January 2008 - Posts
Would you if you could?
Tired of reaching into a purse or pocket for your cell phone, only to find it has enough juice for just one call?
Well, scientists may have found something to end that power shortage: body heat.
Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of California at Berkeley say recent findings point to a way of making silicon into a better thermal conductor for turning even small amounts of heat into electricity.
The secret, they say, lies in nanowires, or microscopic strands of silicon. Arranged and bent in a particular way, they channel heat energy far more efficiently than current designs for thermoconductors. With improved efficiency comes better energy conversion, to the point that even the temperatures generated by body heat could produce enough electricity to charge the batteries in small technology.
Ideally, this finding could lead to special clothing and other wearable materials that produce electrical current for batteries in cell phones and handheld computers, or power the devices themselves.
Plugging my cell phone in to my bvd's? Read the story here.
I've been a big fan of Audible and a customer for many years. Amazon must have agreed that it's a great concept listening to books when you aren't able to read them and flip the pages.
Amazon announced that it has swooped to buy Audible in a deal valued at $300m in a cash tender agreement for all of its outstanding shares. Currently Audible offers over 80,000 programmes with audiobooks from the likes of Stephen King, John Grisham (*sigh*) and Jane Austen ("Oh Mr Darcy you're using the wrong spoon *titter, titter*) as well as spoken word audio content from sources including The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Harvard Business Review.
"Audible.com offers the best customer experience, the widest content selection and the broadest device compatibility in the industry," said Steve Kessel, Amazon's senior VP for worldwide digital media. "Working together, we can introduce more innovations and bring this format to an even wider audience."
"This deal brings together two pioneering companies that share a long history of ceaseless focus on improving the customer experience," said Donald Katz, founder and newly minted CEO of Audible. "We are very excited to be joining a company as innovative as Amazon.com."
Motorola to Explore Structural and Strategic Realignment of its Businesses to Enhance Shareholder Value
Company will evaluate alternatives to accelerate the ability of its Mobile Device Business to recapture growth and profitability in an expanding global market
SCHAUMBURG, Ill., – January 31, 2008 – Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced it is exploring the structural and strategic realignment of its businesses to better equip its Mobile Devices business to recapture global market leadership and to enhance shareholder value. The company’s alternatives may include the separation of Mobile Devices from its other businesses in order to permit each business to grow and better serve its customers.
“All of our businesses have exceptional people, products and intellectual property and the ability to achieve category leadership in their markets,” said Greg Brown, President and Chief Executive Officer. “We are exploring ways in which our Mobile Devices Business can accelerate its recovery and retain and attract talent while enabling our shareholders to realize the value of this great franchise.”
The company does not intend to discuss developments with respect to the exploration of strategic alternatives unless or until its Board of Directors has approved a definitive transaction or the process is otherwise complete. There can be no assurance that any transaction will occur or, if one is undertaken, its terms or timing.
Full press release
Well, it looks like the love affair is back on. After ditching the negotiations several months ago, Sprint and Clearwire are once again negotiating on WiMax.
According to Reuters:
Clearwire Corp and Sprint Nextel Corp have made progress on terms for a roaming deal for their high-speed wireless networks based on WiMax technology, Clearwire's Chief Executive said on Wednesday. Clearwire Chief Executive Ben Wolff said the companies were also working on collaborating in other areas, but did not give details. He declined to comment on recent reports speculating that Sprint and Clearwire were looking to merge their WiMax assets with investments from outside companies.
Clearwire, a service provider founded by wireless pioneer Craig McCaw, said that it ended the fourth quarter with 394,000 customers, including domestic and international markets, despite stiff competition from cable providers. Citing weakness in the U.S. economy, other Clearwire executives said that in the fourth quarter cable and telecom broadband Internet rivals competed more aggressively than ever on prices and network access speeds offered.
There was a time several years ago that this was the only browser we supported internally. I remember working with my tech support team of one additional person and how thrilled we were that we could access the internet. I don't even recall at the time who else offered internet access. It was a true 'Oh my god' experience for me and the guy I worked with (you know who you are).
I just went through a major "remember when" reading this.
AOL has a long history on the internet, being one of the first companies to really get people online. Throughout its lifetime, it has been involved with a number of high profile acquisitions, perhaps the largest of which was the 1999 acquisition of the Netscape Communications Corporation. Netscape was known to many as the thought leader in web browsing, and had developed a number of complementary pieces of software that allowed for a rich suite of internet tools.
At the time of the acquisition, the Netscape team had begun working on converting their flagship product - the Netscape Communicator web suite - into open source software, under a new name: Mozilla. AOL played a significant role in the launch of the Netscape 6 browser, the first Mozilla-based, Netscape-branded browser that was released in 2000 and continued to solely fund the development and marketing efforts of Netscape-branded browsers. In 2003, an independent foundation was created to support the continued development of the open source web suite. AOL was a major source of support for the Mozilla Foundation and the company continued to develop versions of the Netscape browser based on the work of the foundation.
While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Recently, support for the Netscape browser has been limited to a handful of engineers tasked with creating a skinned version of Firefox with a few extensions.
AOL's focus on transitioning to an ad-supported web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be. Given AOL's current business focus and the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically-acclaimed products, we feel it's the right time to end development of Netscape branded browsers, hand the reins fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox.
Brought tears to my eyes. Netscape is no more.
Read the blog post here.
Why is it that almost all news these days related to the RIM Blackberry is geared towards the consumer markets?
Research In Motion has leapt into the retail consumer market with products such as its pink BlackBerry Pearl, a candybar-shaped e-mail phone stuffed with multimedia goodies, exposing itself to shoppers' fickle tastes and competition from Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) iPhone.
Its devices now include more "lifestyle" features like television, music players, cameras and Facebook social-networking software for broad appeal.
"I think the whole social networking phenomenon is quite substantial," RIM's co-Chief Executive, Jim Balsillie, told Reuters in an interview.
His comment highlights a big shift for the Canadian company, which first made its name supplying blocky handsets that executives, lawyers and politicians used to send secure e-mails to their offices and clients.
Their growth is now coming primarily from consumers, not enterprises. Have they given up on enterprise customers?
Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced that in 2008 the company will begin an international rollout of Amazon MP3, Amazon's DRM-free MP3 digital music store where every song is playable on virtually any digital music-capable device, including the PC, Mac(R), iPod(R), Zune(R), Zen(R), iPhone(TM), RAZR(TM), and BlackBerry(R). Amazon MP3 is the only retailer to offer customers DRM-free MP3s from all four major music labels as well as over 33,000 independent labels.
"We have received thousands of e-mails from Amazon customers around the world asking us when we will make Amazon MP3 available outside of the U.S. They can't wait to choose from the biggest selection of high-quality, low-priced DRM-free MP3 music downloads which play on virtually any music device they own today or will own in the future," said Bill Carr, Amazon.com Vice President of Digital Music. "We are excited to tell those customers today that Amazon MP3 is going international this year."
A group of hackers calling itself "Anonymous" has hit the Church of Scientology's Web site with an online attack.
The attack was launched January 19 by Anonymous, which is seeking media attention to help "save people from Scientology by reversing the brainwashing," according to a Web page maintained by Anonymous.
Anonymous claims to have knocked the Church's Web site offline with a distributed denial-of-service attack, in which many computers bombard the victim's server with requests, overwhelming it with data in the hope of ultimately knocking the system offline. True to its name, Anonymous does not disclose the true identities of its members.
Read more
Google has announced that YouTube for Mobile is expanding to target 3G mobile phones from companies including Motorola, Sony Ericsson, LG and Nokia.
YouTube offers a downloadable Java application for some mobile phones in the UK and US that support J2ME MIDP2. These include the Sony Ericsson k800, w800, Nokia e65, n95, n73, 6100 navigator and 6120 classic.
http://m.youtube.com
Wow that's a lot of mobile phones. According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, global mobile phone shipments grew 12 percent year-over-year, to reach 1.12 billion units in 2007. Who's got the biggest share?
Nokia, Samsung, and Motorola.
- Motorola registered 12.3% global share in Q4 2007, down sharply from 22.4% in Q4 2006. A failure to replace the popular Razr model has been the main cause of decline.
- Samsung went from 11% of the market to 14% of the market year to year.
- Sony Ericsson continued to slow down. Its annual growth rate has plunged in recent quarters. Improved handset portfolios from Samsung, LG and Nokia are starting to have a competitive impact on Sony Ericsson.
- Apple shipped 2.3 million iPhone units worldwide (they say in the 4th quarter). Let's see. I believe that calculates to .006 of the total mobile phones shipped. Yep, .006 of the total. Only roughly 21 million more phones to sell to break the top five.
Fizz Traveller 3.0 is the next generation of the Award Winning Fizz Traveller program. With Fizz Traveller 3.0 we have taken your travel information needs to the next level. No other program offers so many possibilities to it's users, with numerous personalisation options and all the features that you could possibly ever need, all combined in a visually stunning package. Localised in English, French, German, Italian & Spanish.
Special Introductory Offer - Normally $29.95 - Get 15% Off - Use Code SPECFT3
Available for Standard, Professional & Classic devices.
Supporting Windows Mobile 5 & 6
And the press calls it trying to find money by digging around couch cushions and coat pockets...
Sprint (NYSE:S) announced today the filing of four patent infringement actions in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas in its continuing effort to enforce its Voice over Packet ("VOP") patent portfolio. The lawsuits are against NuVox Communications, Inc., Broadvox Holdings LLC, Big River Telephone Company, and Paetec Communications, Inc. Sprint alleges that each of these companies has infringed at least 6 VOP patents by selling VOP services that utilize the Sprint patents. Sprint seeks monetary damages from these companies and an injunction that would enjoin the companies from ongoing infringement.
The clustering team is looking for two new Program Managers. Interested? Visit: www.microsoft.com/careers and search for job codes: 220546 and 220547.
Check out the latest on the Palm Blog:
Just last month we announced that the Palm Treo 755p smartphone is available on Verizon Wireless and I wanted to provide some clarification around the Treo Voice Dialing software included.
The Verizon Wireless Treo 755p includes a full version of Treo Voice Dialing at no additional cost. You can find the Treo Voice Dial application in bonus software, either directly on your device by opening the MyTreo application, or from your PC by following the bonus software link of the CD.
Later on in the blog...
As one commenter on the original blog post points out, the Treo 755p on Sprint uses a different voice dial application. The Sprint Treo 755p comes with a trial version of Nuance Voice Control, which provides more advanced features like short email/SMS dictation. After the trial, users can subscribe to Nuance Voice Control service at an additional charge.
So, why do Verizon customers get a full version of voice dialing, but ut appears Sprint users get a demo version and subsequently have to pay for it?
What's slightly funny (probably not for Palm) is reading some of the comments in the original post here, such as,
Posted by: NN
God, it's so dated. Do you have a design team or are you using copy and paste?
Posted by: roman
what happened to a higher capacity processor, more memory, wider screen with all those previous functions and add the capability of calling a phone number from any part of the phone (calendar, notes, word etc)
Posted by: bob
Here's a reason why Verizon should never be given exclusivety lock on a smartphone. By the time it is released to the public, testing took so long that it's already very dated.
Let's hope Palm does in fact stage a comeback and give us some decent phones.
Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and the UK (£269.00) can now get an unlocked Treo 500.
For sale in the Palm Europe EStore
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