If you’re looking to save a little time this holiday season by shopping on the mobile web, you’d do well to spend some time on Amazon’s mobile site, according to figures released this week from Compuware’s Gomez division. The online retailer’s destination fared the best in a study of 14 mobile sites studied by the developer of web optimization software, placing first in both response time (averaging 2.85 seconds) and availability (99.86 percent). Mobile sites from QVC and Newegg also performed well, Gomez said, while sites from Sears, Buy.com and Target each had an average response time of more than six seconds.
By Colin Gibbs, Wednesday, November 25, 2009 10:11 PST
In the wake of Google’s big announcement last week on Chrome OS, its netbook-focused operating system due to launch in late 2010, speculation is building as to what sort of response it may draw from the competition, especially Microsoft. Given that Google’s idea is to put a browser-centric look and architecture at the heart of its cloud-focused operating system, PC World thinks Redmond could respond with a so-called “Internet Explorer OS.” Meanwhile, InfoWorld imagines a scenario in which Microsoft conducts a full-frontal attack that starts with classifying Chrome OS as “desktop Linux” (Canonical, which makes the Linux distribution Ubuntu, has been helping Chrome OS take shape). In fact, Microsoft is unlikely to go on the attack at all.
By Sebastian Rupley, Wednesday, November 25, 2009 08:06 PST
Google this week expanded its coupon service to mobile just in time for Black Friday, enabling U.S. consumers to access and redeem the discounts via their phones. It’s an effort that could give the space a much-needed shove into the mainstream.
By Colin Gibbs, Wednesday, November 25, 2009 07:57 PST
Before web music service Spotify launched, serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky called it “Joost for music,” drawing a comparison with the once-promising web video provider. Now that Joost has sold off its assets for a pittance in a deal that came to light this morning, the comparison is no longer flattering –- but there are still plenty of parallels between the two companies. And the online music’s press darling of 2009 would be well-advised to learn from Joost’s mistakes — or it could wind up suffering a similar fate.
By Paul Bonanos, Tuesday, November 24, 2009 16:04 PST
White-hot consumer demand for the new Nook e-book reader is proving to be a mixed blessing for Barnes & Noble. Sold-out pre-orders for the device were a rare bit of good news in an otherwise gloomy fiscal second-quarter report issued today, but chasing demand for the Nook is forcing the bookseller to hike its investment in manufacturing. Regardless, executives at the book retailer think the e-book game is one that Barnes & Noble can win, thanks to its size and market power.
By Paul Sweeting, Tuesday, November 24, 2009 12:27 PST
IMPORTANT POINTSHeroku is adding about 1,000 apps to its platform every week
Heroku is seeing interest from non web developers.
Heroku has built its platform as a service cloud cheaply using Amazon's web services. Heroku, the San Francisco-based startup that offers a Ruby-focused cloud platform as a service, last week saw the number of apps deployed on its platform top 40,000, according to CEO Byron Sebastian. He joined the company after stints at BEA, EMC and most recently, SourceLabs, where he replaced co-founder James Lindenbaum as CEO. Heroku, which offered its services for free during its beta, started charging for its platform back in April. Sebastian stopped by our offices to give us a quick update on the state of Heroku.
By Om Malik, Monday, November 23, 2009 10:30 PST
Sometime over the last year you’ve marveled at the intersection of a real-time event and your social graph, whether it’s an earthquake, a big occasion like the Obama inauguration, or a football game for your alma mater. Suddenly, everything aligns in your Facebook and/or Twitter feed!
By Liz Gannes, Monday, November 23, 2009 09:29 PST
The Internet is abuzz over Google’s release of the open-source version of its Chrome OS, and for good reason. It’s free, which will save hardware manufacturers licensing fees, and it appears ideally suited for the netbooks that have become such a hot item for the mobile crowd (GigaOM Pro, sub. required). But Chrome is not without its detractors, and it’s worth remembering that Google isn’t King Midas — in fact, there’s a substantial list of Google products and services that have flopped, floundered or simply disappeared into the ether. Here are a few of the most memorable…
By Colin Gibbs, Saturday, November 21, 2009 11:00 PST
Layoffs are cropping up all over the tech industry, with workers at companies ranging from AOL to Adobe to Microsoft getting pink slips. But while most people know to turn to the big online job boards and social networks ranging from LinkedIn to Facebook to help land a new gig, there are a lot of off-the-beaten-track online paths that can be taken as well. Below are 12 proven tech job search resources that you may not be using yet. Good luck!
By Sebastian Rupley, Friday, November 20, 2009 15:10 PST
You’ve gotta hand it to Google: The company is never shy about throwing the proverbial spaghetti against the wall to see if it will stick. Over the years, it’s introduced countless projects that have gone through long beta cycles only to fail miserably — or achieve a degree of success far below what was expected. Google Docs, for example, was supposed to topple Microsoft Office, and is still predicted to do so, but if that ever happened, I missed it.
By Sebastian Rupley, Friday, November 20, 2009 12:00 PST
The Windows 7 trumpets are blasting with gusto, with Steve Felice, president of the small and medium-sized business (SMB) division of Dell, claiming that Microsoft’s new operating system is fueling a surge in demand for PCs, according to Computerworld. “As soon as Oct. 22 hit, both our consumer business and our SMB business had a very healthy increase in demand,” Felice is quoted as saying. Meanwhile, David Coursey reports that with Vista on the sidelines and a well-reviewed new OS, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer “has a new ‘f’ word” to describe Windows: ‘Fantastic.’”…
By Sebastian Rupley, Friday, November 20, 2009 10:04 PST
Verizon Test
WiMAX Test
By Stacey Higginbotham, Thursday, November 19, 2009 10:42 PST
Qualcomm holds about a quarter of the patents required to make the Long Term Evolution wireless standard happen on mobile devices and networks, according to an ABI Research report published earlier this week. Other big holders include Interdigital, with 18 percent; Huawei, with 10 percent; Nokia and LG, with 9 percent each; and Samsung, with 7 percent. Which basically means Qualcomm may not be the patent shark that it could be with the CDMA 3G standard, but it’s still going to make some serious money with LTE. In fact, Len Lauer, COO of Qualcomm, confirmed that the company’s royalty rate for LTE would be about 1 percent lower than the royalty it charges for 3G.
By Stacey Higginbotham, Wednesday, November 18, 2009 07:12 PST
Cray’s Jaguar supercomputer is the fastest machine on the planet, according to the Top 500 list of supercomputers published today by four researchers in the computing industry. It marks the first time that Jaguar beat out IBM’s Roadrunner on a performance basis, achieving 2.3 petaflops, or about 2 million billion calculations a second. However, a deeper look at the list shows that the trend in supercomputing is not only one of faster machines, but a steady erosion of how super supercomputing actually is, as exemplified by dedicated vendors such as SiCortex being shut down and venerable players like SGI filing for bankruptcy before then getting acquired.
By Stacey Higginbotham, Monday, November 16, 2009 12:15 PST
Touch functionality has become a key component of a host of different operating systems on smartphones, laptops and even traditional PCs. So shouldn’t we have some sort of touch standard for developers looking to build to a variety of OSes?
By Colin Gibbs, Monday, November 16, 2009 08:22 PST
A new Android phone was popping up all over the web this week, one that looks like a chubby Droid. The V1 has all of the standard features you’d expect in an Android smartphone plus the promise of a unique video calling function, and is due to be launched next year, according to the company bringing it to market, Saygus. Never heard of Saygus? Neither had we.
By James Kendrick, Saturday, November 14, 2009 06:00 PST
At the NewTeeVee Live conference in San Francisco yesterday, I interviewed Sam Blackman, co-founder and CEO of Elemental Technologies, about trends on computing and storage costs. Elemental makes software that takes advantage of graphics processors to provide super fast transcoding, which is the process by which video content is formatted for different devices. The idea of storing one copy of a piece of content and formatting it on the fly makes intuitive sense when compared to storing four or five copies of that content and then delivering it only when needed.
By Stacey Higginbotham, Friday, November 13, 2009 17:05 PST
Om and Frank Eliason of Comcast
By Stacey Higginbotham, Friday, November 13, 2009 08:00 PST
Intel and AMD today settled all of their various patent and antitrust disputes, with the top chipmaker paying out $1.25 billion to settle more than two decades of litigation. The two companies will also cross-license their technology over the next five years. The move helps Intel far more than AMD, as Intel is likely to retain its dominant position in the chip market. But Intel will continue to face government antitrust investigations over its pricing practices, and there’s still an intellectual property suit with Nvidia to deal with.
By Stacey Higginbotham, Thursday, November 12, 2009 08:30 PST
The mobile space has long buzzed with rumors of a Verizon Wireless version of the iPhone, and according to Northeast Securities, the device may finally arrive next year. Citing its supply-chain checks, the financial services firm said in a research note issued today that Apple will launch a WCDMA/CDMA2000-enabled version of the device — not an LTE version — through Verizon by the summer of 2010.
By Colin Gibbs, Wednesday, November 11, 2009 11:56 PST
Several Internet service providers in the U.S. and around the world (including a large Chinese ISP) are currently implementing P4P technologies on their networks to help alleviate congestion caused by peer-to-peer files, and they will soon be joined by other ISPs doing the same. Indeed, P4P efforts that were showcased in August 2008 are taking on more relevance as broadband demand escalates and the FCC tries to regulate the principles by which carriers can deal with congestion on their networks.
By Stacey Higginbotham, Wednesday, November 11, 2009 07:00 PST
Apple became the world’s most profitable handset vendor in the third quarter of this year, reports Strategy Analytics. “We estimate Apple’s operating profit for its iPhone handset division stood at $1.6 billion in the third quarter of 2009,” wrote analyst Alex Spektor. That means Apple overtook Nokia, whose operating profit came in at just $1.1 billion. As Spektor noted, “With strong volumes, high wholesale prices and tight cost controls, the PC vendor has successfully broken into the mobile phone market in just two years.”
By Sebastian Rupley, Tuesday, November 10, 2009 12:04 PST
Clearwire, as expected, said today that it’s managed to cajole $1.56 billion out of most of its previous investors to continue its buildout of the Clear WiMAX network. However, those doubling down on WiMAX (see chart) as the ideal fourth-generation wireless technology are likely throwing good money after bad. Even if we ignore the incredible writedowns these companies have had to make related to their first bet on Clearwire and WiMAX, the potential for return on the latest investment is still low. Why? Because Clearwire’s Clear service is stuck between a rock and hard place.
By Stacey Higginbotham, Tuesday, November 10, 2009 10:14 PST
The estimate that Verizon sold 100,000 Droid phones this weekend as part of the Droid onslaught is pretty sweet for Motorola, as is the assumption from Mark McKechnie with Broadpoint AmTech that the cellular provider purchased 200,000 of the handsets from Motorola in anticipation of high demand. But the more interesting part of his research note wasn’t the past — it’s the future, namely that he thinks Motorola’s handset business should return to an operating profit next year on the strength of co-CEO’ Sanjay’s Jha’s bet on the Android operating system. From the analyst note…
By Stacey Higginbotham, Tuesday, November 10, 2009 07:54 PST
Handbrake Speaks Video. Handbrake has long been a favorite open source video transcoding and DVD ripping application. Over on OStatic, Lisa discusses the latest release, which has a slew of new features, including better picture quality and ways to make ripping DVDs easier. You can also use preview features to see how a video will look before you go through a lengthy transcoding process.
Music Muscle. The world of applications you can use to enjoy, organize and share music is hardly limited to iTunes. There are lots of free applications that are fun to dig into. Do you want to play Doom on your own customized OS for iPods or most other music players? Do you need customized music library management for multiple software platforms? Check this post for 8 free, open source tools that let you do those things and more. Also check out this post on the popular Amarok music app, organizer, and media player, which is out in a new version.
A Free Book on GIMP. In “6 Ways to Get Much More Out of GIMP” the OStatic editors collected a number of excellent resources for the powerful, free, open source GIMP graphics application, available for Windows, the Mac and Linux. You’ll find a complete, free online book on GIMP, tips on getting plug-ins and more.
Free Media Centers. Have you tried out any of the free media center software platforms that are available? Boxee is a very popular one, but there are other good ones for Windows, the Mac and Linux. Read about four here .
How to Shop on the Go This Holiday Season
Broadsheet
War Room
Glenn Greenwald
