Ebooks now sold at Barnes and Noble

By
Ahleen
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0

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

That is probably the store’s motto that bills itself as the world’s largest book seller. Now, it has announced they will be the “world’s largest ebookstore”.

To keep up with their competitor Amazon and their ebook reader Kindle, B&N now sells digital text software that runs on the Apple iPhone, the iPod Touch, and the RIM BlackBerry as well as Windows and Mac desktops and laptops.

The US retail giant doesn’t have its very own handheld device. Yet. A device which will debut next year, will have B&N as the exclusive digital bookstore. The device is from Plastic Logic, a cross-Atlantic start-up.

B&N however, isn’t new to this ebook business. They first had their ebookstore in 2000, backed by the novelist Stephen King and PC-based Microsoft Reader and Adobe. The ebookstore didn’t do well though and it was eventually shutdown after three years.

The present ebookstore comes well prepared this time though. It offers more than 700,000 titles and is expected to grow to over one million ebooks by the mid-2010. The Barnes and Noble’s reader app is based on technology from Fictionwise, an indie book seller it acquired for $15.7m this spring.

In a canned statement from B&N.com president William J. Lynch, he expressed their belief that “readers should have access to the books in their digital library from any device, from anywhere, at any time”.

“As America’s number-one bookstore and newsstand, our goal at Barnes & Noble is to build a service that revolves around the customer, enabling them to have access to hundreds of thousands of titles and read on their smartphone, PC, and many other existing and future devices. We want to make eBooks simple, accessible, affordable and convenient for everyone.”

Source:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/21/barnes_and_noble_ebooks_phase_two/

Google Chrome: fastest web browser

By
Ahleen
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0

That is, according to the web browser speed test conducted by PC World.

Google Chrome, Firefox 3.5, Explorer 8, Safari 4 and Opera 10 Beta – all latest versions of their kind – were pitted against each other in a battle of the page-loading supremacy. J

Chrome outshone the other four with an average page-loading time of 1.6999 seconds. The next contender, Firefox 3.5 however, wasn’t that far behind with an average page-loading time of 1.762. According to PC World, for the most part, the difference between Chrome and Firefox’s page-loading times is approximately two-tenths of a second.

Winning the third and fourth places are Internet Explorer 8 and Safari 4, which both did a decent job in loading pages. IE 8 had an average page-loading time of 1.833 seconds while Safari 4 has 1.964 seconds of average page-loading time.

Opera 10 Beta was last, which according to PC Word’s results, had come in “roughly a half second behind its nearest competitor.”

Hmmmn, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not sure if I’d notice two-tenths or whatever-tenths of a second’s difference in page-loading, so I guess let’s trust these guys with numbers. 😉

Sourcehttp://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20090720/tc_pcworld/browserspeedtestslatestfirefoxisfasterbutnotasfastasgooglechrome

Pirate Bay to become legal?

By
Ahleen
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0

“The more you give, the more you get”

These were the exact words of Hans Pandeya, chief executive of Swedish software firm Global Gaming Factory X. The company announced last month that it was buying Pirate Bay and would start paying both content providers and copyright holders.

Pirate Bay, one of the world’s largest filesharing Websites is going legal by applying a series of give-and-take payment models.

Will this work though? The filesharing community fears that by making the Web site legal, the new operators would start charging them for downloading content which they had previously accessed for free.

Pandeya however, stressed that Pirate Bay will not become like pure pay sites such as iTunes Store and Napster.

“For the great majority it will be free of charge, for a minority it will actually make them money, and for a small portion it will cost them,” he clarifies.

Peter Sunde, a spokesman for Pirate Bay, says that he and his associates are pleased with GGF’s plans for the sites since they “felt they couldn’t take it any further — lacking both money and resources to do so.”

The newly “repackaged” Pirate Bay is expected to be launched in a month’s time so stay tuned and I’ll to give you guys a heads up. 🙂

Source:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090718/ap_on_re_eu/eu_tec_sweden_pirate_bay;_ylt=AnQ5lDZ6few2QfjDajsS5tsjtBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTJwazRmOGVvBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkwNzE4L2V1X3RlY19zd2VkZW5fcGlyYXRlX2JheQRjcG9zAzMEcG9zAzcEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDbmV3cGlyYXRlYmF5

Verizon to offer some of their phones to small wireless companies

By
Ahleen
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0

AT&T has iPhone, Sprint Nextel has Pre, and Verizon has an exclusive deal to offer BlackBerry Storm; so what does that leave other wireless companies? Nothing, nein, nada.

Congress has been looking into the issue as to whether these giant wireless companies are hurting other smaller companies by shutting them out through exclusive contracts with the phone makers of popular phones.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are also looking into the issue.

So to fend off federal regulation of exclusive handset deals, Verizon Wireless announced last Friday that it would allow small wireless companies to have access to some of the cellphones that they offer exclusively to their customers.

When Verizon now strikes a deal with a manufacturer for exclusive handset access, it will allow the phone to be sold to any carrier after a six-month limit.. However, only those carriers with more than 500,000 customers are “qualified” to sell.

“Exclusivity arrangements promote competition and innovation in device development and design,” Verizon wrote in a letter to Representative Rick Boucher, the Virginia Democrat who is chairman of a major telecommunications subcommittee.

“When we procure exclusive handsets from our vendors, we typically buy hundreds of thousands or even millions of each device. Otherwise manufacturers may be reluctant to make the investments of time, money and production capacity to support a particular device.”

The New York Times reports that much of the political pressure on the issue is coming from rural carriers “that worry that they are being shut out from all the cool phones by one giant carrier or another.”

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18phone.html?_r=1

NASA’s space shuttle finally takes off!

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Ahleen
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0

After five failed attempts, NASA’s Endeavor finally succeeded on its launch try No.6 yesterday.

“The weather is finally cooperating, so it is now time to fly,” launch director Pete Nickolenko said to the crew. “Persistence pays off.”

The shuttle blasted off a little after 6 p.m. from its seaside pad — the same pad used to launch Apollo 11, exactly 40 years ago to this day.

It was not all good news though. As AP reports, “eight or nine pieces of foam insulation came off the external fuel tank during liftoff, and the shuttle was hit at least two or three times, said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s space operations chief. Some scuff marks were spotted, but that probably is coating loss and considered minor, he said.”

NASA engineers immediately began reviewing the launch pictures. Zoom-in pictures of the shuttle will also be taken for the entire duration of the flight, right before it docks with the space station. This is to make sure that the damage wasn’t anything serious.

Endeavor’s crew will install a porch onto Kibo – Japan’s first human space facility which enhances the unique research capabilities – for science experiments, replace batteries in a solar panel wing, and do other maintenance tasks. It also carries hundreds of pounds of food for the crew and a new station resident, an American who will take the place of the lone Japanese on board.

Source:

Yahoo! News

Amazon faces a $5 million lawsuit over Kindle 2

By
Ahleen
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0

Mathew Geise, executive director of a Seattle property management firm and his wife, Alisa Brodkowitz filed a lawsuit against Amazon because it failed to replace their unit which was damaged by Amazon’s own $30 protective case.

According to CNet News, Brodkowitz’s Kindle 2, which she received as a gift from her husband, developed cracks around around the points “where the cover attaches with metal clips,” Geise told Seattle Times reporter Brier Dudley. On July 6, the screen froze and the device stopped working.

Brodkowitz’s then spoke with a customer rep who told her that their warranty does not extend to the cracks in the unit which she allegedly said “were caused by improperly opening the cover backwards” and a $200 was needed for the fixing of the Kindle. Brodkowitz however, says that she never did any backward bending of the cover.

What ticked off the couple was the fact that Amazon’s customer service supervisor has told Brodkowitz that the cracks are a “common problem” (as evidenced by the complaints about cracks in the area around the clasps found in user reviews of the Kindle 2) but they still had to pay the $200 repair fee.

The lesson? Don’t mess with an angry wife with a broken Kindle 2 or you’ll end up having to face a lawsuit. 😀

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10287749-93.html

Facebook now has a quarter billion users

By
Ahleen
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0

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has announced yesterday that the social networking site Facebook, has passed the 250 million member mark.

“For us, growing to 250 million users isn’t just an impressive number; it is a mark of how many personal connections all of you have made, and how far we at Facebook have to go to extend the power of connection to the billions of people around the world,” Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post.

He also adds, “The rapid pace of our growth is humbling and exciting for us, and it affirms that people everywhere are realizing the power of staying connected to everything they care about on Facebook,”.

About a year ago, Facebook reached 100 million users. In January, it has hit 150 million users and then on April, it hit 200 million users, and then just last month, Facebook was catching up to Myspace in terms of the number of unique visitors according to ComScore.

Facebook now is the most popular site in the U.S. in terms of visitors after pulling in 70.278 million unique visitors in the states, compared to MySpace’s 70.237 million last May.

Do you know anyone who hasn’t got a Facebook account? 😉

Source:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2350293,00.asp

Bing plus Twitter = a whole new experience

By
Ahleen
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0

Microsoft’s newest search engine seems to be getting better and better!

Now, they have come up with an ingenious plan: incorporating the very popular Twitter in the search engine! Now who can say no to that?

The Website is called BingTweets. The interface shows users a combined view of the search engine and a live feed of current tweets that match your search.

Mathew Murrey of PCMag says, “BingTweets struck me as an efficient and enjoyable way to get sources of established and up-to-the-minute opinion in the same window.”

The BingTweets site also has a “Share This” feature where you can instantly type in anything and share it in Twitter, email it, or post it to various social networking sites.

Pretty cool eh?

Source:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2350274,00.asp

iTunes says goodbye to Palm Pre

By
Ahleen
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0

“Apple is aware that some third parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.”

This was the content of the article which appeared on Apple’s support site last Tuesday. It wasn’t directed to any particular company, unless they mean “non-Apple digital media players” to be Palm Pre which Palm has manipulated the smartphone to sync with Apple’s music software. 😉

And lo and behold! An upgraded version from iTunes (iTunes 8.2.1) is now available with a release note that states: “iTunes 8.2.1 provides a number of important bug fixes and addresses an issue with verification of Apple devices.” Apparently, addressing the issue meant disallowing Palm Pre to sync with iTunes.

Writers from CNET confirmed this by testing the software with their Pre. When they selected the Media Sync option, it did not launch iTunes automatically. “Instead, it was only recognized as a mass storage device, and manually launching iTunes did not surface the Pre either(*tears*), Bonnie Cha of CNET news says.

Well, what can I say? It was too good while it lasted. 😉

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10287709-37.html

Say hello to the Twitter hacker

By
Ahleen
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0

Its common knowledge: the web isn’t free from opportunists, scammers and hackers.

Now this story is yet another proof that confidential information on the web, even those of the big guys like Twitter execs, isn’t safe at all.

It was revealed yesterday that a hacker has exposed corporate info about Twitter a month ago. How?

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said the hacker broke into an employee’s email account and was able to access Google Apps account, where Twitter shares spreadsheets and documents with business ideas and financial details.

The hacker, identifying himself as Hacker Croll, then sent the documents he found which included confidential contracts, company plans and finances to two tech news blogs, TechCrunch and Korben. The documents also included personal info about Twitter employees such as credit card numbers.

So what did the documents contain?

It included files showing that Twitter projected it will reach a billion users and $1.54 billion in revenue by 2013. In an interview with Michael Arrington, TechCrunch’s founder, he said that the hacker had also sent him “detailed strategy documents about potential business models, the competitive threat from Facebook and when the company might be acquired.”

Not satisfied with an employee’s account, he also broke into the email account of the wife of Twitter’s executive, Evan Williams. From there, he was able to access Mr. William’s personal Internet accounts, including those at Amazon and Paypal.

Whew.

Better heed what this hacker advices because he says he wants to teach people to be more careful. He wrote in a message to Korben that his attack could make Internet users “conscious that no one is protected on the Net.”

A hacker with good intentions. 😉

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/technology/internet/16twitter.html?_r=1

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