AOL's IM hiccups during morning server upgrades
Available... no, away... no, available again... wait, no: Users of AOL's Instant Messenger service didn't know whether they were coming or going for a brief period this morning. According to an AOL spokesperson, the outage occurred during a software update and were resolved. By 11:00 am PST, no further glitches were officially reported, though Betanews tests have been revealing evidence of AIM misbehavior up until mid-afternoon.
ZillionTV promises unlimited TV through targeted ads
Beta testing for ZillionTV is currently under way, the streaming service closely follows the model Roku took with its own set-top box, but applies it to commercial television.
Users pay a one-time fee to activate the ZillionTV set top box and remote, and then hook it up to their broadband connection to begin streaming content. The service then offers viewing tiers: the free, ad-subsidized tier, the rental tier, and the "buy to own" tier. The ad-subsidized tier features interactive ads targeted to the user's preferences. Before watching subsidized programming, for example, the user could have to select the ads they'd most like to see, the ads are also affected by the user's location, viewing habits, and demographics.
Vista SP2 RC image goes live
An .ISO file for the DVD image of the installation routine for Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Release Candidate was made publicly accessible by Microsoft early this morning. As of 1:45 pm EST, however, there was no official word from Microsoft as to the release candidate's public availability. Private testers began receiving their early copies last week.
Download Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Release Candidate from Fileforum now.
Not quite tru2way, TiVo will get new streaming VOD
Tru2way is the brand name for the open cable standard architecture that will allow next generation TV hardware to work with any cable provider. The hallmarks of tru2way are interactive services and HD on demand content. Unfortunately, there has yet to be an industry-wide breakthrough in the adoption of tru2way outside of companies such as Panasonic, Comcast, and TiVo.
This week, TiVo announced a deal with streaming on demand and IPTV middleware company SeaChange that promises to bring tru2way-style features to CableCard-equipped TiVo set top boxes in areas where the architecture has not been implemented yet.
Already outdated, Treo Pro hits March 15
Officially announced in the Summer of 2008, and expected to come to the US in the Fall, the Treo Pro was supposed to raise Palm's suffering margins as it crawled through the end of the year. The device's release was pushed back all the way to the point of inopportunity: after the Pre's unveiling.
Now, the Treo Pro just looks like a Centro update that showed up for the party after everybody has gone home. In the company's third quarter earnings call this week, Palm put the delay of the Treo Pro up there with the economic crisis in terms of severe detriments to the company's bottom line. Today, it has finally been announced, and it will be available through Sprint on March 15.
Phoenix to embed an OOXML office suite in firmware
Most of us who have been in the PC business ever since there was such a thing know the Phoenix Technologies brand for having helped catalyze the PC "clone" revolution in the 1980s, as one of the first great independent BIOS producers. It's still in the firmware business, and its programs are still the first ones many PCs run after their users flip the switch. But gradually, the company is assembling a comprehensive software platform and embedding it in its latest firmware: the HyperSpace platform that embeds Linux on motherboards.
HyperSpace premiered last July with a built-in hypervisor that can run operating systems not as native, but as guest environments within a secure envelope. But since then, it's acquired some native applications of its own, including a DVD player from Corel, and just last November, the Opera Web browser. Now Phoenix is preparing to add the piece de resistance: a commercial office suite called ThinkFree Office that's designed to use the OOXML format created for Microsoft Office 2007 and now published as an open standard by Microsoft.
With its own iPhone app, Kindle becomes a genuine brand
Amazon today has officially launched the Kindle application for iPhone and iPod Touch. While Amazon's flagship e-paper reader and Apple's devices are in fundamentally different device classes, bringing the e-book platform to the iPhone completely changes the Kindle brand.
The era of the Kindle as "The iPod of books," is no more. Now that the actual iPod has access to the same library of 240,000 books, it's the era of the Kindle platform.
Dell intros 'green' features for server racks
Dell has added a large batch of energy-conscious features to the rack enclosures used for supporting its servers and storage systems. The new PowerEdge 4220 and 2420 rack enclosures are geared to use in any environment, ranging from wiring closets to data centers. For one thing, the new rack enclosures are deeper than previous racks, leaving more space for hot air to move out of the rack. The new racks also add 80 percent front-and-read-door perforation, aimed at improving efficiency by lowering the cold air restraint to the server.
Also new in the PowerEdge 4220 and 2420 racks are flexible rear and side-rack power distribution unit (PDU) options, for easier access to power outlets within the rack. New cable management options such as adjustable cable rings and removable tail-bars at the top and bottom of the back frame are available for simplified power and cable routing. For security, Dell is providing optional stabilizer bars for attaching the rack to the floor and "ganging kits" for bolting adjacent racks to each other. The 4220 rack has a static load rating of 2,500 pounds, while the 2420 has a static load rating of 1,500 pounds, Dell said in a statement.
Europe: Microsoft's behavior has changed, interop docs already complete
In an historic, if muffled, admission that Microsoft has not only made progress in its compliance with European Commission directives but may have been making progress all along, the EC this morning, Brussels time, released a statement saying it no longer needs to directly monitor Microsoft's compliance with the terms of its 2004 Statement of Objections.
"In light of changes in Microsoft's behaviour, the increased opportunity for third parties to exercise their rights directly before national courts and experience gained since the adoption of the 2004 Decision," this morning's statement reads, "the Commission no longer requires a full time monitoring trustee to assess Microsoft's compliance. In future, the Commission intends to rely on the ad hoc assistance of technical consultants.
No kudos yet for Microsoft's Kumo
The word which perhaps best characterizes the screenshots, leaked today to The Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher, of Microsoft's internal tests of a search service tentatively entitled "Kumo," is unremarkable. They show a remade version of Windows Live Search with a few new innovations -- new for Microsoft, that is -- but at least based on these samples alone, not enough to clearly demonstrate why anyone should use Kumo instead of Google or Yahoo.
The screenshots display search results for three typical types of popular searches. These results are displayed on a page with a categorical navigation bar along the left side, offering ways in which the service can display different types of results (in Windows Live Search, these categories might appear in a line along the top marked See also). Unlike in Live.com, however, results can appear automatically grouped into Yellow Pages-like categories; for example, a search for "Audi S8" returned a list which was subcategorized into "Parts," "Accessories," "Forum," and other groupings with related terms.
Firefox 3.1 beta 3 developers prepare for freeze
Mike Beltzner, the director of Firefox, sent out the call Tuesday afternoon on mozilla.dev.planning: It's time to lock the trees and land the bugs on beta 3 of the 3.1 version of the browser.
As of 3pm PST, just nine bug landings stood between the dev team and handoff of mozilla-1.9.1 to the Release Engineering crew according to the mozilla.dev.planning thread on Google Groups. Beltzner noted in his Twitter stream that he "is hoping we get done with beta 3 code for Firefox tonight" after a day so busy he was wondering if he needed to block off time for bathroom breaks; the staff of Betanews wishes him all the best with, well, all of the above.
Will Palm survive until the Pre launch?
Palm on Tuesday issued the kind of preliminary earnings data that illustrates just how much the company depends on a successful Pre launch for its continued survival -- and how much the firm is betting on a win for the wildly anticipated smartphone.
The company says that for the third quarter of 2009, which ended for Palm on February 27, it expects to report revenues of between $85 million and $90 million. Operating expenses were between $95 million and $100 million. Factors cited included late shipment of the Treo Pro and the general economic situation.
Demo'd at DEMO 09: ARM netbook, 15 hours of battery life
At the Demo 09 show in Palm Desert, CA today, a start-up named Always Innovating showed off a Linux-based netbook with a touch screen, a detachable keyboard, and a touted battery life of 10 to 15 hours. The company's Touch Book netbook also happens to be the industry's first with an ARM processor, as opposed to the Intel Atom CPU used in most other netbooks.
Pre-orderable now, the Touch Book is slated for delivery this spring at pricing of $399 with the detachable keyboard and $299 without the keyboard. The detachable keyboard concept has appeared before in convertible tablet PCs as well as some netbooks. But although the Touch Book might lack the same horsepower as a convertible tablet, it's certainly a lot less costly than PCs in the tablet category, which still run anywhere from around $1,000 to above $3,500. Ten to 15 hours of battery life isn't bad, either.
Schwarzenegger to CeBIT: 'Go green!'
At the CeBIT fair in Germany this week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is acting as a cheerleader (and unofficial ambassador of sorts) for the green computing products of the Silicon Valley, exhorting attendees from Europe and elsewhere to "Go green!" In an energetic speech during opening ceremonies, Schwarzenegger pumped up the audience at the recession-rocked show, down 25 percent this year in numbers of exhibitors.
"We are gathering in challenging times. Some may say this is the wrong time for a big trade show like this, but they are wrong," urged the Governor, who accompanied about 50 computer vendors from California to the event in Germany. During a stop at IBM's booth at CeBIT, Schwarzenegger contended that time is of the essence for cutting energy costs and reducing greenhouse emissions, with the information technology industry's carbon footprint still expanding inexorably from one year to the next.
Web ads in Office 14? Not very likely
A Microsoft spokesperson today confirmed the text of a statement attributed to Business Division President Stephen Elop this morning, which was interpreted by bloggers including Silicon Valley Insider as meaning that the company's forthcoming Office 14 suite will add advertising as a source of alternate revenue.
"There will be ad-based revenue streams," reads the quote from Elop. "There's an opportunity to draw those pirate customers into the revenue stream. We want to draw them into the Windows family and maybe there's an upsell opportunity later."
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