Wi-Fi: Comcast enters beta in NJ, while BART leaves beta in CA
With the as yet unannounced test of Wi-Fi at 100 commuter rail stations in New Jersey, Comcast follows Cablevision's lead into testing Wi-Fi among commuters in areas adjacent to New York City.
A spokesperson for Comcast today acknowledged that the company is in "early, early beta" with a Wi-Fi test at rail stations in New Jersey, while San Francisco's BART announced plans to expand its own recent trial into a full commercial rollout.
Google Earth 5.0 shows ocean floor, Mars
Download the new Google Earth from Fileforum now.
Google today announced new additions to Google Earth which include Ocean, Historical Imagery, Touring, and Google Mars 3D.
TiVo ranks top ten Super Bowl Commercials
Based on its second-by-second Stop||Watch audience metrics, DVR maker TiVo has released its figures ranking the most watched television commercials during yesterday's Super Bowl.
TiVo found that the highest viewership spikes in the first half of the game actually took place during the commercials; while in the second half it was during crucial moments in gameplay. In descending order, the top ten highest rated commercials were:
Pong turns 40, gets own museum
A site celebrating the 40th anniversary of the invention of Pong, pongmuseum.com, has opened. With the museum comes a rare gem: a video directly from inventor Ralph H. Baer featuring himself and chief engineer Bill Harrison playing a demonstration model of their invention in 1971.
In addition to explaining the origin of the home video game console (which even goes into the basic schematics of the General Instrument AY-3-8500 chip, the common "pong" chip), Pong Museum includes a collection of international pong machines, from the breakthrough Magnavox Odyssey to the rare Heathkit GD that required users to open up their TVs to connect the game's wires directly.
Will Motorola veer away from Windows Mobile?
In the face of a gloomy financial report expected on Tuesday, some analysts are voicing concerns that Motorola's previously announced strategy of focusing more on high-end phones can remain viable. Last fall, then recently appointed Co-Chief Executive Sanjay Jha rolled out a company restructuring that cut Motorola's number of supported smartphone platforms to two: Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Google's Android.
But as recently reported in Betanews, Motorola recently added 70 workers at its Windows Mobile unit in Plantation, FL to a tally of 4,000 job cuts announced earlier in January. Pink slips also went out in January to long-time Mobile Devices vice presidents Yvonne Verse and Tracey Koziol, according to a report today in The Wall Street Journal, which cited "people familiar with the situation."
Adobe Flash on iPhone: A one-sided coin
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen spoke yet again of the company's continuing interest in porting Flash to the iPhone.
"It's a hard technical challenge, and that's part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating," Narayen said to Bloomberg Television, "The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver."
As Palm crawls back, the Centro gets another carrier
The smartphone that was supposed to save Palm last year has actually sold very well. The problem up to now has been pitifully low margins -- Palm can certainly sell Centros, but not enough to substantially profit from them.
While the world awaits the Pre -- a phone whose margins will hopefully be higher for Palm -- the Centro has finally made its way to one more Canadian carrier today: Bell. This will apparently end the phone's exclusivity with Rogers in the region, which has been selling the phone for $299 (with a three-year contract) since its introduction there last June. Bell's price has yet to be announced.
Who picks the badware? Dispute erupts after Google glitch
For about 40 minutes early Saturday morning, a URL with a single forward slash was inadvertently checked into a list of potential malware sites operated by Google, with some help...maybe...from StopBadware.org.
As a result, its search results partner, Google, was flagging nearly every Web site on the planet as a potential conveyor of malware, from about 6:40 am to 7:25 am PST.
Analysts: IPTV to keep thriving despite financial meltdown
Even the ravaged economy can't hamper the growth of IPTV on a global basis, according to an analyst report released today.
In spite of the global economic crisis, worldwide subscriberships to "telco TV" -- a category encompassing TV delivered by telecom operators through IP in addition to other technologies -- will more than triple by 2012 to 71.6 million, according to the report from In-Stat.
Woolworths to be resurrected as an online retailer
If you're an American, imagine if you will the sudden disappearance of a retailer whose brand is as big as Target. The recent loss of Woolworths in Great Britain is at least proportional. The great five-and-dime retailer -- the namesake of an institution that was actually founded in Pennsylvania in 1879 -- filed for bankruptcy (administration) last November, and began shutting the doors on all its UK retail outlets soon afterward.
Now, that nation's largest online retailer -- which also happens to operate conventional retail stores -- is gearing up to resurrect "Woolies," at least for now as a direct online merchandiser.
Report: Panasonic may post an historic loss Wednesday
The press service AFP this morning is citing reports in the Asian press as stating that Panasonic will report an operating loss this past quarter of ¥350 billion (about $3.9 billion USD) on Wednesday, partly due to the bad economy and partly to its ongoing acquisition of Sanyo. This would be the first quarterly loss for the former Matsushita in about seven years.
However, the exact source of the AFP's news this morning is uncertain. In what could be a possible rewrite error, the name of the newspaper ("Shimbun") was attributed by the AFP to two different cities. The Asahi Shimbun and the Mainichi Shimbun are two different sources entirely, and the Web sites for neither paper are carrying any such news this morning.
Netflix contemplates a tiered streaming model
Certain Netflix members this weekend received a survey from the company in their inbox which asked if users would pay more for premium content.
The survey focused on HBO content, which would add $9.99 per month and give the user instant access to HBO original series and movies. While it is still only an idea by the company, the introduction of a tiered streaming model is a logical next step for the company. It would move the streaming business out of the auxiliary position it currently holds and closer to the company's mail order business which currently has nine different monthly rental plans.
FiOS could give more 'economic stimulus' to Verizon than others
Bloggers from Verizon and The New York Times slugged it out on Friday over parts of the economic stimulus package considered by Congress that give broadband providers extra incentives for ultra-fast services like FiOS.
In the NYT's Bits blog on Friday, Saul Hansell suggested that wording tucked into the Senate version of the economic stimulus bill would supply Verizon with a larger share of the stimulus pie than most of its rivals.
Infinite Canvas revealed
For comics geeks, any tech that unfurls the promised "infinite canvas" of digital comics is something to behold. Microsoft Live Labs has taken a crack at bringing that ideal -- a comics layout and viewing page in cyberspace, unconstrained by print thinking and limitations -- with a "funky side project" that's attracting attention from some of the greats.
"Infinite canvas" is a phrase coined by Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics, the tech introduction to Google Chrome), and he's one of the creatives highlighted on the site. The idea is that since a screen doesn't have to behave like a printed page, the possibilities for storytelling are expanded. Images can be of various sizes and can be arranged or overlaid in various ways. Text can escape bubbles and captions and behave in ways that emphasize (or subvert) what the words say.
eJamming Audiio P2P music collaboration launches beta 14
At CES 2008, Intel's Paul Otellini used eJamming Audiio, BigStage, and the band Smashmouth to show off how a group of musicians located on various corners of the globe could get together via P2P and play live in a virtual environment.
BetaNews tested the eJamming Audiio software last year and found that it was suitable for recording and collaborating with others in a VoIP-enhanced environment, but playing instruments live had too many latency issues to be feasible. In using MIDI drums, a guitar and bass in three different locations in the United States, each musician found they had to get accustomed to latency in their own signal, and then the latency of the others as well. In the end, it was nearly impossible to play live.
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