Archive for September 2009
The world’s governments will meet in Copenhagen in December to hammer out a new global climate deal. But Al Gore, speaking on Wednesday at the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting in New York, said success hinges on the U.S. Senate’s progress on legislation that would … Read More »
If Microsoft’s freshly granted patent for a digital rights management system sounds like a 2003 idea coming to fruition in 2009, that’s because it is — the patent that was granted yesterday was filed six years ago. The newly codified bit of intellectual property is … Read More »
Time for our new Wednesday feature that highlights some of the latest iPhone news! Outside of San Francisco, the place I most see iPhones is in the local Starbucks. The coffee company must see the same because today they outed two new iPhone apps. myStarbucks … Read More »
Coffee lovers with overstuffed wallets rejoice: You can now pay for your Starbucks coffee with your Starbucks Card without actually using a physical card. There’s a catch — you’ll need an iPhone. But if you have one, you can now pay with Starbucks Card … Read More »
OK, so the funniest, most zeitgeist-y new web series of the fall is out already, and it’s by…The Washington Post. For realz, yo.
Created and directed by Liz Kelly, the blogger behind WaPo’s Celebritology blog, Twits does its very best to transform the Twitter … Read More »
Many users have a love/hate relationship with Microsoft Outlook — it’s the standard email and calendaring application in many organizations, yet it often doesn’t enable them to work as productively as they’d like, spawning a veritable cottage industry of add-ins.
The Microsoft Office 2010 … Read More »
At our Mobilize 09 conference, someone joked that Nokia was the Yahoo of the mobile world. I’m sure he meant that Nokia was bereft of direction and purpose. You can also extend that argument to Nokia’s acquisition strategy. The company has been buying up tiny … Read More »
iPhone coma. Two words you never want to see in the same sentence! Yesterday I went to pick up my phone, and it wouldn’t unlock. Weird. I figured maybe the battery had died. That’s a common problem with the 3.1 iPhone … Read More »
More Must Reads
The Microsoft Courier is all over the news today, no doubt due to the two screens and special interface. Our readers quickly pointed out that they had seen a prototype of this before, and from Microsoft Research at that. It turns out they are … Read More »
By Colin Gibbs
Sep. 23, 2009, 11:00am PT
The mobile phone shopping experience is plagued with uninformed retail staffers and intolerably long wait times at the sales counter, according to new figures from Amdocs. The St. Louis-based provider of software and services to the communications industry found that while 60 percent of respondents … Read More »
By Aliza Sherman
Sep. 23, 2009, 11:00am PT
I’ve been a little caught off-guard lately with some of the presumptions people seem to be making now on Twitter. Where did all these expectations, such as an expectation for a response to a retweet or a “follow back,” come from? Why are people coming to … Read More »
By Katie Fehrenbacher
Sep. 23, 2009, 10:47am PT
Canadian electric vehicle maker Zenn Motors has been stating its grand vision for a while: to supply a range of automakers and grid operators with energy storage technology created with partner EEStor. That’s what Zenn CEO Ian Clifford told us at the Fortune Brainstorm Green … Read More »
Those of us who use a lot of gadgets are always faced with the dilemma of how to use them hands-free. Maybe we want to prop them up and watch a video, or some similar function. What we need is a cheap way to set the … Read More »
In case you’re an Apple user who isn’t on board with iPhoto ’09, Google has just updated its own free image management software, Picasa, which shares its name with the web-based Flickr rival. Picasa 3.5 for Mac takes a lot of direction from iPhoto ’09, borrowing … Read More »
Dr. Horrible 2 and Joss Whedon Digital Studio on the Way? Sequel to the smash web series will likely happen, according to creator Whedon, who is looking for $5 million investment for a new digital studio that would create for web series per year. (Tubefilter)
Google … Read More »
By Jordan Golson
Sep. 23, 2009, 9:40am PT
Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen gave a keynote speech this morning at the EmTech conference, running today and tomorrow at MIT. He spoke of tech innovations and — perhaps most importantly — the need to turn them into sustainable, profitable businesses. During the question-and-answer … Read More »
We’re not down at the DEMO conference in San Diego this week, but there are quite a few online video startups presenting. I wrote up Vitamin D’s smart security video software this morning, and Chris is planning to get an in-person demo (and I can … Read More »
Just about every mobile computer on the market comes with Wi-Fi these days, but not all of them use the 802.11n spec. That means many devices can’t take advantage of the faster speeds and greater range of an 802.11n wireless network. TRENDnet has … Read More »
By Jennifer Martinez
Sep. 23, 2009, 9:13am PT
Cuil, a company of ex-Googlers that developed a search engine of the same name, released a new streaming feature today that displays real-time search results in a box on the site. It’s intended to help you watch the conversation about your search term unfold on … Read More »
After months of software updates by the respective companies to disable and enable the Pre syncing with iTunes, the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) has ruled on the issue.
Palm loses.
The standards group has not only rejected Palm’s claim of anti-competitive behavior by Apple, but … Read More »
By Georgina Laidlaw
Sep. 23, 2009, 9:00am PT
It doesn’t matter how focused you are, working from your remote office likely entails more than a few distractions. For each of us those distractions will be different (I just had to break my morning’s work to move my goat to a new patch of … Read More »
By Jennifer Kho
Sep. 23, 2009, 8:16am PT
By Edit Staff
Sep. 23, 2009, 8:04am PT
Gizmodo has sparked a lot of interest with word of a secret project within Microsoft that is a new take on the Tablet PC. Code-named Courier, the gadget is a dual-screen gizmo in a book form that works with both pen and touch. This isn’t … Read More »
With Internet-connected TVs hitting the market this fall, look for television to get its app store moment. Widget makers will flood your TV with nifty tools that allow you to do all sorts of things with the click of a remote. Rallycast is among … Read More »
By Stacey Higginbotham
Sep. 23, 2009, 7:54am PT
If I were to bet on a device that would benefit most from wireless access, it wouldn’t be a digital book reader, not in a nation where roughly half the people don’t read novels. A personal navigation device, an MP3 player on which one can download … Read More »
Two weeks after introducing iTunes 9 at the “It’s Only Rock and Roll” music event, Apple has released the first update to the software.
Version 9.0.1 of iTunes cryptically addresses performance and stability, as well as resolving unnamed issues when browsing the iTunes Store. Syncing issues … Read More »
By Darrell Etherington
Sep. 23, 2009, 7:00am PT
As I noted over at TheAppleBlog, Google has turned on push for Gmail on the iPhone. That means that your incoming messages will be pushed from the Google servers to your phone, instead of your phone having to call in periodically to check … Read More »
By Om Malik
Sep. 23, 2009, 6:42am PT
Google today is launching Google Sidewiki, which despite its name is actually a universal commenting system. The new service will be available via Google Toolbar. As the company said in an email explaining the feature:
Sidewiki enables users who have installed Google Toolbar to contribute information … Read More »
One of the things I have been enjoying is using the Tablet PC to stimulate the creative process for writing projects. Our friends at WebWorkerDaily recently extolled the virtues of pen and ink mindmapping for writing projects and they are absolutely right about that. Read More »
Vitamin D, a two-year-old Palm spin-off that’s using Palm founder Jeff Hawkins’ new company Numenta‘s natural intelligence technology, is building something a bit unexpected considering its pedigree: better software for security cameras.
Vitamin D’s first product, launching at the DEMO conference today, uses … Read More »
By Colin Gibbs
Sep. 22, 2009, 11:00pm PT
Scandinavian developers Flander and Ardites are merging with Symbio Group to create a global player in the outsourced product development space in a deal announced late tonight. Symbio, which has headquarters in Beijing and Silicon Valley, provides outsourced product development (OPD) services to clients … Read More »
By Justin Moresco
Sep. 22, 2009, 9:00pm PT
Here are some of today’s phone conversations I enjoyed reading or viewing on the web, along with some brief thoughts:
Shop savvier with Windows Mobile (Big in Japan) — One of the first prize-winning software titles for Google Android devices is coming to … Read More »
By Om Malik
Sep. 22, 2009, 7:26pm PT
Skype, a division of eBay, is likely to announce tomorrow that the beta version of its Skype for SIP offering will interoperate with Cisco Systems’ Unified Communications 500 system. This follows closely on the heels of similar arrangements struck by Skype with Shoretel and … Read More »
By Stacey Higginbotham
Sep. 22, 2009, 6:00pm PT
80Legs, a startup that aggregates CPU cycles and bandwidth to offer companies a Google-like web crawling service on demand, today launched its public beta at the DEMO conference in San Diego. The Houston-based company has raised $400,000 from Creeris Ventures to provide its web crawling service. … Read More »
It’s funny how the mobile space goes — UMPCs hit the scene a couple of years ago and then all but died out. This year has seen a resurgence in the UMPC segment and today comes word from one of the first companies to produce … Read More »
By Jennifer Martinez
Sep. 22, 2009, 4:46pm PT
Thing Labs, San Francisco-based startup that makes social networking applications, released today an API called Let’s Be Trends that lets developers procure information about trending topics on Twitter.
The move comes on the heels of the private beta launch of Thing Labs’ Twitter application — … Read More »
By Om Malik
Sep. 22, 2009, 4:17pm PT
Intel Corp., a San Jose, Calif.-based chip company, today announced a range of low-power chips aimed at driving down the power requirements inside data centers. Among them were two new Xeon 3400 chips; a version that consumes only 45 watts will be released this year while … Read More »
Arris announced today that it will acquire the assets of Digeo, Inc. for roughly $20 million in cash.
Kirkland, Wash.-based Digeo, which was founded by Paul Allen in 1999, was originally set up to deliver stock and sports information through set-top boxes. In 2002, the … Read More »
