Comcast will cut back some customers' speeds after FCC order
Just one day after the Federal Communications Commission released its official opinion and order regarding the cable provider's throttling practices, Comcast has changed its ways.
Called Fair Share, the service's new protocol will slow down the connection speeds of Comcast's most bandwidth-heavy users for periods of up to 20 minutes. It will be application-agnostic, and will be triggered by the customer's overall use of bandwidth.
Apple hit with class action suit over 'defective' iPhone 3G
Claiming that the iPhone 3G doesn't really perform "twice as fast for half the price," a user in Alabama has filed a class action suit against Apple, charging that the phone is "defective" and that it has failed to live up to its hype.
The disgruntled customer, Jessica Alena Smith, issued the complaint against Apple in the US District Court in southern Alabama on behalf of herself "and all others similarly situated," a number estimated in the court filing at "thousands and perhaps tens of thousands" of other people.
Amazon Web services to get persistent storage
The Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon's block-level persistent storage service for its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) has come out of beta, offering more security for databases in the event of instance failures.
For companies relying on cloud-based services, the threat of outages looms large. In July, when Amazon's Simple Storage Service went down for eight hours, dozens of popular sites such as Twitter and SmugMug were disrupted.
Coming to a 'webisode' near you, the US Postal Service
High definition "webisodes," RSS feeds, podcasts, and iTunes downloads will be integral elements of a new image-making campaign for the 256-year-old US Postal Service.
The new, multiple award-winning "Mark of the Eagle" campaign hardly represents the first time the US government agency has stepped to new technologies over the past two-and-a-half centuries. But instead of automating processes such as sorting and processing mail, the USPS' latest move is geared to drawing more business among new generations who have a lot more communications options open to them than just popping a letter into a physical mailbox.
IBM spends $300 million on data centers with 'virtual workplaces'
Today, IBM announced a $300 million investment around building upon its 154 existing data centers in 2008, with the addition of 13 new "Business Resilience" service delivery centers in ten countries, including the US.
The new data centers will be located in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area in the US and in emerging markets elsewhere in the world, said Brian Reagan, IBM's director of business continuity and resiliency strategy, in an interview with BetaNews.
Microsoft trademark apps hint at 'private' browsing in IE
Bloggers have uncovered paperwork for two possible applications from Microsoft having to do with keeping the details of a user's browsing session private.
Critics of what could become a critical feature for Internet Explorer 8 have derided the idea of a built-in privacy feature for erasing histories and other trace elements, as nothing more than a "porn mode," allowing for surfers to cover their tracks if they are viewing questionable content. However, Mozilla -- which was set to include the feature in Firefox 3, but later pulled it -- argued for its legitimate uses.
Jobs: Fix for crashing iPhone apps bug en route
Apple is apparently set to release a fix for an issue which is locking some iPhone users out of their installed third-party applications.
Users have been complaining about the issues in Apple support forums since earlier this month. With the first post coming before the 2.0.1 update, its not unreasonable to believe some have been experiencing this problem nearly from the start.
Sirius XM disputes negative interpretation of its CEO's comments
Following a BetaNews article indicating that Sirius XM CEO Mel Karmazin suggested the company's finances were in bad shape, the company shot back that it was not the case.
A spokesperson for the satellite radio provider contacted BetaNews late Tuesday refuting the original article's premise that Karmazin had admitted that Sirius XM's finances were not healthy.
TiVo: Viewers don't skip movie promos
In its latest Stop||Watch commercial rankings, TiVo found that, while viewers fast-forward through most paid advertisements, movie trailers are among the least skipped.
Stop||Watch has been measuring this trend for months. In May, the top three most-watched commercials were promoting movies. Now, the results for June show the top four commercials in total viewing were for movies.
EBay drops listing cost of Buy It Now auctions
To remain competitive as user activity levels off, eBay has announced that Buy it Now sales will incur a reduced flat fee for an extended listing period.
Online auction service eBay charges its sellers twice for each transaction: once for listing the item (called the insertion fee) and once after the item has been sold (or the final value fee). Effective September 16, sellers will be able to insert 30-day Buy it Now auctions for 35¢, a 70% reduction in listing cost, according to eBay.
Sony to add 160 GB option for PS3, new high-color screen for PSP
In a series of announcements this afternoon, Sony says its preparing to distribute a wide array of new gaming system features well for the holiday season, including a new hard disk capacity for its upper-tier PlayStation 3.
As of last February, Sony was bundling its $499, upper-tier PlayStation 3 as an 80 GB console with Metal Gear Solid 4 and a DualShock 3 controller. Then last month, the new CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America announced an 80 GB Core package for $399 in lieu of an actual price cut.
AOL updates AIM Express, Windows Mobile Messenger
Download AIM Express 7.0 from FileForum now.
Two new AIM updates geared toward keeping the mobile user connected, were launched by AOL this morning: AIM Express (IE6 & 7, Firefox 2 & 3, and Safari 2 & 3) and AIM for Windows Mobile (5 & 6).
Third time's the charm: Palm finally announces Treo Pro
After leaking and then retracting information about its new phone twice in four days, Palm released a written announcement for the Treo Pro this morning which has remained on its Web site for several hours now.
As anticipated from all the hype circulating over the past week, Palm's latest phone differs from the consumer-oriented Centro by targeting the enterprise. Capabilities intended to support that objective range from a Windows Mobile 6.1 operating environment to high-speed UMTS/HSPDA network functionality.
American Airlines launches in-flight Wi-Fi on busy routes
Three of American Airlines' routes out of New York will get in-flight Wi-Fi: Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco. The service will be available on all Boeing 767-200 planes in the fleet.
Starting Wednesday, AA's new Gogo service will be available to customers, and will be run by aviation telecommunications company Aircell. Passengers will pay $12.95 for access during flights longer than three hours.
Yahoo's search share plunges in July; MSN, AOL follow
In what could be dire news for the world's #2 search provider, as Nielsen Online reports, Yahoo in July lost a full 11% of the US-based search traffic it had the previous year, down to only 17.4% of the nation's searches, or about 1.4 billion.
If you're thinking all the rhetoric against Yahoo since Microsoft's public takeover bid in February may be the cause, the problem is that Microsoft isn't the beneficiary. The number three US search provider on Nielsen's list this morning lost 10% from July 2007 to July 2008, down to under 1 billion searches. Google literally grabbed all of that traffic, with share of US searches rising 16% for the period to 4.8 billion, eclipsing the 60% mark. At about this time last year, Google was just rising past 55%.
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