Quadruple play: The big four touchscreen phone makers make new game plans
Each of the major US mobile carriers has its own exclusive touchscreen smartphone, and they are providing the fuel for the smartphone market's continuing growth. We are closing in on an all-fronts update, so prepare for another round of comparisons and competition.
AT&T leads the pack with the Apple iPhone, which will receive its 3.0 software update at an unspecified time this summer.
T-Mobile has the Android-based G1, which will be updated to Version 1.5
EC may sue Great Britain to stop a sweeping data interception law
"Do you want the Internet to turn into a jungle?" asked European Commissioner for the Information Society and Media Viviane Reding, to open her weekly English-language address this morning. "This could happen, you know, if we can't control the use of our personal information online."
Comm. Reding's message accompanied an announcement that the EC has launched the first stage in what could be a long, drawn-out series of proceedings against one of its own member nations, the United Kingdom. At issue is the UK's handling of online privacy laws, under the nearly two-year-old administration of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The surface issue is what made news in the UK, at least in the general press: The EC has been concerned that the behavioral advertising service Phorm, a service built in association with leading UK carrier BT, may be enabling data collection policies that go beyond the limits mandated by EC directives.
New desktop virtualization scheme will enable hybrid Windows deployment
Just one month after its acquisition of a partner company called Kidaro, which produced desktop virtualization software, Microsoft yesterday announced the immediate availability of a greatly enhanced version of its own desktop virtualization package for its volume license customers. As part of its latest update to Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP), Microsoft's new Enterprise Desktop Virtualization software (MED-V) will let companies deploy software running in older versions of Windows, to appear on clients running newer versions such as Vista.
What this means is, software that ran fairly well in Windows XP or Windows 2000, and Web-driven software that runs using Internet Explorer 6 but not IE7 or IE8, can now run in a virtual envelope that leverages Virtual PC. Meanwhile, clients' users won't notice anything unusual; legacy apps' icons will appear on clients' desktops as though they were installed on their local systems.
Popular Chinese MMO to open in US for free
Korean software company EYA Interactive announced the upcoming "Grand Opening Beta" of its Free MMORPG called Titan Online, which is the English-language version of "Mo Siang," a martial arts-themed MMO based in China (both in story and server) and popular in Southeast Asia.
On April 28, Titan Online will open to the public in an unlimited beta, and will let users download and play the game until its commercial launch, which does not yet have a date. All players will begin the game at the same level to foster an environment of fair competition, and once the software has officially been launched, nothing on the player's end will change.
iPhone 3.0, meet Android 1.5
Google released a developer preview of the next version of Android, officially adding the "cupcake" features to the operating system's SDK that have been a vague reality for Android users since late last year.
Yesterday evening, Android developer Xavier Ducrohet announced that developers can now download an early version of the Android 1.5 SDK, based upon the Cupcake branch of the Android Open Source Project.
VoIP provider Ooma recovers from complete service outage
12:45 pm EDT April 14, 2009 - This afternoon, a spokesperson for the data center co-location service Internap -- a name brought up in connection with both the Ooma and RIM service failures yesterday, which took place at approximately the same time -- denied any service outage, though admitted to some routine router replacements and maintenance.
Ooma's single data center, mentioned by its technical VP in his blog post yesterday, is located on the West Coast -- Internap, meanwhile, is located in Atlanta. Any service issues related to both services may have had to have been incidental.
eBay to unload StumbleUpon, and that might not be all
According to a statement today from its chief architect and founder, Garrett Camp, the business relationship between content location service StumbleUpon and auction service eBay has ended.
"This change will help StumbleUpon move quickly and stay true to its focus: helping people discover interesting Web content," Camp wrote. "Our goal is to make StumbleUpon the Web's largest recommendation engine, and we think this is the best way to get us there."
Bluetooth 3.0 coming next week
One week from tomorrow, Bluetooth 3.0 will be unleashed upon the wireless world.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group confirmed to Phone Scoop late last week that next week's All Hands Meeting in Tokyo will be official unveiling of the updated Bluetooth spec.
Rather than submit to new Korean law, YouTube turns off user uploads
In the midst of a Draconian new South Korean law passed April 1 that could force some ISPs to enable lawmakers to suspend their customers' Internet accounts or face fines, Google's YouTube division has turned off some features that could, if misused under the new law, land its customers in prison.
The South Korean National Assembly narrowly passed a sweeping new law whose purpose was to create a system of accountability for the nation's Internet users. While ostensibly the new law is designed to discourage piracy, Korean journalists such as Korea Times' Kim Tong-hyung provide evidence that the law's true purpose may be to enable government authorities to keep tabs on all kinds of online behavior, including political and social networking.
Amazon, where being gay makes you invisible
What's being called a "glitch" on Amazon.com has exclusively affected books dealing with gay and lesbian themes.
On one side, Amazon's Kindle 2 is the central element in the civil rights conflict between authors and those with reading disabilities. On the other side, Amazon.com is now accused of de-ranking and re-classifying content as "adult literature" simply because it contains homosexual themes or characters. Specifically, the complaint is that listings for some books with homosexual content are not displaying comparative sales rankings.
IE8 automatic update option likely to begin next week
In a heads-up message on the company's IE blog over the Easter weekend, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 lead program manager Eric Hebenstreit warned users that as soon as next week, some Windows users will be automatically given the option of downloading IE8. It will not be a massive land rush, and as Hebenstreit repeated, the company's new Web browser will not automatically install itself.
"IE8 will not automatically install on machines," the program manager wrote, emphasizing what will be Microsoft's general policy in this new and more careful era of interoperability. "Users must opt-in to install IE8."
PMP hunters: On the lookout for a new 'Zune HD'
It's safe to say that Zune team "senior partner" Brian Seitz's little message was a reiteration of what we already knew, since there was never any announcement that Microsoft was discontinuing it's line of portable media players. But what a way to set the rumor mill churning! That tweet successfully reminded us that we still don't know the most important things about the next Zune: when we'll see it this year, what sort of functions it will have, what it is going to look like, how much storage it will offer, and how much it will cost.
On Friday, a series of promotional shots turned up that show the "Zune HD," suggesting at least that the next generation of the device is going to be metallic instead of plastic, and offer a velocity sensor that will shift the screen to portrait/landscape mode.
Too easy: A common cross-site scripting technique tangles Twitter
A self-proclaimed 17-year-old whose identity hasn't been particularly confirmed -- so therefore, neither has his or her age -- has taken responsibility for deploying cross-site scripting code through Twitter. That code, embedded in its users' profiles and masked to look like ordinary hyperlinks, resulted in messages being 'tweeted' through those users without their knowledge. Those tweets, when their links were followed, resulted in the same code being injected into the followers' profiles.
It sounds sophisticated, especially when it's being explained by a novice TV news anchor. In fact, the concept itself is something that is easily Googled, and example code similar to that created by the fellow calling himself "mikeyy" is readily available.
Novell rolls out its Service-Driven Data Center initiative
An offshoot of its Linux and open source software activities, Novell's new Service-Driven Data Center initiative revolves around three components: SUSE Enterprise Linux Server (SLES) 11, PlateSpin Workload Management solutions, and Novell Business Service Management tools.
Announced at the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) last month, SLES 11 features data center enhancements such as the Xen 3.1.1 hypervisor, for virtualization; a new Swap over NFS capability for remote storage; and new control groups and CPUset features for more fine-grained management of CPU, memory, storage, and networking resources.
YouTube + Universal = Vevo
Another day, another arbitrarily-named video service.
Though Vevo is a name that could very easily be lost among the likes of Veoh and TiVo, the soon-to-be launched music video site has backers that are far from forgettable: Google and Vivendi, or, more specifically, YouTube and Universal Music Group.
Most Commented Stories
© 1998-2025 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. About Us - Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy - Sitemap.