By Tim Conneally, BetanewsWhen Microsoft announced the release of Windows 7 SP1 in early February, the company also released some information about a couple of upcoming products: Windows Thin PC (WinTPC) and Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM.)Monday, Microsoft shared the first round of information about WinTPC, how it will fit in with volume licensing somewhere between Window...
By Ed Oswald, BetanewsAmongst all the other things that Verizon and AT&T can lob at each other in the ever increasingly bitter battle for iPhone subscribers is this: Mean download speed for iPhone 4 on AT&T is twice that on Verizon. This is according to Metrico Wireless, a Maryland-based independent wireless performance research firm. That said, Web pages load in about the same amount of time on i...
By Ed Oswald, BetanewsAmongst all the other things that Verizon and AT&T can lob at each other in the ever increasingly bitter battle for iPhone subscribers is this: Mean download speed for iPhone 4 on AT&T is twice that on Verizon. This is according to Metrico Wireless, a Maryland-based independent wireless performance research firm. That said, Web pages load in about the same amount of time on i...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsTrend Micro on Monday became the latest security software company to release a parental control package aimed at protecting kids from trouble on social networking sites.Referring to a recent study from Pew Internet research, Trend Micro on Monday said over 90% of kids ages 12-17 are on the Internet, and over 70 percent of teens have a social networking profile of one kind...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsTrend Micro on Monday became the latest security software company to release a parental control package aimed at protecting kids from trouble on social networking sites.Referring to a recent study from Pew Internet research, Trend Micro on Monday said over 90% of kids ages 12-17 are on the Internet, and over 70 percent of teens have a social networking profile of one kind...
By Ed Oswald, BetanewsLikely aiming to attract those familiar with RIM's BlackBerry, Samsung on Monday debuted the Galaxy Pro, an Android smartphone that combines a full QWERTY keyboard and a 2.8" touch-screen display. The device will ship in the UK later this month and across Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia shortly after.The phone appears to be targeted to the lower end of the busines...
By Ed Oswald, BetanewsLikely aiming to attract those familiar with RIM's BlackBerry, Samsung on Monday debuted the Galaxy Pro, an Android smartphone that combines a full QWERTY keyboard and a 2.8" touch-screen display. The device will ship in the UK later this month and across Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia shortly after.The phone appears to be targeted to the lower end of the busines...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsMonday, storage and network hardware company Western Digital announced that it will be acquiring Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for $3.5 billion in cash and 25 million WD common shares. The total transaction will be approximately $4.3 billion, and Hitachi GST president and CEO Steve Milligan will join Western Digital as president under the company's current CEO John ...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsMonday, storage and network hardware company Western Digital announced that it will be acquiring Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for $3.5 billion in cash and 25 million WD common shares. The total transaction will be approximately $4.3 billion, and Hitachi GST president and CEO Steve Milligan will join Western Digital as president under the company's current CEO John ...
By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsIs it you? I'd like to know. Apple's second generation tablet goes on sale this Friday. There was a ridiculous amount of rumor and hype pre-launch event and overly large amount of buzz post-launch. Has someone started calling this thing the Jesus tablet yet, like iPhone as the Jesus phone? No wait! Moses brought the tablets down from the mountain top, right? You get the poin...
By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsIs it you? I'd like to know. Apple's second generation tablet goes on sale this Friday. There was a ridiculous amount of rumor and hype pre-launch event and overly large amount of buzz post-launch. Has someone started calling this thing the Jesus tablet yet, like iPhone as the Jesus phone? No wait! Moses brought the tablets down from the mountain top, right? You get the poin...
By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsAndroid handsets infected with malware are getting a cleaning job from Google. On March 2nd, Google removed 21 apps from the Android Marketplace that contained malicious code. Now Google is "remotely removing the malicious applications from affected devices" and "pushing an Android Market security update to all affected devices that undoes the exploits to prevent the attacke...
By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsLast week's iPad 2 debut offered few surprises, other than Apple's new tablet not living up to out-of-control rumors -- and still there is endless cacophony on the InterWebs. By measure of noise, there is seemingly no other tablet worth purchasing. But, of course, that's not the case. Perception isn't always reality. But from iPad 2 hype and perceptions, there are five lesso...
By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsLast week's iPad 2 debut offered few surprises, other than Apple's new tablet not living up to out-of-control rumors -- and still there is endless cacophony on the InterWebs. By measure of noise, there is seemingly no other tablet worth purchasing. But, of course, that's not the case. Perception isn't always reality. But from iPad 2 hype and perceptions, there are five lesso...
By Robert ScobleOK, maybe Steve Jobs' reality distortion field is wearing off a bit, and I might feel differently in a week when I get my iPad 2, but after playing with my Motorola XOOM a lot more tonight and seeing just what "no apps" looks like, I got something to say to developers:You should build for Android. Before you build for iPad. Here's why.1. The bar on Android for getting noticed is ve...
By Robert ScobleOK, maybe Steve Jobs' reality distortion field is wearing off a bit, and I might feel differently in a week when I get my iPad 2, but after playing with my Motorola XOOM a lot more tonight and seeing just what "no apps" looks like, I got something to say to developers:You should build for Android. Before you build for iPad. Here's why.1. The bar on Android for getting noticed is ve...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsTwo thousand dollars ($2,000) and two years of probation…after five years of investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division and three years of litigation.That was the sentence for Michael Uszakow, 46, of Houston Texas, in the U.S. District Court of Connecticut this week. His "Conspiracy to Commit Cri...
By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsThis week, I unexpectedly started using Google's Cr-48 notebook running Chrome OS as my production system. On Monday, my 11.6-inch MacBook Air fatally crashed, leaving no real alternative since a friend has my Windows laptop. So I fired up the Cr-48, which I reviewed in December in seven parts. It has been a great week that got better after installing yesterday's Chrome OS u...
By Ed Oswald, BetanewsWednesday's announcement of the iPad 2 has seemingly caught Apple's biggest competitor off guard, and Samsung is apparently reevaluating its next moves. In comments to Korea-based Yonhap News Agency, Samsung's mobile head Lee Don-joo said that the next iPad's sleek new design and competitive price are challenges.The Korean electronics manufacturer's Galaxy Tab tablet is widel...
By Ed Oswald, BetanewsMobileMe's expected refresh was notably absent from Apple's event Wednesday announcing the debut of the iPad 2, however Cupertino may be working behind the scenes to make a revamp of the cloud service part of a larger push towards streaming content.Sources have told Bloomberg that Apple is currently in negotiations with several record labels including Universal, Sony, Warner,...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsInternet Explorer 6 was released a decade ago, and as of February 2011, 12% of the world accessing the Web still used it. On Friday, Microsoft officially stated that it wants that fragment of the population to just let it go already. It did this by launching an official "death clock" for IE6 at ie6countdown.com. The website is dedicated to watching IE6 usage drop down to ...
By Mike WilliamsGerman multimedia specialist MAGIX has released two free photo management and editing packages, each designed to help you get more from your digital images.MAGIX Photo Manager 10 lets you navigate your photo collection with its thumbnail browser. Automated tools allow you to quickly organise your images into categories, while a "find similar photos" option can search your entire ha...
By Ed Oswald, BetanewsAfter more than four years in prison, Robert Soloway is now a free man. Dubbed the 'Spam King' for his role as the head of a spam ring that sent an estimated 10 trillion junk e-mails between 2003 and 2007, Soloway is now busy reintegrating himself into everyday life, according to Wired.He was first arrested in May 2007 and charged with 35 counts including fraud, identity thef...
By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsI know that yesterday Apple CEO Steve Jobs proudly proclaimed 100 million iPhone shipments, which is a darn big number. But iPhone isn't winning the smartphone wars, a story that's getting tired to write (Apple could still win the mobile platform wars). Today, ComScore and Nielsen separately released new US smartphone data that puts Android ahead of Research in Motion's Blac...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsAt Thursday's open meeting of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a set of reforms to the Lifeline/Link-Up program was proposed, aiming at "modernizing and driving tougher accountability" for the program that provides discounts for telecommunications service and installation for lower-income consumers. The existing program is part of the Universal Services Fund (...
By Ed Oswald, BetanewsAiming to harness some of the buzz surrounding deal of the day websites as of late, Microsoft said Thursday it had partnered with The Dealmap. The San Francisco-based aggregator site takes content from about 200 sites like Groupon and LivingSocial, and lists them on a single page organized by city.Instead of attempting to create its own program, or look to acquire an existing...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsThursday, Adobe announced the public availability of ColdFusion Builder 2 beta, the company's Eclipse-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for its ColdFusion development platform.ColdFusion Builder first became available nearly two years ago when Adobe integrated Flash Builder 4 and AIR into ColdFusion 9. This version, codenamed "Storm" adds a host of enhancemen...
By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsIt was the software -- FaceTime, Garage Band, iMovie and Photo Booth -- and the colorful Smart Covers. I kid you not. There are good reasons why so much of yesterday's launch event focused on software -- hell, Apple even made a video about the new covers; now what does that you tell you?Apple CEO Steve Jobs officiated yesterday's launch event, which spent surprisingly little...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsThis time of year is packed with tech industry trade shows. DEMO, GDC, CeBIT, PAX East, SXSWi, and CTIA all butt up against one another and stimulate activity and interest across many different tech sectors. These events may not exactly be the lifeblood of our high-tech economy, but they're serious business and they generate...well, serious business. Developers, company r...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsAlong with the iPad 2 on Wednesday, Apple unveiled the next version of its mobile operating system, iOS 4.3. Though these features were revealed back in a beta version in January following the launch of the CDMA iPhone 4, this is the first time Apple officially presented the new features. According to Apple, iOS 4.3 will be available to iPad, iPad 2, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 ...
