A new take on Hollywood's 'wall of fame'...from Microsoft
Microsoft's MSN together with BermanBraun Interactive yesterday launched Wonderwall.com, a celebrity gossip site like the popular TMZ.com or People.com. Sites like these are in no short supply, but neither is their demand. Yahoo's top ten search terms overall are consistently dominated by celebrity names. 2008's top 10 from Yahoo, for example, included Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, and Angelina Jolie. Google Zeitgeist year-end summaries have shown the celebrity search trend every year since 2001.
BermanBraun was founded in 2007 by ex-Paramount Pictures executive Gail Berman, and former Disney, ABC and Yahoo executive Lloyd Braun. The company focuses on providing the content and advertising on the site, MSN handles the rest.
Microsoft My Phone...not a phone
Of Microsoft's anticipated "Sky"-prefixed services: SkyMarket, SkyLine, and Skybox, which are all cloud-based services for Windows Mobile consumption, Skybox has made an advance appearance, but with the title Microsoft My Phone beta. The My Phone service, which is located at getskybox.com (link currently inactive), will be a cloud sync tool similar to the one used natively by Android with Google services or MobileMe on the iPhone. Contacts, calendar information, emails and texts, photos, music, and video can all be synched between the Windows Mobile 6+ device and the related Windows Live service. Microsoft will be premiering the free service at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain next week.
Intel begins shipping new Atom Processor
Intel is now shipping the next generation of its Atom processor, the single core N280, to PC manufacturers. This iteration of the Atom microarchitecture has already been slated for use in Asus' latest Eee PC Netbook, the 1000HE. Asus has increased the battery life of this Eee to a purported 9.5 hours on a single charge, thanks to the new Atom processor which only consumes 2.5 Watts of power.
The Atom N280 runs at 1.66GHz, FSB 667MHz, and Pre-orders for the first netbook equipped with it, Asus' 1000HE, began this week.
Pandora likes Palm Pre, but iPhone and others still in the cards
Online music streaming leader Pandora is indeed "putting a bid" on Palm's Pre, but the company's founder, Tim Westergen, doesn't exactly see the Pre as the only game in town. Westergren spoke with Betanews last night.
In an interview with Betanews, Tim Westergren said that while the personalized Internet radio provider is now working on software for the Pre, Pandora will also keep developing for Apple's iPhone. Other mobile platforms -- including a possible future application for Google's Android -- are still in the cards for Pandora, too.
Microsoft says yes, will augment UAC in the next Win7 RC
In a stunning and maybe unprecedented accedence to public opinion this morning, Microsoft has announced it will take the emotion out of its discussion, and simply do something its users are asking for.
Perhaps taking a cue from President Obama himself -- who on Wednesday evening after the failure of two of his cabinet nominees told the American public, "I screwed up" -- Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan yesterday took a blow for the team. In a contrite and euphemism-free blog post this morning, the two senior vice presidents in charge of Windows cited excerpts from their own critics who demanded that the adjustable User Account Control dial in Windows 7 not be exempt from User Account Control itself, and then essentially responded, "Okay."
TiVo releases Desktop 2.7 for Windows
It's been just under a year since TiVo last updated its Desktop software which allows videos to be shared between a user's TiVO DVR and PC or other networked devices. Now there's a new version for both Desktop and Desktop Plus users.
TiVo Desktop has received some noteworthy improvements, chief among them being the software's ability to group .tivo recordings on the PC by series when they are viewed on the DVR. Also, automatic transfers from the DVR now have the "Keep at Most..." value like Season Pass allows, and .vob are now treated the same as MPEG-2 files.
Garmin re-announces Nuvifone, this time with Asus
GPS maven Garmin has re-announced intentions to launch GPS-enabled mobile phones, and this time around, the rollout is planned with Eee maker Asus for later this month in Barcelona.
The name might not roll easily off the tongue, but the "Garmin-Asus Nuvifone series" -- a new revival of Garmin's previously unveiled Nuvifone -- just might challenge Apple's iPhone some day.
Prosecutor in Jammie Thomas case joins DoJ
The lawyer who argued the only RIAA case to go all the way through the trial process has been named an Associate Attorney General for the new administration. Donald Verrilli Jr. is a senior litigator with Jenner & Block, a DC firm.
Verrilli, like several other Obama appointees to the Department of Justice, has a history of going after entities for which the entertainment industry does not care. In 2005, he represented the music industry before the Supreme Court in MGM v Grokster, which not only drove that file-sharing service into extinction but dismissed any argument that the service had significant uses other than the swapping of copyrighted works.
Dream jobs: IEEE's list goes to eleven
The latest issue of IEEE Spectrum (you don't read it? what kind of geek are you?) includes, along with a great story on the new breed of massive server farms, their annual Top 10 Dream Jobs list. We beg to differ -- or to amend, anyway.
There's no arguing with the picks; if you can't see why evaluating toys for Wild Planet or designing all-electric dirt bikes or bringing electrical light to remote South Pacific villages is a wicked cool way to earn a paycheck, we're going to pause here while you check your pulse. (You'll have to check the article for the other seven. We also recommend, for the commenters who just can't contain themselves about the DTV switchover, this month's article concerning antenna technology. The photos are gorgeous.)
Government contractor warns of possible breach
We talk a lot at Betanews about weak security at certain government agencies (hello, IRS!), but let's not forget that federal employees can suffer too when defenses are breached at an agency or contractor -- for instance, at Virginia-based SRA International, which handles IT consulting and services for various defense, military and civil agencies.
SRA is required by law to inform potentially affected agencies when they've been hit, and on January 20, the company sent a fax to the Maryland Attorney General's office letting them know that malware -- something that can scarf up personally identifiable information, something that slipped by SRA's antivirus protections -- was recently discovered on SRA's network.
MIT develops an even more augmented reality device
On Wednesday at the Technology Entertainment and Design Conference, Dr. Pattie Maes, founder and director of the Fluid interfaces group at MIT presented a smart device with ordinary parts that can turn any surface into a touchscreen.
Using a webcam, battery-powered projector, and mobile phone, the device acquits itself like a portable Microsoft Surface display built from $300 worth of consumer-grade hardware. The interface is generated by the phone which is in turn projected onto nearly any surface, and the camera is used to recognize gestures that interact with that projection.
Android gets native support for Broadcom's wireless combo chip
Broadcom said today that combo drivers for its Bluetooth/Wi-Fi/FM wireless chip have now been ported to the Android operating system. As a result, designers of future Android phones should be able to easily build the chip -- known as BCM4325 -- into their devices.
The company's combo chip becomes the first in the industry to achieve native support in Android, according to Broadcom officials. The chip provides advantages in space, power, cost and coexistence among wireless technologies, the company maintained in a statement. "We expect a plethora of products and applications to evolve from the connected Android platform in the not-so-distant future," predicted Chris Bergey, Director of Broadcom's Embedded WLAN line of business.
Microsoft on Win7 UAC: 'Take the emotions out of the discussion'
The latest blog posts from Windows 7 engineers reveal this quandary: If the whole point of accelerating Win7 was to eliminate the Vista complaints, and the tool to accomplish that is generating more complaints, what do they do?
Repeating the message, sometimes exhaustively, that they are indeed listening to testers' concerns about the trial security measures in the latest Windows 7 public beta, Microsoft's engineers appear to be on the brink -- if not already over it -- of asking testers the following: If all you're going to do is complain, why should we bother?
Lenovo posts Q4 loss, fires its CEO
In announcing a fourth quarter loss of $96.7 million, China-based PC maker Lenovo today ousted former Dell exec Bill Amelio as CEO and handed the leadership reins back over over to company founder Liu Chuanzhi.
At the same time, Lenovo demoted its chairman, Yang Yuanqing, to the post of CEO.
Mandriva community called to communicate
The long strange tale of Mandriva, that fascinating French Linux distro, continues -- and perhaps, soon, in a more organized fashion. Pending a vote by members of the community, the Mandriva Linux Assembly is at hand.
The assembly, as per terms of the call for nominations, would represent three groups: the user community, with one representative seats per nation or group of nations; five representatives of the cookers, Mandriva's term for the paid staff and contributor who do the actual development; and five representatives from Mandriva. Those representatives re tentatively expected to be sorted into three working groups: the MUGs, which will comprise all the user-community electees plus two Mandriva representatives; the Cooker Menu, which will have five members from each constituency; and Cooker Chefs, a mainly operational group that includes all ten Cooker and Mandriva reps.
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