New track-and-snap anti-theft software roams freely...and privately
Download Adeona for Windows 0.2.1a Beta from FileForum now.
A software project from U. of Washington and U. C.-San Diego researchers will make its way to ToorCon next week, and if your laptop should happen to go to that conference without you, you could use this software to see that it makes it there.
As CES approaches, vendors give glimpses of 2009 gadgets
While it isn't even October yet, the CES 2009 time bracket is fast approaching, with new gadgets on including the latest rechargeable "e-bicycle," and a family of Wi-Fi-, Web-, RSS-, and photo-enabled "wireless Internet frames."
NEW YORK, NY (BetaNews) - Although vendors at a ShowStoppers press event this week focused mainly on demoing electronically oriented gifts for the 2008 holiday season, a few also gave sneak peeks of new products targeted for release at the start of next year.
The Palm plague hits RIM: Greater sales, lower margins
The problem that Palm has been perennially facing is that it now has a very popular phone, the Centro, whose price point is so low that the company can't sustain its margins. Yesterday, we learned that RIM is no longer immune.
Until recently, analysts have been divided on the impact the ongoing financial services upheaval will have on Research in Motion and its BlackBerry line of smartphones. Yesterday, RIM announced it doesn't think the future looks quite as wonderful as it once did, and lowered its outlook for the next quarter. Stock value subsequently plummeted.
Microsoft wins appeals ruling in Alcatel-Lucent MP3 case
Microsoft on Thursday was released from a payout to Alcatel-Lucent that at one time was as high as $1.5 billion, when a federal appeals court tossed the original jury's verdict in a long-running patent case.
The original case concerned Windows Media Player and Microsoft's MP3 license for that software. Microsoft licensed its MP3 codecs for $16 million from Fraunhofer Labs, the German research institute that, with Bell Labs and French electronics giant Thomson, invented the MP3 audio-compression standard.
T-Mobile to drop 1G data cap for G1, while throttling heavy users
1:55 pm EST September 26, 2008 - T-Mobile told BetaNews today it has now removed a 1 GB monthly data cap on the Android-based G1 from its policy statement, confirming our earlier report that the wireless carrier is dropping plans to impose a cap. A T-Mobile spokesperson also said that revamped 3G data plans will be "shared broadly with all customers" as soon as those plans are finalized.
The full text of the T-Mobile spokesperson's statement to BetaNews this morning follows:
Microsoft's effort to document protocols for DOJ hits a snag
The challenge continues for Microsoft to produce documentation about Windows' communications protocols that others outside the company can understand. Two weeks ago, the Justice Dept.'s team started making its own suggestions.
According to the US Dept. of Justice's regular Joint Status Report on the ongoing effort by Microsoft to meet the commitments of its settlement with the government, the Technical Committee (TC) overseeing the project for documenting communications protocols has not been entirely pleased with the quality of Microsoft's work thus far. It's not that Microsoft hasn't produced papers -- it has, and perhaps now that the count has reached the five-digit mark, parties may have stopped counting. It's that the work has been hard to understand, and now the TC is trying to help Microsoft by suggesting a new set of documentation templates based on what it considers to be approved industry standards.
Force 2.2 Mbps streams on your Roku Player
Just how capable is your Netflix STB? An enterprising customer discovered there's an unpublished way to make the box stream much faster than any ordinary user can select.
A feature turned on by default in Roku's Netflix set-top box is intelligent streaming, where the bitrate is chosen according to the user's connection speed, thereby assuring the smoothest stream as possible. A user on Roku Forums posted a heretofore undocumented way to override the automatic selection and always stream at a chosen bitrate.
Copyright concerns take a voyage of Discovery
A new service from iCopyright allows publishers and content creators to find out who's reusing some or all of their words and pictures. But don't just think of it as a tool to beat up on "little guys" online, says the owner of the company.
In fact, CEO Mike O'Donnell says that searching out plagiarists and other abusers of copyright is "a distant third" on the list of things his firm's new Discovery service can do.
UnitedLayer COO: Giving access to InterCage is an issue of ethics
Richard Donaldson, COO of co-location provider UnitedLayer, knows that his new client InterCage is unpopular. It's just that he's not sure that hosting botnets, malware, and spam services deserves a lifetime of incarceration.
Because that is, Donaldson says, effectively what it means to cut off InterCage (a.k.a., Atriva) from the net community in this day and age.
Google co-founder blames politics for 'white space' device failures
Following Tuesday's rollout of T-Mobile's Android-based G1 phone, Larry Page went to Washington on Wednesday, urging the FCC to hurry up with its decision about opening up "white spaces" of the spectrum for free use by Google and others.
The day after helping to launch the first Android phone on T-Mobile's commercial wireless network, Google co-founder Larry Page landed on Wednesday in Washington, DC, where he lobbied the FCC to provide the "white spaces" wireless spectrum free of charge to companies like Google -- along with end users -- for future wireless devices.
High-def Slingbox enters the market
News from Sling Media hasn't been this big in quite a while. The Slingbox Pro-HD is now available -- the company's first device that enables streaming of high-definition content.
Though the device is half a year late, the new Slingbox Pro-HD is fortunately over a hundred dollars cheaper than originally anticipated. Priced at $299.99, the Slingbox Pro-HD can be purchased directly from Sling, or at select stores throughout the country.
Blu-ray market share creeps up - or down - to 8 percent
Back in April, Sony President Ryoji Chubachi projected that its Blu-ray Disc format would garner 50 percent of DVD market share by the end of 2008. At this rate, according to new data, we could get there in about nine years.
For the US home video market, new figures from Nielsen VideoScan show that Blu-ray ended last week with a scant 8 percent share -- only two percentage points over the 6 percent recorded for the last week of April, and a 13.4% decline over the previous week.
Mobile browser Skyfire begins its public beta phase
The latest Skyfire beta offers a full Web browsing experience to WM5, WM6, and Symbian S60 devices, enabling the consumption of media that's usually off limits to users of the "mobile Web." At least that's what it offers.
Of the three "screens" that the marketers of converged devices say are critical to the consumers' lifestyles -- television, computer, and handset -- it's the third that has been the most neglected in terms of the availability of media. Sure, improved storage has allowed greater volumes of audio and video content to be stored and played back on mobile phones. But with streaming media now a prime focus for content providers, our lowest-power and often most slowly connected screen could often use a little push.
DOJ unwilling to prosecute in private IP theft cases
Is the Justice Dept. unconcerned with everyday cases intellectual property theft, like the one profiled in the upcoming movie, Flash of Genius? No, it's just that there's not enough resources to go around, says a key DOJ official.
Bipartisan legislation introduced earlier this month before both houses of Congress would enable the President to appoint an "intellectual property czar," responsible for the enforcement of the nation's IP protection laws and answerable to the Executive Branch. But that would entail the creation of a major new wing of the Dept. of Justice whose responsibility would be to prosecute even the smallest cases, including instances that have typically been tried in civil court up to now.
ISPs to Congress: Let us regulate our own privacy practices
Broadband service providers are perfectly capable of setting up appropriate safeguards for users who may be targeted by behavioral ad platforms, said ISPs' executives this morning. It's the content providers we should be worried about.
It was an eerie setting on Capitol Hill this morning, as representatives from three of the nation's largest broadband ISPs -- Verizon, Time Warner, and AT&T (Comcast was conspicuously absent) -- plus the founder of Public Knowledge, noticed the hearing taking place in front of them very nearly suggested the absence of a quorum. Not that the subject of ad targeting methodologies for broadband users wasn't important. But with the Senate Commerce Committee's own chairman absent from this morning's hearing, and with only three senators present at any one time -- the bare minimum -- you definitely got the feeling something bigger was going on next door.
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