First look at a multitouch Android phone
Over the weekend, a proof of concept and downloadable demos for multi-touch on the Android open source mobile operating system were made available to the community.
In the time that I've been an Android user and owner of the HTC/T-Mobile G1, I've seen one thing happen dozens of times: when people ask to play with my phone, one of the first things they do is open the browser and try the iPhone "screen pinch." I don't know why, but it has happened literally dozens of times. Work and social colleagues, strangers, male, female, young and old, from the random people sitting next to me in airports to BlackBerry-faithful family members, almost everyone does it.
Apple iLife '09 launches tomorrow
Apple's iLife '09 creativity suite will be released tomorrow, according to the company. The software package will include updates to the iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, and IDVD products made famous for being pre-installed on Macs.
iMovie '09 received the a new Precision Editor mode, video stabilization, animated travel maps and improved drag and drop functionality. iPhoto '09 now recognizes GPS tags, face detection and face recognition technologies for improved indexing of photos. GarageBand '09 has added instruction modes with 18 lessons on how to play piano and guitar, bolstered by the star power of Sara Bareilles, John Fogerty, Norah Jones, and Sting.
Verizon Wireless femtocell launches yesterday, AT&T plays catch-up
Right on schedule, the nation's largest carrier is rolling out the first deployment of cellular signal-boosting femtocell equipment on private premises, using high-speed Internet as the backbone.
In perhaps one of its more radical experiments -- at least for Verizon Wireless -- the carrier is offering its Wireless Network Extender device for a lump-sum payment of $250. It's not a service, you don't subscribe to it, but you also don't need Verizon's wireless Internet service to use it either.
Free Vista promotions may not be free after all
It's hard to complain when someone offers you his top-of-the-line operating system for free. But it's hard not to complain when you're all ready to install it and you discover, surprise, it may not be free after all. That's the situation facing perhaps hundreds of recent recipients of Windows Vista Ultimate SP1, as gifts for attending the company's MSDN seminar tours.
To ensure that recipients register their copies and only use them once, Microsoft printed a promotional code inside the jacket, which is not the usual product key. By visiting the Web site www.registerwindowsvistasp1.com and entering the promotional code, recipients are given the full product key, and that way they will also be registered with Microsoft. Perhaps as part of a plan instituted months earlier, Microsoft set the Web site to discontinue operations after December 31, 2008.
Sprint announces job cuts
Sprint this morning became the first of the major US telecommunications companies to announce layoffs brought about by recent economic conditions. The third largest provider said up to 8,000 jobs will be eliminated to reduce labor and operating expenses.
Additionally, the company said it has frozen 2009 salaries and 401(k) matching bonuses. The measures are expected to cost Sprint $300 million in the first quarter of 2009, but reduce operating costs by an annual $1.2 billion.
Monster.com data breached again
As if current job-seekers don't have enough woe, Monster.com is warning its users that data kept on its servers has been breached -- names, user IDs and passwords, e-mail addresses, contact information, phone numbers, and "some basic demographic data."
The announcement on the Monster site is dated January 23 (Friday), but considering Monster.com's track record over the past couple of years, they might as well just keep a copy on file for reuse. August 2007 saw an attack on the service that breached 1.3 million accounts and led to a mini-epidemic of phishing; later that year, another attack resulted in malware infections for hapless seekers who clicked to compromised pages on the monster.com site.
Wired.com discovers Google Docs flaw, but that's not the only one
A writer at Wired.com this week pointed to a document editing issue in Google Apps, and that's just the latest in a list of security holes -- of varying severity -- uncovered by users of Google's suite.
Other users have complained, for example, about Google document ownership getting assigned to the wrong people, an inability to delete images of Google documents, and the lack of SSL encryption for docs published in the Standard Edition.
The DTV delay: Would this be the last?
How much could you accomplish in 115 days? The DTV Delay Act, provisionally delaying the switchover to DTV, appears to have overcome GOP objections and is moving toward a full Senate vote sometime next week. The Act would push mandatory rollover back to June 12.
Reports state that Senate Republicans were concerned that television stations ready and eager to switch would be forced to delay their move; the revised Act says they're free to make the hop as they see fit, and the feds can thereupon take up the unused and discarded spectrum for public-safety communications, as has been the plan all along.
Air Force applies brakes to satellite program
Nextgov reports that the ambitious Transformational Communications Satellite (TSAT) system, a $16 billion program that would allow surveillance satellites to move masses of data to troops in and near battle, is in a holding pattern.
The program is designed to make available over broadband masses of intelligence and surveillance data from its sources -- satellite and otherwise -- and move it to fighters in the field. It's a crucial part of the comprehensive Future Combat Systems program developed by the Army to modernize its capabilities. The Air Force's space program has undertaken the TSAT project, but other branches of the Armed Forces would have access to its capabilities.
Your multitouch update: Apple: "Grr." Palm: "GRR."
That didn't take long: After Apple's cranky comments concerning multitouch and intellectual-property rights on Wednesday, Palm has responded with a tone that suggests that Apple execs might want to invest in asbestos undies if they insist on proceeding along their apparent current path.
During Apple's earnings call on Wednesday, the company was uncharacteristically testy concerning potential competitors to its iPhone -- specifically, to Palm and its hotly anticipated Pre, which uses certain multitouch-style gestures on the touchscreen part of the smartphone's interface. "I don't want to talk about any particular company," said COO Tim Cook at the time. "However, we will not stand for having our IP ripped off. And we will use whatever weapons we have at our disposal."
Analysis: After yesterday, it's time to reset
Among the comments we received yesterday after our all-day, wall-to-wall coverage of the deluge that struck the technology industry, was a complaint asking, why we didn't pick some happier news?
One of the many things I've always appreciated about the movie Apollo 13 is that penchant for its historical accuracy enabled it to introduce the world, by way of actor Ed Harris, to one of the 20th century's greater heroes, former NASA flight director Gene Kranz. Sure, after the movie, folks everywhere had adopted one of Kranz' true-to-life catch phrases, and what had been emblazoned on my wall as a teenager: Failure Is Not An Option. But there was another Kranz phrase used in the movie that is applicable to yesterday, a day which revealed for us the wide extent of the damage incurred during this ongoing, global economic failure.
Garlinghouse resurfaces, without stripes
Let's pause for a moment to enjoy a moment of peanut butter without salmonella: peHUB today reports that Brad Garlinghouse, the former Yahoo senior VP who in 2006 compared that company's increasingly overextended efforts to a thinly-spread sandwich topping, is up to something.
In a better world (or at least a world better to Yahoo's put-upon shareholders), Garlinghouse's memo, which castigated company leadership for lacking a "cohesive, focused vision" for the dot-com pioneer and bewailed redundant projects, a bloated bureaucracy, and the "phoning it in" mentality then becoming ubiquitous, would have been the butt-kicking that got Yahoo straightened up and flying right. As it was, some activity ensued -- then-COO Dan Rosensweig put Garlinghouse in charge of thinking through how his suggestions might be put into practice -- but political struggles followed and the rest is history. Garlinghouse left the company in mid-2008.
On the anti-piracy beat with Cryptography Research
Psst! Hey buddy! Wanna buy a Snoy TV, an Appel Mic, or a bottle of Vaigra? Probably not -- not only are counterfeit products inferior, they can be downright hazardous. Paul Kocher wants to help ensure you never do.
Kocher, known well to security geeks as one of the architects of the SSL 3.0 protocol (and one of the theorists behind differential power analysis as a crypto-cracking strategy), is working these days to quash piracy and counterfeiting. He was at CES with Cryptography Research Inc. earlier this month to talk about tech that integrates anti-counterfeiting technology into systems such as computers, televisions, and set-top boxes.
Obama taps Sun's McNealy for open source advice
Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems' co-founder and chairman, says that President Barack Obama has asked him to write a white paper on the benefits of open source technology.
In an interview with the BBC, McNealy contended that government should mandate the use of open source products to "improve security, get higher quality software, lower costs, [and obtain] higher reliability -- all the benefits that come with open software."
Google whittles down free access to Apps
Google has been steadily shrinking the number of users it lets access a business' free Google Apps account. When the service first launched, it allowed up to 200 users per business. Then, Google announced its $50 per-user premier platform and the the user limit on free accounts was reduced to 100. Now, Techcrunch reports that the number has shrunk yet again, hitting the 50 mark. Google says there are over 1 million businesses using Google Apps for their collaborative online workspace.
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