Latest Technology News

Early this afternoon, I was surprised to see that Machead John Gruber had posted "Clam Chowder: Joe Wilcox on Verizon and Apple." He referred to my Jan. 8, 2011 post: "Why Verizon won't let Apple announce iPhone." The headline played off the title to a TechCrunch post I rebutted: "Why Apple Will Let Verizon Announce An iPhone." I disagreed with reasons that put Apple solely in control of the Verizon iPhone announcement, which was then just rumored.

I normally wouldn't bother responding to Gruber's typical slash-and-attack pulpit (Hey, it's free speech and his right). But Gruber quoted a comment posted here at Betanews, and that warrants response because it misquotes or takes out of context my January 8th post. In fact, I wrote a response in comments, but before posting I realized just how long it was and decided to do a separate, full-post response instead. Hence, what follows is my response to commenter iphonedroidberry, whose identity I don't know. But the commenter's first Betanews login was two days ago. You can read iphonedroidberry's full comment following my response. I will address additional issues after the quoted comment.

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Based upon some of the trends we saw at the 2011 consumer electronics show, here are three technology "marriages" that look to be coming into consumer tech in a big way.

Tablets with E-books with College Students

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Just a day after former social networking behemoth MySpace announced massive cuts to its workforce, parent company News Corp has now confirmed that it is investigating its options to divest itself of the now struggling service.

The comments came as part of a wider company-wide meeting Thursday held by CEO Mike Jones, and were confirmed by a company spokesperson in an interview with Bloomberg. Among the options being considered is a merger, spin-off, or outright sale of the unit.

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Select Apple, HP and Dell laptop or tablet owners who purchased their computers between November 2005 and February 2010 were alerted Thursday that they may begin to file claims to replace faulty graphics processing units produced by chipmaker Nvidia. Final approval of the settlement was reached on December 20, court documents show.

The faulty chips caused video issues with these computers, manifesting themselves in blank screen or scrambled displays. Nvidia was sued, and the suit successfully was granted class action status. As is customary with such settlements, Nvidia is not admitting wrongdoing by agreeing to its terms.

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Surely today marks the end of Western civilization. The YouTube generation that spawned the Justin Bieber sensation has another place for the much-loathed (by adults - come on, you know you do) teen singer. Bieber now has a URL shortener, which does more than just shorten the URL. Bieber.ly also plasters a photo of the teen on whatever website it takes you to -- and every page you navigate to.

Normally I wouldn't post something like this, but surely somebody would want to comment about this marvel of brand marketing and ickiness. So I'm eager for some reader reaction to this one. Fire up your comments, folks.

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Today, semiconductor manufacturers IBM and Samsung announced they will begin research and development on a new process technology that will be utilized in "a broad range of applications," in the general area of mobile telecommunications.

IBM, Samsung, and Global Foundries are partnered in what is known as the Common Platform technology alliance, where each company provides resources and expertise for the development of new bulk CMOS process technologies. IBM and Samsung have already established a joint development agreement to nodes starting at 20nm and beyond.

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Thursday, Microsoft released its new free Web development software WebMatrix, a tool that lets users create, build and deploy websites based upon the web technologies and content management systems of their choosing. The goal of the software is to be an extremely simple, lightweight development environment that eliminates the need for switching back and forth between other applications while developing websites.

Sites can be built from templates or from scratch, and more than 40 open source web applications are supported, like the popular WordPress, Joomla, DotNetNuke, and more, and files can then be edited in HTML, CSS, ASP.NET or PHP. Naturally, Microsoft put some special shine on ASP.NET in WebMatrix and included support for the "Razor" view engine and special single-line-of-code helper functions to integrate with external social and commercial services.

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In his 11th year as chief executive and third outside the shadow of Chairman Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer is asserting surprising control over Microsoft. There were signs in 2010, but events over just the last week, particularly the public execution of Bob Muglia, show a different side of Microsoft's CEO. Competitors, you've been warned.

Over the last week, Ballmer did two things that spotlight this change in his leadership style, something already seen in other executive ousters (including Robbie Bach and Ray Ozzie in 2010). The first: Ballmer rightly resisted making tablets a major part of his Consumer Electronics Show keynote last week. The second: Muglia's demotion, and in real substance firing, as Server and Tools Business president.

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Gartner and IDC both released fourth-quarter PC shipments this afternoon (PC here refers to Windows computers and Macs). While they didn't agree on the actual numbers or year-over-year growth, both analyst firms cited iPad and other media tablets (What? There are others?) as displacing PC sales. Well, hell, no wonder every Tom, Dick, Harry and Jane with a manufacturing plant, or the funds to outsource one, showed off a tablet during last week's Consumer Electronics Show.

A Betanews analysis finds that not only did iPad cannibalize computers sales but with greater impact on Apple than major Windows PC vendors.

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Just two months ago, Hulu launched its premium subscription service Hulu Plus which brings streaming TV content from its popular website to mobile devices and connected TVs and set-top boxes.

Now that a special for-pay version of Hulu exists for all these devices, the services that brought Hulu's free Web content to these same devices could be squeezed out of the "placeshifting" margin where they existed before.

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Sony has filed suit against George Hotz -- more commonly known for his work in jailbreaking iPhones -- and a hacker group called "failoverfl0w," accusing both of copyright infringement and other related charges over their work to circumvent Sony's PlayStation 3 copyright protection.

The Japanese game maker is partially at fault here, having failed to use properly secure cryptography in order to ensure that pirated software can not run on the console. Hackers discovered the private key, and now can allow copied versions of games to run on the console without any issues.

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Worldwide IT spending will rise by 5.1 percent this year to $3.6 tillion, according to Gartner. The new forecast increases year-over-year growth from 3.5 percent. The analyst firm released the data last week; some news is better kept on hold until supernovas like the Consumer Electronics Show or the Verizon iPhone pass by.

Richard Gordon, a Gartner research vice president, expressed cautious optimism.  The forecast "is far from certain, given continued macroeconomic uncertainty," he said in a statement. "Favorable US dollar exchange rates" is one factor precipitating IT spending.

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The rabble worshipping Apple's so-called Jesus phone are in for a surprise. The expected mass-exodus from AT&T to Verizon may be more myth than reality. Yesterday I asked Betanews readers "Would you buy Verizon iPhone?" and embedded a poll in that story and two others. At least among the tech-savvy people who read Betanews, the informal survey suggests that most will not switch from iPhone 4 on AT&T to iPhone 4 on Verizon. Nor are they likely to abandon Android phones. Prominent blogger or journalist posts, particularly the prognosticators of Android's doom, give a different impression. It's reality check time, baby.

Betanews readers give many reasons for sticking with what they've got, and for many it's not iPhone. Reasons range from satisfaction with their existing (usually Android) handset to concerns iPhone 4 is already outdated to there being no LTE support.

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Microsoft is challenging Apple's 2008 trademark application for "app store," reports said on Wednesday. The term, Microsoft contests, should be non-trademarkable, because, in short, an App Store is a generic term for a store that sells apps, not a proper name.

"The undisputed facts further show that the combined term 'app store' is commonly used in the trade, by the general press, by consumers, by Apple's competitors, and even by Apple's founder and CEO Steve Jobs as a generic name for online stores featuring apps," Microsoft's complaint with the Trademark Trial and Appeal board says. "A search of Westlaw's US ALL NEWS database found over 1,000 current articles using 'app store' as the generic name for stores featuring apps."

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At the end of December, I looked at some of the book scanning options for small collections looking to archive their unique printed matter and make it accessible on digital platforms. Now, thanks to the availability of low-cost cameras and optical character recognition software, that sort of scanning is about to break into the mainstream.

iON, maker of every type of entry-level analog-to-digital conversion appliance, announced it will begin selling its own paper-to-eBook scanning solution this year called the Book Saver.

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