Author Archive | David Worthington

Alleged iPhone 3.0 Specs and Ship Date Leak

Posted by David Worthington on May 19, 2009 at 4:53 pm

An Apple enthusiast blog may have gotten its hands on the holy grail of gadget news: the specs and final ship date for the next iPhone. Apple iPhone Apps reports that the next generation smart phone will ship on July 17 with an assortment of new hardware features.

Before I comment about the veracity of the report, and all of the cool alleged features, it has to be said that this news breaking today is unfortunate for Palm, which announced that the Pre would be shipping on Jun. 6 for US$199.99 (after rebate) earlier today.

If this unconfirmed report is true, the iPhone 3.0’s feature set easily eclipses the Pre. Here’s the breakdown:

* 32GB and 16GB to replace current capacities
* $199 and $299 pricebpoints to be maintained
* 3.2 megapixel camera
* Video recording and editing capabilities
* Ability to send a picture and video via MMS
* Discontinuation of the metal band surrounding the edge of the device
* OLED screen
* 150% more battery life
* Double the RAM and processing power
* Built-in FM transmitter
* Apple logo on the back to light up
* Rubber-tread backing
* Sleeker design
* Built-in compass
* Use of the camera, GPS, compass, and Google maps to identify photo and inform about photo locations.
* Turn by turn directions

That is a compelling list of features, and logical enough that I have to suspend my skepticism. Everything makes sense for a next generation iPhone–except for the costly OLED screen. However, economies of scale may solve that problem.

It is also high time that OLEDs are being used in more devices. They eliminate the back it glare of LCDs screens, and use far less energy. If Apple is serious about making gaming one of the iPhone’s selling points, this is the way to go.

Indeed, many features solve problems or offer a natural progression from today’s iPhone, and this is a feasible feature set. My biggest gripes are the current phone’s battery life, camera, and storage capacity.

Removing the metal band could improve reception, and firming up its grip is also a good idea that I’m certain many customers have asked for. The iPhone is slippery without a case, and dropping mine would mean a costly $500 mistake.

Couple these specs with the new firmware and rumored cheaper data plans, and we would have a winner. I can’t imagine that Apple won’t continue to outshine the competition–unless one of them pulls a rabbit out of its hat.

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iPhone 3.0 Draws Closer

Posted by David Worthington on May 18, 2009 at 8:01 pm

Apple’s iPhone 3.0 operating system upgrade moved step closer to its release as the company began external testing of its push notification service today, according to Cnet.

Apple asked third-party application developers to test out the AP’s iPhone news app in an e-mail. The AP app is the first third-party program to incorporate push notifications on the iPhone platform–a long-promised feature that has been restricted to Apple’s own core applications.

Apple outlined push notifications in March at its press event in March. It had previously promised to deliver the feature in September 2008, but scuttled its plans when the notifications proved difficult to implement.

As an iPhone user, I am hoping that the testing goes smoothly and does not delay the iPhone 3.0 operating system’s expected release this summer. With the wide availability of advanced software testing and performance tools, it likely will, but as my mother used to say, “The proof is in the pudding.” I look forward to hearing reports about the AP app–and other push-enabled ones to come.

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Don’t Believe Everything You Read on Twitter

Posted by David Worthington on May 15, 2009 at 6:27 pm

Someone caused a bit of a kerfuffle on Twitter today after he or she tweeted that California’s controversial Proposition 8 had been overturned by the State Supreme Court, crediting @LATimes. Slight problem–it wasn’t true.

The court has taken the constitutionality of the amendment under its consideration, so it wasn’t unreasonable to believe that the LA Times somehow gotten the scoop on its decision. That is what just one one careless person came to believe.

The culprit tweeter linked a story written dated May 16, 2008, when the court overturned a law barring same-sex marriage, because it violated the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee.

Any “followers” who clicked the link and examined the date on the story would have discovered that, but many chose to not take the extra step to verify what they read, and reflexively re-tweeted the “news.” Word inevitably made it way back to the LA Times’ own Twitter feed where its 19,700-plus followers began to see it– a perfect storm of misinformation.

There is a degree of trust built into the social mesh of Twitter, because people select who they want to follow. That trus does not substitute the fact that most people that blog about news on Twitter are not journalists, and do not have editors verifying their work. Twitter is place to find news, but it is not a news source.

Another root cause is the at-a-glance, all-the-world in 140 characters, aspect of it all. People consume information rapidly, and can react to something that they see on Twitter without thinking. Even friends make mistakes, and in this case, friends of friends propagated that mistake.

There are consequences when just anyone can post something online –consequences that could affect people’s lives, reputations, and even their livelihood. That is why print publications have editors, and television networks have guards placed outside of newsrooms. People’s emotions and legal rights were needlessly toyed with today.

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WiGig: A Cure for Living-Room Cable Clutter?

Posted by David Worthington on May 8, 2009 at 12:03 am

Dell, Intel, Microsoft, and Panasonic are forming an industry consortium called WiGig Alliance that will create a new high-speed wireless specification for PCs and devices capable of transmitting the contents of a DVD across a living room within a matter of seconds.

WiGig transmits data at 6 gigabits per second–far beyond the maximum transfer capacity of today’s Wi-Fi networks. In comparison to Wi-Fi, WiGig has a limited range and cannot work across a large household.

Instead of wiring the entire home, WiGig would be used to connect an ecosystem of home entertainment devices such as set top boxes and Blu-ray players, in addition to networking digital video cameras and cell phones. It is backed by a cadre of companies ranging from chipmakers including Broadcom, Marvell, and MediaTek to consumer electronics companies such as LG Electronics, NEC, and Samsung.

The WiGig Alliance will likely compete with Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDi), a specification that was designed by another group of companies for the same purpose. It should also supercede WirelessHD (which Intel also supports), a specification that is limited to connecting TVs with DVD players.

Something like WiGig will play a critical role in the evolution of the digital home. The tangle of wires that we have all grown accustomed to should become a relic of the past. As more people upgrade to broadband services and digital cable, the alphabet soup of acronyms that exists today will be whittled down to a few core standards.

I hope that the ultimate WiGig specification is open when it is published, and caution against adopting the technology if it is not. A consortium does not count as a standards body. There could be clear, affordable and nondiscriminatory licensing terms for its use in devices and software. Ideally, WiGig should be submitted to a standards body such as ISO International.

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BitTorrent Search Aggregator Filters Copyrighted Content

Posted by David Worthington on May 6, 2009 at 4:51 pm

In a win for big media companies, Mininova, a popular torrent search Web site, today deployed a content recognition system that removes any file linking to allegedly copyrighted content, and will permanently ban those files from being re-uploaded.

Torrents are a terrific way to distribute large files, but let’s face it: the technology has been used largely for piracy, despite its many merits. People don’t go to sites like Mininova to download Linux faster.

While sites that aggregate torrents are not hosting illegally gotten content themselves, certain ones know full well that they are facilitating it. They are just hiding behind the BitTorrent architecture.

There are various esoteric arguments made in defense of torrent search Web sites such as “a crime can be committed with product X, but the people that sell it are not responsible for the action Y.” I don’t buy that. There is a correlation between content piracy and torrent search sites, and everyone knows it. Pirate Bay is the perfect example.

Pirate Bay has infamously flaunted the fact that people could go to its site to locate copyrighted content, but argued that it was not engaging in any illegal acts due to the decentralized nature of torrent file distribution and the relative permissiveness of Sweden’s national copyright laws. The courts ruled otherwise.

The letters Pirate Bay has published from a gaggle of angry attorneys are oftentimes hilarious and amusing in a punk rock “stick it to the man” sort of way, but are also wildly adolescent. Web sites that profit from posting torrents files should perform due diligence to ensure that copyrights are not being violated as a consequence–period.

Mininova is cooperating with an unnamed association that represents copyright owners. It is doing the responsible thing, even if it was induced into taking action by the threat of lawsuits. The Web can’t be the wild wild west forever, and a business should not exist simply to enable illegal acts.

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Identity Theft Protections Put Off Until Tomorrow–Again

Posted by David Worthington on May 4, 2009 at 6:53 pm

Measures that would protect consumers from identity theft have been delayed, because many businesses are not compliant yet with federal regulations. Fortunately, there are solutions to help them protect your privacy.

In 2007, the United States Federal Trade Commission issued its final rules on identity theft “red flags” and address discrepancies. Fast forward to today, and the implementation of those rules has been delayed for a second time until August 1st.

The rules are intended to protect consumers from identity threat by governing how businesses that deal with credit handle financial information. Industries affected by the rules include healthcare providers (doctors, hospitals), utilities (gas, electric, telephone, cable TV, etc.), auto (car, motorcycle, RV dealerships), real estate (brokers, lenders), banks and credit unions and more, according to Compliance Coach, a company that sells risk assessment software.

It was an e-mail pitch from Compliance Coach about the delay that inspired me to write this article. The delay has occurred due in part to the fact that many businesses are not yet compliant with the rules or are unaware that they applies to them, the company says. It’s onto something.

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with Peter Coffee, director of platform research at Salesforce.com. Peter said that it would be okay for me to disclose that a significant portion of IT professionals (not all of who were Salesforce customers), surveyed in third party research that it uses internally, understand that they are not compliant with existing laws and legal rulings that affect IT operations.

He noted in a follow-up e-mail that the research he discussed is not a statement of the legal opinions of the company’s corporate counsel, nor is it a formal statement of the assurances provided by the team that is headed by its chief trust officer.

Salesforce needs to think hard about compliance, because its customers are forced to tackle issues around data when they use its services. The cloud computing model that Salesforce pioneered–where data is hosted by a third party on remote servers–forces companies to build applications that abide by regulations that govern data, such as who can access it, and where it can exist.

Today’s delay is yet another example of how traditional IT has trouble keeping pace with cloud services. It is simply too difficult for many businesses to build the systems that they need to be compliant.

Cloud services can help organizations with limited IT resources meet today’s standards for business processes and data, because cloud providers must meet those considerations as part of their business model. The easier that is for businesses to be compliant, the safer your personal information becomes. Now let’s just hope that the FTC’s new protections go into effect with no further delays.

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A Porcine Panic Button for Your iPhone

Posted by David Worthington on May 1, 2009 at 6:05 pm

An iPhone application called Swine Flu Tracker–not yet enables users to track confirmed cases of the flu, check health alerts, and to learn about about its symptoms.

When the Black Plagues struck Europe during the middle ages, communication was poor, and pestilence spread rapidly before anyone had an indication of where it might strike next.

The 1918 flu pandemic was better understood, but the public was still largely in the dark save for newspaper reports. Nearly a century later, technology has made it possible to track pandemics from your pocket.

Web 2.0 technologies are being leveraged in innovative ways to monitor the spread of the flue. It’s an intriguing exercise of modern messaging platforms, and in the event of a real emergency, people could turn to the Web to help themselves, and more importantly, help each another. But reality is that most places in the world are not in a state of emergency.

I am not going to discount the public health threat posed by the H1N1 (Swine Flu) virus, and I deeply regret that toll it has taken on human lives. When healthy young adults are killed by their own immune response, it’s an even greater tragedy.

The overall public understands that the virus could mutate – that is why governments are taking serious measures to monitor it. Mechanisms are in place throughout the world to safeguard public health. In the United States, the Centers for Disease control even has a Twitter account (@CDCFlu) where relevant information is posted.

That said, my advise is not to install this application (assuming Apple gives its okay) unless you enjoy self abuse or want to be nominated as hypochondriac of the year. Want to track where the virus has spread? Try Google Maps.

Unless you are told otherwise by the authorities, please chill out, go outside, enjoy the weekend, and remember to wash your hands. If you think you may be ill, stay away from crowds like you should any other time that you are sick. Common sense isn’t rocket science, but you may need a rocket scientist’s salary to pay for anti-anxiety medications if you install this application.

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Apple is Headhunting Gaming Executives

Posted by David Worthington on April 30, 2009 at 9:31 pm

The evidence keeps coming that Apple is getting serious about gaming. In just the past week, the company has hired a senior Xbox executive from Microsoft, and earlier this week, a graphics expert from ATI. Apple’s headhunting follows its investment in a graphics chip maker in December.

Today, Gizmodo reported that Apple now employs Richard Teversham, the former senior European director of business, insights and strategy for the Xbox. Bob Drebin, CTO of AMD’s graphics group, and creator of Nintendo GameCube’s graphic chip, joined Apple earlier this week.

In December, Apple took a 3.6% ownership stake in UK-based chip maker Imagination, and licensed its PowerVR graphics technology. PowerVR provides advanced graphics capabilities including OpenGL ES 2.0 support, and shader-based 3D graphics.

iPhone games are becoming more clever, and the platform’s library of titles is increasing day by day. While most next generation iPhone rumors are vague, Apple’s gaming-related investments are transparent. It’ll be fascinating to see what the results are.

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Office 2007 Service Pack Boosts Performance

Posted by David Worthington on April 29, 2009 at 12:52 pm

Service Packs are usually limited to fixing bugs, but Microsoft has added some major pep to Office 2007 with Service Pack 2 (SP2). Microsoft says that SP2 is a “major performance enhancement,” and anecdotally, that is what I’m hearing from Office users.

Office 2007 SP2 became available yesterday, and will be available via Microsoft Update in August. It may be downloaded from Microsoft’s Web site.

Jane Liles, group program manager, Office Sustained Engineering at Microsoft detailed the performance tweaks in a prepared statement. “Outlook 2007 SP2 is 26 percent faster than its predecessor on a set of common e-mail tasks and is even faster, 35 percent, with larger mailboxes,” she said.

Further, she added that users now greater control over visual representation of data in Excel, and that Microsoft Office SharePoint Server was given security and performance updates in addition to support for the Firefox browser.

For what it’s worth, a friend that works for a financial company IM’d me today saying that Excel 2007 is now noticeably faster. I’m also seeing similar comments being made in forums across the Web. If you’ve already made the upgrade, feel free to leave a comment here.

Even more importantly, SP2 adds significant support for open document formats. The average user may not notice it, but SP2 makes great strides toward interoperability with support for non-Microsoft document formats such as OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.1, PDF 1.5, and PDF/A.

Now, I just wonder what the incentive will be to upgrade to Office 14. The only thing that I can thing of offhand are the forthcoming Office Web services. That, and Microsoft is holding off support for ISO International standardized Open XML until that release.

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