WhatsApp says it’s not selling to Google after all
Speculation was rife yesterday that messaging app WhatsApp was reportedly in talks to sell itself to Google for a nice little (billion-dollar) sum.
But the company has now denied that this is the case - although it's not clear whether the fact is that talks have ended or that talks were never happening.
Neeraj Arora, WhatsApp's business development head, told AllThingsDigital that the company is in fact "not holding sales talks with Google", though declined to say more than that. Read more...
Floodgates to open for Windows RT tablets in January
Got your scorecard ready? The road to Windows RT has been filled with speculation about the software (we're still faced with many unanswered questions), but the hardware side's been just as hard to nail down.
Right now, we know for a fact that Microsoft has promised to ship the Surface tablet for Windows RT when Windows 8 hits "general availability" on Oct. 26. Microsoft's RT tablet will run on an Nvidia ARM chip, but we don't know which one.
Just about everything else we know has appeared in dribs and drabs over the past few months. Microsoft has only mentioned and demoed Windows RT machines based on ARM chips from three manufacturers: Nvidia, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm. And we've been hearing for months that Microsoft allowed each of the chip providers to choose just two hardware manufacturers. Read more...
Oracle rigs MySQL for NoSQL-like access
Speculation has been running rampant that Oracle may introduce its own NoSQL database at the OpenWorld conference, to be held next week in San Francisco.
While Oracle thus far has been quiet about the rise of the NoSQL database movement over the past few years, its developers have been at work devising ways to bring NoSQL-like speed and flexibility to its MySQL open-source database.
For OpenWorld, Oracle has scheduled a number of sessions and demonstrations (PDF) devoted to something called the Oracle NoSQL Database. The work that the company has done thus far to equip MySQL with NonSQL functionality might provide a clue as to the nature of this new offering.
Oracle's work has focused on combining the responsiveness of NoSQL systems with the full range of options of SQL-based systems such as Oracle's own. Read more...
How to get your Mac ready for Lion
Now that Apple has released to developers the golden master of Lion (Mac OS X 10.7) -- typically the final non-public version before the official release -- speculation is mounting as to when the next major version of Mac OS X will hit the street. But the golden master signifies something more important on a practical level: It's time to start getting our Macs ready for Lion.
Apple is advertising Lion as the easiest-to-install version of Mac OS X yet, and that may be true. But there are still a few things you can do right now to ensure that your Mac is ready for 10.7 when the update finally arrives.
What you need
To install Lion, you need a Mac with a minimum of 2GB of RAM and one of the following Intel processors: Intel Core 2 Duo, i3, i5, i7, or Xeon -- early Intel-based Macs with Core Solo or Core Duo processors aren't compatible. You can determine your Mac's processor and the amount of installed RAM by choosing About This Mac from the Apple menu and looking at the Processor and Memory lines, respectively. Read more...