Archive | February, 2011
HTC’s Flyer Tablet Includes OnLive Gaming
HTC’s $40 million investment in OnLive is already coming to fruition, with OnLive’s streaming video game service baked into HTC’s upcoming Flyer tablet.
OnLive games, which are processed on remote servers and streamed as compressed audio and video, will be playable on the tablet using touch screen controls. In a demonstration video posted by Slashgear, OnLive Chief Executive Steve Perlman plays through a version of Virtua Tennis 2009 whose controls have been retooled for the tablet. HTC’s press release says a “variety of games” will be available including Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, NBA 2K11 and Lego Harry Potter.
The Flyer can also plug into televisions via HDMI for big-screen play with the OnLive game controller, effectively turning the tablet into a MicroConsole set-top box.
HTC Enters the Tablet Wars
15. February 2011
HTC’s inevitable tablet looks interesting: It’s got…a stylus! That might make it a winner for those of us who like to draw on computers. I am, however, worried about the fact that it runs Android Gingerbread, not Honeycomb. Sounds like Android tablets may be just as fragmented as their smartphone brethren.
Google Farms Out Blocking of Content Farms to Users
14. February 2011
So far, Google has been reluctant to directly block or demote content farms such as AOL’s Yahoo’s Associated Content and Demand Media’s eHow, which push out cheaply-produced articles intended mainly to appease Google’s search algorithms. But now it’s giving the banhammer to users with a Chrome extension.
Personal Blocklist lets you block entire web domains from Google searches. You’re not technically limited to content farms, either; the option to block a domain appears next to every search result.
Google isn’t hiding the fact that this is crowdsourced research. If you use the extension and block a site, Google collects that information, and “will study the resulting feedback and explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results.” In other words, if enough people block Associated Content or eHow, Google may lower the PageRanks of those domains.
I’d Buy It–But Steve Jobs Surely Wouldn’t
14. February 2011
I love the idea of an iPhone with a physical keyboard–as far as I’m concerned, a handset that had the upcoming HP Pre 3′s hardware and Apple’s iOS would be nearly perfect–but I have trouble believing that this Taiwanese rumor about a possible keyboarded iPhone is anything but…an impossibility.
There it is, a 7-inch Honeycomb Tablet
14. February 2011
Last week I wistfully wondered when we’ll see more 7-inch tablets running proper tablet operating systems. Acer might be one to deliver with the Iconia A100, GigaOM’s Kevin Tofel reports. It’s launching in the United Kingdom in April, but no word on a U.S. release date.
Windows Phone 7 Will Get Competitive in 2011
14. February 2011
A couple of Windows Phone 7 updates, coming this year, will give Microsoft’s smartphone operating system some much-needed parity with other platforms.
The first update, which according to Ina Fried at All Things D will be out by March, adds copy-and-paste, performance tweaks and support for the CDMA networks of Sprint and Verizon Wireless, clearing the way for new handsets from those carriers.
A meatier update is due in the second half of 2011, and will add Internet Explorer 9 Mobile (with HTML5 support), Twitter integration into the People Hub, support for SkyDrive online storage and — wait for it — third-party multitasking. As VentureBeat’s Devindra Hardawar reports, Windows Phone 7 will use a card-like interface for multitasking, kind of like HP’s WebOS and Research in Motion’s Playbook tablet. No word on voice-guided Bing Maps navigation or custom ring tones, though. Bummer.
Four Reasons Why a Cloud-based iOS is Ridiculous (For Now)
14. February 2011
While there’s good business in posting Apple rumors, sometimes one comes along that is just so out there that you have to think, where do they get this stuff? The latest is that the newly rumored “iPhone Nano” will sport a cloud-based OS. While “to the cloud” has become a popular idea in tech, the mobile world is not ready to join it just yet.
Why wouldn’t a cloud-based OS work for the newest Apple iPhone? There’s a multitude of reasons, and all seem to indicate that Cult of Mac’s sources (the originator of this rumor) may be a little off base.
Adobe to Bring a Better Flash to Mobile Gadgets
14. February 2011
At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona–which I’m not attending this year–Adobe has announced that it’s planning to bring Stage Video, the FlashPlayer 10.2 feature that permits fast video playback that doesn’t kill the battery–to mobile devices. It’ll be available on Android and for RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook tablet; the Android version will require Android 3.0 Honeycomb, which means it’ll work on tablets such as the Xoom but not on any currently-available Android smartphones.
Is the “iPhone Nano” Really an iPhone Shuffle?
14. February 2011
As Jared reported on Thursday, rumors are back that Apple is working on an “iPhone Nano”–a smaller, cheaper phone designed to be sold without a carrier contract. (The idea dates back to at least 2008, but the media outlets writing about the latest version–including The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg–give it new credibility.)
Now Leander Kahney of Cult of Mac is reporting a new twist: The “iPhone Nano” supposedly has no storage, and instead streams entertainment from the cloud, using the technology Apple picked up when it bought (and shuttered) LaLa.
As Leander says, the notion of an iPhone having no storage doesn’t make sense. But maybe it has the bare minimum it needs to function, rather than the massive amounts–4GB, 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB–that are mandatory for phones that store music and movies locally.
The Xperia Play’s Stopgap: Tweaked Android Games
14. February 2011
The Xperia Play has been Sony Ericsson’s worst-kept secret since the PSP Go. The first rumors popped up in August, and photos and videos followed in December. Engadget got its hands on the Xperia Play before Sony Ericsson even acknowledged the phone’s existence.
But until this week’s official announcement, Sony Ericsson has managed to keep a lid on the most important aspect of all: the games that the Xperia Play will support. At launch, there will be 50 of them, but many won’t come from Sony or even fall under the Playstation brand. Instead, publishers such as Gameloft and Electronic Arts are retooling some of their existing Android games to work with the Xperia Play’s slide-out set of buttons and thumb pads. That was unexpected.
The Glorious Minimalism of the Backside of the Verizon iPhone
13. February 2011
At the moment, I’m walking around with two iPhone 4s in my pocket: my personal AT&T phone, and a Verizon iPhone lent to me by Apple for review. (More thoughts on it coming up.)
As everyone reading this knows by now, the two flavors of iPhone are close to identical. So much so that I keep getting confused about which one is which–at least until I turn them on, whereupon I can check out the carrier identifier in the upper left-hand corner.
Without turning the phones on, I could examine the slightly different placement of the antennas and mute switches. But there’s a more obvious difference that I’ve found quite handy: The Verizon iPhone has way less fine type on its back, and is missing an entire row of regulatory logos.
By happy coincidence, I just read an Ars Technica piece by Casey Johnston that explains the stuff on the back of iPhones, and helped me figure out why there’s so much less of it on the new Verizon model.
JC Penney Wise, Pound Foolish
13. February 2011
The New York Times’ David Segal has a fascinating story up on sleazy search optimization done on behalf of JC Penney (who says it doesn’t know anything about it). And Vanessa Fox of Search Engine Land provides some good follow up.
In my own personal searches on Google, I’m still satisfied most of the time–maybe because they rarely involve shopping and other commercial activity–but there’s no doubt that the question of whether Google is fundamentally broken is one of tech’s biggest stories at the moment.
Verizon iPhone 4 Launch: Why the Lack of iLines?
12. February 2011
I went to my local Apple Store yesterday night, in the wake of yesterday’s release of the Verizon iPhone 4. It was an utter mob scene.
Of course, it’s almost always an utter mob scene in there–and tonight, it was no more crazy than usual. I commented on the lack of Verizon-induced insanity to a salesguy. “We’re surprised ourselves,” he said.
When Apple releases a new iPhone, there are supposed to be hordes of folks willing to show up at the crack of dawn and wait for hours to get their hands on one. Everybody knows that. But this time, it didn’t happen–across the country, people did show up to buy Verizon iPhones, but not in droves.
Why the startling degree of normalcy? A few theories…
Last Gadget Standing: The Video
11. February 2011
If you weren’t at our Last Gadget Standing event at CES last month, here’s a chance to see the demo that won it all in the applause-o-meter audience voting: the company was Acer and its gadget was the Iconia two-screen laptop. The theme? Watch for yourself!
(The Acer folks shot this video record of their win.) Also seen in the clip: LGS creator Robin Raskin, celebrity cohosts Jon Hein and Gary Dell’Abate, Laptop Magazine’s Avram Piltch, and…me.
Okay, Everybody Calm Down About Sony and iTunes
11. February 2011
I’m seeing a lot of frantic stories in the tech blogosphere today over some comments a Sony executive made about iTunes.
Speaking to The Age, Sony Computer Entertainment Australia Chief Executive Michal Ephraim said his company would like to get away from iTunes, if only it could move to a credible alternative, such as the Sony Music subscription service that’s rolling out now.
But thanks to some eye-catching headlines (including The Age’s own), Ephraim’s remarks got twisted into a threat to abandon the most popular music download service in the world. You need only look at the quotes to see that’s not the case.
Where, Oh Where, is the 7-inch Tablet of My Dreams?
11. February 2011
Another day, another tablet with a 9- or 10-inch screen.
The latest rumor from Pocket-Lint is that Samsung is about to announce a 10.1-inch Android tablet, running Honeycomb. It’ll reportedly have a dual-core processor, an 8-megapixel camera — the usual stuff.
But what happened to Samsung’s appetite for smaller tablets? Was the Galaxy Tab sized at 7 inches simply due to the unavailability of proper tablet apps, and the relative ease of blowing up smartphone apps to a 7-inch screen?
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15. February 2011
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