Technology archive for 2011-01-20

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:Sergey Brin: We've Touched 1 Percent Of What Social Search Can Be  —  With the news that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is stepping down and founder Larry Page is taking over in the role, both gentleman and Google co-founder Sergey Brin joined the earnings call to address questions from analysts.

If you're one of the few Google Voice users granted the option to port your existing phone number to the service--congratulations. This new feature is being tested by Google now, and will roll out to all users in the "near future," according to a company spokeswoman.

For as long as newsmakers have used Twitter, tweets have broken news stories. And yet for Techmeme, linking directly to tweets was never imperative - after all most newsworthy tweets are blogged within minutes, moreover with helpful context. But still it seemed as if something was missing in passing over tweets: we'd miss the first few minutes of certain developing stories as well as opportunities for including good commentary. We also missed the chance to let certain sources simply speak under their own byline. And so, at last, we've begun incorporating tweets on Techmeme. Our first tweet as a main headline is here, and appears below. What kind of tweets will appear on Techmeme? The tweets Techmeme will now link to fall mainly into two categories. First is the news-breaking variety, which directly offer new factual information, whether a straight-up product announcement (example), a new "rumor" report (example, via), a statement containing a veiled announcement (example), or a kind of inadvertently newsworthy announcement (example, via). Tweets of this sort, if interesting enough, will receive full Techmeme headlines of their own. The second type is commentary: reactions, responses, rebuttals, endorsements, or amplifications to news stories. Exceptional tweets of this sort may occasionally receive headlines, but more commonly will show up in Discussion, the smaller headlines collapsed by default on Techmeme. Even a tweet simply intended to share a link, if paired with[..]

Intel and Microsoft have been slow to adapt to the rise of tablets. Intel’s chief says there’s time to recover.

There's a gap between reports of malware generated from social networking sites and the potential threat businesses perceive, according to results of Sophos' s "Security Threat Report 2011".

Millions of e-mail addresses and passwords may have been stolen from Trapster, an online service that warns iPhone, Android and BlackBerry owners of police speed traps, the company said.

New version of the company's offering begins rollout today, allows IT management as well as collaboration with outsiders

Verizon files a challenge to FCC net neutrality rules.

HTML5 will be the last numbered version of the standard, a W3C working group member decrees

If you're one of the few Google Voice users granted the option to port your existing phone number to the service--congratulations. This new feature is being tested by Google now, and will roll out to all users in the "near future," according to a company spokeswoman.

The Samsung Galaxy S 4G will be the first smartphone to take advantage of T-Mobile's upgraded HSPA+ network with a theoretical downstream speed of 21M bps (bits per second), the companies announced on Thursday.

Google co-founder Larry Page will take over as Google CEO in April from Eric Schmidt, who will remain with the company as executive chairman.

Members of the U.S. IT sector are more confident now in their business prospects than they have been in the last year and a half, according to a new survey released by the Computing Technology Industry Association.

There's a gap between reports of malware generated from social networking sites and the potential threat businesses perceive, according to results of Sophos' s "Security Threat Report 2011".

Intel and Microsoft have been slow to adapt to the rise of tablets. Intel’s chief says there’s time to recover.

A Black Hat Conference is nothing if not quirky as security geeks try every stunt possible to show what a clueless world we live in when it comes to security. Anyway, here are some such moments from this week's event.

For those of you dear readers who get all a’twitter at the thought of cataloging, managing, and syncing vast databases between your Mac and iPhone, Apimac has a pair of presents: iDatabase 2 for Mac and iDatabase 4 for iPhone and iPod touch.

Verizon files a challenge to FCC net neutrality rules.

New version of the company's offering begins rollout today, allows IT management as well as collaboration with outsiders

Google co-founder Larry Page will take over as Google CEO in April from Eric Schmidt, who will remain with the company as executive chairman.

Millions of e-mail addresses and passwords may have been stolen from Trapster, an online service that warns iPhone, Android and BlackBerry owners of police speed traps, the company said.

Literary magazine McSweeney's updated its much-lauded iPhone app this week, converting it into a universal app optimized for iPad use. The latest version also features access to a new in-app e-bookstore.

Acer on Wednesday in a statement said that it has no plans to phase out netbooks as it increases its focus on tablets.

Traditional helpers in disaster relief, such as the U.N. and world governments, provided aid after a massive earthquake devastated Haiti in January 2010, leveled Port-au-Prince, claimed 230,000 lives and caused US$14 billion in damages.

Box.net has redesigned from the ground up the user interface of its cloud-hosted content management application, as well as expanded collaboration features and new real-time notification capabilities.

All of Google's strategic initiatives this year are about mobile, the company's CEO, Eric Schmidt, wrote in a guest article for the Harvard Business Review titled "Preparing for the Big Mobile Revolution."

You've written your LinkedIn summary and updated your experience field. You've joined a handful of groups and connected with colleagues. A few of them wrote you recommendations, but your activity on LinkedIn has been stagnant since.

All things considered, HTC doesn't do the best job of protecting its roadmap; indeed, the slides that leaked a little over a year ago ended up doing a fabulous job of showing us what was in the pipe for 2010, so we wouldn't doubt the massive spread that PocketNow published today. Starting at the top, we've got a device that looks like a trackpad-less evolution of the original Desire (pictured above), another that looks like an Aria-sized Nexus One in black (complete with old-school trackball), and an additional version of a buttonless phone that's got generic HTC branding in place of the Verizon logo in a picture unearthed by Phandroid a few days ago (pictured after the break).That's not all, though: there also seems to be a lower-end Android device with physical Send / End buttons and an optical trackpad underneath a smallish display accompanied by the usual four capacitive buttons. A device with a China Telecom logo on it is also in the mix, looking like a big-screened model that'll probably be ready to do battle with that 1.2GHz Droid X by a different name that just launched over there. Finally, there's a small, entry-level model that might succeed the Smart as HTC's Brew MP-powered flagbearer, though Android is obviously the thrust here. Specs and names are still a mystery across the board at this point, but as PocketNow says, we wouldn't be surprised to get details at MWC next month.Continue reading HTC leaks suggest big, small, buttonless, and Brew MP-based phones are[..]

Most of the CIOs I speak with are looking at the year ahead as an opportunity to drive innovation within their organizations, usually by automating back office activities. That's a good place to start. But the most aggressive are looking beyond running the IT shop more efficiently and effectively; they're also experimenting with new technologies that can increase profitability, improve competitiveness and attract new customers. We call them ambidextrous innovators.

Mistakes happen. Situations change. Yet very few outsourcing customers regularly check their outsourcing invoices against their original contracts on a regular basis. And that means they may be leaving thousands--or millions--on the table, says outsourcing consultants Adam Strichman and Mark Ruckman.

The Samsung Galaxy S 4G will be the first smartphone to take advantage of T-Mobile's upgraded HSPA+ network with a theoretical downstream speed of 21M bps (bits per second), the companies announced on Thursday.

HTML5 will be the last numbered version of the standard, a W3C working group member decrees

Verizon files a challenge to FCC net neutrality rules.

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:Google Grows Revenues 26% In 4th Quarter To $8.44 Billion [Slides]  —  Google has once again posted optimistic growth this quarter boasting $8.44 billion in revenue, and increase of 26% compared to fourth quarter of 2009 in which revenue was $6.67 billion.  Google beat the street easily …

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:Google's Founders & CEO Promised To Work Together Until 2024  —  Google CEO, Co-Founders Made Long-Term Promise from the Wall Street Journal reports Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, said they would work together until the year 2024.

In a massive shake-up of its board of directors -- perhaps prompted by a shareholder lawsuit regarding the exorbitant severance pay awarded former CEO Mark Hurd last summer -- Hewlett-Packard announced that four of its current board members would not be running for re-election

Apple's efforts in China appear to be paying off, an analyst said today, breaking into the market by doing an end-around the high price of Macs and selling less expensive smartphones and tablets.

mxhf writes "I just came back from a four-week vacation to Mexico. This is the country for Aztecs and Maya Ruins and we visited plenty of them. Needless to say we took thousands of pictures with two cameras. Having arrived back home I realize that my hard-disk does not have enough space left to hold the additional 16GB that I collected on the other side of the globe. Now, my hard disk already is 250GB. I work exclusively on a laptop and do not want to change this. I know that there larger disks today. But I figured that the time has come to finally move my image collection from my laptop to somewhere else. But where should I go? So, how do you store your photo collections? And how do you keep backups?. These are obviously images that I want to keep for my life. So the need to survive fires, burglaries, etc. I think the amount of data I have rules online storage out. Should I just get two USB disks and leave one at a reasonably save location? I think this must be a common problem today? And yes — before you ask — I do know that the first thing to do is to go through your collection and dump what is not worthwhile keeping." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google co-founder Larry Page is to take over as chief executive of the search giant in April, with Eric Schmidt moving to executive chairman role.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Verizon Communications is going to court to challenge the top U.S. telecommunications regulator, saying the FCC overstepped its authority with the recent adoption of open Internet rules.

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:Google Grows Revenues 23 Percent In Third Quarter (Earnings Slides)  —  Google released third quarter earnings a few minutes ago.  Above are the slides showing its results.  Revenues jumped 23 percent to $7.3 billion.  Net income was up 18 percent to $2.2 billion.

Verizon will challenge the Federal Communications Commission's Net neutrality issued as 2010 was winding down. The gist: The FCC doesn't have the Congressional authority to act.

The buzz out of Bloom Energy today about the latest strategy for its fuel cell energy servers (it will offer them "as a service") underscores the important of storage technology when it comes to...

Google reported a solid fourth quarter today, an announcement that included news of major shift at the company's executive levels.For the quarter ending December 31, the company reported $2.85...

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:LIVE: Google Explains Why Larry Page Is CEO  —  Google is about to kick off its quarterly earnings call, but a whole lot of people are going to more interested in people, not profits, today.  That's because Google is moving Eric Schmidt out of his CEO job, to be replaced by cofounder Larry Page.

Hewlett Packard moved to shake up its board of directors amid the resignation of CEO Mark Hurd last year. A handful of former technology executives were named to the board.

Members of the U.S. IT sector are more confident now in their business prospects than they have been in the last year and a half, according to a new survey released by the Computing Technology Industry Association.

Google co-founder Larry Page will take over as Google CEO in April from Eric Schmidt, who will remain with the company as executive chairman.

Verizon:Verizon Files Appeal in Federal Court Regarding FCC Net Neutrality Order  —  Verizon Communications on Thursday (Jan. 20) filed an appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, challenging the Federal Communications Commission's Report and Order on rules dealing with the issue of net neutrality.

Arik Hesseldahl / All Things Digital:Meg Whitman, Patricia Russo Among Five Joining HP Board  —  Here's the news from Hewlett-Packard only minutes old.