Tremendous lines reportedly amassed outside of several metropolitan Verizon Wireless stores awaiting the new BlackBerry Storm, only to have eager fans turned away empty handed.
Today, shares in parent company Verizon have jumped in value nearly six percent in midday trading, but many BlackBerry fans are skeptical about the efficacy of Verizon Wireless' Storm launch.
Two weeks ago, Opera released the beta of Opera Mini 4.2. This morning it's been made available to Android users directly from the Android Market.
Android Market, the open mobile OS's app store, has been graced with only a handful of blockbuster applications, most of which were released when the T-Mobile G1 was released.
A change in the way the Windows client enables IP routes to be amended manually is the target of a potentially serious exploit for Vista users only, that Microsoft may now have no choice but to address.
Through SecurityFocus.com last Wednesday, a team of researchers at Phion published a proof of concept that demonstrates how Microsoft's Internet Protocol Helper API could be exploited to trigger a stack buffer overflow, potentially leading to the execution of random code. Unusually, this particular exploit can only be recreated, Phion said in its bulletin, on Windows Vista Enterprise and Ultimate versions, in 32- and 64-bit editions.
The discovery that Microsoft has not only registered but is currently running servers under the domain name "kumo.com" has people wondering today whether a rebranding of its cloud-based services is in the works.
We've heard some talk in recent days about this "cloud" thing that Microsoft's been playing with. Maybe you've seen or read something having to do with the company's cloud services for business users, as well as its ambitious system for hosting .NET apps on a platform being given the brand Windows Azure.
A letter from HP CEO Mark Hurd to Steve Ballmer after the release of Vista gives observers a sense of how miserable life became thereafter at HP -- plus that delicious feeling of snooping into someone else's cranky e-mail.
A court document filed last month in the class-action suit pitting Microsoft against disgruntled buyers of "Vista Capable" machines seeks to require a deposition from CEO Steve Ballmer. The plaintiff's motion states that "Mr. Ballmer's deposition is vitally important to this litigation" -- three hours max, at Microsoft or off campus, during the workday or on the weekend, whatever it takes.
Information stored on remote computers should be given the same legal protections as data stored on a user's desktop PC, according to report produced by more than 20 activist and human rights groups.
A coalition of influential organizations is recommending to the next President's administration that an 18-year-old privacy law needs overhauling in order to deal fairly with "cloud computing" technologies as well as with cell phone location data.
With many news services, it's the dire predictions that make the boldest headlines; but if the headline happens to be, "Advertising Growth Declines," then suddenly the news looks a little more...measured.
So the news emerging this week from the Internet Advertising Bureau, which collects information submitted by surveys from members who sell advertising over the Internet in the US, is that the rate of growth in the ad industry has essentially flattened. According to IAB statistics, ad revenue among US-based ad dealers who are members (this should account for Google and AOL's Platform-A, among others) grew to $5.865 billion for the calendar third quarter, up 11% annually over the previous year's Q3.
Yieldex, a service that forecasts online ad inventories and aids publishers in making the system work smoothly, took the top prize in Amazon's second annual Web Services Start-Up Challenge.
That prize is more than just a loving cup; Yieldex will get $50,000 cash, $50,000 in Amazon Web Services credits, and maybe -- maybe! -- an investment offer from The House That Bezos Built.
The labs that brought you the MP3 codec have moved their Mufin music-finder project into the public-beta phase, adding two widgets options to its collection.
The Mufin service, which makes tracks-like-this suggestions via algorithm, has worked on usability and bug-hunting since the last time we visited. The drawn-out process of lining up the licenses to play clips of the music seems to be progressing, though slowly; a number of tracks had clips available, but a sizable minority did not.
Today, Google launched its SearchWiki feature, which adds an aspect of personalization and quasi-semantic enhancement.
Several weeks after search startup Semanti Corp launched its Google-centric search plug-in that allows users to tag and rank search results, Google has come out with its own version, SearchWiki. Google's new product is different from Semanti's in that it is primarily intended to be personal. A signed-in user's search results can be re-ranked, deleted, added, or commented upon.
NEW YORK, N.Y. - Last night, Asus gave a first-time look at a more affordable version of the "deluxe" S101 Eee that debuted in October. The Windows XP-based EPC 1002HA comes with a two-cell instead of a four-cell battery.
Asus, manufacturer of some of the first netbooks, will introduce a $499 version of the "deluxe" Eee PC S101, BetaNews has learned. At a Pepcom press event here last night, Asus showed off a non-working prototype of the upcoming 1002HA, a 10-inch ultramobile PC (UMPC) that costs $150 less than the $649 price tag on the deluxe model that debuted last month.
The latest version of Adobe's stand-alone player for Flash media appears only cosmetically different, and we've noticed a few bugs in our tests. But the big changes are under the hood, with Flash 10 and the latest AIR platform.
Now on a par with specialist content delivery services such as Joost, Adobe Media Player began upgrading itself on users' systems today to version 1.5. Besides a change of the shade of AMP's panels to a not so dark grey (about a "3" on a "10" scale rather than a "2"), viewers may not notice much functional difference; though the episode library was already stacking up rather nicely, it's not much larger this week than last week.
NEW YORK, N.Y. - AT&T plans to add another 3G phone in December, BetaNews has learned. Pantech's C630 phone will join eight other low-cost phones in AT&T's growing 3G family, along with the pricier Apple iPhone 3G and Windows Mobile-based LG Incite.
At a press event last night, Pantech previewed the C630, a low-priced smartphone that AT&T will sell to customers for use on its 3G network starting in December.
Apple today released the iPhone's 2.2 firmware upgrade that includes Google Maps upgrades, and the ability to directly load podcasts to the device.
While today's update does improve issues with mail fetching, stability in Safari, and sound quality of Visual Voicemail, it is not a critical fix for problems like the 2.1 update was. Rather, it adds some welcome features to the device that have been floating around the blogosphere as rumors for a month or so.
Amid all the bad economic news, including a downturn in PC market growth projections for 2009 by nine points, who would have thought the company best suited to weather the storm could be one that just emerged from a storm?
You may not have to look to the end of the tunnel for signs of light today. In a clear demonstration that Mark Hurd is not the only fellow who can shape up a company to emerge from scandal unscathed and healthy enough to tackle a fresh new year of hell, yesterday was the day of Michael Dell.