hundred tabs open at one time. And yes, I try to keep them in some kind of order, which is never easy; and when the browser crashes (as it still often does), recovering all those open tabs is becoming more difficult, it seems, as time goes on.

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Mobile network operators O2 and Movistar, subsidiaries of Telefonica, will be Europe's first exclusive operators to carry the Palm Pre, the device maker announced today. O2 will offer the device In the UK, Ireland, and Germany, and Movistar will offer it in Spain, with availability some time before the holidays.

Rumors of a deal between Palm and Telefonica began to stir last week, with expectations of a price and launch date this week, but neither was supplied today.

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A European Commission policy review white paper released last week (PDF available here) was brought to light in the US this week by virtue of a comment from its most vocal opposition. Yesterday, press sources including IDG's Paul Meller quoted the Association for Competitive Technology's Jonathan Zuck as taking sides -- not surprisingly -- against the white paper, accusing the EC of bias in favor of open source software producers over commercial manufacturers.

"We remain concerned that the policy framework suggested in the white paper seems to favor open source software over proprietary software to achieve more interoperability," reads another citation of Zuck's statement. Ironically, Zuck's ACT Web site from which the statement originated appeared to be the victim of a crash in its open source asset management system this morning, so only second-hand citations of Zuck were available today.

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After all the noise Sony made about avoiding the term "netbook" with the release of its Vaio P ultraportable, and the statements Senior Vice President Mike Abary made about the Eee PC before that, it was beginning to look like Sony was never going to release a device in the netbook/mini-note form factor. But that has changed.

Today, Sony officially launched its first netbook. The 10.1-inch Windows XP-based Vaio W runs on a 1.66 GHz Intel Atom N280, has 1 GB of RAM, and a 160 GB SATA HDD. It's equipped with 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth, a built-in Webcam, and offers 1366 x 768 screen resolution -- higher-than-usual for netbook screens.

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