October, 2008 — Tech News and Analysis

Archive for October 2008

Ultra-wideband Near Death as WiQuest Shuts Down

EETimes reported that Ultra-wideband startup WiQuest has shut its doors. This is a sad day for the more than 120 employees of the Allen, Texas chipmaker and unfortunate for the venture backers who put at least $54 million in the wireless networking company, but it’s something … Read More »

iTunes 8 Makes Podcast Management Improvements

One of my personal gripes with iTunes 7 and earlier versions was that the “retention” rules for podcasts were global. You could choose to keep all episodes, all unwatched episodes, the 5 most recent, etc. but that choice would be applied universally to all your different … Read More »

 
 

Despite being an avid OS X user, there are deficiencies in this great OS of ours and many of the ones I focus on center — unsurprisingly — around security. In the plethora of accurate claims of superiority in Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ads, one counter-example is … Read More »

Sony seems to have a hard time with notebook batteries and have issued a recall of over 100,000 notebook batteries once again.  The batteries are prone to overheat and start smoking and catch fire, although only 19 reports of such incidents have taken place in the … Read More »

Netbooks at $200? These Systems Continue to Surprise

As JKOnTheRun is reporting, Asus president Jerry Shen has told DigiTimes that consumers can expect a $200 netbook in 2009. Asus, of course, was one of the pioneers of the now very fast-growing netbook category, with its diminutive Eee PCs, some of which now … Read More »

Vuze Confirms Layoffs

Vuze has confirmed two rounds of previously unreported layoffs, which totaled 44 percent of its staff: 12 people were let go in April and another 12 in August. Read More »

AMD Doesn't Think Mobile Internet Devices Are All That

I visited the relatively new AMD campus here in Austin today, where the chipmaker employs about 2,600 people, for an overview of the products and computing trends that the company is keeping its eye on. Below is a quick video I shot of Pat Moorhead, V-P … Read More »

Cisco to Release a New Router for Metro Networks

Cisco on Nov. 11 will release a new router targeting the metro networks, which are seeing a big surge in demand, especially in large cities. Read More »

Hurricane Debris to Power Biomass Plant

The debris from Hurricane Ike, a depleted oil field and some biomass power expertise could soon start delivering clean power to the city of Houston, which is still recovering from the third-most destructive hurricane to hit the U.S. Biofuels Power Corp. signed an agreement … Read More »

Fey-Lin Effect: 30 Rock Has Best Night Ever

Tina Fey’s spot-on impersonation of V-P candidate Sarah Palin and near constant presence on “Saturday Night Live” over the past couple of months helped boost her show “30 Rock” to its highest ratings ever. Read More »

Do old media and new media have anything in common? Two nights ago I went to a dinner titled “The Future of Content.” Last night I participated in a workshop called “The Next Generation of Advanced Media.” The differences between the two were striking. The first … Read More »

More Must Reads

I’m sorry, I know it’s not really an online video, but The Nightmare Before Christmas is awesome and you should all just watch the opening number, OK? OK. And closing out NewTeeVee Station’s week of spoooooooky web series (yes, Strike.TV was an aberration, … Read More »

Ever find that little tool and think, “where have you been all my life?” We’re constantly talking about ways of dealing with information overload, so it’s a happy day when a tool can truly make a difference. Today, that tool is Idea Shower’s ReadItLater. Along … Read More »

In a previous article I explained how in the last year I’ve moved the majority of my data to the Cloud. By utilizing MobileMe’s syncing mechanisms, I’m able to do this without sacrificing the “comfort” and “safety” of having all my data local. This … Read More »

Don’t let the ghouls today or the uncertainty of next Tuesday scare you from securing your ticket to NewTeeVee Live! Today is the very last day of our “late bird” special, so step right up and buy your ticket now. Come meet the senior … Read More »

Duke Energy Carolinas and Progress Energy, two major utilities in the Southeast, have partnered to test a fleet of smart-charging plug-in electric Priuses in what they say will be the country’s first interstate electric car-charging scheme involving multiple utilities. Read More »

The Windows Mobile 6.x client for Live Mesh followed right in the footsteps of the Mac client although it’s not out for general consumption just yet. … Read More »

Don’t let the ghouls today or the uncertainty of next Tuesday scare you from securing your ticket to NewTeeVee Live! Today is the very last day of our “late bird” special, so step right up and buy your ticket now. Come meet senior … Read More »

As a developer and some-time designer, I’m always on the lookout for tools to make communicating with customers easier. For many things, the textual tools that web workers reach for are sufficient: email, wikis, … Read More »

It’s Friday the 31st of October and that means only one chilling thing… it’s time for our first annual Halloween App Store Roundup. On this frightful Friday, we went bobbing for a selection of the most spooktacular Apps created just for Halloween. This Halloween we’re looking at … Read More »

Google Labs is starting to collect some really cool features that bring GMail to a new level of usefulness and the SMS chat feature now available is really neat.  The new SMS Chat feature enables sending SMS text messages from GMail to any mobile phone … Read More »

Joyent, a Sausalito, Calif.-based cloud storage startup, says the economic downturn is bringing on the good times and that since August its annualized revenue is up more than 25%. Is Joyent’s good fortune a sign utility computing will get a boost from the glum economy? The 19-employee … Read More »

Every time around this year I get ghostly pangs of gastro-intestinal discomfort as I’m haunted by memories of eating bags and bags of candy in a single sitting. I also get secretly excited about the one time of the year I’m able to play dress-up in … Read More »

My poor MSI Wind. The hard drive has to be suffering from MOSPD or Multiple OS Personality Disorder. If XP, Vista and OS X weren’t enough stress … Read More »

A little over a week after Tesla CEO and Chairman Elon Musk said that the company had pulled back from raising a $100 million round because of the credit crunch, Musk tells Reuters (and Tesla confirmed with us this morning) that the electric car … Read More »

TV Watching and Internet Use Complement Each Other; according to a new Nielsen report, the more Internet you use, the more TV you watch; 31 percent of in-home Internet activity takes place while the user watches TV. (emailed release) Time Warner to Raise Cable, DVR Rates; follows … Read More »

We told you recently how the folks at CodeWeavers were giving away their CrossOver program due to gas prices reaching a certain low level.  We knew you would want the chance to pick up this excellent program for free and we were not mistaken.  Today … Read More »

We’ve heard this before in the market, but I suspect this time a $200 netbook will become a reality. Watch for it in 2009 says Asus president, Jerry Shen Read More »

As we continue to slide into a dire economic correction, a silver lining is starting to emerge around the dot-com crash. By pushing a lot of froth out of the system several years ago, it has spared us from a true “Perfect Storm” of an economic … Read More »

New numbers from comScore show that 6.5 million Americans watched mobile video in August. AT&T, which is the exclusive carrier for the iPhone, was tops among providers, with 4.4 percent of subscribers accessing programmed or on-demand mobile video. Read More »

Two pieces of news out indicate the recession is indeed going to put a damper on the consumer electronics industry. In in its quarterly filing with the SEC today, Intel explained that the uncertain economic climate means its revenue guidance for the fourth quarter is a … Read More »

Another busy week at Mobile Tech Manor that saw a hot new netbook get announced.  I was impressed by the HP Mini 1000 but is it … Read More »

That mosaic screen saver of your iPhoto pictures may look groovy, but it’s really not doing anything to help your work flow. How about a screen saver that displays all your iCal appointments instead? PocketMac, the geniuses behind the app that lets you sync your … Read More »

Time has released its 50 Best Inventions of 2008 list and a full dozen of the spots are occupied by either cleantech startups or energy ideas. From floating data centers to high-flying wind turbines, Time thinks some of the coolest inventions of the year are … Read More »

Forget filters, DRM and locked-down set-top boxes. The makers of the open-source media center Boxee have a novel approach aimed at getting people to watch TV from legitimate sources. The idea behind it is not to punish pirates, but to instead use them … Read More »

Network-connected appliances that can be remotely turned off and on at various times of the day have largely been stuck in the realm of dark corporate labs; at least that’s how Andrew Tang, senior director of California utility PG&E, explained it to us recently. But … Read More »

Can’t afford that round-the-world trip you’ve always dreamed of taking? Now you can bring the world to your living room instead: WhereverTV, which offers an online collection of international TV channels, is bringing its service to U.S. TVs with a new set-top box. The … Read More »

Cogent Communications, one of the largest bandwidth providers in the world charged that Sprint-Nextel has severed its network from Cogent’s networks. This could cause network slowdown and decrease in web performance. Read More »

The last time technology investments took a hit, it was easy to look around at the scattered sock puppets and dark fiber, and blame the downturn on the rapid run-up in venture-backed funding for me-too companies and unproven business models. But this time around, … Read More »

MasterCard today announced a program that allows its issuing banks to essentially turn your cell phone into a one of the credit cards (provided you already have one, of course) at any merchant that uses the payment processing company’s PayPass program. Vendors that have PayPass … Read More »

Wind Companies Get Ethical: Noble Environmental Power and First Wind have both agreed to play by the new rules set by New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo. The code of conduct was created following an investigation into bribery and intimidation on the part of wind … Read More »

Google today said on its official blog that it has developed optical character recognition technology to the point that its search engine can read any scanned document in Adobe’s PDF format, effectively turning scanned images into words that are searchable and indexable. Read More »

Online video studio 60Frames has laid off six of its 14 employees, as was first reported by the Hollywood Reporter today. We were able to confirm the report, though the company declined comment. Read More »

Computing companies that can access cheap green power in bulk will be the only ones able to afford to run data centers in the coming years, posits a new report entitled Microsoft and Google: Cloud Computing Dominance Through Renewable Energy, published today in Virtual … Read More »

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