AOL acquires TechCrunch sites: It's all about advertising
AOL announced Tuesday that it will be acquiring popular blog TechCrunch and all of its subsidiary sites, which includes MobileCruch, CrunchGear, TechCrunchIT, GreenTech, TechCrunchTV, and Crunchbase. The sites will be incorporated into AOL's Technology Network of publications.
AOL's Technology Network already includes the blogs Engadget, Switched, The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW,) and DownloadSquad. The inclusion of TechCrunch and its related sites will make AOL the owner of two of the most popular tech blogs according to news aggregator Techmeme.
Sony Ericsson LiveView: Part Android Watch, Part Android 'Nano'
Sony Ericsson today announced a unique new accessory for Android, a Bluetooth-connected 1.3" screen called LiveView which can be used to control and interact with applications on your phone remotely.
Similar to the new iPod Nano, LiveView is a small square screen with a clip on the back. Unlike the Nano, however, the tiny 1.3" OLED display is not touch-enabled. Instead, the border of the screen acts as the touch pane, and the chassis has action buttons on it. It is not a standalone device, and must be paired with an Android 2.0+ smartphone (not necessarily just with the X10 series.) Once paired, it can then access dozens of applications.
RIM unveils PlayBook, the long-awaited BlackBerry tablet
At Research in Motion's BlackBerry Developer Conference Devcon 2010, CEO Mike Lazardis unveiled the rumored BlackBerry tablet, which is going by the name PlayBook.
PlayBook has a 7-inch screen, 1GHz dual-core Cortex A9 processor, 1GB of RAM, Front (3 MP) and rear (5 MP) cameras, HMTL5 and Flash 10.1 with hardware acceleration, BES and BBM support, e-reader software, 1080p HD video; H.264, MPEG4, WMV with HDMI video output, as well as a totally revamped browser.
Windows Live Spaces shutting down, WordPress.com takes on users
Microsoft's blogging platform Windows Live Spaces is being decommissioned, and the users are being absorbed by WordPress.com, Microsoft and Automattic Inc. announced on Monday.
Beginning today, Windows Live Spaces users have the option to automatically migrate their entire blog over to WordPress.com when they sign up to create a new WordPress blog, otherwise their content will be removed from Windows Live Spaces when it shuts down in six months.
Android Market paid apps coming to more countries
Android Market, the app store built into most Android-powered mobile devices, is opening up its for-pay section in more countries, mobile analytics startup Distimo said today.
Currently, for pay applications in the Android Market are only available in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, UK, and US. Google recently alerted developers that support for more countries would be rolling out over the next few weeks, and according to Distimo, this has already begun to include Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Finland, Hong Kong, Israel, Mexico, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Singapore and South Africa; doubling the current total.
The bright spot in Microsoft's mobile OS disaster is...
...There's no place to go but up. But up doesn't have to be an arduous climb.
That's the attitude Microsoft product managers and marketers should adopt when launching Windows Phone 7. Microsoft has been humbled by upstarts Apple and Google; from that admission comes a fresh start. Windows Mobile has already lost the major battles of the mobile phone wars. Windows Phone cannot win if Microsoft plays by the rules set by its adversaries. The company must instead engage guerilla tactics, starting by leveraging off core strengths -- and Xbox gaming and mobile Office simply aren't enough. This kind of thinking might yet pull Microsoft out of the mobile OS gutter.
Sharp unveils Galapagos e-readers to support Japanese XMDF e-book, e-Manga format
Consumer electronics company Sharp on Monday announced its plans to launch an E-reader business in Japan under the name Galapagos which will include two Android-based E-book readers and a cloud-based bookstore with about 30,000 pieces of content.
The two Galapagos devices Sharp unveiled today are the 5.5 inch "mobile" model and the 10.8 inch "home" model, and they both come equipped with 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi. Outwardly, the devices are similar to a number of Android-based tablets that straddle the line between mobile tablet and e-reader, but internally, Sharp's products offer a major differentiator: support for the next generation XMDF e-book format.
Zuckerberg's new org treats school districts as startups, invests $100M in Newark, NJ
Mark Zuckerberg, 26 year old Facebook CEO and 35th richest man in the United States today announced his new Startup: Education foundation, which focuses on rebuilding failing education systems one city at a time; treating them as if they were startup companies.
"School districts need more autonomy and clearer leadership so they can be managed more like startups than like government bureaucracies," Zuckerberg said today. "Many people are working on solving a single part of the problem broadly across the whole country. But recently, a few leaders are getting significant results by taking more of a startup approach and moving fast to do all these things at the same time in just one city. If they can prove that it's possible to turn around some of the most difficult urban districts in the country, then that will generate enough momentum to take the same approach and improve education everywhere."
Bye Bye Blockbuster
That Blockbuster filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection isn't surprising. Holding out for so long is the real shocker. I expected today's filing at the beginning of 2009. This outcome was inevitable and may yet foreshadow future bankruptcy filings from other dinosaurs of the retail analog age, such as Borders Books.
But Blockbuster can't just blame digital delivery for its demise. Based on my own experience -- and surely that of others -- the movie rental retailer failed to adapt its business and technology practices to the Internet era. Blockbuster will need to do more than restructure its debt to survive Chapter 11. Executives will have to fundamentally restructure the business and most importantly the customer experience. Other armchair analyses surely will highlight the external problems, such as competition from digital content delivery and high-cost of maintaining retail stores. I'll focus on customer experience and expectations in the instant, connected era.
Facebook Goes Down
While outages have become an expected part of the Twitter experience, social network Facebook has a pretty good reputation for staying available. Beginning on Wednesday evening, and carrying over into Thursday, the site experienced rare outages that affected not only the main Facebook.com site, but also the elements of Facebook that are shared among other sites, such as the ubiquitous "Like" button.
In addition to API latency issues mentioned on the Facebook Platform site, a statement from Facebook on Thursday said:
FCC lays new rules for devices working in the 'white spaces' between TV stations
As expected, today's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) meeting introduced new rules about "white space" adoption that allows unlicensed wireless devices to operate in the spectrum between broadcast TV stations.
The legislation to free up these bits of spectrum for unlicensed usage has been in debate for more than three years, and the Second Memorandum Opinion and Order adopted today by the FCC addresses some technical and legal issues in their implementation.
Windows Phone 7 now offers Visual Basic developer tools
In the Windows Team blog today, Brandon Watson announced that the "biggest request from the WP7 developer community" has been answered: the latest community preview of Windows Phone Developer Tools now includes support for Visual Basic.
Unfortunately, there is no word when this will be fully supported, and currently it stands as more of a proof of concept that it is a viable mobile development language. This is because there are a number of limitations involved: there is no "Go Live" license, so any apps that are put together in VB will not be able to be uploaded to the Windows Phone Marketplace; and developers can only make Silverlight apps and not XNA games.
Microsoft Office Web Apps launches embeddable PPT and XL documents, new features, availability
Microsoft's suite of free, browser-based productivity tools called Office Web Apps received a handful of feature upgrades today, which don't act as substitutes for desktop Office functionality, but instead bring Office documents out onto the Web.
As of right now, Office Web Apps users can embed Powerpoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets in blogs and websites via the PowerPoint and Excel mini Web apps. Below, I've embedded Microsoft's example Powerpoint slideshow, which shows the relatively simple process of uploading a .PPT file to SkyDrive, setting permissions, and embedding it. Clicking on the "full screen" icon in the lower right hand corner opens the full version of the PowerPoint Web app, and with appropriate permissions, users can edit the presentation and automatically update it while it's on the Web.
Dell unveils Inspiron One 23, Zino HD, and Dell Stage
Dell rolled out two new PCs on Thursday- the Inspiron One 23 all-in-one, plus a refreshed Inspiron Zino HD home entertainment PC -- along with a new touch interface called Dell Stage which is expected to appear on devices ranging from PCs to smartphones.
Priced starting at $299, the revamped Zino HD is designed to increase multimedia home theater support by adding better processing, memory, and more I/0 ports on the back, including a new SPDIF port and two eSATA ports.
Roku goes all out against AppleTV with new set top boxes
Roku Wednesday introduced its new line of streaming set top boxes, which promise better performance, smaller physical footprint, and lower prices than the previous versions of the popular net TV appliance.
The new lineup includes: Roku HD for $59.99, Roku XD for $79.99, and the Roku XDS for $99.99.
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