John McCarthy didn’t single-handedly invent what we now know widely as Artificial Intelligence, aka robot brains, but he did coin the term back in 1956 and is certainly one of the founders of the A.I. research field. Not only this, McCarthy was also a professor at Stanford University and a PhD in mathematics. The creator of the programming language Lisp passed away this week at the ripe old age of no less than 84 years.
The creators of the robot race shall never die, so is their legacy and their contribution to the eternal memory of mankind. This fellow was the first to propose and support the idea of selling computers in a sort of time-sharing way in which both applications and computing power could be sold like utilities – yes, the utilities you’re thinking of, water, electricity, etcetera. You know that term “cloud computing”? That’s right along the same lines. He’s been a frequenter of Usenet forums working with enthusiasts around the world for several years, and he wrote a rather interesting story in 2001 by the name of “The Robot and the Baby” which explored the possibility of robots having emotions. A good read if you get a minute to take a look.
John McCarthy also kept up a rather rudimentary looking webpage from 1995 through 2007, and though it shows the doctor’s obvious unwillingness to succumb to Web 2.0 and the blog age, it does truly show the bulk of the work he’d done in one mass. At http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/index.html you’ll find the page which includes links to the many papers and awards McCarthy’d won, and at his [commentary] page you’ll find the closest thing McCarthy ever made to a blog format collection of words. This too ends several years before his death, the last entry dated at June 20, 2008.
Farewell McCarthy, may you continue to hypothesize in whatever beyond you believe in.
Just this morning it was confirmed that Rockstar games would be producing the fifth in one of the most notorious game series of all time, Grand Theft Auto – now it’s time to let our hopes run wild. There are quite a few features in previous games that are what we’d call nearly unexplored avenues. Small bits of gameplay that would, if allowed to expand, would create a whole new playground for the future of GTA. Below are just five of these items that we’re hoping Rockstar will explore further for GTA:V.
First there’s the idea that Rockstar would bring back the idea of multiplayer missions with free roam. Inside Grand Theft Auto IV’s multiplayer mode, you were either able to play Free Roam where you drove around the city, shot people in the head, or a combination of the two, or game mode where missions where the main objective – and that’s what you aimed to do. What the game Red Dead Redemption, not on the GTA timeline but made by some of the same people, introduced was free roam multiplayer missions. If GTA:V introduced this as well as connection to internet-based team-ups, it’d be a whole new ball game.
Next there’s Animals. Again in the game Red Dear Redemption we see a feature that may well easily find its way into GTA:V. Wolves! And not just wolves, all sorts of wild animals. Imagine a city in the USA, (and we’re assuming this will be so due to the greenback nature of the V in the teaser image seen earlier today,) where a rival gang busts open the local zoo, letting rhinos and tigers and elephants smash through the landscape. Sound like a fun mission to you? Certainly would continue the legacy of GTA being hated by parents and would DEFINITELY spark the imagination of animal rights groups if they started having monkeys getting crunched by motorcycles.
Multiplayer Mini Games are always fun, having shown up in GTA:IV as pool, bowling, darts, and etc. Now what we want to play these sorts of games online – there could be a whole sub-environment of GTA games going on in the Rockstar community. Poker night!
Fourth, the stealing and keeping of cars. This game is called Grand Theft Auto, yes? How about some more missions including stealing specific cars, bringing them to a chop shop, then driving them in for some incognito missions. Would some ninja action be out of line in a game where there’s usually one whole heck of a lot of reckless abandon?
Finally, the ability to replay missions to get the best score possible. This appears very much to be the trend in several gaming sectors, notably the mobile gaming world, where missions are no longer just about finding your way through, but finding your way through with the best possible points and collection of items on your back. This idea has been around for quite a while for SOME games, but only in “The Ballad of Gay Tony” and “Chinatown Wars” has the ability been there for Grand Theft Auto. Rockstar, you’ve got the ability to make this the most re-playable game of all time, again!
What do you think, ladies and gentlemen, what would YOU like to see from GTA:V?
It’s time for the long-awaited next step in the evolution of modern combat in the Battlefield series, this time set along the border of Iraq and Iran as well as several remote locations in the direct sequel to 2005′s Battlefield 2, here simply called Battlefield 3. The game was released today, or this morning, rather, depending on how ravenous you were or are in anticipation of playing the game, and is able to run on Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and EA Mobile has even confirmed that there’s an iOS port out there somewhere in space. Though we’ve heard that the game works exceptionally well on the PlayStation 3, you’ve got to know in your heart that the desktop version will bring you the highest amount of action.
The PC release is exclusive to EA’s Origin platform, and sales SHOULD be started at all of your local retailers. This game will work with both single-player campaigns, as well as multiplayer matches. In cooperative mode you’ll be sitting in one of four roles: assault, support, engineer, or recon, and you’ll be blasting the faces off of enemies in several locations including the aforementioned Iraq and Iran as well as Sarajevo, New York, Wake Island, Sulaymaniyah, Paris, and Tehran.
In addition to the platforms listed above, this game has been mentioned by John Riccitiello of EA games to possibly be coming to the upcoming Wii U. On the other hand, Patrick Liu, aka the executive producer of Battlefield 3, has noted that this isn’t truly in the future. Thusly we’ll just have to wait and see. For now we’re gonna go ahead and pick up the version(s) already in stores. Will you? Have a peek below at the major advancements made between Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (the last game in the series before this newest release) and Battlefield 3. War!
One of the tiniest smartphones in the world has just landed upon the SlashGear review bench, and Sony Ericsson has the spotlight here with the Xperia ray. This device has a single-core 1GHz Snapdragon chip, a 3.3-inch display at 480 x 854 pixel resolution, and an 8 megapixel camera on the back. What more could you want from a phone that you could easily mistake for a garage door opener for its size? Take one look at this little guy and you’ll find that you’re messing with no cheap customer, this is the new generation of Sony Ericsson devices, and they don’t appear to be messing around.
Inside you’ll find that Sony Ericsson calls their Timescape user interface as well as a unique collection of apps you wont find comparable to any other device your humble narrator has recently come across. One would think that such a unique looking device would be running something rather odd, and at this size, something more like a feature phone OS, but look, that’s Android alright, and it’s looking pretty darn good if I do say so myself. The single home button has a light-up rim for notifications, a long-press will give you a screenshot, and the blue tinge to the whole system makes for a rather, again, unique look at Android.
Sony Ericsson Xperia ray hands-on and unboxing
This device has a sort of wine-colored back casing that covers the battery, the AT&T SIM card, and a microSD card slot that comes with a 4GB card right out of the box. This is Sony Ericsson’s answer to a market that, with the onset of the smartphone, may well have otherwise disappeared: the tiny phone. We’ll be concentrating on seeing how well this device performs in the field over the next few days – meanwhile let me know in the comments what you’d like to know about the device – ask away and I’ll do my best to answer in the full review!
Meanwhile check out the hands-on video and the photos above and below and see how tiny this little machine really is!
In what very well may be an invitation to be the first to see the HTC Rezound, (aka the HTC Vigor,) HTC tells of their “latest innovation.” What we’ve got here is an invite as sent out to press which has the reverberations of sound emanating from the “HTC INVITES YOU” text in green down to two logos, one for HTC, the other for Dr Dre’s Beats. Beats and HTC joined forces several weeks ago in an effort to bring greater sound quality to HTC smartphones everywhere and we’ve already seen Beats on HTC in Europe – could this be the ushering in of fine quality music on smartphones right here in the states? Yes, I think so.
Check out a device that’s got Beats but more than likely won’t be coming to US shores for a while, that being what’s currently called the HTC Sensation XL, then note that even though HTC has joined forces with Beats, the Beats roll on in HP devices as well. Compare the invite above to the one received for England back in September and you’ll find that this one isn’t quite so blatant in its promises for music, but there’s Beats all the same.
As for what’s coming in this newest release, we’re guessing it’s the HTC Vigor, a Beats-enabled HTC device that’ll be running on Verizon’s 4G LTE network. This device has been rumored to be coming out at the same time as both the Motorola DROID RAZR and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Which one will you choose?
Before tomorrow’s big Nokia keynote in which Stephen Elop is set to drop some heavy bombs, a couple of them appear to have left the hatch a bit early. Photos here show both the Nokia Lumia 800 and the Nokia Lumia 710, both of them set to run Windows Phone in some form or another. The first of these two, the 800, is also known as the Sea Ray in previous reports, while the 710 has previously been code-named Sabre. Both devices appear to be set to launch in European markets this November with a USA launch date set for next year.
The Sea Ray has previously been seen in no less than two videos and is said to possibly be running a Texas Instruments OMAP4 processor. This device is 116.5 x 61.2 x 12.1 mm, weighs in at 142 grams, and is said to be able to sit idle with its battery for upwards of 390 hours if photos leaked today are to be believed. This device will now be called the Nokia Lumia 800 and again, will be running Windows come tomorrow’s presentation. Also take note that this device looks rather similar to the Nokia N9 we reviewed just this past week.
Then there’s the Lumia 710, a device which is set to measure in at 119 x 62.4 x 12.5 mm, code-named Sabre up unto this point, a device which also had some major leaks in the past which gave us a fairly clear vision of this device throughout October. This device appears to have a 5 megapixel camera, a single-core 1.4GHz processor, and a 3.5-inch WVGA display. Look like the Windows Phone device you’ve been searching for?
Does the world need another Spotify rival? PURE things it does, hence PURE Music, the company’s new streaming media service that promises a 15m+ catalog of tracks that can be accessed from an iPhone or Android app, a PC/Mac browser or their standalone internet radios. Launching in the UK in December – with gradual international rollout after that – PURE Music’s big advantage over Spotify is the price: just £4.99 ($7.99) per month for unlimited streaming. However, there are a few compromises you’ll have to accept for that bargain pricing.
First off is the relatively limited access. Spotify has been pushing integration into standalone HiFi, STB and other hardware, whereas to begin with PURE Music will only play on the company’s own eight-strong streaming radio range, plus the iPhone and Android apps. There’s no iPad app, though that will follow on in 2012, and neither is there local caching, allowing you to store copies of songs locally so as to play them back even when you don’t have a data connection.
Still, PURE tells us that the local caching is on the roadmap to be addressed, while the company also says its open to third-party integration so as to make PURE Music a really cross-platform service. The browser-based PC/Mac interface has also been designed with tablet browsers in mind, and so while there’s no iPad or Honeycomb app at present, you shouldn’t have any issues accessing the web-based interface instead. That’s handy for platforms – like webOS on the TouchPad or QNX on the BlackBerry PlayBook – which are very unlikely to see dedicated apps anytime soon.
From the browser UI, once you’ve registered each PURE radio, you can control the playlist remotely. Alternatively, all the playlist and catalog access, search and other tools are available directly from the radios themselves, which have had a firmware update to handle PURE Music this week. Unlimited clients using the same IP address can access the service simultaneously – so you can have multiple listeners at home, all playing different tracks – though currently there’s no synchronized playback as on Sonos.
Of the more than 15m tracks available – all up for purchase at 320kbps from PURE’s media partner, 7Digital – more than 95-percent are apparently ready to stream, each at 128kbps. PURE tells us it’s working on the hold-out labels currently. One advantage over Spotify is the PURE Tag service (now free for all users, rather than a £2.99 monthly subscription) that allows you to use your phone or PURE radio to identify music playing on the radio and then either buy the track individually or access it through your PURE Music subscription.
We’ll be putting PURE Music through its paces for a full review soon, but first impressions are reasonably positive. PURE is targeting a user-base that’s perhaps looking for less complexity than Spotify, instead after a relatively plug-and-play system; the risk with that is you can end up alienating early-adopters who are more tech-minded and miss the advanced features. Still, for a subscription price just half of what Spotify Premium costs, we can see plenty of people giving PURE Music a second glance.
It appears that the first place to formally offer up the Galaxy Nexus for sale is Phones4u in the UK, complete with shipping date of November 16th. For those of you who are unaware of the world of Android, this Galaxy Nexus device is Google’s next hero device, the one to run their next-level mobile operating system Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. This device was introduced earlier this month in Hong Kong, China to throngs of ravenous online viewers and a room full of publishers snapping their cameras furiously.
Purchasers of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus through Phone4u will have the choice of getting the device carried by Orange – and that’s it. This device will likely be offered internationally off-contract as well, plus here in the USA on Verizon Wireless with 4G LTE. In addition to being the first device on earth to run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, this device is Samsung’s next in an evolution of a best-selling device family that also includes the Galaxy S II. There’s a lovely 1.2GHz dual-core processor inside with 1GB of RAM and 16GB internal memory.
D-Link announced a new line of mini adapters today for its PowerLine home networking solution. These adapters plug into any home outlet and use the existing electrical wiring to extend your wireless home network signal. This helps to deliver a secure and reliable network connection to devices throughout your home or small office where it may normally be inhibited, such as by a concrete wall or by being on a different floor level.
The new additions include the PowerLine AV Mini Adapter (DHP-310AV), which is a single adapter unit that can be added to any existing PowerLine Network. There’s also the PowerLine AV Mini Adapter Starter Kit (DHP-311AV) that comes with two units and the PowerLine AV 4-Port Switch Mini Adapter Starter Kit (DHP-348AV) that lets you setup a new PowerLine Network right out of the box.
The mini adapters can deliver up to 200Mbps speeds over existing electrical wiring, making it a great solution for high-bandwidth applications such as when used with the Boxee Box, Blu-Ray players, or gaming consoles. The single Mini Adapter is priced at $59.99, the double starter kit is $109.99 and the 4-Port Switch Mini Adapter starter kit is $129.99.
It appears that the folks at XDA Developers Forum have gotten a radically early port of the newest and still unreleased version of Android, that being 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich, working on the Samsung Nexus S. It makes sense that this would be the first device to get the newest Android working since it is the second-newest Google hero device having been released with Android 2.3 Gingerbread back quite a few months ago. Now that the Samsung Galaxy Nexus has been announced and Ice Cream Sandwich is officially heading to the wild, it’s been caught early via the released-to-developers SDK environment and converted to a working ROM by no less than a couple of intrepid developers hacking away all night.
You can access the build (if you dare) by heading to the XDA Developers Forum thread where you’ll be given a few directions for use as well. There are both original Nexus S and Nexus S 4G builds out there, make sure you get the right one, and BE careful. This is a hack, and that means the possibility of busting your device all to kingdom come. You’ll need to ROOT and have an environment ready for flashing a ROM. If you have no idea what that means, probably you should just skip it and wait for the official update coming from your carrier.
While this update is not entirely complete, (there are a few icons, Face Unlock, and some other feature still missing,) this does once again show the tenacity of Android developers and their intrepid will to get the best and/or most updated system working on their devices each and every day of the year. To have a peek at how this ROM is looking, check out the screenshots provided by HAKA above and below. To have a peek at how the complete version of Ice Cream Sandwich is working, have a look at our own Ice Cream Sandwich hands-on video from Hong Kong, plus check out our Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich / Galaxy Nexus Launch Wrap-up for all the details!
It looks like HP is still undecided about its TouchPad tablet. Despite the company’s announcement back in August that it would discontinue webOS hardware, rumors now suggest that under Meg Whitman’s lead as HP’s new CEO, the company could revive the tablet by powering it with Windows 8. According to some HP employees, the company is currently testing the TouchPad with Windows 8 as part of a “proof-of-concept.”
The HP sources revealed to FoxNews that the hardware team has been busy testing the Windows 8 developer release on the HP TouchPad and that there have been internal discussions about resurrecting the tablet or even building a completely new device to run Windows 8. This seems to go against HP’s plans to spin-off its PC hardware unit, making a transition into enterprise software as was announced back in August.
It also continues the confusion as to what HP plans to do with webOS, which it had initially insisted that it would continue to support and develop. But the company is looking more likely to sell the unit and has been in talks with HTC, LG, Nikon, and Amazon as potential buyers of the software platform.
Starting at the beginning of next year it seems that Acer will be amongst the first manufacturers to update their existing devices to the new Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. This information comes from Tablet Online who, when speaking with Acer Poland, was told of the release schedule with two devices specifically on the tip. Those two devices come in 2 flavors each, that making this Android 4.0 update ready for dispersal on the Acer Iconia Tab A500, A501, A100, and A101. These tablets may well be the first Android tablets on the market with Ice Cream Sandwich.
Previous reports had Acer placing Ice Cream Sandwich updates in 2012 in a very general way, this Polish report has January as a specific date for an update for the four tablets (two models) in question. Today has really been a day for Ice Cream Sandwich news with talks of the new Google mobile OS being ported to the Samsung Nexus S and the first Android 4.0 device Galaxy Nexus on sale in England with a shipping date set for November.
The team at Amazon.com have released information surrounding their third quarter sales as well as reporting to stock holders that their four new Kindle devices will blow away consumers for the holidays. Financial results for the third quarter ended in September 30, 2011 showed operating cash flow increasing by 19% to $3.11 billion for the 12 months trailing that date, while the 12 months in that timeframe ending at September 30 in 2010 ending up just below that number at $2.62 billion. Net sales had a similar jump at 44% to $10.88 billion in the third quarter while the same quarter last year yielded $7.56 billion.
On the other hand, net income decreased 73% to $63 million in the third quarter of 2011 while net income in the third quarter of 2010 was $231 million. That’s a pretty big drop, if you did not know. It’s of course at this point in the presentation, right after dropping that relative bomb, that Amazon lets the board know that the Kindle Fire is doing really, really well. Have a look at this quote from Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com:
“September 28th was the biggest order day ever for Kindle, even bigger than previous holiday peak days – we introduced Kindle Fire for $199, Kindle Touch 3G for $149, Kindle Touch for $99, and our all new Kindle for only $79. In the three weeks since launch, orders for electronic ink Kindles are double the previous launch. And based on what we’re seeing with Kindle Fire pre-orders, we’re increasing capacity and building millions more than we’d already planned.” – Bezos
As far as the fourth quarter goes, Amazon.com expects things to be rather good. Net sales are being seen as quite possibly being between $16.45 billion and $18.65 billion, that bing between 27% and 44% compared to the same quarter in 2010. Similarly, operating income (loss) is set to be between a 142% and 47% decline when compared to the same quarter 2010. Have a peek at our hands-on with the Kindle Fire from the release day a few weeks ago below and see if you’ve got the hankering to add to the next quarter of Amazon.com sales greatness:
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has just granted Apple a new patent today for its “Slide to Unlock” iOS gesture. The patent application was filed more than a year before the very first iPhone and refers to the unlocking gesture in broad terms as when “contact with the display corresponds to a predefined gesture for unlocking the device.”
The patent was filed in December 2005 and is credited to Apple’s senior VP for iOS, Scott Forstall along with engineers Imran Chaudri, Bas Ording, Freddy Allen Anzures, Marcel Van Os, Stephen O. Lemay, and Greg Christie.
The filing includes illustrations similar to how the gesture control is implemented on iOS with a simple left to right graphical switch, but the description defines the patent more loosely. According to the wording, it would appear that all current smartphone unlocking designs from Android makers could face some legal trouble ahead.
“A device with a touch-sensitive display may be unlocked via gestures performed on the touch-sensitive display. The device is unlocked if contact with the display corresponds to a predefined gesture for unlocking the device. The device displays one or more unlock images with respect to which the predefined gesture is to be performed in order to unlock the device. The performance of the predefined gesture with respect to the unlock image may include moving the unlock image to a predefined location and/or moving the unlock image along a predefined path. The device may also display visual cues of the predefined gesture on the touch screen to remind a user of the gesture. In addition, there is a need for sensory feedback to the user regarding progress towards satisfaction of a user input condition that is required for the transition to occur.”
Android handset makers such as Samsung and HTC, both offer alternatives to Apple’s unlock gesture, such as with wiping a lock screen off the display, inserting a puzzle piece, or pulling a ring. But they all involve moving graphical elements along a predefined path of sorts. We’ll see soon whether this patent gets thrown in the ever growing patent battle against Android.
This week it was announced that Samuel J Palmisano will be switching roles from Chief Executive to chairman while Virginia M Rometty will take over the Chief Executive, all of this taking place at IBM. Analysts say that Rometty’s lead rival for the taking over of the roll at IBM was Steven A Mills, another senior vice president inside the company who has led the group’s profitable and ever expanding software division. Meanwhile Rometty will now be one of the highest-profile female executives in corporate America.
Rometty has a degree in computer science from Northwestern University and joined IBM in 1981 as a simple systems engineer. In between there and here she had a series of management jobs, these including working with clients in everything from manufacturing to telecommunications and back down to banking. Rometty worked on the purchase of firm PricewaterhouseCooper Consulting for $3.5 billion back in 2002, and in 2009 she became the senior vice president and group executive for sales, marketing and strategy.
Certainly she’ll welcome the title change as it’ll certainly save on ink for business cards. Rometty is known for finding opportunities for using science coming from IBM’s labs effectively in new products as well as services, including a push to expand the group’s analytics unit. This unit uses software to find its way through vast amounts of data put out by companies to work with clients on cost-cutting opportunities as well as sales.
While under Palmisano’s reign, IBM sold its personal computer line as well as several hardware lines while it turned to focus on services and software. As you should well know, this strategy has proven itself to be rather successful, this leading us to note that yes, this man was a rather good head for the job. We hope Rometty is ready to fill those shoes!
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group has decided to rebrand its new Bluetooth 4.0 standard, which has recently launched on the iPhone 4S and has been available on the latest Mac Mini and MacBook Air. The new naming scheme adds the categories Bluetooth Smart and Bluetooth Smart Ready to help clarify device compatibilities, although it now seems only more confusing.
Bluetooth Smart devices pertain mainly to sensor-type devices like heart-rate monitors that run on a button-cell battery and were designed for limited and specific tasks. And hence, due to their lower power consumption, they cannot connect to traditional Bluetooth labeled devices, but only to Bluetooth Smart Ready devices.
The iPhone 4S, Mac Mini, and MacBook Air are considered Bluetooth Smart Ready devices, which can also include Bluetooth 4.0 equipped tablets, PCs, and TVs. These Bluetooth Smart Ready devices can connect to traditional Bluetooth devices as well as Bluetooth Smart devices.
Therefore, you may start noticing that future device packaging will sport one of three new Bluetooth logos, including the traditional Bluetooth, Bluetooth Smart, and Bluetooth Smart Ready.
“Once consumers have a Bluetooth Smart Ready device, like the new iPhone 4S, they can continue connecting to existing Bluetooth devices and are also ready to experience the new world of Bluetooth Smart peripheral devices that will carry the Bluetooth Smart logo,” said Bluetooth SIG CMO Suke Jawanda.
Google updated its Government Requests tool today with new data from January to June 2011 that reveal the number of user information and takedown requests the company receives from government and law enforcement agencies around the globe. It’s also the first time that Google has released the number of users or accounts specified per request.
The service is part of Google’s Transparency Report initiative that attempts to provide metrics on how government policies affect online communication. The update reveals a surge in the number of user data requests and takedown requests in the US. Requests for user data has increased 29 percent from the previous reporting period, while requests for content removal has increased by 70 percent.
During this latest reporting period, Google complied with about 93 percent of the 5,590 user account information requests it received in the US, involving more than 11,000 users or accounts related to a criminal investigation. Google also complied with 63 percent of the 92 requests it received to remove 757 items. Two of those requests that Google denied taking down, include a police brutality video on YouTube and videos that allegedly defamed officials.
Google has recently released the raw data behind the requests and is allowing developers or researchers to use the data for visualization. The company is also advocating that it’s time to modernize laws like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that regulates government access to user information.
The folks at Millennial Media have found that inside the third quarter of 2011, Apple’s iPhone and ranked first in devices for mobile ad impressions, while the total for Apple’s iOS was HALF of that of Android as a whole. While the 56 percent had by Android led the way on ad impressions in Q3, BlackBerry sat in third with 13 percent, and Symbian and Windows Phone devices had just 1 percent of ads for each. Meanwhile the same period listed by devices comes up with iPhone has the clear lead with 12.55 percent of ad clicks.
One must note that iPhones have been bulked into one single device – that’s the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 3GS, and all the rest, while the rest of the devices are separated into their own single devices. But here’s the thing, ladies and gentlemen, no group truly takes advantage of the idea of a single device being updated incrementally with essentially the same name throughout its entire expanded life. It’s sort of like Pop art – “I could have done that,” “yeah, but you didn’t.” Meanwhile the iPhone sits in at 54 percent of the total Apple share of ads while the iPad and the iPod Touch are lumped together in the remaining 46 percent.
And for those of you wondering, the next few devices in line for ad shares were the LG Optimus at 6.3 percent, the BlackBerry Curve at 4.7 percent, the original Motorola Droid at 4.35 percent, and the HTC Desire at 4.01 percent. Goes to show how long people are holding on to their devices, that’s for sure.
Adding to the app statistics we’ve been ringing in over the past few days, Millennial Media notes that Apple’s iOS devices had 41 percent of ad spend for apps in Q3 of 2011 while Android had 49 percent and a 20 percent growth quarter-over-quarter. That’s bigtime growth, ladies and gentlemen. RIM hits third at 8 percent while the rest of the groups had 2 percent of ad spend combined. Inside apps it was music and entertainment that headed categories while games came in second. For iPad specifically, games is in the lead, while games overall grew 26 percent quarter over quarter, it now sitting at 34 percent of app ad impressions. Games on iPad, who would have thought?
Sony has acquired the movie rights to Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of Steve Jobs and is reportedly pursuing screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to turn the book into a script for the big screen. Sorkin not only has several acclaimed works under his belt but also seems especially fit for the part since he had recently won an Academy Award for his work on the movie about Facebook called The Social Network.
According to the LA Times, Sony is moving forward with the Steve Jobs movie and sees Sorkin as its top choice. Besides writing the adapted screenplay for The Social Network, Sorkin also worked on other films, including Charlie Wilson’s War and Moneyball as well as TV shows such as West Wing.
Sorkin also happens to know Jobs personally as he had an opportunity to work with him in the past for a Pixar movie, which Sorkin ultimately turned down. He decided against accepting Jobs’ offer as he felt he couldn’t “make inanimate objects talk.” But surely, taking up the task to pen a biopic of the tech icon himself has got to be a much greater challenge.
It’s time for the carrier videos showing off the next hero device for Google to be shown off, this simple set of explorations starting as a hands-on with Three UK and Brendan Arndt. What you’ll get to see here is no less than the Samsung Galaxy Nexus as it’ll be showing up in the UK. This is a slightly different configuration than the USA is going to see as the carrier here in the USA will be on Verizon Wireless and running with a 4G LTE connection. What this video will afford you is a another close-up look at the first device, or perhaps the second, running Ice Cream Sandwich out in the wild, starting before the end of the year.
One thing this video will allow you to see perhaps better than anyone not having already had a hands-on look themselves have been able to see is the HD screen. The Galaxy Nexus has 720 x 1280 pixel resolution on an HD Super AMOLED technology 4.65-inch display. And on top of that, it’s curved as well – have a look at the post Galaxy Nexus has a curved pentile OLED display for some heavy conversation on what you’re going to see.
Earlier today we also got a look at the first place you can pick up the Galaxy Nexus in the UK over at Phones4u as carried by Orange. There’s also a listing of all the UK carriers if you’d like them as well. At the moment there’s just Orange, Three, and Vodafone carrying the device in the UK, while O2 and T-Mobile UK have yet to announce their allegiance to the vanilla Android cause.
Mister Trevor Prideaux, a British man born without an arm on the left side of his body, now has what we’re pretty sure is the world’s first prosthetic limb with a built-in smartphone dock. Not only that, but he’s using the cool Nokia C7, a device that not only Chris Davies reviewed here on SlashGear, your humble narrator Chris Burns wrote a review for the USA side of things as well. Now one of these magical little devices sits in the hardened arm of a Brit – hows that for taking your “handicap” and making it work in your favor. Plain old human arm not looking so good to you now, is it?
The business of prosthetic bits doesn’t come up often here on SlashGear, but when it does, it’s awesome. Everything from a £35K artificial hand to a full-on tentacle to a Dalek-style gripper has us applauding the industrial design world for their class. Now we’ve got this fellow Prideaux together with no less than official Nokia communications chiefs and a group of medical experts who’ve together created this special custom build.
What they’ve done here is to carve a phone-shaped fibreglass cradle into prototype arm build, this cradle able to hold and grip Prideaux’s Nokia C7. Prideaux believes this to be the first time this setup has been executed in the world, and notes that he’s proud to be part of the project:
“I can now take calls and make texts just by using my one hand, while the phone sits inside my arm. The phone slots smoothly and securely within my limb and is easily removable, when required. I think this would help a lot of people with prosthethic arms – especially those who were not born with the disability. People who have had motorbike crashes and soldiers who have lost limbs – they could all benefit from this.” – Prideaux
Prideaux is a caterer by trade, and has always had his limbs specially made at a place by the name of Exeter Mobility Centre in Devon. Once he had the idea to add a holster for a smartphone in his prosthetic arm, he contacted Apple to try to get ahold of a blank iPhone casing to test the idea out, but he notes that the group “refused to co-operate.” Next he went to his local O2 carrier when it was time to upgrade the device he already had to a new Nokia, the Nokia crew agreed to help him and the technicians at Exeter Mobility Centre to create the new limb.
Specifically it was prosthethist Steve Gallichan, undergraduate worker Sarah Bennett, and technician Les Street and created a prototype of the arm. The fiber cast of the phone was laminated and built into the limb where it could hold Prideaux’s mobile device.
“Now when I get call I can either hold my arm up to my ear or put it on speaker phone. I can also take it out if I need to. Texting is also much easier and a lot safer. I am hugely grateful to the people EMC. This is a leap forward which has helped me out a lot and can also aid others.” – Prixeaux
Now we’ve just got to get something like that for human skin implants as well – could you live with just one size? I imagine your favorite smartphone would really, truly have to be your favorite for you to be able to choose one mold. Love it all!
It’s October 26, and that means Nokia World 2011, the Finn’s opportunity to convince us that they still have a place in the hotly contested smartphone market. SlashGear is in London, UK, today to see Nokia’s Stephen Elop officially unveil the first new Windows Phones from the company.
That shouldn’t come too much as a surprise: after all, the usual cavalcade of leaks and whispers have already revealed two new devices. The Nokia Lumia 710 and Lumia 800 were caught in the wild only yesterday, the 800 borrowing the polycarbonate styling of the N9 we liked so much in our review at the weekend.
Still, there’s plenty of opportunity to still be surprised, and there’s the thorny matter of who exactly will be able to actually buy the first wave of Nokia devices. Last we heard, the US market wouldn’t get any Nokia Windows Phones until 2012, something which is likely to come as a major disappointment to many would-be Mango buyers.
“Earlier this year we realized the need to shift our strategy so we could deliver even better experiences.” So Stephen Elop kicked off the Nokia World 2011 keynote, the CEO painting a picture of the company as a reliable old friend who was very much in need of a makeover. “Generally people like Nokia, we’re durable, we’re trustworthy, we’re reliable” Elop explained. “We comb our hair neatly, we always pick you up after work when we said we would. But we wanted more … and that wouldn’t happen without change.”
Seven new NFC phones – the most open NFC models of any vendor – and the MeeGo powered N9 were a part of that, Elop explained, along with a significant step into the dual-SIM market. That includes technologies that allow you to switch the SIM card without rebooting the phone.
“Who is the next billion? Where are these people … how do they define life’s little adventures?” Elop asked rhetorically, going on to suggest that Nokia’s research says it’s young people: “extremely savvy mobile users” with far-reaching demands but limited budgets. For today, Nokia is announcing four new mobile phones, the Nokia Asher series. Stay tuned for full details!
Nokia has revealed its new Asha series, the company’s four-strong Symbian range intended for developing markets, entry-level users and anybody whose mobile ambitions might exceed their budgets. The Nokia Asha 200, 201, 300 and 303 run Symbian S40 on a range of form-factors that includes QWERTY keyboards and full touch.
The Nokia Asha 200 has a QWERTY ‘board along with a full touchscreen in a candybar form-factor, in addition to multi-SIM support and multi-swap, allowing users to move between different SIMs without rebooting the phone. The Asha 201 has the same specs but lacks dual-SIM.
The Asha 300 has a touchscreen and numeric keypad, along with a 5-megapixel camera in a candybar form-factor. There’s a homescreen widget for social networking integration, as with other Asha models. The Asha 303 meanwhile has similar specifications but a QWERTY ‘board instead.
Nokia is still talking about full specifications and capabilities, so we’ll update as soon as we know more.
Angry Birds continues to make its way across the mobile landscape, with Nokia announcing that the hugely popular game will now be available on S40 devices. Demo’d this morning as part of Nokia World 2011‘s debut of the Asha 200, 201, 300 and 303, the game will also be offered to existing S40 users through Nokia’s Ovi Store for app downloads.
It’s not clear at this point whether Angry Birds will be a free or paid app. Nokia and Rovio could follow Android, and offer the game free with adverts, or it could follow iPhone and offer the title as a paid download with no ads. Considering Nokia’s entry-level audience with S40, a free game would arguably make more sense.
There’s no word on when, exactly, the game will be released. Keep an eye on the Ovi Store for more details.
Nokia has officially announced the Lumia 800, the company’s first Windows Phone. Borrowing the style and construction of the Nokia N9, the Lumia 800 is, according to Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, “the first real Windows Phone.” That’s unlikely to go down well with HTC, Samsung and other manufacturers also onboard with Windows Phone, but Nokia says it’s playing for the top spot in smartphones once more.
Like the N9, the Lumia 800 will be offered in black, cyan and magenta, using a CNC milled polycarbonate casing. Unlike the N9 it gets a dedicated camera button, along with three touch-sensitive buttons under the display for the usual Windows Phone functionality.
“Our ambition is to surprise you at every turn” Nokia said of the Lumia 800, “it’s human, it’s elegant, it just fits and feels great in your hand.” There’s an 8-megapixel camera on the back, with a dual-LED flash, along with Carl Zeiss optics and a curved ClearBlack display. There’s Nokia Drive for turn-by-turn directions preloaded, with a dedicated homescreen tile
The Nokia Lumia 800 isn’t the company’s only Windows Phone 7 handset at Nokia World 2011; the company has also revealed the Nokia Lumia 710, it’s entry-level model. Available in “stealthy black” and “crisp white” there’ll also be optional covers that match the Windows Phone Live Tiles. Inside, it’s the same processor and software as the Lumia 800, but fronted by a 3.7-inch Clear Black display.
The Lumia 710 design is more similar to previous Symbian handsets than the N9-inspired Lumia 800, a curved handset with a chunkier form-factor than its polycarbonate sibling. Performance from Mango should be the same, however, and there’s a 5-megapixel camera on the back.
Nokia isn’t saying exactly how “affordable” the Lumia 710 will be, though the company is no stranger to building devices on a budget. Buyers will also get access to the Nokia Drive with turn-by-turn navigation functionality, the Nokia Music with preset mixes on a subscription-free basis, and the ESPN sports hub, just like the more expensive Lumia 800.
We caught a glimpse of the Samsung Exhibit II 4G smartphone earlier this month when the device was first tipped to be getting the Exhibit moniker rather than the Galaxy W name. The smartphone has now gone official on T-Mobile with pricing and all the details you might want on the smartphone. The Exhibit II 4G will is to be the first 4G smartphone to be sold at most Walmart stores that doesn’t require a contract. The smartphone will land on October 27 as a no contract offering.
The smartphone will also be offered with a 2-year contract as well starting on November 2. The Exhibit II 4G packs in a 3.7-inch screen with WVGA resolution. The processor is a 1GHz Snapdragon and the device runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread. It can access the T-Mobile TV network in mobile HD along with the Samsung Media Hub.
The phone is offered in marine blue color and has a 3MP rear camera with flash and the ability to capture video. It also features WiFi and can access the Android Market. The phone will sell for $29.99 after a $50 MIR on a 2-year contract. The no contract price for the smartphone will be $199.99. The 4G network that it connects to is the HSPA+ T-Mo network not the tastier LTE Verizon offers.
Specifications of the new headphones haven’t been revealed, but we’ll update as soon as we know more. Nokia has both wired and wireless options, some using NFC to automatically pair the Bluetooth connection.
Nokia World is underway and SlashGear is at the show live. We had hoped that there would be a lot of new devices unveiled at the show and so far, there have been some cool announcements. The Lumina 800 Windows Phone for instance looks very nice on paper and we can’t wait to try the smartphone out in person. If you were hoping for some confirmation of when the Mango Nokia devices would land, we have that too.
Yesterday we mentioned that Nokia Windows Phone might not hit the US until next year. The tip came from leaked advertising plan. Nokia has today confirmed at Nokia World that the Windows Phone Mango handsets that it is showing off will not reach US store shelves until early 2012. Early is a relative term, I suspect that we are looking at some time in Q1. As we get closer to 2012 hopefully Nokia will tip a firm launch date.
We are waiting on confirmation of whether or not the Mango devices will launch in Europe this year. The rumor previously had the smartphones pegged for a European release in time for the holiday season this year. Nokia also confirmed that it plans to introduce both LTE and CDMA versions of the smartphones to address specific local network needs globally.
Nokia has just made its first Windows Phone range official, and we wasted no time in spending some playtime with the flagship model, the Nokia Lumia 800. Borrowing heavily from the N9 design we’ve already waxed lyrical over, the Lumia 800 casing is milled from a solid piece of polycarbonate but gains some extra buttons and controls to suit Microsoft’s platform. Read on for our first impressions.
We can’t argue with the Lumia 800′s quality. The smartphone feels pretty-close to perfect in the hand, the gently curved casing – Nokia would probably describe it as “pillowy” – making for an easy to hold and sturdy feeling device. The 3.9-inch touchscreen’s ClearBlack technology shows off the Live Tiles well, with their black background seamlessly blending into the bezel, and the phone – despite the single-core processor – felt speedy as it whipped through the Start list.
Nokia’s custom apps will initially include Nokia Drive, for turn-by-turn navigation, and Nokia Music, for streaming mix playlists. The ESPN-powered sports hub will follow on later. Nokia Drive is little changed from the MeeGo version, impressing us with its ability – along with the Lumia 800′s GPS hardware – to lock onto a position and pull in mapping data almost instantaneously, despite our being buried in the depths of a convention center. From there it’s a familiar matter of picking a destination using the easily jabbed-at UI – complete with oversized buttons perfect for when the Lumia 800 is dashboard-mounted in your car – and then following either 2D or 3D maps with spoken directions.
Nokia Music is likely to be popular among those tempted by streaming music services such as Spotify, but wary of the monthly cost. Subscription-free, it offers a selection of Mix Radio playlists, each with a range of tracks that have been specially combined to suit your location and other factors. Tap the playlist and it plays instantly – no registration required – and we could easily press-hold on a tile, choose to sync it for offline play, and then pin the playlist to the start screen for easier access next time. Obviously you don’t get the full flexibility of something like Spotify’s full music catalog, but it’s a lot more usable than a traditional FM radio.
Otherwise this is generally Windows Phone 7.5 Mango as we’ve seen before, Microsoft’s smartphone platform continuing to represent the “unusual option” amid the mobile crowd. We can’t deny we have a soft spot for the OS, and the interface looks great on Nokia’s hardware. What will undoubtedly make the difference is how well the Lumia 800 is positioned in stores: Nokia reckons it has dozens of carriers onboard and a hefty training and marketing budget to try to encourage retail staff to at least consider promoting Windows Phone instead of solely iPhone and Android. That Nokia will have the Lumia 800 in stores by November – for the initial roll-out at least, which unfortunately doesn’t include the US – can’t hurt that either.
We’ve got hands-on video processing and will update with it asap!
I think many people had given up on digital magazine subscriptions, as many readers did not adopt them quickly. It seems that at least for publisher Conde Nast that slow uptake of its digital subscriptions may have changed thanks to the update to iOS 5 and the iPad getting Newsstand. According to Conde Nast, its digital subscriptions have boomed since Newsstand landed.
Conde Nast reports that since iOS 5 and Newsstand hit the iPad its digital subscriptions have soared by 268%. The publisher also notes that single issue purchases have also grown significantly to the tune of 142%. Electronista reports that Conde Nast’s executive VP Monica Ray attributes the increased subscriptions and single issue purchases to the inherent design of Newsstand.
Ray says that the design makes it easy to for readers to find and purchase the digital magazines. Another part of newsstand that is pointed to for the increased success of the digital content is background downloads that make it easy to get new issues. So far, other publishers haven’t stepped up and announced that they have seen similar gains. Presumably, Conde Nast isn’t alone in seeing gains in digital sales.
Nokia’s new Asha range isn’t quite as excited to our smartphone-jaded eyes as the Lumia 800, but it could arguably have a bigger impact on the Finnish company’s user-base. Targeted at the “next billion users” the four-strong range includes a trio of QWERTY candybars some of which offer touchscreens too. Check out our hands-on impressions after the cut.
With pricing only creeping over €100 (pre-subsidies) for one of the models, the Asha 303, we didn’t have huge expectations on build-quality and functionality. However, in the hand we were pleasantly surprised. The Asha 200 (the 201 is identical, apart from only offering a single SIM slot) feels the cheapest of the range, though at €60 that’s hardly a shock. The glossy plastic chassis was sturdy if a fingerprint magnet, and the non-touch display lacked the vivid colors and contrast of other recent Nokia’s we’ve seen. The keyboard, however, was usable and had decent inter-key spacing.
The Nokia Asha 300 and 303 were more successful all round, though priced at €85 and €115 respectively. The full-QWERTY on the 303 was somewhat cramped, the phone being narrower than the 200/201, but the hard, domed buttons were tactile and we could punch out a quick SMS or Facebook update without issue or error. Although the numeric keypad of the Asha 300 is better-spaced, we really wouldn’t want to go back to T9 text entry.
The display on the 300 and 303 is better quality than that of the 200/201, to our eyes, though still not up to the standards of some of Nokia’s ClearBlack panels such as on the Lumia line-up. Bearing in mind budget, however, it’s certainly acceptable. The touch responsiveness is decent, and the phones generally are more easily pocketed and feel less toy-like than the cheaper phones.
S40 isn’t the most inspiring of platforms – we’d rather see Windows Phone or even Symbian Belle as on the Nokia 700 - but it puts social networking and messaging front and center which is likely what users of these devices will want. In short, while the Lumia line-up will get most of the attention from the show this week, it’s the Asha range which will likely provide Nokia’s biggest sales.
We’ve got video processing of the Asha handsets, and we’ll add it in asap!
Amazon has been granted a patent on a new tech for gift cards that will help the giver limit exactly what the person they gift the card to can purchase. Amazon applied for the patent titled “customizing gift instrument experiences for recipients” back in 2008 and the patent was granted recently. In a nutshell, the patent boils down to parental controls for the products the gift card can be used to purchase.
The way the patent outlines the new gift card the person giving the card would be able to recommend items that the person receiving the card might like. The giver would also be able to limit the purchases to specific things. Presumably that would mean if you don’t want the receiver to use it for video games you could restrict that category.
The part that is a bit more intrusive for the receiver of the gift card is that the sender can get a report back on what the person they gave the card to actually purchased. I can see the use for the restrictions. If an uncle for instance wants to send an 11-year-old a virtual gift card for Christmas, but wants to be sure the kid uses it for books or toys and not violent video games this would allow that.
Yesterday Rockstar came out of nowhere with the announcement that the trailer for GTA V would be landing early in November. This news sent fans of the franchise all around the world into full on rumor mode. Rumors started to surface that said the game would be based on a real-world location and that multiple playable characters would be offered.
Kotaku reports that a source familiar with the game has said that some of the rumors that were flying around are in fact true. Kotaku cites multiple sources claiming that the multiple playable characters rumor is true. Other rumors claim that the game will be set in real world Los Angeles rather than a fictional city. This would make sense to me and a real city where you can explore actually places to loot, kill, and pillage would be cool.
I have always wished that GTA would license some real cars so you can steal rides that are available in the real world. It would be cool to go into the LA hills and steal some rich dudes Ferrari or jack his house with a view. We should know more in a short time since the trailer is set for next week. This game had better be good.
The Pew Research Center has conducted a study for Excellence in Journalism in cooperation with The Economist Group that has find some impressive facts about the reach and use of tablet computers with adults in the US. According to the report that was published this week 11% of all American adults own a tablet. We already know that the most popular tablet is the iPad, so most will be using the Apple product.
What is more impressive than that number is that 77% of those adults that own a tablet use them every day. That shows that tablets are more than just a fad or a me too purchase since the people are actually using them daily. The average tablet user spends 90 minutes each day using the tablet for all sorts of things. Email use is one of the most popular tablet activities with 54% using the tablet for email.
Social networking is next on the tablet activity list with 39% using their tablet for that, 30% of users play games on the tablet, and 17% read books on it. The survey found that 17% of users watched movies on their tablets. The most common activity on a tablet is getting news at least once weekly with 77% of users consuming news. General web surfing was performed by 66% of users. The study also found that the majority of users still don't pay for content with only 14% of users having purchased content.
JBL has gobs of speaker docks for the iPhone and the iPad tablets. The latest of these docks has been announced for launch in the UK soon and it is called the JBL OnBeat Xtreme. This is the latest docking station and it is designed specifically to fit the iPad and iPad 2 tablets. The dock the Xtreme uses rotates so that the iPhone and iPod touch can dock as well.
Other than the dock for playing music, the Xtreme also has Bluetooth technology for streaming audio from non-dockable devices and a 3.5mm input. The Xtreme also has an integrated mic to allow it to be used as a speaker phone. The microphone uses DSP and has echo cancellation for better sound quality. The Xtreme is engineered for high quality sound according to JBL.
It has dual Atlas bass drivers and Ridge tweeters both using DSP equalization. The docking station can be controlled using the OnBeat Xtreme app that is on the App Store as a free download. This app gives control over playlists, EQ settings, and the user can set alarms. The dock also has an RF remote for changing tracks from other rooms. The OnBeat Xtreme will sell for £399.99 in the UK.
Japanese government officials have announced that over the last several months, viruses have hit its House of Representatives and Ministry of Foreign affairs during cyber attacks. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs offices along with its overseas embassies and consulates were targeted by emails in a focused attack with the goal of stealing information.
The announcement came from Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura this week. Computers in the Japanese House were infected in late August according to Fujimura. The computers in the overseas Foreign Affairs offices handle low security information and the separate network that handles high security information was not infected according to officials.
Fujimura is specific in pointing out that there was no leak of confidential information. However, he declined to comments on the specific locations and nature of the attack. If the attack was from emails as previously stated, the source was likely infected file attachments. The computers in the House that were infected in August were identified and cut off from the network. PC World reports that local Japanese media are saying the attacks were malicious and claim that logins and passwords to protect email and other private data were stolen in the attacks. [via PC World]
Nokia’s main show may be the Lumia range this week at Nokia World, but the company’s labs have also brought out some of their more interesting tidbits to play. The Kinetic Labs Concept is perhaps the most eye-catching, a flexible smartphone prototype that allows for navigation by physically deforming the device, sizable screen and all. Check out our hands-on after the cut.
The system is reminiscent of Synaptics’ Fuse concept, a squeezable, tillable smartphone which we played with back in February 2010. Unlike the Fuse, however, Nokia’s prototype includes a fully-bendable display rather than cladding the handset in touch sensors.
It definitely makes for a more involving experience: Nokia has whipped up a UI for navigating music and photos, and by twisting the handset laterally you can scroll through the lists of media. Bending the edges toward you or away from you zooms in and out, and then more twisting pans around the zoomed image.
Right now there’s no phone integration, and in fact the heavy lifting is being done by a hidden computer at the moment. Nokia tells us that it’s not beyond the capabilities of a current smartphone processor, however, and that the UI is pretty much platform agnostic and could be placed on top of any current OS. Other potential implementations of the kinetics could be squeezing the phone to answer a call, relaxing you grip to mute or end it.
This has been a big week for IBM. The company has appointed Virginia M. Rometty as CEO of the company, making her one of the highest profile female CEOs in the business world. When Rometty took the CEO spot, the former CEO Samuel J. Palmisano moved over to the Chairman position. While a new CEO and Chairman are in play, IBM has announced something else interesting today.
IBM will be buying back another $7 billion worth of its stock and has declared a dividend. That $7 billion in additional buyback is on top of the $5.2 billion that IBM had announced it would buy back at the end of September. Apparently IBM still isn’t done gathering its own stock back up.
The technology giant is expected to ask its board for permission to buy back more stock in a board meeting set for next April. The quarterly dividend that was announced is 75 cents and will be paid to shareholders on December 10 that were on record as of November 10.
If you are a user of the Google Chrome web browser the latest update is now available for you to download. The latest version that is up for download right now is Chrome 15. The update brings with it it new bug fixes and adds in some new features as well. One key feature of the new version of the browser is that Google says it will allow the user to be more sociable.
This new social twist will be in the form of giving the user the ability to share media and documents. One of the most noticeable changes to the browser in Chrome 15 is the Chrome Tab panel is redesigned completely. The redesign was done to make it easier for the user to access and organize pages and apps. Google also notes that you can get information about an app or extension in a click by opening a panel that has screenshots, videos, and other details offered in different tabs.
It’s worth noting that some users are saying that the new version of the browser is more unstable than the old one. One also pointed out that the new Tab page can’t be edited. I hope the new version doesn’t have serious stability issues. I left Firefox for Chrome recently after increasing instability issues with Firefox. Check out the video to see some of the Tab page changes in action.
With Microsoft recently finalizing the purchase of Skype you might think that the first video calling service on the coming Mango smartphones would be Skype. That would be wrong. The start-up video conferencing firm Tango will be the first video calling app on Mango devices according to the company. We have talked a bit about Tango in the past.
Tango was the app used to demonstrate video calling on Windows Phone devices in September. The service has been on Android and the iPhone previously. With the purchase of Skype, the video calling technology will eventually be embedded deep inside the Windows Phone OS. With the time it takes for that sort of integration, Tango will be the stop gap.
Forbes reports that a Skype representative declined to comment on Skype and Windows Phone integration. Beating Skype onto the Mango platform could be huge for Tango. Analysts have predicted that Mango will be the fastest growing OS next year. Tango should hit the Windows Phone platform on November 7.
When it comes to reducing the power that large data centers consume a seemingly small reduction can have huge savings in power consumption and the cost of operating the data center. Apple is getting ready to install a large solar panel farm on land it already owns in Maiden, North Carolina. Apple has been issued permits needed in Catawba County to reshape the 171 acres of land it owns adjacent to the data center.
The reshaping will involve changing the slope of the land so that the large solar farm can be installed. Apple is big on green energy and the power company that provides power to the large data center right now gets its electricity from coal and nuclear plants. Other Apple locations are 100% powered by renewable energy and green is big to Apple so the solar farm is on the agenda.
The solar project is being called “Project Dolphin Solar Farm A Expanded” that Dolphin project name is reportedly the codename for the billion dollar data center constructed in Maiden. According to the plans, the solar farm will have multiple gravel roads to access the panels for maintenance. For now, there is no information available on how large the solar farm would be. Apple can fit lots of solar panels on 171 acres.
We admit, the Lumia 800 grabbed out attention from the start, but that’s not to say the Nokia Lumia 710 is any less important in the grand scheme of the company’s smartphone regeneration. The lower-cost half of the WinPho double-punch, the Lumia 710 sticks closer to Nokia’s existing design language but still offers tidbits like ClearBlack and Nokia Music. Read on for our first impressions.
While the Lumia 800 may be the more eye-catching of the two Windows Phones Nokia announced today, but the Lumia 710 could arguably be more important in the market. It’s the first sign of Nokia flexing its economy of scale prowess, leveraging its production skills to produce cheaper phones. Considering Windows Phones to-date have all pretty much offered fundamentally the same package at roughly the same price, the Lumia 710 not only represents a more affordable phone today, but heralds a wallet-pleasing low cost Lumia range tomorrow.
That’s the future: what of the 710 today? The screen may be smaller than that of the 800 but the handset altogether is slightly bulkier, the visual effect of that slightly compensated by the two-tone casing color scheme. The plastics are solid but lack the matte finish of the 800, and the ClearBlack display isn’t as punchy to our eyes. Still, Windows Phone moves slickly – the CPU is the same 1.4GHz single-core Snapdragon as in the 800 – and you get the same custom Nokia apps, Drive for turn-by-turn navigation and Music for access to the Nokia Mix playlists.
On the back is a 5-megapixel camera with a single LED flash, down from the 800′s 8-megapixels and dual-LED. We didn’t have a chance to test it out, so image quality assessment will have to wait until review units are available. Video capture is limited to 720p HD, however.
In all, while it’s certainly not as appealing as the 800, the Lumia 710 could well deliver on the cost-effective Windows Phone action that the platform so desperately needs. Still, we can’t help but be more interested in what might come down the line than what the 710 offers today.
Rumors were flying this week that RIM was pushing the much anticipated PlayBook OS 2.0 update out to early 2012. At the time, the rumor was making rounds there was no official word from RIM on the fate of the OS update. PlayBook OS 2.0 is the update that will bring with it support for native email, PIM access, and Android apps.
RIM has officially confirmed that the update to version 2.0 for the Playbook will not be offered until February 2012. RIM says that it would like to get the OS into the hands of users today, but that it won’t launch the OS until it’s confident it has met the expectations of the developer community and end users. As much as PlayBook owners will hate to hear this, it’s a good thing. If RIM launches the new OS for the tablet and it doesn’t work the PlayBook is dead.
Another big piece of bad news is that RIM announced that it has decided to not include the BBM application with version 2.0 and will push that feature until a later version of the OS. The rumors had pointed to RIM having difficulty integrating multiple user devices into a single BBM account. The bright spot in the announcement is that RIM is ready to provide developers with the gold release of the native SDK for the tablet and a beta of the OS 2.0. This will allow the devs to port their apps to the PlayBook in native form.
If you are a fan of that slick new Nokia N9 smartphone that we reviewed this week there is a bit of news for you today. Nokia has announced that it is adding a new version of the N9 to the family already. The new version comes in a white color. That white color is the only difference, the hardware inside is the same. Why is the white version a few days late in landing?
Apparently white gives Nokia the same sort of troubles it gave Apple with the iPhone. Nokia says that it wanted to be sure that the quality of the white phone was top notch for the buyers. Apparently, the manufacturing process for those white smartphones is more complex than other colors. The white finish of the N9 is glossy as well setting it apart from the matte finish on other N9 colors.
That glossy finish will mean more fingerprints though. The white N9 will be available starting in Q4 2011 in a 64GB version to start. Nokia has also announced that all versions of the N9 will soon get a new software update. That update will also be available to download in Q4 2011. New additions in the update will include music controls from the lock screen and the ability to close apps by swiping them down. NFC tag reading is also being added to the update.
Google’s original Nexus One will not get an official upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, it has been confirmed, with only the Nexus S getting the latest version of the smartphone platform. While the Nexus S will get updated “within weeks” of Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) going live, Google’s Hugo Barra confirmed to the Telegraph, the exec admitted that the Nexus One hardware was simply too old to support the new OS.
“The operating system is thought through with the needs of the next three years in mind; it's a wholesale revamp of the way people interact with the phone” Barra said of ICS, something that will come as cold comfort to Nexus One owners whose device was only announced in January 2010. Many will still be within their original two-year contract, forced to watch later Nexus adopters – who picked up the Nexus S after it was launched at the end of December.
As for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmert’s recent comments that Android demanded a computer science degree in order to get to grips with, Barra was not impressed. “Android, especially this new version 4.0, is an incredibly intuitive platform – the best one we've ever built” he insisted. “There are power user features, but there is no need for an instruction manual or a computer science degree.”
We spent hands-on time with Ice Cream Sandwich back at the Galaxy Nexus launch earlier this week. The smartphone will hit shelves in November, with open-source code availability tipped for the same time. More details on Android 4.0 in our full hands-on.
Get your documents all in order today on the Amazon Appstore with OfficeSuite Professional 5, an Office editing app that’s normally $15, completely for free. As you may or may not know, the Amazon Appstore is a place where you can pick up apps on your Android device, this app store completely separate from the official Google version, that being called the Android Marketplace. If you’ll take a look at your humble narrator’s original Android Community 101: Amazon Appstore, it will all become abundantly clear. Today the Amazon Appstore is giving away no less than your one-stop shop for everything Office.
To get this app, you’ll first have to download the Amazon Appstore. All this consists of is dropping your email in the box in the upper left of Amazon’s Online Appstore, waiting for a confirmation email in your inbox, and clicking the link inside that email. Your download then will contain the appstore itself, and inside you’ll find not only a full-range of lovely applications including the only ad-free Android versions of Angry Birds, but OfficeSuite Pro 5, an app that’ll normally cost your three $5 bills, completely free today.
The Amazon Appstore is set to gain some vast popularity this holiday season as the Kindle Fire will rely solely on it for app purchases. In that Amazon used its own appstore instead of working with Google to gain their favor for the Android Market, Amazon freed themselves from adding the rest of the Google suite of apps as well, creating a whole new monster based on the Android system architecture. Have a look at the Kindle Fire, download the Amazon Appstore, and see for yourself why Amazon is set to make bank this coming holiday season.
Nokia’s own preloaded Windows Phone apps, Drive and Music, are just the start of the company’s software push on the new Lumia range. In addition, there’ll be a curated app environment not yet demonstrated at Nokia World; Keith Varty, Head of Ecosystem and Services at Nokia, told SlashGear that App Highlights will be a tile on the Windows Phone homescreen, featuring the company’s picks of the best WP7 software for new and established users. Read on for more details.
App Highlights, Varty explained, will be both present on the homescreen – it’s not yet clear whether it will be a Live Tile, dynamically updating to flag up new download options, or otherwise – and as a category in the Marketplace on Nokia Windows Phones. There will be three categories, including “Featured” apps and “Starter” apps, described by Varty as “what we think is the key content for our consumers.”
Rather than simply flagging up the top paid and free downloads, or the best rated apps, as current app stores do, Nokia will leverage its local level expertise to populate the App Highlights categories. The company already has people whose job is to merchandize the stores, Varty pointed out, and calls upon their expertise at a country-by-country level to pick out the best content for each marketplace. Nokia has already used a similar system for its Nokia Music service, using local experts to highlight what music is topical in each location.
“We’re in many more markets than some of our competitors” Varty highlighted, suggesting that despite its heft Nokia is a “very local business.” Sourcing content from local providers is just part of that. It will also better differentiate Nokia Windows Phones from those of rivals; HTC has its own Hub store, but it’s not as holistically integrated into the Marketplace as Nokia’s App Highlights system will be.
We also asked Varty about the Nokia Launchpad offer made to developers back in February, promising them a free Nokia Windows Phone when available (along with, at the time, a free E7). Varty couldn’t confirm today exact details of that scheme – though he did say that, if Nokia had promised it, they’d be following up on it – but pointed out that in a recent developer event 150 coders were promised Lumia 800 handsets. We’ll follow up when we have more on the Launchpad deal.
More on Nokia’s new Windows Phones in our Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 hands-on.
This morning at Nokia World 2011, two flavors of Nokia’s Lumia line were released, the Lumia 800 and the Lumia 710, and Qualcomm now reports that yes, indeed, they are being powered by no less than their very own Snapdragon processors. This is the first time Nokia has entered into the Windows Phone world as well as the first time Nokia has worked with Qualcomm to combine both of their well-loved architectures. With all the coverage on the smartphones themselves this morning, one must see the energy here, in the motor, and what better way to usher in a single new collaboration than with a second!
Another point to make here is that Qualcomm has currently cornered the Windows Phone market with their processors. That’s right, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors power 100 percent of Windows Phone devices on the market right now, and they don’t plan on stopping there! With the Windows Phone 7 marketplace on the rise, its in Qualcomm’s best interest to continue to hold on to the entirety of the platform.
Enrico Salvatori, senior vice president and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies Europe, is more than pleased with the situation of course. Salvatori notes that the process from start to finish only took six months, quite a feat for two manufacturers working to optimize eachothers products for one another for market release. "The completeness of the Snapdragon processor and deep integration between Snapdragon and Windows Phone 7 have enabled a unique smartphone experience in record development time for Nokia." Sounds good and dandy!
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