CES Countdown #12: Has streaming media already rendered discs obsolete?
This just in, the format war is over. The 18-month honeymoon analysts had given Blu-ray has prematurely ended, and while sales have risen from nothing to something barely eclipsing okay, its successor may already be over the horizon.
In paleontology, there is a concept known as the Alvarez Hypothesis. This hypothesis originally suggested that a giant asteroid impacting the Earth's surface triggered the subsequent extinction of the dinosaurs.
What's the Dell 'Adamo?' Inadvertent catalog entries give clues
Gee, what do you suppose Dell's super-secret new Adamo brand, due to premiere at the next CES, could be? We could ask a slew of analysts for their best advance speculation...Or we could just Google it.
About one hundred percent of the media speculation today over the identity of a curious new Dell brand device called Adamo centered around the possibility that it is an ultralight computer, probably an offshoot of its existing XPS series, designed to compete with Apple's super-thin MacBook Air.
Android 'Cupcake' roadmap promises much
Pending updates to the Android mobile operating system were made public this week as a part of the Google's "Cupcake" roadmap, revealing new functionality that will endow future Android devices with abilities beyond those in the G1 now.
According to the roadmap, development taking place privately will soon be made available to the public source code via a single large development branch update. It will be followed by a series of smaller, incremental updates as time passes. Among the numerous bug fixes listed on the roadmap are some serious functionality upgrades that promise to add some highly desirable features previously absent from Android 1.0.
Snip, snip, snip: Three undersea cables cut
Internet and voice traffic to much of the Middle East and south Asia has been disrupted by the overnight loss of three major cables spanning the Mediterranean.
According to a notice from France Telecom, the three provisioning cables linking Sicily to Egypt were lost within about 40 minutes of one another Friday morning (local time). A France Telecom-owned maintenance ship will be dispatched to inspect the site within a few hours. Until then, it's not known what might have caused the cuts.
Positivo: Lenovo buyout bid 'not in our best interest'
Brazilian PC maker Positivo has confirmed in a regulatory filing that it has rejected a buyout offer from Lenovo, estimated in the Brazilian press as worth up to $800 million.
In a regulatory filing now posted on its Web site, Positivo Informatica has corroborated an earlier statement by Lenovo that the Brazilian PC manufacturer turned back an acquisition bid earlier this week.
Invitation to final beta test of Ad-Aware 2009 edition
The makers of one of the Internet's first and most respected anti-adware products are on schedule to release their 2009 edition next month, though they need some help from registered testers to make it happen.
A Lavasoft representative asked BetaNews today to spread the word about Beta 3 of its 2009 edition of Ad-Aware, which was released last December 8 along with the company's latest adware signatures.
YouTube offers videos in HD
Google's popular video site YouTube yesterday unveiled a dedicated HD section for US users to watch videos in 720p high definition.
When a video's source upload supports higher resolution, YouTube will have a "watch it in HD" button below the player's lower right hand corner in the space where some videos had the "watch it in high quality" button. Clicking this button expands the standard viewing window to 16 x 9 with a 1280 x 720 resolution.
Oracle earns, though flat year-to-year
Second quarter 2009 looked much like second quarter 2008 for Oracle's per-share earnings, announced Thursday in its quarterly call. It would have been better if the dollar hadn't muscled up.
GAAP earnings for the Redwood Shores, Calif-based IT giant were 25 cents / per in the just-released Q2 earnings report (PDF available here), in line with last year's numbers. Had the dollar not strengthened during the quarter that ended November 30, the return would be been 29 cents / share. Overall, the company held the line, but the flat earnings are the first profitability decline for the firm in 12 quarters.
RIAA to discontinue litigation strategy, coordinate more with ISPs
Rather than pursue suspected file-sharers in court, the recording industry will take a more technological approach to finding, penalizing, and then potentially suing individuals when it has more evidence against them, BetaNews has learned.
A spokesperson for the Recording Industry Association of America confirmed to BetaNews this morning that, in an agreement with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the Association's members will discontinue their strategy of seeking widespread litigation against large numbers of individuals suspected in trafficking in unauthorized recordings. Instead, they will adopt a strategy of coordinating with Internet service providers to notify individual customers of suspected violations via e-mail.
OpenSUSE 11.1 Linux OS leaves beta
Download OpenSUSE 11.1 Release Edition from FileForum now.
The newest edition of the Novell-sponsored OpenSUSE Project's Linux OS, contains a number of new enhancements built both internally and through the open source community.
RIM reports a season of good cheer
Research in Motion's Q3 2009 report confirmed that the company met its revised projection from earlier in the month, and indicated that perhaps things aren't so bad in the "land-grab" wireless-handset market.
Last December 2, Palm predicted it would see revenues of $2.75 billion to $2.78 billion; the final number was $2.78 billion, a year-to-year increase of 66 percent (from $1.67 billion). The company's stock returned 69 cents / share, up four cents over the same period last year.
Palm CEO: Linux smartphone to ship in H1 2009
Palm plans to ship a consumer-oriented smartphone -- based on its upcoming Nova OS -- in the first half of next year, while continuing to focus its Windows Mobile-based Treo on the enterprise, Palm's CEO said today.
In a conference call with financial analysts late Thursday, Palm officials gave virtual confirmation to reports that the product announcements Palm is planning for CES next month will revolve around Palm's Linux-based Nova OS.
Congressmen accuse FCC of violating law in delaying AWS-3 vote
Chairman Kevin Martin can't win for losing. Taking the President's and a powerful senator's advice yesterday in delaying a critical vote on nationwide free broadband...again, two more congressmen are sounding legal alarms.
After the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission took the advice of both President Bush and powerful senators this week, delaying a vote on the auctioning of the so-called AWS-3 block of spectrum until sometime after the DTV transition next February, a pair of congressmen sent a joint letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin advising him that he may have broken the law in so doing.
A big week for the iPhone-as-game-console
Last week, Apple evangelist John Geleynse reportedly called the iPhone a gaming console in various capacities. With a deluge of top-tier licenses coming to the iPhone this week, we have begun to see what Geleynse was presaging.
Apparently Geleynse's comments at last week's Apple Developer Conference in San Jose weren't so much predictions as fanfare preceding a veritable onslaught of iPhone games.
Sony folds its social network into music software
Sony's ACID Music Studio is a loop-based music creation tool favored by electronic and hip-hop artists. Now in its tenth year, Sony announced its social network for Acid artists will be more tightly integrated with Acid Xpress 7.
AcidPlanet is a social network for musicians with a popularity-based ranking system similar to PureVolume or Reverb Nation. Users can upload their original music to connect with fans and other musicians, or to compete popularity contests such as "The Duel." There is also an associated Web radio station that plays the best artists from the site.
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