December 21, 2006 — Tech News and Analysis

Archive for December 21, 2006

NEC's Water-resistant Ruggedized Laptop

I can’t imagine I’m the only person who’s ever spilled a drink on my laptop. And if you’re hauling your deck from dining table to cafe to conference, then you might want to think about getting something a bit more rugged. To be released … Read More »

India has become the next big battle ground for global mobile giants. Vodafone is said to be mulling a $15 billion bid for local mobile carrier, Hutch Essar. Not quite “3” of Europe, but still a big player in the local market. Hutchinson Whampoa, … Read More »

 
 

Dashcode Beta

Apple has officially released Dashcode, an application for developing Dashboard Widgets. It’s in beta, but from what I can tell from using it, it seems to be pretty feature complete, and very stable. This application is really cool, I must say. It allows anyone, even … Read More »

What’s On GigaOM Network

Heavy.com is easily most mature online video site in terms of venture capital funding. According to PE Hub, the company has just raised its fifth round. The round, which came out through one of PE Week’s signature habit of rifling through regulatory files, is valued at … Read More »

Raph Koster, co founder of MMO Areae interviewed.

Raph Koster the lead designer on such games as Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies recently started Areae Inc., and MMO with John Donham. He talks about his strategy in this special interview. Read More »

Will Consumer Apps Replace Enterprise Tools?

A new article in The Economist details a transition by Arizona State University IT director Adrian Sannier from the school’s application infrastructure to Google’s “Apps for your domain:” For Mr Sannier, however, a bigger reason than money for switching from traditional software to web-based alternatives has … Read More »

iBank 2

For years, the realm of personal finance on the Mac has been ripe for a small, independent kick-butt developer to come in and win everyone over. Anyone who is a mac fan and has ever launched Quicken can attest to that fact. And so, in 2003, … Read More »

The state of Vista on the Fujitsu P1610

I installed Vista on the Fujitsu P1610 (Miyagi) over a week ago and thought I’d share the state of the system.  When I first installed it I was only playing around with it and didn’t try to do anything productive, rather I was getting familiar with … Read More »

What’s this? InformationWeek is talking about how Microsoft botched the marketing for UMPCs? Great…another MSM-type article of someone who probably doesn’t even use a UMPC. Who wrote this thing?!? Oops….the byline says "James Kendrick"! Ah, I knew it along and was just playin’ ya. … Read More »

Microsoft Questions Wii and PS3 Online Strategy

The Nintendo Wii has taken off like a rocket and is a seriously hot commodity this holiday season. The PS3 is also very popular, but it’s hard to find due more to a relatively small launch than an overall desire by consumers (not to say it … Read More »

More Must Reads

As we reported yesterday, Earthlink officially launched its New Orleans network today. The company is offering its standard for-fee service as well as a temporary free service. Read More »

It’s that time of year again — time for Christmas television specials. And thankfully the tradition has carried on into cyberspace. The latest episode of “Will it Blend?” answers the age-old question of whether you can blend an entire Christmas dinner into … Read More »

Ex-Rocketboomer Amanda Congdon will launch the next of her projects, a “a behind the scenes look at her life in L.A. as she juggles new projects in the traditional and new media,” tomorrow. Details here. Read More »

CNN is reporting that Emirates Airlines is planning to allow cell phone usage on its planes, beginning in January. Fliers have long been able to keep in touch with those on the ground by using phones built into the backs of airplane seats. But the … Read More »

While Verizon and Sprint are busy in an EVDO Rev A standoff, Cingular is occupied with expanding its 3G network. Cingular says it now offers 3G in “more than 160 markets, including most of the top 100 major cities in the … Read More »

Dear Apple, Thank you. I had pretty much written off what happened as a silly mistake and although I didn’t feel very good about it, I had decided there wasn’t much I could do. You did the right thing, and proved to me again you … Read More »

Web-made heroine Amanda Congdon will launch the next of her projects, a “a behind the scenes look at her life in L.A. as she juggles new projects in the traditional and new media,” tomorrow. The show, Starring Amanda Congdon, has already hooked up deals with … Read More »

Bunnyfoot Quantities, a company that specializes in Behavioural Research, has found that in-game advertising in sports titles has less of an impact than desired. Using their specialized tool, the Sponsor Fixation Index (SFI), Bunnyfoot analyzed the results from 120 different game players. … Read More »

Motion Computing, maker of the fine line of slate Tablet PCs, today announced a new agreement with ASUStek, makers of notebooks and UMPCs.  Motion will have ASUS manufacturing new Tablet PCs in 2007, leveraging on ASUS’ ability to mass produce PCs.  This could be an … Read More »

Demetri just left a question in our comments that’s probably worth answering in a post; I’m sure other folks could use this "tip" on the Tablet Input Panel (TIP). Here’s Demetri’s question: "I am unable to fill out gmail with the TIP. Does anyone … Read More »

Michael Calore of Wired News writes about a coworker who called their ISP, RCN, after having trouble sharing a file using BitTorrent. Instead of being told that RCN was blocking his ability to seed torrent transfers, he was scolded for being a copyright infringer. … Read More »

Perhaps you don’t have a notebook with the ExpressCard slot, but if you purchase a new machine, there’s a chance it will have the newer interface. Don’t throw away those old flash memory cards … Read More »

Lost Remote mentions a new category in Nielsen’s year-end statistics: top 10 time-shifted prime-time television shows. It’s dominated by NBC and CW, with a more-than-healthy dose of chick TV. And no American Idol, of course, by far the winner in primetime TV. Lost Remote … Read More »

Given their history of successes with Skype and Kazaa, it’s no wonder that there is plenty of anticipation about the online video startup coming from Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the Venice Project. Thanks to some friends who have access, Om was able to get … Read More »

In a short item earlier this week, I linked to the announcement that the BBC would be distributing some of its shows through the new Azureus portal, Zudeo. The P2P Blog suggests correctly inferred that the shows will come with some form of … Read More »

Ever since we interviewed Janus Friis, the co-founder of Skype about The Venice Project, his latest start-up that plans to use peer-to-peer technology to disrupt the television industry, we have been intrigued and have been dying to get a look at the service. Even though … Read More »

Raph Koster has worked in the MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) game business for quite some time and has been the lead designer on such games as Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. Recently, he and John Donham started their own company. Koster, President of Areae … Read More »

iTunes 7 separates files into Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts and Audiobooks, whereas previously you could view all of your Library files in a single window and see what the total playtime and size was. In a comment on macosxhints.com, Doug Adams, who manages Read More »

In our house, we have "priority viewing" on our main HDTV. The kids get first pick of what to watch just because we can stay up later and watch high def … Read More »

The New York Times adds another gee-whiz article to the volumes of ink dedicated to cell phone-based child tracking services. Just in time for the holiday shopping season! But this is one sci-fi gadget that’s no longer fi, thanks to advanced … Read More »

Many companies have moved to a single sign-on approach for their employees within the last few years, so that workers only need to login once to access online systems like time and expense reporting, travel planning, and HR portals. The web worker who uses multiple … Read More »

Gmail is absolutely wonderful, but for folks that prefer to "ink" their e-mail for the personal touch, the native support isn’t there. Josh Bancroft sees this as an opportunity for improvement and like many others, I agree with him. For the moment, I’m … Read More »

In the comments of our piece, The Return of the Tech IPO, David Coleman pointed out that Facebook and its $8 billion valuation might just be the proof that we are all getting bubblicious. Coleman, on his blog, goes on to dissect the irrational … Read More »

Casual games have been on the rise over the last few years. The great success of games like Bookworm, by PopCap Games, and the game site Pogo have proven that not all gaming belongs in the basement. Further evidence of the growing popularity of cheap, casual … Read More »

As a reader put it nicely – VoIP business is no different than the long distance business. High costs of acquisition, and very low margins. In other words it is a sucker’s game. One IP Voice, learnt this the hard way, and had to … Read More »

While noting the analyst prediction that more than 9 million Macs will be sold in 2007, Softpedia Editor Codrut Nistor uses some ‘fuzzy math.’ In January, the Mac will be exactly 24 years old. Named after the McIntosh Apple, the original Macintosh computer was released on January … Read More »

This should come as absolutely no surprise, but Nintendo has once again joined the illustrious ranks of those on the receiving end of a lawsuit. The law firm of Green Welling recently placed a statement on their website in regards to the case being … Read More »

Call it the evolution of a tech-bubble story line: After the close-up profiles of the early lotto winners have run their course, you can almost bet on reporters turning to the old look at the arms merchants strategy, which today means peering into the … Read More »

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