Oct 27, 2011 | News
The reports are in from the Q3 financials of Amazon and they reported lower than expected operation margins from Wall Street which saw their stock take a hit and there is even thoughts of a Q4 operating loss! But never fear Amazon says that this is due to expansion like building new distribution centers and of course the digital business with the new Kindle Fire on the way. Once again it was said that Amazon was happy to lose a bit on the Fire to make more money on the digital content. This is the standard for video game systems. They sell the product at a small loss or a breakeven and then they sell content for that device which makes up for the losses they see. Same will be put into play with the new Kindle Fire. The interesting thing is that Amazon is taking a different approach to this unlike Apple. Time Cook sells media so he can sell iPads and iPhones; Bezos sells Kindles so he can sell books, videos, and music and heck even advertising. With Apple already in the driver seat with their model, how will Amazon fair with theirs? Only time will tell.
Oct 26, 2011 | News
From what I have read Twitter is expanding its timeline. They are testing out new design changes which will make the main Twiiter timeline expand so you can see media and related information right in the timeline instead of it being off to the side or off to another page. It is suppose to be a subtle change and it should simplify something that is already a simple service. You can ?open? up a tweet to see how many people retweeted it, the threaded conversation related to that tweet, or related photos and videos. For instance, here is a screenshot of a reply tweet along with the original tweet. You will notice that the star, retweet, and reply buttons have also been moved to the top right. And you can close the tweet to go back to the main timeline view. Many Twitter clients have long included inline media, and it is encouraging to see Twitter trying to figure out how to make it part of the official experience.
Oct 25, 2011 | Wireless
Tablets are getting more and more competitive these days. It seems like when Apple puts their foot into something everyone wants to step on their feet with something better and most will say none have been able to do it. Well this tablet will not do it either but it will give people an affordable option. It looks as if View Sonic is rolling out a $200 ViewPad 7e Android tablet. This will only give you Android 2.3 and not Honeycomb but for the price specs are decent 1GHz ARM A8 processor, dual cameras, a “RiteTouch” 7-inch capacitive display, 4GB of storage with a microSD card slot for expansion, and HDMI output. As is often the case with low-end tablets, however, one key omission is official support for the Android Market, but you do at least get access to Amazon’s Appstore, as well as plenty of pre-loaded apps including Twitter, Kindle, and TuneIn Radio.
Oct 24, 2011 | News
Apple is make some great upgrades to their Macbook Pro line. So if you are looking for a decent Mac looks like these upgrades are exceptional. The starter Macbook Pro will be a 13 inch with a 2.4Ghz processor and a 500GB hard drive although running at 5400rpm. The 15 inch model will have a core i7 processor running at 2.5Ghz has some graphic upgrades on its board. Finally the 17 inch model is changing up from a AMD Radeon HD 6750M to a nice HD 6770M and the base processor of an i7 2.2ghz to a 2.4Ghz and the prices are staying the same from the reports, there is also talk that these models will have Bluetooth 4.0 to keep in line with the new MacBook Air and the iPhone 4S.
Oct 23, 2011 | Uncategorized
Verizon has reported their 3rd quarter earnings and this showed that they are well on their way to hit the fourth quarter and the 2011 goals, thanks to the strength of their wireless business. The reported earnings was about $3.54 Billion or 49 cents a share on revenue of just about $27.9 billion dollars. Verizon did comment and said that they are very optimistic about the future of the company with the iPhone 4S and a bunch of new LTE devices making their mark. Also more than half of the Verizon’s 5.6 million smartphones that were sold in the third quarter were Android devices, it reported that 35% or just about 2 million iPhones.
Verizon CFO Fran Shammo made the following points on the company?s earnings conference call:
? A strike and storm outages shaved 5 cents a share from GAAP earnings. Both factors hampered FiOS installations and some enterprise provisioning.
? The company secured new agreements for cloud services with companies such as RWE of Germany, Smile Brands and the University of North Carolina.
? ?Our 4G LTE deployment is going very well and we are now providing service in 165 markets covering more than 186 million POPs. With additional markets planned in November and December we are actually ahead of schedule and have already exceeded our year-end target of 185 million POPs.?
Oct 22, 2011 | News
Going through the many articles I read I found one that was very interesting about throttling and using BitTorrents. Measurement Labs gives a special insight into this and reveals that Comcast was slowing down nearly half of all BitTorrent traffic in the US in the early months of 2008 although it has dropped to 3% last year. They even did other countries and found in Canada, Rogers is the worst as it throttles over three quarters of all the BitTorrent traffic. So here is the best and worst from the US, Canada and Great Britain.
US
The Bittorrent throttling businesses connected with Comcast, subjected to by simply Robb Topolski along with TorrentFreak inside ’07, ended up simply what resulted in the Dimension Research exploration. Immediately after the FCC exploration Comcast ended up being requested to prevent slowing lower Bittorrent on the large-scale, as well as the records exhibits that this company possesses stored its concept.
First 2008 Comcast restrained nearly one half (49%) off Bittorrent traffic yet this is minimized to be able to three p’cent from the first one fourth connected with not too long ago. Cox, a further hefty throttler, travelled through 51 p’cent to be able to three p’cent inside the same time interval. The slide images further more exhibits that will truly, Clearwire ended up being really the only U. S. Internet service provider that will restrained over eight p’cent off Bittorrent traffic, 17 p’cent to become correct.
Worst: Clearwire (17%)
Best: Comcast and others (3%)
Canada
Inside North america, many great ISPs include admitted to be able to slowing lower Bittorrent traffic, as well as some perform therefore to your excellent level. Because the start of sizing’s Rogers possesses frequently throttled over three-quarter off Bittorrent traffic, along with you can find zero indicators that this does away with.
Through first one fourth connected with the year of 2010 both the alternative great Canadian ISPs, Bell along with Shaw, ended up throttling sixteen along with 14 p’cent respectively. Videotron on the other hand possesses in no way slowed lower over 6 p’cent, along with simply three p’cent through previous dimension season.
Worst: Rogers (78%)
Best: Videotron (3%)
Great Britain
In great britain, TalkTalk familiar with control 1 / 3 off Bittorrent traffic, yet this is minimized drastically from the conclusion connected with the year just gone. They at this point simply decelerate Bittorrent in the course of summit a long time which often resulted in the twelve month period p’cent throttling price first the year of 2010. Tiscali along with BT Group are generally subjected to for the reason that most hefty throttlers although Virgin Mass media, O2 along with BSkyB have had relatively decreased percentages in the dimension interval.
Worst: Tiscali and BT Group (27%)
Best: BSkyB (5%)
Oct 21, 2011 | News
It looks like Microsoft is well underway in creating it’s next top of the line gaming system for a predicted launch of 2013. Me being an avid gamer this is big news to everyone and I wonder what type of hardware it will use. Obviously it would be difficult for Microsoft to get bluray in their systems since their chief rival Sony holds that crown. The speculation from many sources is an E3 unveiling of this XBOX Next and a release of the actual system in the holiday season of 2013, no doubt in November. However many in the gaming industry say that this system will most likely launch in 2014 but would still be shown in 2013. This is very exciting as Microsoft is getting more innovative all the time with their products and games and I am looking forward to seeing what Xbox Next will have to offer us.
Oct 20, 2011 | Wireless
Andy Rubin the Chief of Android thinks phones have the potential to be a more of a useful companion to you but doesn’t want to turn the Android devices into personal assistants like Apple has done. ?I don?t believe that your phone should be an assistant,? the Android chief said in an interview on Wednesday just after appearing on stage at AsiaD. ?Your phone is a tool for communicating. You shouldn?t be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone.?
Although millions and millions of people have purchased an iPhone 4S which had a major selling point of Siri which is the voice-controlled assistant.
?To some degree it is natural for you to talk to your phone,? Rubin said, but historically that has meant talking to another person. As for talking to your phone without actually trying to connect to another person, Rubin says he?s not so sure. ?We?ll see how pervasive it gets.?
Oct 19, 2011 | News
Google has announced the new version of its Android OS that we all have known for awhile that the code name of this is Ice Cream Sandwich. This Android 4.0 OS is really just a basic refinement of creative ideas that started in Honeycomb and now has transformed into something that is rocking and ready to go for Android devices. Also this OS will also be open source which means developers will be able to start programming on it without limitation. Here is a little look at it.
Your UI may be revamped substantially, having of which clear, futuristic glance having about via Honeycomb ? although it is Tron beginnings happen to be beautifully shaped down simply a little bit, having extra likeness on the current renovation Google?s online applications have got picked up. Yahoo and google furthermore made some font for your interface, dubbed ?Roboto. ? Rather than equipment links, your COMPUTER ITSELF these days provides some program returning, property, and current applications links right within the filter. Your current applications button provides way up a scrolling all the list filter reflects of your current exploits, but when you could swipe absent litter, of which doesn?t genuine kill accomplishing this. Swiping furthermore functions to reduce inward notifications, and you may also swipe way up as soon as receiving a mobile call to select from an index of scripted text message replies in the event you don?t experience similar to obtaining. Yahoo and google provides tweaked your keyboard to increase far better malfunction correction, and there?s furthermore a in-line spell checker. The complete expertise is definitely obviously specifically designed to get 720p displays, when using the program links vanishing after you observe a video clip to get a full-in widescreen expertise.
This is going to be available in November, which is just a month away. So many will be having our ice cream sandwich very soon, although if you are a developer the SDK is currently available now to start building applications.
Oct 18, 2011 | News
So in San Francisco the CEO of Twitter Dick Costolo has brought forth some numbers at a dinner for the Web 2.0 Summit. The company had around 90 million tweets per day in Sept. of 2010 and reported at the beginning of this year it was around 100 million, well now they are 1/4 billion tweets per day as this month. So that means twitter has about a billion tweets ever say 4-5 days which is outstanding. He also went on to say that iOS 5 twitter integration has helped tremendously. Twitter sign ups have gone up by 3x the normal amount since the release of iOS5. Twitter is really gaining steam here and with the iOS 5 integration they will only continue to grow at a rapid pace.
