By Tim Conneally, BetanewsLightSquared, the company building a hybrid LTE and Mobile Satellite wireless network that will be sold as wholesale bandwidth to the major U.S. networks, announced Tuesday that it has closed a $586 million loan led by Swiss investment bank UBS AG and JP Morgan. Over the last seven months, the company has raised more than $2 billion in debt and equity to build its ambitio...
By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsOne of Amazon's best values is its Prime service, which costs $79 a year. For that fee, buyers get free two-day shipping or overnight packages for $3.99 per item. Today, Amazon added something more: free streaming of 5,000 movies or TV shows. Or so the retailer claims. I only see 1,688 movies and 484 TV shows currently available on Amazon Instant Video.Amazon offers a surpri...
By Ed Oswald, BetanewsVerizon confirmed that it would subsidize the cost of the Motorola XOOM tablet on Tuesday, possibly answering critics that it is too expensive for consumers. While the Android-powered device was introduced at CES to generally good reviews, its $799 unsubsidized price could be seen as a deterrent.Those who subscribe to a 2-year contracted data plan would receive the standard $...
By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsApple can no longer remain silent about its CEO's health. This is no longer a debate about corporate responsibility or fair disclosure to shareholders. Now that Paparazzi are following Jobs and taking photos or videos of him outside the cancer treatment facility, Apple must respond. Silence is bad for Apple, bad for its shareholders and quite possibly damaging to Jobs' recov...
By Jacqueline Emigh, BetanewsLenovo on Tuesday expanded its ThinkPad notebook line-up on the high end by rolling out six new Intel Sandy Bridge-enabled models with features like 30 hours of battery life, Dolby Home Theater v4, NVidia Optimus graphic switching, and Instant Resume, for more continuous wireless connectivity. The new series of enhanced ThinkPads includes the top-of-the-line T420 and T...
By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsApple may be the most talked about tech company in geekdom and on Wall Street. The brand is hot, but for all the hype Macintosh is not. Sure Mac sales are way up, as is Apple's personal computer market share -- at least compared to May 2001 when CEO Steve Jobs talked about topping 5 percent share when opening the first company-owned retail store in McLean, Virginia. Ten year...
By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsApple may be the most talked about tech company in geekdom and on Wall Street. The brand is hot, but for all the hype Macintosh is not. Sure Mac sales are way up, as is Apple's personal computer market share -- at least compared to May 2001 when CEO Steve Jobs talked about topping 5 percent share when opening the first company-owned retail store in McLean, Virginia. Ten year...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsThe different epochs of consumer computing are marked by catchphrases that coincide with the great money-making technology of the time. At the dawn of the twenty-teens, we're already well into the generation of "smart devices."In the 8-bit computing era, everything was "micro." From microprocessors were born microcomputers, and from there we had a whole slew of products, ...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsThe different epochs of consumer computing are marked by catchphrases that coincide with the great money-making technology of the time. At the dawn of the twenty-teens, we're already well into the generation of "smart devices."In the 8-bit computing era, everything was "micro." From microprocessors were born microcomputers, and from there we had a whole slew of products, ...
By Ed Oswald, BetanewsThey say if you can't beat them, join them. Rather than fight back against enterprising hackers aiming to get the Xbox Kinect motion-sensing controller working with Windows, Microsoft has now announced the availability of an SDK to come this spring. The news shouldn't be all too surprising, however: CEO Steve Ballmer had made statements that compatibility with PCs was in the ...
By Ed Oswald, BetanewsThe first major update to the Windows Phone 7 software is now being delivered to customers, Microsoft said on Monday. While the update does not include highly anticipated features such as cut and paste, it does lay the groundwork for future updates.Microsoft has improved upon the software update process in order to make it more efficient. While the company did not give much d...
By Nick PeersNot every photo comes out perfect, and the beauty of image-editing software is that it allows you to rescue those photos that would be perfect but for one or two flaws that render them useless. The trouble is, while image editors give you these options, they're not always the simplest to use. And if you're forced to perform several fixes, say color correction followed by blemish remov...
By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsLast week, DisplaySearch joined Canalys classifying iPad as a personal computer. Canalys claims that iPad lifts Apple to third place in global PC market share. DisplaySearch puts Apple No. 1 in the United States by similar reckoning. The Apple fan club of bloggers and journalists delighted in the DisplaySearch data, gifting Apple with "its No.1 headlines." I write to correct...
TELSTRA has announced it will shift its focus on online marketing and plans to open a new bath of 100 retail stores adding to the existing 300 allover the country.
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsMaintaining skepticism is good practice for consumers, but even moderate consumer skepticism can play serious hell with a company that pushes its product too hard. This is especially true among tech adopters. Betanews' Tim Conneally takes an objective look at Gunnar Optiks and the value of their "digital eyewear" against the skepticism it elicits.Anyone who spends enough ...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsMaintaining skepticism is good practice for consumers, but even moderate consumer skepticism can play serious hell with a company that pushes its product too hard. This is especially true among tech adopters. Betanews' Tim Conneally takes an objective look at Gunnar Optiks and the value of their "digital eyewear" against the skepticism it elicits.Anyone who spends enough ...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsOokla Net Metrics' free network speed test speedtest.net is so widely used that even the federal government has recognized it as a reliable tool for measuring wireless network conditions. Friday, the company published results of some 57,000 user-initiated iPhone speedtests in the U.S., which showed users on the AT&T network getting average speeds substantially higher than...
By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsThere are close to 90 different tablets announced for 2011 delivery. Some of the hottest models, like the Motorola XOOM, are weeks away from availability. Meanwhile, hype continues as fervently as ever about iPad 2. In such a competitive market, with overwhelming number of choices, there are going to be losers -- and lots of them. Is there a formula for success?Earlier today...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsPopular microblog Twitter has blocked third-party mobile Twitter apps Twidroyd and UberTwitter on Friday, citing unspecified policy violations."Every day, we suspend hundreds of applications that are in violation of our policies," the Twitter Help Center blog said Friday. "Generally, these apps are used by a small number of users. We are taking the unusual step of sharing...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsOpera software has taken a cue from Ubuntu and will be giving its browser builds catchy names starting this year. Thursday evening, the company released a snapshot of the browser formerly known as Opera 11.10, now known simply as "Barracuda."This version updates the browser core to version 2.8.99, which adds the implementation of the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) to the bro...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsWhen Google's Chrome browser moves up the ladder in the public beta channel, the dev channel gets an upgrade too, but a full generation ahead of what the public is playing with. So with Chrome 10 beta now available in public beta, the Chrome 11 developer beta (11.0.672.2) can now be downloaded as well.Download Chrome 11 in Fileforum now!Even though this is the first offic...
By Nick PeersHow safe are you online? These days the biggest prize for any hacker or thief is access to your online accounts --financial or otherwise, and with many people choosing to protect all their online details with a single, easily crackable password, there's never been a better time to practice safe browsing.The problem with staying safe is that ideally you should use complicated, unique p...
Popular internet auction site eBay said on Friday that as more Australians turn on online shopping, the country’s web-based retailers are experiencing growth while delivering services required by consumers who have little time for traditional purchases.
With its prepaid credit recharge system experiencing a downtime much of the whole day on Thursday, Vodafone was forced to resort on providing free calls and text services to its prepaid customers yesterday.
Sony has brought its unlimited music streaming service in Australia and New Zealand, launching on Friday its Music Unlimited that opens the door for accessing more than six million songs from its wide-ranging catalogue.
It used to be that video killed the radio star. Now another culprit is decimating an industry that used to be so secure in Australia its gradual demise is taking everyone by surprise, save of course for those who long abandoned the traditional bookshops in favour of online bookstores and publications.
By Ed Oswald, BetanewsGoogle is committing further to social search, and said Thursday that it would more tightly integrate results from its users' social circles. The Mountain View, Calif. search company first introduced the functionality two years ago in an effort to make results more personally relevant."As always, we want to help you find the most relevant answers among the billions of interco...
By Tim Conneally, BetanewsThursday, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released The National Broadband map, a staggeringly powerful free tool that gives anyone access to census-level data about broadband connectivity in the United States. The map, which cost roughly $200 million to build, includes data from more than 25 million records, showing what types of broa...
Telstra Corporation’s decision on Wednesday to shut down its Moe call centre will render 114 workers out of job, leaving Latrobe Valley executives in doubt whether the soon-to-be separated employees will find replacement works within Telstra, as pledged by the telco yesterday.
Windows-powered Nokia handsets will enter the mobile industry by 2012, according to the Finnish company’s board chair, who added that more partnerships are being worked on by the phone maker besides the already sealed deals with Google and Microsoft.
