Windows 8 to Sport a Store?

If  Windows 8 doesn’t include an app store, it’ll be a stunner.

Not No cable. Just Less Cable

Peter Kafka of All Things Digital wonders if consumers are engaging in “cable shaving”–dumping premium channels such as HBO for Internet TV, but keeping the basic stuff–instead of out-and-out cable cutting.

Internet Explorer 10. Yes, Already!

It’s been less than a month since Microsoft released the final version of Internet Explorer 9, but it’s already unleashing a sneak peek at IE10. As with IE9, it’s starting with a nearly interface-less “Platform Preview” that’s all about the rendering engine–and especially HTML5 support–not features.

The company isn’t saying when IE10 will ship, but if it sticks to its typical schedule it might be about a year away–which would be quick on the heels of IE9 by Microsoft standards.

Opera’s Turbo Mode Gets…Turboier?

Opera has released version 11.10 of its namesake browser. It says its unique Turbo mode, which compresses Web pages on the server side before sending them to you, is now 15 percent faster. There are also some improvements to Speed Dial, the original browser “page with thumbnails of your favorite sites” feature.

Cisco Axes Flip, Decides That ūmi Isn’t a Consumer Product

Wow. Networking kingpin Cisco, which had been making a major push into the home in recent years, has announced that it’s dramatically scaling back its consumer efforts. It’s shutting down its Flip camcorder group altogether, shifting the emphasis of its ūmi TV telepresence system (announced just six months ago) from the living room to business use, and refocusing its home networking business “for greater profitability and connection to the company’s core networking infrastructure as the network expands into a video platform in the home.” (I assume that means that it’ll concentrate its Linksys line on bread-and-butter products such as routers, rather than the media streamers and other consumer-electronics gear it’s sometimes experimented with.)
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New Toshibas: A More Powerful Portégé, Sleeker Full-Sized Laptops, and a Monitor to Go

Toshiba's Portégé R830

When people ask me for recommendations about highly portable Windows notebooks, I’m quick to mention Toshiba’s Portégé R700–a reasonably-priced three-pounder that has a 13.3″ screen and even manages to pack a DVD burner into its trim, good-looking case. Today, Toshiba is announcing the R700′s successor–as well as two larger notebooks and a unique portable display. The company recently gave me a preview of its new wares.

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Eye-Fi Rolls Out Direct Mode and a New Card

Eye-Fi, the folks who make the unique SD cards with built-in Wi-Fi, are just about ready to launch the most interesting improvement they’ve made since they unveiled their first cards. Previewed in January at CES, it’s called Direct Mode, and it will let you transfer photos from a camera with an Eye-Fi card directly and wirelessly to an iPhone (or other iOS device) or an Android phone or tablet–where you can then upload them to the Web using Eye-Fi’s  apps or use them with any phone app that involves photos, such as Instagram, Path, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter.

If, like me, you do much of your photography these days with a phone but aren’t crazy about the results, this is potentially a more exciting application of Eye-Fi’s technology than its original features, which require that you be within range of an available Wi-Fi network to get photos off your camera and onto the Internet.

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A Slightly Cheaper, Ad-Supported Kindle

Back in August of last year, Slate’s Farhad Majoo predicted that the Kindle–$139 as of the time he wrote his story–would be $99 by the holidays. His prognostication that didn’t pan out: the Kindle’s price stayed put at $139. But Amazon just announced a new Kindle at a lower price. It’s called the Kindle with Special Offers, and it’s the $139 Kindle with the new twist of promotions for deals at the bottom of the home screen and on the screen saver (but not within books themselves). It sells for $114, or $25 less than its ad-free counterpart.

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Google-Powered Trivia

Google and the New York Times have teamed up to create A Google a Day, a trivia game–solvable using Google, once you’ve figured out what to search for–that will appear in the Times above the crossword puzzle. It’s also available at AGoogleaDay.com.

The Future of Tablets: Also Unknowable

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about IDC’s projections for smartphone operating-system marketshare in 2015, and came to the conclusion that the whole exercise of predicting phone sales that far in the future is pointless–at least if you’re doing so in a form which suggests a scientific approach.

Now IDC rival Gartner is making some 2015 predictions of its own. These ones are for tablets, and they forecast that Apple’s share will fall under 50 percent, Android will surge to nearly 40 percent, and QNX, WebOS, MeeGo, and everything else will fight over the remainder of the market.

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Sony and George Hotz Settle PS3 Hacking Lawsuit

A nasty legal battle between Sony and Playstation 3 hacker George “geohot” Hotz has ended in an abrupt settlement.

A joint statement from Hotz and Sony, posted on the official Playstation Blog, says Hotz agreed to a permanent injunction — meaning he’ll wipe all his PS3 hacking resources from the web — as part of the settlement. Neither side is disclosing the full terms.

Sony sued Hotz and several other hackers in January, after he posted files and documentation for the PS3 jailbreak. As with Hotz’s work on the iPhone, the PS3 hack allowed users to install unauthorized software, including cheats, pirated software and the Other OS feature that Sony removed from the console a year ago. “It was never my intention to cause any users trouble or to make piracy easier,” Hotz said in a statement. Both parties say they’re happy to have the lawsuit behind them.

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That’s Quite a Bit of a Dough

The music industry thinks that file-sharing service LimeWire may have owe it $75 trillion–not a typo, and more money than the everyone in the recorded-music business has made in its entire history.

Netbooks: Not Exciting

MocoNews’s Tom Krazit says that recent developments at Acer and Google indicate that netbooks are down and out.

Adobe Teaches Photoshop to Talk to Tablets

A couple of weeks ago, Adobe demoed an ambitious experimental version of Photoshop for the iPad. The company isn’t saying when it might turn into a shipping product. But it is rolling out an intriguing new technology that involves both Photoshop and the iPad. It’s the Photoshop Touch Software Development Kit, an interface that allows apps on the iPad, Android tablets, and the BlackBerry PlayBook to shuttle information back and forth with Photoshop running on a Windows PC or a Mac via Wi-Fi. The Touch SDK can turn a tablet into an extension of the Photoshop interface or let a tablet app move images into Photoshop with one tap–and it’s a neat idea with loads of promise.

Adobe is announcing the Touch SDK as part of an extravaganza of Creative Suite news tonight that includes the announcement of Creative Suite 5.5 (an interim upgrade due within the next month with a bunch of new features, many of them focused on creating Flash and HTML 5 content and apps) and the introduction of subscription plans that will let users opt to pay monthly fees for ongoing access to the latest versions of the Creative Suite apps rather than buying them the traditional way (prices range from $35 a month for one app, such as Photoshop, to $129 a month for the Master Collection, which includes everything). Creative Suite 5.5′s version of Photoshop will support the SDK, but you won’t need to upgrade to it to use Photoshop-enabled tablet apps: Adobe will make a free update available for Photoshop 5.5 on May 3rd, the company says.

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WatchESPN on Your iPhone (but ReadFINEPRINT)

The future is upon us. As the content owners and cable/satellite providers maintain relevance by extending their offerings beyond the traditional television. And the most promising new service is WatchESPN. Not only does it enable streaming around the home, as seen with Time Warner and Cablevision apps, but it allows you to get live ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, and ESPN3 broadcasts on the go. Assuming you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad and subscribe to television services from providers ESPN has deals with (currently: Time Warner Cable, Verizon FiOS TV, Brighthouse).

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Companies Hacked: Track E-Mail and Avoid Spam

Another hack attack: The bad guys gained access to the database that stores customers’ names and e-mail addresses for Capital One, JPMorgan, Brookstone, BestBuy, TiVo, Walgreens, Kroger, and a long list of others.

The breach occurred through Epsilon, the firm each of the companies used to manage their e-mail communication with customers.

Chances are good that if you’ve corresponded with any of the companies, you’ll see phishing e-mails in your inbox. They’ll likely be messages for you to confirm a recent order, or reconfirm or update a credit card.

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