Many Obama supporters never received 3am VP wake-up text
"Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee," read the Obama campaign's early morning SMS message to his supporters. Trouble was, even by that time, many already knew it, and some weren't even getting the message.
The original plan was for Barack Obama supporters nationwide to be the first to receive the news of his vice presidential running mate. But well over two hours before many of those supporters received what ended up being, perhaps in an inadvertent tribute to Hillary Clinton, a 3am EDT wake-up call on August 25, CNN correspondent John King was the first to go live with the news that two highly-placed, then anonymous sources within the Democratic Party had confirmed to him that Joseph Biden was Sen. Obama's choice.
NBC failed to leverage Web for Olympic video, say reports
The TV network lagged behind competitor Yahoo in terms of traffic to its Olympic themed Web site, while its decision to limit Web video may have crippled online advertising revenue.
Although during the first three days of the Summer Olympic Games, NBCOlympics.com was able to hold onto the top spot, Yahoo's Olympic-themed site was able to beat NBC's since Day 4 in the race for Web eyeballs, according to Nielsen.
Ziff Davis indefinitely postpones DigitalLife, blames the economy
The yearly technology expo that had become a centerpiece of New York City's Digital Technology Week, and a viable alternative to CES has been postponed for 2008.
This morning, prospective attendees and exhibitors to the annual event, found this notice in small print, on the lower right corner of the event's Web site: "The DigitalLife event planned for September 25-28, 2008 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City has been postponed. Please check back for details on DigitalLife 2009."
European solidarity crumbling on digital mobile TV
A technology for mobile digital television in Europe may have had a better chance for a full rollout before the EC mandated it as Europe's official standard. Now, a leading analyst reports that hope may be fading for DVB-H.
In March, the European Commission agreed that DVB-H would be the standard for terrestrial mobile television broadcasting, thanks to the directing hand of Commissioner Viviane Reding. Only five months later, German service provider T-Systems, an arm of Deutsche Telekom, rolled out a DVB-T service to its customers despite the EC mandate that providers stick to DVB-H.
OLPC laptops now blanket the Pacific nation of Niue
The small country of Niue today became the first nation to provide OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) laptops to all of its public school students -- but then again, that number amounts to only 500.
Niue's 200 secondary school students received their PCs last month, according to a report by Radio New Zealand International.
Security lab warns of possible Chinese ISP DNS exploit
An apparent case of DNS poisoning in the caches of a major China-based ISP is causing extra concern today, in light of security engineer Dan Kaminsky's recent warnings about just how serious a cache poisoning exploit could become.
Visual evidence posted by security company WebSense earlier this week shows DNS resolution calls placed to the IP address of Chinese ISP Netcom using the command line tool nslookup, redirected to a completely different source whose IP address is linked to China. There, WebSense says, instead of the user's regular home page or Web mail, he'll see instead some links to exploits for RealPlayer, Adobe Flash Player, and Microsoft Snapshot Viewer.
Report: Google to be Verizon Wireless' default search
Verizon and Google may be close to establishing a revenue sharing mobile search deal, according to a report which have yet to be confirmed though have certainly not yet been denied.
Both Google and Verizon refuse to comment upon rumors, but a report from The Wall Street Journal this morning said the two companies could close a deal within the next few weeks. Such a deal would establish Google as the default mobile search engine for all of Verizon's handsets in exchange for a share of advertising revenue.
Is CDMA cell phone technology already dead? Analysts disagree
In separate reports issued this week, one prominent analyst firm proclaimed the impending death of CDMA cellular technology, while another touted its resurgence. So which is it?
Analyst firm Dell'Oro Group has declared CDMA -- for many years a widely used mobile communications standard, especially in North America -- already "dead."
Intel works on wireless laptop battery recharging
The groundwork may have been laid by Nikola Tesla for wireless transmission of electricity, but Intel is putting it to good use through a new effort to charge a laptop in much the same manner.
At the Intel Developer's Forum in San Francisco this week, a demonstration was shown where researchers were able to power a 60 watt light bulb from an energy source that was three feet away. About 75% of the power from the source was retained.
Pro-Tibet album may be behind China iTunes block
Users of Apple's music store in China have been reporting problems downloading music since the beginning of the week.
Chinese authorities have not directly confirmed blocking iTunes. Requests for comment have gone unanswered, or reporters have been told officials had no information on the block. However, the timing of this latest blockage seems to coincide with the release of a pro-Tibet album by the Art of Peace Foundation, which was released on Sunday.
Is BlackBerry Bold really having iPhone 3G-like issues?
Research In Motion launched its newest BlackBerry, the Bold, in Canada yesterday. Reviewers who have hastily compared it to Apple's iPhone have been asked by RIM to remove a side-by-side review comparing browsing speed between the two devices.
The Bold, or BlackBerry 9000, runs on an Intel XScale 624 MHz processor, has an HVGA 480x320 display and offers UMTS (2100, 900, 850MHz), GSM (1900,1800,900,850MHz), GPRS, EDGE and HDSPA , as well as Wi-Fi connectivity and GPS. There is also 1 GB of on-board memory for storage of files, and 128 MB of flash memory for applications.
Vista's image problem personified
It might not have even been a story meriting any extent of coverage -- Microsoft's hiring yesterday of comedian Jerry Seinfeld as its new commercial spokesperson -- had it not been for the fact that Microsoft has an image problem. That problem is due in large part to Windows Vista, and the public perception of it as somewhat less than the savior of modern computing that it was originally promoted to be in the early months of 2007.
As was widely reported yesterday, Microsoft is reportedly investing $300 million in a new advertising campaign starring comedian Jerry Seinfeld, and designed by the firm responsible for Burger King's popular, yet disturbing "King" ads. You may recall, the ones where ordinary people find themselves conversing with a plastic, motionless, mute Burger King statue that they find in their midst for no apparent reason.
Apple's iPhone 3G gets ho-hum response in Poland and India
Mobile service provider Orange Poland this week hired actors to help "warm up" reception to Apple's latest phone. Meanwhile, in India, a new iPhone 3G costs the US equivalent of $712 -- another indicator of barriers in some emerging markets.
Although earlier launches of Apple's iPhone 3G created big stirs in the US, northern Europe, and Japan, in a later wave of rollouts this week, the reaction has been more ho-hum in countries like India and like Poland -- a place where actors actually got paid to stand in line.
Apple makes e-mail harvesting easy with MobileMe
A curiously simple oversight may have opened every MobileMe user to the risk of having their e-mail address harvested just by looking through the company's iDisk folder hierarchy.
Specifically, the oversight appears to be that every MobileMe user's iDisk folder is named with the exact same username as his or her e-mail address. All a spammer would need to do is add '@me.com' to this information, and the legitimate e-mail address is complete.
Nintendo sued for controllers again
A Maryland company has sued Nintendo, alleging that the Wii's controller infringes upon four of the company's patents.
Earlier this year a small Texas company called Anascape sued Nintendo for the designs of its Wii classic and GameCube controllers, two peripherals especially popular at that time because of the game Super Smash Brothers: Brawl. That company walked away with $21 million after Nintendo lost the patent appeal.
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