Music site Imeem has undergone a redesign that premiered yesterday evening, streamlining the service as its OpenSocial comrade MySpace chews up headlines with MySpace Music.

Imeem has been delivering social playlisting for nearly two years, and has finally reworked its site to be more friendly to the new user. To assist in the discovery of new music, a spotlight page with streams of new artists has been added. A new "Discover" page gives personal recommendations based upon browsing habits on the site, growing the lists as the user uses the site more.

Continue reading →

NPR's got people, as in "NPR people" -- listeners whose fondness for National Public Radio is shorthand for who they are. Now they have their own social network.

An intensely loyal fan base is a great place to start a social network, but that didn't necessarily speed up the launch process for NPR's latest venture, which appears on its Web site under the Community banner.

Continue reading →

You can't keep a good Dell down. After having paid the price two years ago for surrendering its leadership position, it's now clearly rejoining the battle with HP and is inching its way back toward market leadership, according to iSuppli.

It's fair to say that the resurgence of Hewlett-Packard under the leadership of CEO Mark Hurd has been one of the more incredible success stories in the emerging annals of 21st century American business. There were other prospective leaders who could have taken the helm when Hurd did, who might not have led the company away from what seemed certain catastrophe.

Continue reading →

Apple's iPhone isn't the only device to get new support from an IBM division this week. Enterprise users of Windows Mobile, RIM, and Symbian devices can now get more businss intelligence capabilities from IBM's Cognos division.

Two days after IBM's Lotus division rolled out new software for accessing Notes mail from Apple iPhones, IBM's Cognos division has introduced more functionality for using its business intelligence (BI) software on other devices, including Windows Mobile, RIM Blackberry, and Symbian handhelds.

Continue reading →

On the same day Nokia releases its audio-centric XpressMusic 5800 touchscreen smartphone, LG sees the Finnish company's bet with its own camera-centric handset of similar styling.

Named the Renoir, this device combines an 8 megapixel xenon flash camera with unique touchscreen-enhanced features, with a result similar to a tactile viewfinder on a point and shoot camera. A special feature known as "Touch Shot" allows the user to select the area of focus by touching it on the screen, and the shutter fires upon release. It also includes 16x digital zoom, auto- and manual focus, image stabilization, face and smile detection, geotagging, and Schneider-Kreuznach optics.

Continue reading →

It's popular with police departments, schools and other institutions where users' install rights need to be contained. But the new 3.0 version of Faronics' Anti-Executable doesn't click so well with a common touchpad driver.

Anti-Executable's page on the Faronics Web site proclaims that "PERSISTENCE IS FUTILE" -- meaning that users on Anti-Executable machines can only load programs from a carefully controlled "whitelist," no matter how badly they think they need to play Solitaire or download a file from that nice prince in Nigeria who wants to transfer some money to them. Mainly geared to enterprises, the program also comes in a single-computer version for non-enterprise installations. That's the version we tested, or began to test, at BetaNews this week.

Continue reading →

The Google-driven WIA's efforts in advocating "white spaces" devices have been joined by two heavyweight industry coalitions: the BSA, which includes Apple; and the CCIA, which claims Linux distributor Red Hat as a member.

One week after Larry Page's FCC lobbying appearance in Washington, Google and its existing partners picked up more clout today in their fight to "unlock the unused white spaces" of the wireless spectrum. The Wireless Innovation Alliance's (WIA) campaign was officially joined by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) open systems advocacy group, and the Business Software Alliance (BSA) anti-piracy group.

Continue reading →

While it may be a rather late entry in the "handset*" field, today's launch of the Nokia XpressMusic 5800 (originally nicknamed the "Tube") has been timed to coincide with the availability of the "Comes with Music" service.

The 5800 is equipped with the tactility-enabled Symbian S60 interface that Nokia began showing off last year. Unlike other touchscreen handsets in this form factor, the 5800 is primarily a music phone. It has outward-facing stereo speakers (rather than ones mounted on the back of the device), a 3.5mm headphone jack, stereo Bluetooth, 81 MB of on-board memory expandable with an included 8 GB microSD card, and a quirky guitar pick stylus. Fortunately, that is not the device's main input device, and is more of a gimmick to accompany the numerous ways to interact with the touch UI.

Continue reading →

Under pressure from developers, Apple has dropped the controversial NDA clause previously imposed on its iPhone OS. Many developers are expressing their happiness on Twitter and elsewhere online, sometimes in pithy language.

Admitting that the non-disclosure agreement [NDA] for developers of apps for the iPhone's App Score is creating a "burden for developers," Apple is now abandoning the agreement for released software.

Continue reading →

The chief question in most satellite radio listeners' minds has been, would XM and Sirius subscribers always remain separate? Today, the official answer has changed from "Yes" to "Sorta," with the emergence of new "best-of" selections.

In a potentially acceptable compromise with what legislators had sought prior to the merger, Sirius XM Satellite Radio announced this morning it will be making some XM channels available to Sirius subscribers as an add-on package, and that one of its Sirius radios available now can accept a la carte programming selections.

Continue reading →

After a couple of rumor-heavy weeks, Nintendo will officially release an upgrade to its popular touch-screen handheld game system in Japan next month.

The most celebrated feature of the DSi is its dual-camera setup. One is mounted inside the clamshell, and the other on the outside. With these 640 x 480 "eyes" come the requisite photo manipulation tools, the roots of which Nintendo included with the Game Boy Camera more than ten years ago. Pictures can be merged together, drawn upon, or distorted.

Continue reading →

Even its proprietor says it's not a good thing when you have to join the RareShare social network, but for those suffering ultra-obscure diseases and disorders, it's a powerful resource.

The site, currently building its way through beta, is geared toward those suffering from what the National Institutes of Health call rare or orphan diseases -- those affecting about one (or fewer) Americans in 1500. The term "orphan disease" indicates one so uncommon that drug companies tend to ignore it, but if you're the only person you and your doctor have ever heard of with a highly uncommon condition, the "orphan" label feels mighty personal.

Continue reading →

Two of AOL's efforts to keep pace with the Web 2.0 era are slipping quietly into the 404 files as the service announced plans to close AOL Journals and Hometown at the end of the month.

One BetaNews reader this morning shared the e-mail he received from AOL, which included this: "It's very important that you save your Journals content before the shutdown. We're working on a way to easily move your Journal to another blogging service -- you can expect an email within the next week with more details about how to do it. We want the transition to go as smoothly as possible for you, so you'll have two choices. You can either save your information manually and find another place to blog on your own, or choose to automatically transfer your Journal to a different blogging service we've selected."

Continue reading →

Beyond its previously available native support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, the Apple iPhone's business stature jumped up another notch this week with a free application dubbed iNotes ultralite from IBM's Lotus division.

While Apple's App Store has been rejecting applications from smaller developers, a new iNotes Web application from IBM's Lotus is one piece of software being enthusiastically welcomed into the iPhone fold.

Continue reading →

Looking to draw fresh users into the arms of Live Search, Microsoft on Wednesday announced a half-year contest in which users can exchange clicks for tickets, and tickets for various goodies.

The SearchPerks contest, which launched Wednesday, is open to 250,000 respondents for now, though Microsoft says that it could open the gates to as many as a million if there's interest (its site's legalese says it's already expecting 1,000,000). Participants earn a "ticket" for using Windows Live, MSN, or Live Search -- up to 25 tickets every day. The contest is slated to run through April 15, 2009.

Continue reading →