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31 Dec 2010 12:07

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Tech: Will China force Skype off the mainland? It’s a strong possibility

  • China wants to stamp out “unauthorized” VOIP services. The country’s Ministry of Information and Industry Technology said as much in a statement a couple of weeks ago – pointing out that the only services that could run VOIP services were China’s big telecom companies. Skype, still inexplicably partly owned by eBay for some reason, has been gaining major popularity in China lately. Which suggests that, while not explicitly stating it, that the Ministry’s statement was targeted at Skype, with the possibility of lawsuits. Skype, by the way, is on track to make $1 billion from an IPO next year, or more money than God. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

30 Dec 2010 21:44

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Tech: Web users like Facebook, Google, and…Bing?

  • facebook was the most-visited website this year. That is, of course, if you consider each Google offshoot site (Maps, Gmail) a separate website. If you count all Google properties, though, the search engine giant shoots up to #1, comprising 9.85% of all US visits. Some more weird bits: eBay was pushed out of the top ten by Bing (people actually use Bing?), and “facebook login” was the 2nd most-searched term of the year, which is odd, because it’s not like the login box on Facebook.com is terribly hard to find. source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 1 Comment • Permalink

30 Dec 2010 12:36

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Tech: So long, FaceTime: Skype can do iPhone 3G video chat now

  • So it’s official: Skype has just eaten Apple’s lunch in the video-chat market. Video chat over 3G? Interoperability? Apple can’t do either right now. As long as Skype can bounce back from their recent outage and keep customers happy with them, FaceTime will lose. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink

28 Dec 2010 22:54

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Tech: Nerds devise crazy way to make computers insanely fast

  • [Field Programmable Gate Arrays] are not used within standard computers because they are fairly difficult to program but their processing power is huge while their energy consumption is very small because they are so much quicker – so they are also a greener option.
  • University of Glagsow researcher Dr. Wim Vanderbauwhede • On the amazing technological discovery he and a team have discovered – a method of creating computer chips that runs 20 times faster than modern computers, and can fit 1,000 cores (rather than one or two) on a single processor. Basically if this actually gets on a real consumer-purchasable computer in the next few years, Moore’s Law will be matched – and then some. The programming issue is kind of a big deal – if they can figure out a way to make these mega-processors convenient to program, it could be a huge deal and a major computing breakthrough. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

27 Dec 2010 13:54

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Tech: Amazon has record-setting holiday season, led by the Kindle

  • 158 units sold each second, and 13.7 million overall source
  • » And the key factoid? Amazon’s best-selling item of all-time is the third-generation Kindle, which only came out a few months ago. That’s not the best-selling technology item. No. It managed to top the final book in the “Harry Potter” series for the mantle of Amazon’s biggest seller of all-time. At $139, guess they found their price point. And guess we have egg on our face.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

23 Dec 2010 04:30

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Tech: Christmas present for old tech nerds: Byte Magazine coming back!

  • Why did this magazine stop publishing? Byte, an overtly technical magazine, kinda faded away back in the U.S. back in 1998 (but continued publishing in other countries), which is too bad, because it had a style all its own – less what-if pontification like Wired, more nitty-gritty detail. For much of its existence in the U.S., it also had Jerry Pournelle, a science fiction author who interspersed geek stuff into homespun, slice-of-life back-page articles. But now, it’s coming back as a professional-oriented consumer technology magazine. The reboot should be interesting, because even though the magazine started one of the first online services (Byte Information eXchange, better known as BIX), they missed out on the social media revolution completely. When they shut down, the Pentium II was top of the line and Apple’s first iMac had yet to be released. Everything has changed since then. Hopefully Byte can catch up to current technology trends quickly. (Thanks to Digibarn for the scan of Byte’s very first issue.) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink

21 Dec 2010 11:05

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Tech: Guess that streaming-only Apple TV reboot really paid off

  • 1 million units sold in just three months; that’s not a bad start, guys source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

21 Dec 2010 10:19

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Tech: The Woz on net neutrality: Big telecom screws customers

  • Every time and in every way that the telecommunications careers have had power or control, we the people wind up getting screwed. Every audience that I speak this statement and phrase to bursts into applause.
  • Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak • Offering up his take on the whole net neutrality battle, an argument he explains in great detail by noting how he, being the inventive guy he is, has run up against the big telecommunications companies multiple times in his life, first with his dial-a-joke service (which he had to stop because the cost proved to be way too expensive), and then, years later, with his nice-guy attempt to wire up his entire neighborhood with free cable access (no, really). The Woz’s main argument in this case? “Local ISP’s should provide connection to the Internet but then it should be treated as though you own those wires and can choose what to do with them when and how you want to,” he writes, “as long as you don’t destruct them.” That’s something that a lot of people can certainly get behind, for sure. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

20 Dec 2010 20:46

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Tech: Apple lowers barrier of entry for advertisers, but not developers

  • Question of the day: Why is there a slick iAd creation program (the brand-new iAd Producer, above), but not a slick iPhone app creation program? Seems like Apple’s new development environment for advertising should exist in a similar form for iPhone app creators, lowering the barrier of entry for many app designers and getting more people in on the game. This seems like a direct competitor to Flash, by the way. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

20 Dec 2010 10:58

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Tech: AT&T makes huge investment in more wireless spectrum

  • $2 billion for fresh bandwidth; fewer dropped calls, possibly? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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