Nokia unveils another fashion phone
Nokia officially announced today the new handset in its Prism line for the "design conscious" consumer, the 7900 Crystal Prism.
Despite a decidedly corny name and somewhat inutile keypad layout, the Crystal Prism is a unique device with customizable backlighting in 49 different colors. Graphic artist Frederique Dubal who has worked extensively on graphic and textile design on campaigns with Nike in the Netherlands, Sony's Playstation in France, and Paul Smith in the UK, collaborated with Nokia on the laser-etched graphic designs and exclusive wallpapers available for the handset.
Baidu expands to take on Google in Japan
The dominance of Google in the search space is almost written in stone in North America, but there may yet be some populous spots in the world where the market is wide open. Now its main Chinese competitor has launched a new assault.
While the US market looks to Yahoo as perhaps the sole competitor in the Internet search space capable of mounting a serious challenge to Google in 2008, there's one area of the world where Google has yet to gain a stronghold: Asia. Now the Chinese market leader, Baidu, is mounting its first strategic mission to capture Google users from outside its home base, setting up shop this morning with a new portal aimed at Japan.
Germans outraged over Nokia cell phone plant shutdown
Upset over the loss of 2,300 jobs in Germany, 15,000 local residents have staged a street demonstration over Nokia's plans to shut down a factory and move production to budget-wise Romania. A boycott is possible, and government leaders claim Finnish-based Nokia should now give back the considerable amount of subsidy money it's gotten from Germany.
Angered over Nokia's plans to close a cell phone manufacturing plant in Germany, 15,000 local residents have marched through the streets, with some politicians calling for a boycott of Nokia products and demanding reimbursement of a big chunk of more than 80 million euros ($120 million) in subsidies paid by Germany to Nokia over the past 20 years.
Next Microsoft Office will continue to support VBA
It has been the "macro" language for Microsoft Word since Office 97, even while Microsoft has moved Office developers toward .NET. But now members of the Visual Studio team are saying Visual Basic for Apps isn't going anywhere.
In response to reports that cropped up last week saying that Microsoft is finally shutting down support for Visual Basic for Applications, the COM-based macro language for customizing Office 97 and subsequent versions, members of the team whose product would presumably replace it are saying VBA support will remain in the next edition of Office, code-named either "Office 13" or "Office 14" on account of squeamishness over the earlier number.
Southwest Airlines to offer Internet access to flyers
Known for its unique boarding system and joke-telling cabin crew, Southwest will be the first US airline to test satellite-delivered broadband Internet access.
Through a partnership with privately held Southern California company Row 44, Southwest will be able to offer an anticipated 30 Mbps to Wi-Fi enabled devices at the cruising altitude of 32,000 feet. Tests are expected to begin on four aircraft this summer.
The case for WordPerfect is resurrected in the Supreme Court
Microsoft is now resurrecting an ancient battle by asking the US Supreme Court to quash a lawsuit filed by Novell back in 2004, alleging that Microsoft maliciously ruined WordPerfect's chances in the office productivity market.
In its suit against Microsoft, Novell claims that, between 1994 and 1996, Microsoft maliciously withheld technical information about Windows 95 so as to give Microsoft Office an advantage over its rivals and to effectively squash WordPerfect and other competitors in the marketplace.
AT&T: U-verse gets speed boost, broadband customers get free Wi-Fi
AT&T announced today that its U-verse fiber-to-the-node Internet service will begin offering more bandwidth and higher speeds to top-tier subscribers, and free Wi-Fi hotspot connectivity to all of AT&T's broadband customers.
The AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet Max tier will cost $55 a month when bundled with U-verse TV, and will now have downstream speeds of up to 10 Mbps, and upstream speeds up to 1.5 Mbps.
MPAA admits 'human error' in its revenue loss estimates from piracy
Back in 2005, the Motion Picture Association of America released a study that blamed 44 percent of the industry's domestic losses on college students illegally downloading movies. Now the Association admits its numbers were wrong.
A more accurate figure, the MPAA now says, is about 15 percent, in an admission to educational groups cited this morning by the Associated Press. It attributed its overestimate of student-based losses to a "human error."
HD DVD, Blu-ray playback added to new entry-level ATI cards
For years, ATI played itself as the performance leader in the graphics space. But now as part of AMD, which is having a difficult time of late making its case for CPU performance, ATI may have to make like its new corporate parent for a little while.
It was not a premium feature of high-end graphics cards for very long: This morning at a rollout event in Beijing, AMD is announcing its ATI division has added DirectX 10.1 support to two new Radeon cards at the low end of the price spectrum, with the new HD 3400 model expected to retail for as low as $49.
Apple's attention shifts to Mac as iPod growth slows
In the last few weeks, its biggest news has been the deals it's made with movie studios for streaming content over iTunes, and its having deflated the bulk of a notebook computer to a razor-thin profile. Didn't Apple used to sell those little song gadgets?
A public corporation always puts its best foot forward for its quarterly earnings report, and in that case, Apple Inc. is no different. But when a seasoned performer has become accustomed to always entering the stage with his right foot, as many have trained themselves to do for whatever reason, you take notice when one enters the stage with his left.
Can EMC convince you to do online data backups?
How do you deal with backing up your data, especially when you're out on the road with your laptop? With today's announcement of EMC's MozyEnterprise, you can now encrypt, back up, and store your laptop or desktop PC data in a high security data center for not much more than $5 per month.
MozyEnterprise might finally be enough to convince even the most reluctant home users, small businesses, and enterprises that online backup and storage over the Internet is a safe, effective and maybe even necessary way to go, according to some industry analysts.
Internet Explorer 8 to feature 'super' Web standards mode
If the next edition of the world's most distributed browser expects all Web sites to pass the Acid2 test, one of its key architects said yesterday, an unfortunate irony might be that many sites could break in that browser.
In one of the stranger admissions yet to come from a Microsoft developer, Internet Explorer 8 platform architect Chris Wilson acknowledged on his team's blog yesterday that one of the quandaries his team has faced to date is meeting the simultaneous challenges of embracing Web standards to a greater extent than ever before...while not breaking Web sites that tweaked themselves years ago to comply with IE6.
Verizon offers Bluetooth FM transmitter for cars
Verizon today announced it now offers the Venturi Mini, an A2DP bluetooth FM transmitter that can broadcast music and voice calls through in-car audio systems.
Similar in function to the Motorola MotoROKR T505, the Venturi Mini pairs with stereo bluetooth-enabled phones and broadcasts the phone's audio over the car's audio system on a free FM channel.
Ten-year eBay CEO rumored to be eyeing retirement soon
Is Meg Whitman preparing to leave the top spot of the highly successful auction site? People close to the situation think that the corporate leader, mentor, and self-made billionaire is now ready to open eBay's doors to some fresh new ideas.
With Web mega-auction site eBay about to announce quarterly earnings tomorrow, rumors are afoot that the company's long-time CEO, Meg Whitman, will soon retire from the job she assumed back in 1998, when the then-start-up employed merely 29 people and operated only in the US.
NBC Direct adopts personalized ad network
NBC has announced that its NBC Direct downloadable TV platform currently in beta will utilize the YuMe network for its advertising.
YuMe was designed especially for broadband video, providing ad and campaign management, trafficking and reporting for its users. It delivers metrics on viewership and ad performance in both downloaded and streaming playback, and even changes overlaid ads to embedded ones when the content is moved from place to place.
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