Microsoft’s secret weapon against Google — Office for iPad and Lion
For years Google has targeted Microsoft Office with its Google Docs and Google Apps Web-based productivity suite. Office still rules the roost, but Google has been making some headway. But versions of Office being developed for the iPad and OS X Lion may help seal Microsoft's lead.
The Daily reports that Microsoft is developing a version of Office for the iPad, as well as for OS X Lion.
The version for the iPad could be a Google stopper. The Daily says it is expected to sell for somewhere around $10, the price that Apple has set for its productivity apps Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Read more...
Cloud Seen Driving Data Center Traffic; to Surge by 2015
Cloud is in. The cloud, a significant component that would rewrite the future of information technology and video/content delivery, is being seen by conglomerates as an important arena to log on to. With more companies getting on to this new computing services terrain, the cloud is turning out to be the fastest growing component of data center traffic.
Estimates are that the cloud will grow four-fold at 33 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to touch the 4.8 zettabytes mark annually, by 2015. It has been pointed out that cloud comprises 11 percent of data center traffic, and would be up by 33 percent of the total by 2015. Read more...
Samsung finally wins one in patent war vs. Apple
Samsung Electronics has won its first legal battle against Apple in a patent lawsuit in Australia.
The Korean company had lost to Apple in Germany and the Netherlands due to court injunctions on the sales of Samsung products. The ruling by an Australian court, however, could mean a Samsung turnaround.
An Australian federal court Wednesday unanimously overturned the first ruling imposing a temporary block on the sale of the Samsung tablet PC Galaxy Tab 10.1. The ruling said Apple`s suit lacks logic in its claim of patent infringement and allowed Samsung to sell the Tab from Friday, lifting the ban on Samsung marketing the Tab in Australia. Read more...
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, ISPs, All Served With Streaming Site Blocking Demand
A trio of organizations representing the movie, cinema and TV industries have gone to court in France in an attempt to force Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and the country’s ISPs to block several streaming sites. The groups, which represent hundreds of video-related companies such as Paramount and Sony, want streaming sites blocked to Internet subscribers and delisted from search engines.
Following the introduction of a ’3 strikes’ mechanism targeting regular Internet users, as reported earlier this week moves are underway in France to strangle the finances of streaming and direct download (DDL) sites. Today the direction of the multi-pronged action becomes even more clear. Read more...
Unboxing the First Quad-Core Android Tablet
It's a tablet! It's a laptop! It's the first quad-core, Nvidia Tegra 3-powered mobile monster. The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime is most definitely here. We unboxed it at PCMag Labs, and we'll have a full review later today.
The Transformer Prime goes on sale in about two weeks for $499 (32GB) and $599 (64GB). The keyboard dock, which is almost a must here, costs an additional $149.
Besides being built around a powerful quad-core 1.4GHz processor, tablet has an 8-megapixel rear camera, a 10-inch, 1280-by-800 super bright "super-IPS" LCD screen, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Read more...
Email response times: Four ways to fight the urge to fire off a rapid reply
Technology is accelerating email response times, creating unrealistic expectations, email overload, errors and costly workplace stress.
A few years ago, a response to an email was expected within a few days or even a week. However, Mesmo Consultancy's latest survey reveals that today a quarter of us expect a response within the hour.
Over a third of us, expect a reply within two hours and over two-thirds within half a day. Only a quarter of us think a response within one day is acceptable and only seven percent of us are prepared to wait two days.
Today's always-on culture of email, smartphones and social media means we expect almost instant responses to our communications. Read more...
Technology v support: Amazon’s premium challenge
In order to compete in the public cloud with the Amazon juggernaut, rivals like Rackspace and Alcatel-Lucent are turning to value-added services to try to turn commoditised cloud computing into premium offerings.
It's unclear whether this will work. Once customers get habituated to "low cost and more than good enough", it's hard to convince them to pay more, particularly when Amazon Web Services has come to be the default public cloud option.
The stakes are high enough, however, that Amazon's competitors aren't about to shirk the fight.
That's the distinct impression I had when talking with Rackspace chief technology officer John Engates recently. Engates made it clear that his company's commitment to "fanatical support" is just as relevant in the cloud age as in yesterday's hosting market, and will continue to win Rackspace customers against Amazon's more impersonal approach. Read more...
Google JavaScript library offers access to APIs
Google this week began offering an alpha version of Google APIs Client Library for JavaScript, which provides access to HTTP-based APIs on the Web, as well as to many of Google's public APIs.
The library is intended to make it easier to use Google APIs, said Brendan O'Brien and Antonio Fuentes of the Google Developer Team in a blog post. "The client library is also flexible, supporting multiple browser environments including Chrome 8+, Firefox 3.5+, Internet Explorer 8+, Safari 4+, and Opera 11+. In addition, the JavaScript client library supports OAuth 2.0 authorization methods," Fuentes and O'Brien said. Read more...
Mobile spyware raises ethical, legal questions
In 2003, Atir Raihan began work on a product that has gone on to gain infamy in the world's security industry. His idea: to build a spyware program for mobile phones that would allow people to catch a cheating spouse.
"I remember eight years ago, having a drink with friends and telling them about my personal situation. It involved infidelity with an old girlfriend," Raihan recalled recently. Wouldn't it be good, he thought, if there were a technology that could help him get to the bottom of it?
Seeing a potential business opportunity, as well as a solution to his relationship dilemma, Raihan and his Thailand-based company, Flexispy, developed a product of the same name that can secretly track calls and texts made to and from a mobile phone. Read more...
Lawmakers express support for Internet sales tax
Several members of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voiced support Wednesday for legislation that would allow states to collect sales tax on Internet purchases.
Several lawmakers, joined at a hearing by representatives of Amazon.com and a Michigan musical instrument seller, called for Congress to pass one of three bills that would allow states to collect sales taxes from Internet-based sellers with no operations within their borders. Since a 1992 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, states are now allowed to collect sales taxes from sellers with no physical presence within their borders. Read more...
Scientists optimize 3D printer to create new bones
We won't be surprised if the time comes when we can print just about anything. Even today 3D printing is advanced enough to create toys, a fully-operational car, and even teeth and blood vessels. Now, researchers from the Washington State University have come up with a technique to make new bones using a commercially-available 3D printer they optimized for the study.
The repurposed printer sprays a plastic binder over a bed of bone-like calcium phosphate powder with silicon and zinc additives that double the strength of the man-made bone. This results in a sheet half a hair thin, so the process is repeated over and over again, building up layers of the ultra-thin sheet to create the structure. These artificial bones don't actually replace real ones — they act as a temporary scaffold on which new bone cells grow, eventually dissolving inside the body with no side effects. Read more...
The best iPhone blogging apps of 2011
Being a blogger may not be as difficult as being a firefighter or a doctor or even an accountant, but that doesn’t mean bloggers don’t need some help from time to time. Whether in need of inspiration for story ideas, or simply dying for ways to actually get their posts up, there were plenty of apps in 2011 that catered to the blogging crowd. Here are my picks for the five best apps for bloggers in 2011.
Pinterest (Free)
Blogging took many forms in 2011 but Pinterest, an app that takes what Tumblr started on the web and brings it to iOS, might be the most fascinating of the bunch going forward. Like Tumblr, the emphasis in Pinterest is on brevity. A picture with a brief caption fits the bill on a Pinterest post. But instead of posting a funny picture and calling it a day, the Pinterest app creates a collage of the things the user likes. As if the song “My Favorite Things” was turned into an app.
The app’s added social element — allowing users to re-pin and comment on things they liked from other people’s pages — completes the social cycle for this new kind of blogging. Long winded opinions are out, and showing off pictures of your new kicks are in. Read more...
Is Microsoft bringing Office to the iPad?
When a new customer considers buying an iPad, one of his first questions will often be whether it runs Microsoft Office. The productivity suite has been an integral part of desktop computing for decades, and some consumers will base their buying decision on its availability. If an unconfirmed report has any validity, Office will soon be available for the iPad.
Rumor has it that Microsoft is developing an iPad version of Office along with a Lion-optimized edition for Mac OS X. Microsoft allegedly wants the iPad app to have tight integration with the desktop version of Office; this would allow the company to sell the iPad suite for cheap. Apple’s iWork for iPad apps cost $10 each ($30 total), and that is supposedly the price Microsoft is targeting. Read more...
Lenovo planning Windows Phone devices for 2012 debut
Lenovo has been busy working on Android smartphones and tablets, but they’re going to start putting ARM to work on another mobile platform: Windows Phone.
Leaked images first appeared about a month ago, showing what looked like a Lenovo LePhone S2 — an Android device — running Windows Phone 7.5. At the time there had been no official announcement from the company, but LePhone Product Manager Yue Chen has now confirmed that Windows smartphones are definitely in the Lenovo product pipeline. Chen also stated that Lenovo has a “very clear release schedule,” though she didn’t share specifics — only that the first Windows-powered LePhone models will arrive during the second half of 2012. Read more...