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New iPhone OS Rumored To Finally Allow Multitasking

Admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:57:02 +0000

Version 4.0 of the operating system for Apple's iPhone, iPod touch, and the forthcoming iPad will represent a major overhaul of the software and will feature a "full-on solution" to one long-standing gripe about Apple's devices -- their inability to multitask.

At least that is the latest rumor making the rounds, as reported by the AppleInsider blog. The site attributes the report to "people with a proven track record" in predicting Apple's next moves.

AppleInsider's sources offered no details, however, on how the company will deliver multitasking without compromising battery life, efficient memory usage, and security.

Multitasking Manager

Users will see a multitasking manager that "leverages interface technology" already bundled with the Mac OS X, according to AppleInsider. The site added that the operating system is still early in development and has a "way to go" before its ready for release.

The lack of full multitasking on the iPhone is not strictly a technology problem. The current iPhone 3.x software is a multitasking operating system, but Apple artificially restricts third-party applications from running in the background.

This is an intentional choice Apple made in version 2.x of the software as part of the security model. By cutting off apps when the user hits the hardware button or answers an incoming call, third-party apps cannot run in the background, which effectively eliminates much of the risk of viruses and spyware.

No Background Music

The downside is that users are irritated by the phone's behavior. For instance, users playing music via the Pandora music-streaming app, or listening to audio feeds of baseball games via the MLB.com app -- just the type of content that works best in the background -- cannot switch to games or productivity apps while listening to audio streams.

Other apps that users want to be able to run in the background are instant messaging programs (other...

FTC Probing Google’s Planned AdMob Acquisition

Admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:56:48 +0000

U.S. regulators are reportedly digging deeper into Google's planned AdMob acquisition. The Federal Trade Commission is asking for sworn statements from the search giant's competitors and advertisers in what could signal plans to hold up the merger. The news comes as part of a wave of government scrutiny against the maturing company.

According to Bloomberg News, the FTC is seeking to learn whether Google's proposed purchase of the mobile-ad technology provider would lessen competition in the market for Internet advertising on mobile phones. The FTC couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Bloomberg didn't identify the names of two companies that said they were asked to sign statements for the probe. However, it's likely that the FTC spoke with companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Jumptap and Millenial Media, all of which have stakes in this growing space.

Will Google Dominate Mobile?

"We're continuing to talk with the FTC and provide the information that they've asked for, but we're not going to discuss the details of that process," a Google spokesperson said. "We're confident that they'll conclude that the rapidly growing mobile-advertising space will remain highly competitive after this deal closes."

Google announced plans to acquire AdMob for $750 million in stock in November. Although the FTC is concerned that the acquisition would reduce competition, Google painted a win-win picture, predicting the acquisition would enhance the company's expertise and technology in mobile advertising and give advertisers and publishers more choice in the emerging mobile market.

Google is jockeying for position in a mobile market that is projected to be worth billions in just a few years. Jupiter Research issued a recent report, Mobile Advertising: Delivery Channels, Business Models & Forecasts, that predicts the mobile-advertising market will grow to $5.7 billion by 2014.

According to IDC, if the Google-AdMob merger is approved, it would create the mobile-advertising industry's largest company....

OnLive Plans On-Demand Streaming of Video Games

Admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:56:32 +0000

In a move to shake up the online gaming industry, OnLive has announced PC and Mac versions of its on-demand, instant-play games will roll out in June during the E3 2010 show. Here's the rub: Gamers don't have to buy a console, and they can get broadband speeds.

OnLive delivers games to HDTVs over an Internet connection via a small browser plug-in for PCs and OnLive's MicroConsole TV Adapter, which will roll out later this year. The company is billing its game service as a way to find, purchase or rent video games from publishers like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft 2K Games, THQ and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

"The idea here is that you buy or rent the games and stream them. That's pretty challenging when it comes to gaming because you need very quick responses," said Michael Gartenberg, a partner at the Altimeter Group. "OnLive is an interesting twist. The question is how it's going to work in real time over the network."

A Subscription Model

The OnLive service will cost $14.95 a month and give gamers access to a library of games. OnLive said it will also offer loyalty programs, such as multi-month pricing.

To kick-start the service, OnLive is offering to waive fees for the first three months for the first 25,000 gamers who sign up for a subscription. Full versions of the games will be available for purchase or rent during the introductory period.

OnLive said its service will offer features like gamer tags, user profiles, friends and chat, and hinted at exclusive content such as state-of-the-art 3-D graphics. The service will also offer free game demos; multiplayer games across PC, Mac and TV platforms; and Brag Clips video capture and posting. Finally, OnLive will introduce massive spectating, always-updated games, cloud-saved games, and the ability to pause and resume games from anywhere,...

Verizon Expects a 4G Smartphone Earlier Than Planned

Admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:56:15 +0000

Verizon Wireless hopes to debut its first 4G smartphone in the middle of next year, months earlier than planned, a company executive revealed Wednesday. The new handset will debut about three to six months after its Long-Term Evolution network launches, Verizon Wireless CTO Anthony Melone told The Wall Street Journal.

That timetable suggests Verizon sees 4G as a significant way to outpace its leading rival, AT&T.

"With AT&T's timetable for 2012 or 2013 and Verizon still on track for next year, that shows a pretty big head start for Big Red," said Ramon Llamas, mobile-devices senior analyst for IDC Research.

Data Cards First

Verizon's LTE will be available to some 4G users via laptop cards before the phones debut, Melone told the Journal. Verizon has reportedly been testing 4G coverage in Boston and Seattle, and LTE is planed for 10 to 30 U.S. markets by the end of next year, an area that includes 100 million people.

In December, Verizon promised that LTE's capabilities "will be unmatched in the marketplace, allowing customers to do things never before possible in a wireless environment" with average data rates per user of five to 12 Mbps for download and two to five Mbps for upload.

That would top the existing 4G network operated by Sprint Nextel, which boasts of 2.4-Mbps downloads and 153-Kbps uploads.

"If you look at Verizon's position on LTE, they are not just planning for smartphones but for other consumer electronics devices," Llamas said. "The usual evolution of things is that when you come out with a faster network, you go to data cards first and then to mobile phones."

AT&T is moving more deliberately to the next generation. The company's CEO, Randall Stephenson, recently told a technology investors' conference, "We're not in a tremendous hurry on LTE," but will instead rely on current technology for...

Opera Mini 5 Released for Android-Powered Smartphones

Admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:28:52 +0000

Opera Software launched an Android version of the company's Opera Mini 5 mobile browser Thursday that promises to significantly improve page loading and speed on compatible smartphones. The beta release continues the company's campaign to increase the visibility of its browser on a global basis.

Opera Mini 5 works in tandem with Opera's servers to compress web-page content up to 90 percent before the data is sent to mobile phones, noted Opera Vice President Dag Olav Norem. "Opera Mini will give Android users fast and cost-efficient access to their favorite web sites and services," he said.

A Desktop-Like Experience

Opera Mini 5 now includes popular browser features from the company's platform for desktop PCs and notebooks, such as speed dial, tabbed browsing, password management, and bookmarks. The goal is to enable the platform to deliver a desktop-like web-browsing experience on mobile handsets, the company said.

Tabbed browsing enables several web sites to be viewed at the same time while easily jumping from one to another, while the speed-dial feature provides one-click access to favorite web pages. Additionally, bookmarks and speed-dial settings can now be synchronized between the user's mobile phone and a notebook or desktop PC.

To eliminate the need for horizontal panning on small mobile screens, the browser's mobile view intelligently reformats web pages into a single column. Users also can switch to a landscape mode to view a wider swath of web-page content.

The default size of text from selected web sites can be optimized from within the browser to make it even easier to view content on small screens. Moreover, users can adjust the default zoom level from 60 percent to 200 percent.

Additionally, Android users equipped with touchscreen handsets will be able to navigate content using the mobile platform's new zooming and kinetic scrolling features. And favorite web sites can now...

The FCC National Broadband Plan Faces Long Haul

Admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:46:22 +0000

Paul Karpowicz has nothing against broadband. But he has no plans to take part in a government effort to bring it to more homes.

Karpowicz is president of Meredith Broadcasting, which owns 12 local TV stations from Portland, Ore., to New Haven, Conn. Meredith also holds unused TV airwaves covering some of those markets and Karpowicz intends to use them to stream programming to handheld devices.

As part of its National Broadband Plan, due to be unveiled Mar. 16, the federal government wants broadcasters like Meredith to relinquish and let the government sell excess airwaves, which could then be used by wireless carriers to deliver mobile-Web access. Karpowicz says he has no intention of giving up Meredith's airwaves. "I truly don't visualize a scenario where proceeds [from a sale] would exceed lost business opportunities," says Karpowicz, who also sits on the executive committee of the National Association of Broadcasters.

Opposition from the NAB is just one of the hurdles the government must clear as it presses ahead with a plan to bring broadband access to almost 100 million U.S. residents.

For starters, the plan is just that. Federal Communications Commission officials, under Chairman Julius Genachowski, will present the proposal to Congress, which will weigh in as the FCC embarks on a years-long process of implementing the various proposals. "The really difficult policy options are going to be made in follow-through actions," says Paul Glenchur, senior analyst at Potomac Research Group, a Washington-based consultant.

Plan Resistance

Along the way, the FCC may face resistance from lawmakers unwilling to approve additional funding and from parts of the communications industry, such as satellite providers, largely left out of the plan. "If it were easy, [this reform) would have been done a long time ago," Blair Levin, the Federal Communications Commission official who's spearheading the National Broadband Plan,...

Sony Targets Nintendo’s Wii with PS3 Move Controller

Admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:43:41 +0000

Move over, Wii. On Wednesday, Sony Computer Entertainment announced that its PlayStation 3 Move motion-based controller will launch in the fall. The controller has been discussed by Sony for some time, and was initially expected to be released this spring.

Reportedly, the delay gives third-party developers more time to create game titles using Move's capabilities. Sony said 36 developers and publishers are supporting the platform, and it expects more than 20 Move-related games to be released in its 2010 fiscal year.

'Unlike Anything on the Market'

The success of Nintendo's Wii video-game console has been built, in part, on its unique motion-sensing controller, allowing multiple players to bowl, wield a tennis racket, and other interactions. Sony is touting its new controller as "offering a motion-based, high-definition gaming experience unlike anything on the market."

Accompanying Move's launch will be the Move sub-controller, which enables what Sony described as "intuitive navigation of in-game characters and objects," and the Eye camera to detect precise movement, angle and position.

Sony said the three components provide a level of accuracy that, by implication, Nintendo's Wii does not. The controller has a three-axis gyroscope, a three-axis accelerometer, a terrestrial magnetic field sensor, and a color-changing sphere that the camera can track. More than one blogger has described the device as looking like a toy flashlight with a colored ball on top.

The company said this "unmatched" resolution of movement allows the PS3 to track fast as well as subtle movement. A user can swing a tennis racket as with the Wii, but can also paint with a virtual brush.

Feedback -- such as different colors on the controller's sphere or rumble -- responds to the game action. Transmission to the console is via Bluetooth, and power is supplied by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. The controller kit is expected to sell for under...

CA Expands Cloud Services with $350M Nimsoft Purchase

Admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:13:36 +0000

IT software behemoth CA has acquired yet another company as it moves to provide its emerging enterprise customers and managed-service providers with cloud-computing support. CA acquired Redwood City, Calif.-based Nimsoft, its fourth acquisition in the cloud-computing space, in a cash purchase valued at $350 million, CA announced Wednesday.

Nimsoft, a provider of monitoring systems used in data centers, is the fourth company that CA, formerly Computer Associates, has acquired in the past nine months. CA plans to integrate Nimsoft's assets into its cloud products and solutions business.

The acquisition, expected to close by March 31, will enable CA to tap into Nimsoft's more than 300 managed-service customers such as Hitachi, Barclays Capital, and Amway and its emerging enterprise customers (with revenues between $300 million and $2 billion).

Perfect Marriage or Bad Move

Nimsoft's reporting and monitoring technology has been used in public cloud services such as Google Apps for Business, Amazon Web Services, and Salesforce.com. Its technology has also been used in internal applications and in both physical and virtual server environments.

CA's new acquisition is only one piece to its larger cloud-computing puzzle. CA acquired Cassatt, NetQoS and Oblicore, and last month announced plans to acquire 3Tera.

While Nimsoft attracted a solid customer base, it was having difficulties keeping up with the fast-moving market. Nimsoft hired both engineers and sales people, but not fast enough, according to CEO Gary Read.

"We were already hiring additional sales people and engineers as fast as we could, but there is a natural limit to how rapidly you can scale a business without breaking those things that are important to us, customer satisfaction being the top of the list," Read said.

When he was approached by CA, Read said, he was hesitant to begin any talks. That changed once CA told Nimsoft executives that the company...

LifeLock To Pay $12M To Settle False Claims Case

Admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:15:03 +0000

LifeLock Inc. -- an identity theft protection company that backed its guarantees by putting its CEO's social security number on the side of its trucks -- will pay $12 million to settle claims it misrepresented its services, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

LifeLock will pay $11 million to the FTC to cover the cost of customer refunds, and another $1 million to the attorneys general of 35 states, the agency said. The FTC said LifeLock made false claims about its ability to prevent identity theft, as the services provide no protection against misuse of existing accounts, which is the most common type of identity theft, or medical or employment identity theft.

The agency described the agreement as one of the largest FTC-state coordinated settlements on record.

In a telephone interview, LifeLock CEO Todd Davis said the company was not acknowledging any wrongdoing. He said all of the company's current advertising and infrastructure have been cleared by the FTC.

The FTC said LifeLock overstated its ability to prevent new account fraud, which accounts for about one out of every six identity thefts. The Tempe, Ariz., company responds to suspected identity theft by placing fraud alerts on accounts, but the FTC said those alerts do not provide absolute protection and they can be foiled by identity thieves.

"There's still nothing that can stop all identity theft," Davis said. "We still have that same position. No one can stop all identity theft."

The agency said LifeLock misrepresented its own data security procedures. The company allegedly deceived customers in its ads by saying all its data was electronically encrypted and that highly secure procedures are used to protect the confidentiality of its customers. The FTC said claims that only authorized LifeLock employees would have access to customer information, and then only on a "need to know" basis, were also...

Google CEO: Resolution in China Dispute ‘Soon’

Admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:14:16 +0000

Google Inc.'s CEO said Wednesday the Internet search company is in active negotiations with the Chinese government and expects some resolution in its dispute with Beijing soon.

Speaking at a media conference in the Middle East, Eric Schmidt declined to provide specifics or predict how long the discussions would last, saying that the company has decided not to publicize details of the talks.

"I can't really say anything other than that we're in active negotiations with the Chinese government, and there is no specific timetable," Schmidt told reporters in the United Arab Emirates capital of Abu Dhabi. "Something will happen soon."

Google's comments come just days after China dismissed reports that talks were underway over the company's threat to shut down its China-based search service unless the government relented on censorship.

On Saturday, Chinese vice minister of industry and information technology Miao Wei was quoted as saying that there had been no negotiations with Google.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet company said in January it was alarmed by hacking attacks on it and other companies that appeared to originate from China. Google also complained about attempts that apparently were made to access the Gmail accounts of human rights dissidents.

The dispute has prompted a broader debate about China's controls over the Internet.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has criticized China's censorship, leading China's Foreign Ministry to say her remarks damaged bilateral relations. The U.S. Congress has been holding hearings about Google, China and Web freedom.

In his comments Wednesday, Schmidt denied that Google's dispute was prompted by Washington.

"The Google action was not in any way advanced or coordinated with the U.S. government except post-facto," he said in response to questions. "Google's discussions are with the Chinese government, and they do not involve the U.S. government. The U.S. government's doing its thing unrelated to Google."

Schmidt was speaking at...