The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Cisco and China are involving in a Chinese project to install half a million surveillance cameras in the city of Chongqing. They’ll supposedly be used merely to help prevent crime, but the WSJ has a quote from HP’s Todd Bradley that’s kind of chilling: “It’s not my job to really understand what they’re going to use it for.”
Author Archive | Harry McCracken
HP Responds to TouchPad Reviews
Almost all of the reviews of HP’s TouchPad (here’s mine) have the same gist: “This tablet is extremely rough, but WebOS is neat .” HP can apparently live with that.
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Zuck, Google+ Superstar
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg seems to have more friends on Google+ than anyone else. I wonder who’s more embarrassed by that–Zuck or Google?
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More WebOS to Come
PreCentral says it has info on HP’s plans for WebOS devices for the rest of the year–including a 64GB white TouchPad, an AT&T “4G” model, a 7-inch tablet, and the Pre 3. Sounds interesting–but judging from the first TouchPad, what WebOS really, really needs is a thorough debugging.
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My First Thirteen Questions About Google+
I’ve been using Google+ a lot since it was announced last Tuesday, but I haven’t written much about it yet. There are a number of reasons why I’ve been semi-mum. For one thing, I have a lousy track record when it comes to gut reactions about Google social services. I thought Buzz was intriguing, and I didn’t instantly figure out the privacy issues. And I had visions of Google Wave leading to an epic war between Google and Microsoft.
I don’t completely blame myself for failing to instantly figure out that Buzz and Wave would be very nearly DOA. The most important part of social networks is the social aspect, and that’s impossible to judge from a demo or a closed beta test. And since Google+ still isn’t open to the general public, it’s still early to be rendering any sort of long-range verdict on it.
Still, after almost a week, I’m beginning to form impressions of this service–mostly positive ones–and even if I don’t have all the answers, I have lots of questions.
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Happy 235th Birthday, America!
What better way for Technologizer to celebrate Independence Day than with a drawing of Uncle Sam from one of many, many patents involving the old gent?
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Apple OKs OS X Virtualization
For some folks–developers, especially–this is great news: Apple says you can run virtualized copies of OS X 10.7 Lion, as long as you’re doing it on a Mac with a paid-for copy of the operating system.
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The Google+/Picasa Connection
One of the big questions about Google+ is “how does all this new stuff relate to all of Google’s old stuff?” In some cases, new features (like Google+ photo sharing) will be connected to existing ones (such as Picasa Web Albums). In others, I’m pretty positive, Google+ will replace weaker Google offerings (you can read Buzz within G+, which just makes it all the more clear that Buzz will be redundant if G+ catches on).
For now, things are a tad confusing. Over at ReadWriteWeb, Sarah Perez explains how Google+ interconnects with Picasa. The good news is that you can now get unlimited photo storage; the bad news is that there are catches and complications.
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TechCrunch: Facbook’s Announcement Next Week is Skype Video Chat
Maybe Facebook’s event next week doesn’t relate to the iPad at all. TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington says that the news is something entirely unrelated, but potentially cool: Skype-powered video chat within Facebook.
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Gmail: What a Difference a Little White Space Makes
Almost every week is a big week for Google news–but this one has been particularly jam-packed. There’s Google+, its pretty cool answer to Facebook. There’s the refreshed Google home page. There are rumors that it’s interested in buying Hulu.
But my favorite Google news of the week is an item that doesn’t sound all that explosive: it released a couple of new themes for Gmail. I’m using one of them now. All it does is to give Gmail a bit of the new look that’s also visible in Google+ and the revised home page. And that turns out to be a big deal.