Scanning books into e-books gets cheaper, but accessing them remains the problem
Google's efforts with the six-year old Google Books project have yielded 15 million scanned books, a new cross-platform e-bookstore, and a temporary copyright shield that lets Google sell "orphaned" works*; but the task of scanning every book cannot be left solely up to Google and its partners.
Earlier this year, Google estimated that 129,864,880 books were in existence. At Google's current pace of 1,000 pages per hour per scanner in use, it could take over 40 years to scan that many books. What's more, Google is only counting the media it defines as a "book," and not the countless other paper media that makes a library such a valuable resource.
As NFC enters the mass market, so too should NFC security
All the stars are in line, and tech industry experts now expect an explosion in the close-range wireless communications technology known generally as Near Field Communicaitons (NFC.) But is it as secure a method of sharing as it could be? According to one company the answer is yes, but cost has been a prohibitive factor up to now.
This week, market research firm iSuppli predicted that the market for NFC chips will grow by a factor of four over the next three years, and NFC chipmaker NXP Semiconductor recently made a prediction that 50 million NFC-enabled consumer devices will enter the market in 2011 alone.
FCC declares Comcast-NBCU joint venture to be broadly acceptable, issues order
Senior FCC officials Thursday morning said the commission has determined the transaction between Comcast and NBC Universal that will result in a new joint Venture handling the two companies' content to be acceptably within the public's interest, and an order about the transaction will be circulated later today.
This is not outright approval of the deal, which was first announced in late 2009, and has been under intense scrutiny since. With a transaction of this size, there's still a great deal of time before it can be decisively approved by both the FCC and the Department of Justice.
Skype experiences global outage
Popular voice chat and IM client Skype has been down for a large portion of Wednesday morning, leaving users unable to connect to their peers.
At about 1pm EST, Skype's official Twitter account said, "Our engineers and site operations team are working non-stop to get things back to normal -- thanks for your continued patience."
Don't act so surprised, Microsoft has supported ARM for ages
A report by Bloomberg on Tuesday evening said Microsoft is working "for the first time" on a version of Windows that is not based on the x86 instruction set, but instead on the ARM instruction set popular in mobile devices.
The report, which was followed by another similarly-sourced article in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, both say the operating system will be targeted at the consumer mobility market, with tablets specifically in mind, and that it won't come to market until 2013.
Mozilla releases Firefox 4 beta 8
Mozilla pushed out the eighth beta release of Firefox 4 on Tuesday, promising a significant number of bug fixes and some performance tweaks, but no new features.
The main changes Mozilla cites in the Firefox 4 Beta 8 release notes are an improved Firefox Sync setup experience; an overall speed, compatibility and functionality improvement to WebGL, and some "additional polish" to the Firefox Add-ons Manager.
For better or worse, here are the FCC's new Net Neutrality rules
Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission voted upon --and passed by a 3-2 margin-- the Open Internet Order, the revised net neutrality rules which seek to establish more formal codes of conduct for broadband network operators.
The order has caused a great deal of sturm and drang among consumer advocacy groups, who feared that there would be a shift in power for internet service providers based upon loopholes it opens. The order has raised a great deal of concern from both sides of the political spectrum: from those who believe the FCC oversteps its boundaries by trying to create rules for the Web, and from those who believe the FCC isn't going far enough to prevent future problems.
Open Internet Order for Net Neutrality likely to pass at FCC hearing tomorrow
The net neutrality regulations known as the Open Internet Order are coming up for vote before the Federal Communications Commission tomorrow, and it is now believed the order will pass, based upon statements from FCC commissioner Michael Copps on Monday.
Copps was formerly the "swing vote" for the Open Internet Order, Commissioners Baker and McDowell are expected to vote against the order, while commissioners Clyburn and Genachowski are expected to vote in favor of it. Until recently, Copps was in favor of reclassifying the Internet as a Title II telecommunications service, but that position was denigrated not only by Chairman Genachowski, but also by former Commissioner Michael Powell who is considered the "founding father" of the regulation.
Motorola to show off mystery tablet at CES 2011
Motorola will be showing off its mystery tablet product at CES 2011, according to a teaser video released by the company on Sunday.
It is the first really enticing move from Motorola since co-CEO Sanjay Jha announced the company's intention to make a tablet back in September.
To grow 4G coverage, AT&T spends $1.9B on FLO TV's wireless licenses
Qualcomm on Monday announced that it will be selling its valuable Lower 700 MHz D and E Block wireless spectrum licenses to national service operator AT&T for $1.925 billion. The precious wireless licenses were being utilized in Qualcomm's mobile television service FLO TV which will be shutting down in March 2011.
Less than one year after FLO TV launched as a standalone service with its own HTC-made "Personal Televisions", Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs told investors that the company was looking to sell off the service, but provided little in the way of detail as to whether it would be sold off as a package, or piecemeal.
Justin Bieber's World Cup iPad: 2010 in keywords
The end of the calendar year is a time to reflect on our experiences of the last twelve months, and to look ahead to what the next twelve have in store. For many, this means getting together with the family, exchanging gifts and sharing stories of the year's adventures.
For the technology and information industries, it doesn't mean sitting around the fireplace and getting nostalgic over a cup of hot cocoa, though. It means year-end statistics; and for the rest of us, this is far more exciting.
Yahoo to terminate 8 web properties in restructuring effort
Following a reported four percent staff reduction announced this week, search engine and web portal Yahoo! will also be restructuring its large roster of sites by terminating some, merging others, and turning still others into "features."
According to a presentation slide leaked from an internal Yahoo product meeting on Thursday, Altavista, Yahoo Picks, Yahoo Bookmarks, Yahoo Buzz, Delicious, MyBlogLog, Alltheweb, and MyM are all slated to be shut down for good. Additionally, Yahoo says its Traffic APIs will be shut down as well.
Opera 11 final version published
Opera Software Thursday released the completed version of the Opera 11 browser, which has been available in various states of pre-release since October. This version of the browser breaks new ground for Opera, and includes support for extensions and introduces a new tab management system.
If you have been using the beta version of Opera 11, which was last updated on November 23, there isn't going to be a tremendous amount of change that is immediately visible aside from a few changes to the search dropdown, speed dial background, and extension installer UI, but a handful of usability improvements have been made.
Nokia takes Apple patent fight to British, German & Dutch courts
Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia on Thursday announced it had filed claims against Apple in the UK High Court, Dusseldorf and Mannheim District Courts in Germany, and the District Court of the Hague, Netherlands. The three new complaints join those already filed with the US International Trade Commission, and US Federal Courts in Delaware and Wisconsin.
Nokia had already accused Apple of 24 patent violations; 10 counts in its 2009 complaint, and 14 more in its 2010 complaint that responded to Apple's countersuit. The action announced today piles 13 more patents on the case; 4 in the UK, 7 in Dusseldorf, 5 in Mannheim, and two in the Hague.
Free Software turns DisplayLink docking stations into Linux client PCs
DisplayLink, maker of graphics-over-USB solutions, has partnered with Canadian company Userful to turn Displaylink-powered docking stations into Linux-driven CPU-less client PCs.
Userful makes a virtual PC solution for classrooms called Userful Multiseat Linux 2011. With this, a single PC can drive ten independent client machines running Edubuntu. Now that Userful has partnered with DisplayLink, owners of consumer docking stations with DisplayLink's USB Virtual Graphics technology (such as those made by Targus and Asus) can do the same thing for free, except in a more limited fashion.
Tim's Bio
Tim Conneally was born into dumpster tech. His father was an ARPANET research pioneer and equipped his kids with discarded tech gear, second-hand musical instruments, and government issue foreign language instruction tapes. After years of building Frankenstein computers from rubbish and playing raucous music in clubs across the country (and briefly on MTV) Tim grew into an adult with deep, twisted roots and an eye on the future. He most passionately covers mobile technology, user interfaces and applications, the science and policy of the wireless world, and watching different technologies shrink and converge.
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