Windows Mobile 6.5 made official, but not for older devices
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft gave a grand tour of the new iteration of Windows Mobile, along with My Phone, the company's MobileMe equivalent.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in November semi-officially confirmed that Windows Mobile 6.5 would be released in the second half of 2009, after a long run-up with rumors and speculation about Redmond's progress in the touchscreen OS field. What wasn't "officially" noted at the time was that devices running older versions of Windows Mobile would not be able to upgrade. Rather, it will only be available as the pre-installed OS on new devices.
Sprint adds mobile broadband to 'Everything' plan for $150 per month
Claiming it offers a savings of $599 compared to AT&T and Verizon, Sprint has unveiled a version of its unlimited "Everything" plan that includes mobile broadband for both businesses and consumers. The plan will cost $149.99, and include everything its existing $99.99 unlimited voice and messaging plan offers, along with 5GB of 3G access using a laptop.
Sprint charges $59.99 for mobile broadband on its own, so the bundle amounts to a savings of $10 per month. The company says existing customers can upgrade to the new plan without extending their contract; new activations will require a two-year agreement in exchange for a free USB 3G broadband device.
Palm joins Adobe's Open Screen Project to bring Flash to Pre
Timed with the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Monday, Palm announced it is joining the Open Screen Project spearheaded by Adobe, which aims to bring applications and web experiences to TVs, PCs and mobile devices using Flash. Specifically, Palm plans to integrate Flash into its upcoming Pre smartphone and future devices running webOS -- something Apple has yet to do with the iPhone.
"We're excited that our customers will benefit from the creativity and broad range of Flash content and applications created by the millions of designers and developers using Adobe's popular tools and technologies," remarked Pam Deziel, vice president of software product management at Palm. Whether it will be as simple as downloading a Flash app onto the Pre is not yet known.
LG to make Windows Mobile its primary smartphone OS
In a big win for Windows Mobile, LG -- the world's third largest mobile handset maker -- has agreed to make Microsoft's struggling and aging operating system the primary for all its smartphones.
The move is a gamble for LG, which doesn't have its own smartphone platform like market leader Nokia. Samsung, which has been the fastest growing mobile company and controls the #2 spot, said it will continue to dabble in Symbian, Windows Mobile and Google's Android platforms.
Orange promises to deliver LG's watch phone, likely this year
When Betanews took a closer look at LG's watch phone at CES in January, the only thing separating these quasi-sci-fi devices from reality was a mobile carrier willing to bless them with subsidies.
Today, France's Orange announced that it will be the first mobile operator to bring the watch phone to market.
Mobile app stores: Nokia and Microsoft each get one, too
Today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Nokia announced that its Ovi suite of mobile applications will be getting its own App store in May, and Microsoft announced Windows Marketplace for Windows Mobile devices.
Nokia's store fits into the company's Ovi suite of mobile services, and will appropriately be named The Ovi Store. It will carry the applications, games, videos, podcasts, widgets, and "personalization content" (likely wallpaper and ringtones) previously found on Download!, MOSH, and WidSets, now combined into a single location.
Analyst: Video game industry continues growth
Market research group NPD has released its latest tally of sales in the video game industry, which continues to grow despite worsening economic conditions.
Last September, MIT professor Henry Jenkins III called video games some of the "great equalizers" in digital media. He referred to video games as "convergent transmedia," or a single medium made up of other media: graphic design, music, coding, voice acting, script and dialogue writing, and so on.
Vizio turns tables in ongoing HDTV litigation
While we wait for the digital-TV switchover, the manufacturers of high-definition television sets will joust for our entertainment. On Friday, a day after the International Trade Commission upheld a lower judicial body's invalidation of a crucial HD-related patent, Vizio filed suit against the company that made the claim.
Funai Electric has, over the last year, filed various lawsuits against other HDTV manufacturers, asserting infringement of two HD-related patents, 5,329,369 ("Asymmetric picture compression") and 6,115,074 ("System for forming and processing program map information suitable for terrestrial, cable or satellite broadcast").
Opera to launch 'Turbo' for faster Web browsing
Opera Software will next week roll out Turbo, a new server-enabled compression technology for speeding up Web browsing on PCs, mobile phones, gaming machines, and other devices.
Although many of the details are being withheld until Turbo's official launch at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Opera shared some information with journalists this week.
Court disallows brief in trial against Harvard student who downloaded music
One of the three amicus briefs filed in support of Webcasting the proceedings in the trial of a Harvard student accusing of illegally downloading music has been refused for consideration by the First Circuit Court.
The Associated Press-led brief was rejected because accepting it would have required that one of the judges involved recuse herself or himself from the case. That would indicate that one or more of the judges has a conflict of interest with one of the parties petitioning; perhaps they hold stock in a certain company, or have a close relative employed by one. (In other words, the "
Moonlight 1.0 means more Silverlight apps run smoothly on Linux
Microsoft had always promised interoperability as one of its key goals for Silverlight. The way it's accomplishing this on the Linux side of the scale is by empowering Miguel de Icaza to take the project and run with it.
This week marked an important milestone in a genuine effort to take a pretty good graphical Web applications platform and make it workable for Linux. The Mono Project, a team backed by Novell and Microsoft whose goal is to make the .NET Framework workable on other platforms, including Linux (and even, if you can believe it, Windows) has released its first non-beta version of the Moonlight 1.0 plug-in.
Is text-to-speech on Kindle 2 a threat to audiobooks?
Yesterday, the Author's Guild aired complaints about the Kindle 2's new onboard text-to-speech function from predictive text specialists Nuance Communications, warning that the function could eventually cut into the audiobook market.
The group said, "This presents a significant challenge to the publishing industry. Audiobooks surpassed $1 billion in sales in 2007; e-book sales are just a small fraction of that. While the audio quality of the Kindle 2, judging from Amazon's promotional materials, is best described as serviceable, it's far better than the text-to-speech audio of just a few years ago. We expect this software to improve rapidly."
Nvidia: First Ion PC to ship by summer, might use Vista
PC makers are working on both netbooks and small desktop systems using Ion, but the first Ion PC, expected by this summer, will probably be a desktop model, an Nvidia spokesperson said today.
"Given that we just introduced Ion is December, and that PC design cycles are usually 6 to 12 months, it will take some time for Ion designs to come to market. We do expect the first Ion-based systems to hit by summer, if not earlier," said Ken Brown, PR manager for platforms, in an e-mail to Betanews.
Google: now making you even more visible
This week, Google cranked out several tools that exploit the search company's strength in the LBS (location based service) model. Betanews took a look at one for Android, and one for Gmail.
Google Labs is a repository of potentially advantageous little gadgets, so when new product is pushed through, it usually warrants solid consideration. On Tuesday, a Gmail lab was premiered that carried a solid concept: Show the geographic origin of a user's e-mails as a signature.
Facebook's '$65m settliement' might be worth a lot less
A settlement by Facebook's founder to college classmates, pegged by lawyers at $65 million, contained only $20 million in cash, according to an AP report this week which also revives the issue of Facebook's real stock value.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg paid the controversial settlement to former Harvard classmates who claimed he stole their idea for a social networking site. The classmates later started their own social network, ConnectU.
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