Archive for Technology Content

Why Microsoft May Desire the Netbook to Expire

Microsoft thinks it might be. In reporting record revenues, the software giant buried this nugget: netbooks represented 8 percentage of the company’s PC sales a year ago. Now, it’s down to 2 percent.

That casts a dim light on Microsoft’s Windows 7 Starter Edition, the low-cost version of Windows 7 that effectively defeated go the Linux-based netbook. Just isn’t it in Microsoft’s best stake to see the netbook fade away, regardless?

Patrick Moorhead, a former corporate fellow with AMD and forthwith master at Moor Insights and Strategy, has watched the traditional netbook an Atom-based, small-form-factor notebook that costs about $399 disappear from shop shelves. Netbooks get been relegated to Best Buy’s online shelves, for example, while higher-margin, recurring-revenue productions alike smartphones dominate its floors. Desktops are a thing of the past.

You may forgive Moorhead for thinking that the AMD Brazos platform, combined with a 10.6-inch screen and a good keyboard “crushed” the netbook market. Only what’s realize is that consumers loved the cost point, only wanted more for their money.

“In the end, and I experience been very realize on this since daytime one, is that netbooks are merely inexpensive notebooks that became popular,” Moorhead said. “They became replaced by higher-quality notebooks that were fulfilled by a selfsame like price and situation in the market.”

According to Moorhead, the next of the netbook isn’t the tablet, equally Acer seemed to imply with its decision to throw its lid into the tablet market last year. Instead, the future is something alike the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, which oscillates between a tablet and a notebook, depending on whether it’s in a docked or undocked configuration.

Fitbit Aria WiFi scales tell the internet you’re fat

Fitbit has launched Aria, the company’s foremost WiFi-enabled scales, capable of automatically recognizing up to eight different users and squirting their angle to a cloud-based fitness center. Best known for the clip-on Fitbit dongle that tracks exercise, Fitbit says these new scales were really prompted by user-requests; yet it’s besides worth noting that Withings has been offering wirelessly-enabled scales for some time now.

Either way, the Aria positioned tracks weight, percent body fat and calculates BMI, meshing those results with the feedback from the Fitbit dongle. That way, the companionship reckons, you may see which elements of your utilization regime are actually working. It could likewise flow into a food planner, with users logging their diet and getting suggestions on calorie consumption.

An iPhone app allows you to cover your progression while on the move, and altogether eight users of the scales receive private accounts therefore that you can’t see how much everyone else weighs. User identification is based on weight, so it might not form if you’ve short lost or gained a vast amount, or alive with people who completely matter the same.

Acer’s Dapple strategy Also late, Also copycat

Acer hopes to posed its products aside through its proprietary AcerCloud service, which is designed to allow customers sync files across multiple Acer products. In doing so, Acer is trying to emulate other major technology players such equally Google, Apple, and Amazon, which rely heavily on cloud services themselves.

Acer demonstrated the three services that will initially exist available on AcerCloud when it launches in the minute quarter: PicStream, a photo-sharing service, AcerCloud docs for documents, and clear.fi Media for music. For PicStream and AcerCloud, the files will be stored online for 30 days. The service is expected to coursed on succeeding Windows devices down the line. Boy that’s a tough sell. If altogether Acer could got up with is a clone of other cloud services, the society has grievous problems.

Acer doesn’t have the brand to compete with Amazon, Apple and Google. Raise your give if you receive an Acer laptop and tablet? Considered so. Acer lacks the brand loyalty to actually convince consumers that connecting the company’s devices is really therefore great. Acer looks manner former and mode besides me too. Why would you set your docs on AcerCloud when other services Box, DropBox and Evernote may mould on whatever device you have?

Apps downloads Striking record high in Lastly Week of December

Analytics house Flurry enounced 1.2 billion apps were downloaded in the last week of December.

Activity was buoyed by the facts that many users had new devices for Xmas and firms offered discounted apps over the holiday period.

The US was responsible for nearly half of the downloads, followed by China and the UK.

With 81 million downloads, the UK easily surpassed Canada (41 million), Germany (40 million) and France (40 million).

It was beaten to minute spot by China with 99 million downloads. The US was away before with 509 million.

Flurry thinks this point of download action will got more standard.

“Looking forward to 2012, Flurry expects breaking the one billion download barrier per hebdomad will gone more commonplace,” the house88 pronounced in its blog..

“While [Apple] iOS and [Google] Android development continues to amaze, the market is yet by entirely measures relatively nascent.”

Unsurprisingly, Christmas proved a boom time for device makers. Flurry estimated that nearly seven million Android devices and iPhones were activated on Christmas Day.

Apple does not break such figures merely Google confirmed that more than 3.7 million Android devices were activated over the Xmas weekend.

FCC approves AT&T’s $1.9-billion Purchase of Qualcomm spectrum

The Federal Communications Commission has approved a $1.9-billion AT&T buy of radio spectrum licenses owned by San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc.

The purchase gives AT&T check over licenses that, granting to the FCC, “cover more than 300 million people nationwide, including more than 70 million people in five of the top 15 metropolitan areas (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco).”

The FCC’s decision on the spectrum raft was set to exist delayed into future twelvemonth as the regulatory means was reviewing both AT&T’s proposed Qualcomm buy4 and the proposed $39-billion takeover of T-Mobile USA together — that was until AT&T spent its T-Mobile plans on Monday.

In its approval of the Qualcomm deal, the FCC said Thursday that AT&T cannot utilization the spectrum in a way that would negatively affect other carriers using or roaming on nearby radio1 airwaves.

The FCC articulated that, given that AT&T is the largest telephone society in the U.S. and the second-largest mobile carrier, concerns of competitive harm were looked at, simply any resulting harm wouldn’t “outweigh the public stake benefits of this transaction,” the FCC said in the order.

Android passes 700,000 Everyday activations milestone

Android device activations get hitting 700,000 a day, allotting to platform head Andy Rubin, a brobdingnagian increase on the 550,000 casual activations Google reported back in July. Over 700,000 Android gadgets – phones and tablets – are forthwith coming online each 24 hours, equally the Bone continues to accelerate into the lead.

The achievement is the latest level in a conflict between Google and Apple over mobile platform dominance, with Android and iOS squaring choke to take the coveted tip spot. Android dominates the smartphone space but iOS on the iPad has significant strength in tablets, something Google is hoping to modify in 2012 with the launch of the foremost Ice Emollient Sandwich slates.

Ad Impressions On Kindle Flaming Heating Up

Amazon’s announcement lastly hebdomad that it was selling the Kindle Flaming at a rate of 1 million units a hebdomad forced widespread publicity. Simply how does the Amazon tablet form up equally an advertising platform? According to new data from Millennial Media, ad impressions generated by the Kindle Fire get increased at an ordinary daily rate of 19% across apps and the mobile Web.

“We’re not just considering millions of impressions, we’re regarding a monthly fed rate of hundreds of millions of impressions,” the mobile ad network said in its monthly Mobile Fuse report. The analyze covered exclusively the first two weeks of the Kindle Fire’s release in mid-November. It besides renowned the early growth rate of Kindle Flaming impressions so far slimly outpaced that of the iPad when it was launched in early 2010.

That’s partly because the Amazon device was released into a more mature tablet market, its $199 price tag, and the compass of digital entertainment offered through the Kindle Fire. Reflecting its dominance of the tablet market, the iPad typically accounts for the lion’s percentage of tablet impressions on Millennial’s network. Still, connected devices equally a all are responsible for solely 16% of totally mobile impressions, granting to the latest report.

Smartphones drive the immense majority (70%) of impressions, with lineament phones contributing 14%. Across both smartphones and connected devices, Android continued to principal the way, generating 50% of impressions, followed by Apple’s iOS, with 30%, and BlackBerry, 17%. Ontogeny uptake of the Android-based Kindle Fire should supporter the Google mobile operating arrangement bolster its strength across all devices.

BT Sues Google Over Android-Related Patents

The case covers a kind of Google services, including Google Maps, Google+, Google Music, and more.

“BT brings this action to recover the but compensation it is owed and to prevent Google from continuing to benefit from BT’s inventions without authorization,” BT enounced in its causa (below), filed Thursday in a Delaware district court.

Google did not straightaway respond to a request for comment.

Patent blogger Florian Mueller broke down the six patents BT is asserting, the first of which covers a production that relies on Wi-Fi or network connectivity, like Google Music and Android Market downloads.

“Google Music maintains data relating to whether a particular music service is available or unavailable to its user based on whether is situated in, and connected to, a WiFi hotspot or a cellular data network,” BT said.

The moment patent covers a system, similar Google Maps, that provides up-to-date information over a mobile connection, including public transferral data, tourist attractions, and traffic information.

The tertiary patent covers services generated via user preferences, which Mueller described as “broad.” On this, BT mentions Google Maps, Google Search, Google Places, Google’s location-based advertising, Google Offers, and Google+.

The quaternary patent deals with an information service that stores customer data and is “essentially, a digital rights management patent,” Mueller wrote. The Android Market, for example, “utilizes user identities in Google’s servers,” and keeps a list of things, similar Android apps, that a user could access.

The fifth patent goes back to mapping, specially one that could modify its results based on transfer systems—Google Maps results for driving, walking, or taking public transportation, for example.

Finally, the lastly patent deals with location-based information, particularly that provided via Google Maps and Google Maps Navigation.

According to Mueller, BT is the 5th large, publicly traded society to file a patent case against Google later Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, and eBay.

Created in Texas: Apple’s A5 iPhone chip

The A5 processor – the nous in the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 – is instantly made in a sprawling 1.6 million square feet mill in Austin owned by Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics, allotting to people familiar with the operation.

One of the few major components to be sourced from within the United States, the A5 processor is constructed by Samsung in a newly built $3.6 billion non-memory chip production business that striven total product in early December.

Nearly completely of the output of the non-memory chip production from the factory – which is the size of about nine football plains – is dedicated to producing Apple chips, one of the people said. Samsung likewise produces NAND flash memory chips in Austin.

Apple refused to comment, expression it does not detail supplier relationships. A Samsung spokeswoman declined to comment on its customers and the specification of the chips made in its Austin plant.

The powerful A5 processor, which uses technology licensed from Britain’s Weapon Holdings, is designed by Apple in California.

The A5 chip debuted in Apple’s iPad 2 in March and instantly77also powers the young iPhone 4S. The 120 square millimeter chip is doubly as quick equally its predecessor, the A4, which is besides made555555 by Samsung, allotting to reports from teardown firms that experience necessitated Apple’s devices apart.

Click here to Observe Away more! iPhone 4 Siri port Created legally Possible by Apple with iOS 5.0.1 update today

Apple’s iOS 5.0.1 update today was the foremost iPhone 4S firmware make that’s both official and has an accessible encryption fundamental for its chief file system, thence meaning that browsing the device’s chief file system with your PC is instantly possible. From a afterwards tweet by iOS hacker @MuscleNerd, it looks that Apple has created a Siri port legally possible with today’s iOS 5.0.1 update by offer subject access to organization files that were previously encrypted.

MuscleNerd, a figurehead in the iOS jailbreaking and hacking community, tweeted today that the iOS 5.0.1 update from today created iOS 5 on the iPhone 4 “(to clarify: blanket subject for inspection from a Mac/PC…not panoptic capable security wise :) May have Siri files and such without piracy)”. Previously, to legally coursed Siri, one would experience to have access to an iPhone 4S unique identifier, and the fundamental would motive to be rotated every 24 hours to avoid being detected. If a big enough routine of these devices start calling on Siri from one 4S identifier, Apple will be able to see the activity and kill the port permanently.

No one actually know why Apple has left such a panoptic opening for hackers to exploit when the notion of a Siri port has been such a hotly discussed item equally of recent. We’ll continue you updated when whether there’re farther updates from Apple near Siri, or ontogeny fron third-party groups and developers.

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