January, 2009 — Tech News and Analysis

Archive for January 2009

Good Saturday and a Happy Weekend to one and all, it’s time to sit down, relax and wrap your big eyes round this week’s App Store Roundup. This week on TheAppleBlog, we got in there super fast with an in-depth look at iMovie ’09, iPhoto … Read More »

A video of a supposed assassination attempt in Russia pops up on YouTube and clocks over 400,000 views and 1,500+ comments in under a week.  The info directs viewers to MIR-12, a shadowy organization bent on uncovering a deeply rooted Russian conspiracy they claim began in … Read More »

 
 

Energy Mapping Comes to Marine Power

Following in the footsteps of the wind industry, marine power is getting its own power map. The government of Scotland, home to the world’s only open sea testing facility for wave and tidal power, has Read More »

The Palm Pre is the smartphone that has the attention of many who follow the phone game and with good reason.  It is Palm’s attempt to reinvent themselves and the phone certainly breaks new ground based on what Palm showed in Las Vegas earlier this year. We … Read More »

For about 40 minutes this morning, Google searches were useless. Every result could “harm your computer” with no working link to result. It was, by Google’s explanation, a stupid human error. All is well now. Less than an hour of inconvenience and the incident was over, … Read More »

Google Mistakenly Labels The Internet as Malware

Google labeled the entire Internet as malware earlier this morning (between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST), warning visitors that pretty much every web site could harm your computer. The news spread across the blogophere and Twitterverse pretty quickly. Many speculated that the … Read More »

GE Ups Smart Grid Ante With Super Bowl Ad Campaign

If the millions of Americans expected to watch Super Bowl 43 have managed to escape the buzz about smart grids so far, that’s about to change. GE plans to air a “Wizard of Oz”-themed ad during the big game promoting its smart grid technology, building … Read More »

Johan Pouwelse is a busy man. The P2P researcher based in the city of Delft, in the Netherlands, is heading up development of the social BitTorrent client Tribler; he’s also deeply involved with the EU’s P2P Next project, which aims … Read More »

Monochrome Keyboard DIY Job – Apple may be using a two-color scheme on most of their hardware these days, but Steve Essell likes his keyboards white, and only white. Hence this all-white masterpiece. It’s so cool, it doesn’t need key labels, and neither should … Read More »

I admit it: my phone is never more than an arm’s length away from me during every waking second of my day. My job is to be connected and a handset allows for that. I used to use a Hosted Exchange server with a Windows Mobile … Read More »

Goodbye Martin Schaedel

A few minutes ago, Jon Callaghan, general partner with True Ventures and an investor in our company emailed me to let me know that Martin Schaedel, a long time friend of ours had died in a plane crash in Santa Monica, California. The news … Read More »

Who Wins, Who Loses With Broadband Grants

Congress is debating a stimulus bill that would funnel more than $800 billion into the economy. There are two versions of it wending their way through the legislative houses, so we gathered the key differences, put them in the chart below and pointed out which ISPs … Read More »

More Must Reads

Apple made good on a target set by Steve Jobs when he originally announced the release of the original iPhone in June of 2007. He wanted the iPhone to take 1 percent of global cellphone market share by the end of 2008, and according to at … Read More »

Two different airlines had algae biofuel test flights this month, and both turned to the well-funded Sapphire Energy for their needs. Japan Airlines took flight today on a plane partially powered by camelina, … Read More »

Atom.com’s rebranding as a comedy destination paid off big time this week with the release of Oprah is Dead, which chronicles the terrifying future that awaits us after Oprah Winfrey leaves us for the great beyond. Chaos, anarchy, and a Thriller homage ensue. … Read More »

Liz Gannes and Liz Shannon Miller are hard at work today at NewTeeVee: Miller: Hey, do you have anything you want a quick write-up on? Gannes: Hm, let’s see. There must be some conspiracy blowing up on YouTube. Miller: I think I heard about some … Read More »

MoTR 161 is 26:50 minutes long and is a 24.5 MB file in MP3 format. CLICK HERE to download the file and listen directly. HOSTS: James Kendrick (Houston), Matthew Miller (Seattle) and Kevin C. Tofel (Philadelphia) TOPICS: Nokia Experts launches… with one expert. Impressions of Read More »

The Internet is abuzz these days with speculation over the launch of a new online storage offering from Google said to be dubbed GDrive. The service would apparently be bundled with Google Pack, the company’s software download offering that includes products such … Read More »

California might get all the attention for its solar resources in the Mojave desert, but it’s not the only Western state with sun-soaked lands and a growing appetite for solar power. Arizona’s largest utility, Arizona Public Service, unveiled a plan today to invest $18 billion … Read More »

Unless you’re a big fan of Heroes character Mohinder Suresh, you probably don’t find explanations of genetics all that dramatic. On the other hand, the latest developments in genetic testing mean questions that were once mostly rhetorical — What diseases am I likely to get? … Read More »

So you’re going to a Super Bowl party, but honestly you couldn’t care less about the teams, or even football; you’ll probably get caught more up in the artichoke dip than the broadcast. Or maybe you actually love football, and you use commercial breaks for their … Read More »

Make Way for Lemons: GM CFO Fritz Henderson says automakers still have a lot to learn about battery science, which means there are going to be some absolute lemons in the brave new world of electrical transport. — Telegraph China, Europe, Come Together on Climate: Chinese … Read More »

I was pleased that Apple resisted going to the ultra-wide 16:9 (WXGA/HDTV) screen aspect ratio that’s becoming popular in PC laptops for the new unibody MacBook revisions, sticking with the 16:10 (WXGA+/WSXGA) proportions carried over from the aluminum PowerBooks and older MacBooks. By my lights, 16:10 is … Read More »

We were all over the Palm Pre at the CES this month and since seeing this new smartphone from the folks who made PDAs household words I have been starting to feel the urge to have one.  The folks at Mobile Divide got to see … Read More »

Matt Cox points out that Ma.gnolia, a bookmarking service, may have lost all the data (bookmarks) curated by its customers. The situation seems pretty dire. Read More »

Looks like energy efficient retrofits of public housing is becoming the green cause of the year — it’s cheap, fights climate change and cuts the energy bills of those who need them. This week the UK government launched a new competition, Read More »

More DTV Delay Drama; Senate passes a second bill to push the national switch date back, could get to the House floor by Wednesday. (Broadcasting & Cable); Meanwhile, the White House issued a statement urging passage of this latest bill. (Multichannel News) YouTube Makes Annotations … Read More »

 Sure there are the flashy memes tied to poorly translated video games, 80s pop singers (I warned you) and bad dancing, but there are also serious topics of conversations that pop up online over and over — and over — again. Maybe they’re … Read More »

Frank, one of our readers, noticed that lately I’ve been thinking about replacing my first-generation iPhone. He shot me a link to the BBC site, where they’ve uncovered a top-secret phone project. My curiosity got the better of me, plus I haven’t met a link … Read More »

WebWorkerDaily began in September 2006 as GigaOM founder Om Malik was building his new company from a table at Starbucks. Now, just about everyone who earns income is a “web worker” at least for some part of their day. To keep up with this ever-changing working world, and … Read More »

UPDATE: A Stage 9 spokesperson got back to us to provide the following statement: “Stage 9 will continue to develop/produce in a highly selective benefit /cost manner.” The Stage 9 brand will continue to exist on its own and will not be folded into ABC.com. The … Read More »

This week I discovered two things when I brought the HTC Advantage back into the rotation: I had no calendar nor contacts having canceled my Exchange Server and I needed a way to sync the Advantage with my Google Apps stuff.  Enter GooSync, a free … Read More »

The iPhone has been on the market for more than a year now, and as a result technology manufacturers are beginning to see the touch screen as a viable solution for personal computing. Before the iPhone hit the market in 2007 the general population’s experience with a … Read More »

Duke Energy’s Carolinas subsidy will renege on its proposed $50 million solar rooftop program unless North Carolina utility regulators remove restrictions on how it can pay for the project, the Charlotte Business Journal reports. The energy company, which gets 70 percent of its power from … Read More »

How exactly do you become good at getting the most out of your virtual assistant, thus freeing up much more of your own valuable time? Read More »

A lot has changed since we last caught up with Tim Healy, CEO of EnerNOC, the Boston-based company that reduces electricity demand for power grid operators by automating energy conservation. “Demand response” is a term being heard more and more frequently these days as companies … Read More »

The current economic slowdown is beginning to hurt telecom equipment makers, and their prospects aren’t likely to change much in 2009, as indicated by the spending plans outlined by some of the major service providers. For instance, AT&T said that it will cut its capex spend by … Read More »

An association of small telecommunications providers, some of them rural, has taken a look at the broadband dollars in the stimulus bills making their way through both houses of Congress and said, “Please sir, can I have some more?” What’s more disturbing (although just … Read More »

In my post from earlier this week, Online Community Manager: Yes, It’s Really A Job, I talked about how online community manager jobs continue to be a hot position for web workers despite the current economic conditions. The Monday post was in preparation for a talk … Read More »

At first blush, I wasn’t convinced that BurnBall had the stickiness necessary to merit replay in my oh-so-valuable free time. As it turns out, the deceptively simple yet addictive game play make for a great and fun way to kill time on the iPhone or … Read More »

This was a hectic week at Mobile Tech Manor as I wrestled with lots of new gear that appeared that covered the breadth of mobile technology.  I installed Windows 7 on the HP Mini 2140 netbook and spent quality time with the biggest notebook I have … Read More »

When it comes to energy storage, lead acid can seem so last century — especially compared with nickel-metal hydride (used in the current generation of hybrid cars) and lithium-ion (used in mobile devices today and held by many to be the future of electric cars). … Read More »

Last fall I wrote about the launch of CalliFlower as a fully-featured conference call service from the initial invitation through to the final archiving of a session. CalliFlower has two levels of service: … Read More »

Last week the CEO of northern California utility PG&E, Peter Darbee, made one of the strongest pronouncements yet that it plans to invest in and own solar projects — rather than solely buy power from solar developers. By doing so PG&E can help usher along … Read More »

The people over at Sling Media really get it. They consistently make products that work — and work well. Their latest application, SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry, is no different. In fact the only downside to this application, which is currently in beta, is the price … Read More »

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