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by Stan Beer
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Wednesday, 19 September 2007 |
Apple has announced its November 9 release date for the iPhone on the UK O2 network and those who were expecting a new high speed 3G product will be disappointed at the slow Edge phone on offer. However, as iPod marketing director Greg Joswiak said early this year, Apple expects most serious Internet use for the iPhone to take place over Wi-Fi in hotspots rather than through the cellular network anyway - and access will be free in 7500 of those hotspots.
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by Stan Beer
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Tuesday, 18 September 2007 |
It was a seemingly noble cause initiated by Nicholas Negroponte and colleagues at the MIT media lab - make a heap of cheap US$100 self-powered Linux laptops and sell them at practically cost to third world governments to distribute to children. Except so far things haven't exactly gone to plan, including the ballooning price.
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by Stan Beer
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Wednesday, 05 September 2007 |
Rumours come and rumours go but one rumour that will never come to fruition is Microsoft attempting to emulate Apple's entry into the mobile phone space with a device based on Zune.
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by Stan Beer
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Wednesday, 05 September 2007 |
While the critics decry the recently announced effort of Sony to enter the movie download space just days after the company pulled the plug on its Connect online music store, the move could well turn out to be a smart one.
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by Stan Beer
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Wednesday, 05 September 2007 |
Those in the open source/open documents community now jumping with joy at the failure of Microsoft yesterday to win approval for Open OfficeXML from the International Standards Organization as a global standard should probably take a breather and reflect upon the fact that Microsoft is almost over the line already. In fact, come February next year, OOXML will almost certainly join ODF as an ISO standard.
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by Stan Beer
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Tuesday, 04 September 2007 |
Last week before leaving for a short overseas trip, I asked my local carrier if I could unlock my Nokia N73 from the carrier's network so that I could replace the SIM with a cheap local prepaid SIM in the country I was visiting. No problem, I was told, the carrier's call center rep even helped me to do it. Why should it be any different for the Apple iPhone and AT&T?
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by Stan Beer
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Tuesday, 04 September 2007 |
The move last month of Paramount and Dreamworks to give the Blu-ray HD video format the flick in favour of HD DVD for some easy money looks slightly ridiculous in the face of the latest sales figures from video mag site Home Media Magazine based on Nielsen VideoScan First Alert data. It turns out that of the top 10 best selling videos for the week ending August 26, the only two on the list from Paramount and Dreamworks were in Blu-ray format!
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by Stan Beer
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Monday, 03 September 2007 |
There's no doubting that Apple probably has the most loyal fan base in the world. The problem for Apple is that the N-Geners (net generation) have a different set of values to the previous faithful. They believe in the free flow of information between consumers and suppliers and, as demonstrated by new global group of iPhone crackers, that spells bad news for Apple's closely guarded iPhone walled garden.
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by Stan Beer
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Monday, 03 September 2007 |
The largest provider of video downloads to Apple's iTunes stores, NBC Universal, has decided not to renew its contract to supply videos to iTunes after December. In turn Apple has announced that it will not sell any new NBC Universal TV shows due to hit the market in September. Is this the beginning of the end of Apple's dominance over content providers or simply bluster by old world media companies?
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by Stan Beer
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Tuesday, 28 August 2007 |
Microsoft's anti-piracy spyware Windows Genuine Advantage has been shown for what it is - a dangerously flawed system which treats customers with disrespect.
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by Stan Beer
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Tuesday, 21 August 2007 |
The news yesterday that Paramount and Dreamworks studios have abandoned the Blu-ray HD video format and thrown their weight behind the rival HD DVD standard is perplexing, even if reports that the two studios are receiving large wads of cash for their decision is true.
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by Stan Beer
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Tuesday, 21 August 2007 |
The two-day outage of Skype last week has exposed a serious weakness in the company's networking system which has been made self evident by its own explanation of what took place. Skype's proprietary peer-to-peer networking system has through its own architecture become entwined with the actions of Microsoft.
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by Stan Beer
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Sunday, 19 August 2007 |
Last week nearly 200 million regular Skype users received a stark reminder of the dangers of over reliance on single vendor services. After most were left wondering for two days why Skype no longer worked, the VoIP and messaging provider posted a message on its home page denying that its system had crashed. That message was more than a trifle disturbing.
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