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Google Chrome 4: Yes, it's fast, but is it usable?

Publié: novembre 6, 2009, 11:46pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III
By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

If, as Google says, a Web browser is not so much an application but a platform upon which a new class of applications may be built, then that platform must provide support. It needs to give its users the ability to accomplish tasks, and to devise new and better ways to accomplish them better. For as we all know now, "browser" is an inappropriate word for the thing we use to communicate with the Web using HTTP, because the Web is becoming a space for everyday applications deployment. Especially in the content industry, active work takes place within the browser, much more so than passive amusement.
To that end, a browser may serve either as a springboard or a plank. Despite Google Chrome's achievements, the crucial element of support remains missing. For all the spotlight we've given Chrome for being the fastest Web browser on Windows, it does not yet serve the purpose of supporting users and helping them to make their online tasks more efficient. This is why Google's expert tuning of its V8 JavaScript engine for Chrome is so important, because the browser has truly evolved into a JavaScript platform rather than an HTML platform.
For everyone I know who has, over the last year, made the switch from Microsoft Internet Explorer to any other browser, the reasons have had less to do with security than in the past. People who are compelled to switch are tired of how slow IE has become, and the sinking feeling that it's getting slower -- a feeling which Betanews confirmed this week with actual facts. If you're the manufacturer of a competitive browser, and you have the opportunity to offer your customer a free alternative that's close to 21 times faster overall than IE, and your brand is not only one of the most recognized in the world but the only one analysts believe can truly challenge Microsoft, you'd think there would be an exodus of mass proportion.
There has been no such exodus. The reason is because, despite the number "4" on the version currently under development, Chrome gives one the feeling that it's never been finished once.
In a way, it doesn't make sense to have a JavaScript engine that's as good as it is, running a platform that is so minimalistic. As the manufacturer of any set-top box can tell you, a viewer's entire experience in front of his TV can be ruined if the functionality of the program guide isn't solid. A browser user's bookmarks list is the counterpart of the program guide; it's "what's on," and it's also how to get there.
Not that a list of folders and bookmarks is anywhere near as informative as an STB's program guide. But for years, Firefox has had the good sense to enable users to open the bookmarks list in their sidebar, to open and close it with a keystroke (Ctrl-I) and scroll through it using a scroll bar. For IE8, Microsoft added an appealing and versatile Favorites menu that opens with the same keystroke (as part of an effort to win back refugees to Firefox). This menu starts off life as a pop-up, but can then be pinned to the left side as a sidebar. Then it too can be switched from Favorites (bookmarks) to RSS Feeds and browsing history. It's a versatile feature that Microsoft has thought through, and that performs well.

SEE THE FIREFOX/CHROME SHOWDOWN FROM THE TOP:
- Firefox 3.5 vs. Chrome 3 Showdown, Round 1: How private is private browsing?: Firefox 3.5 (1), Chrome 3 (0) after 1 heat
- Firefox 3.5 vs. Chrome 3 Showdown, Round 2: Are bookmarks outmoded?: Firefox 3.5 (2), Chrome 3 (0) after 2 heats
- Firefox 3.5 vs. Chrome 3 Showdown, Round 3: Finding a place for more tabs: Firefox 3.5 (2), Chrome 3 (1) after 3 heats
- Firefox 3.5 vs. Chrome 3 Showdown, Round 4: Finding a place for more tabs: Firefox 3.5 (3), Chrome 3 (1) after 4 heats
In Chrome 3, the Bookmarks Bar was only part of the New Tab screen, and was actually provided by a Google Web page. With Chrome 4, the Bookmarks Bar becomes a feature of the actual program (along with curious re-additions such as an actual button for the home page, a recent Google discovery). But the complete list of bookmarks is only available through an "Other Bookmarks" menu on the right. Clicking on this button pulls up a drop-down menu, whose folders in turn pull up other pop-up menus. So you're not perusing a folder tree as with Firefox or IE; instead, you're scrolling through pop-ups. And you're scrolling slow...ly... because these are classic menus; there are no scroll bars. So if you have a long bookmarks list, you're not going anywhere fast.
That I'm no fan of Chrome's bookmarks system is nothing new -- I first called attention to this last June. Back then, Chrome 3 was on the "beta" and "dev" tracks, while Chrome 2 was the version declared stable. Here I noted that Firefox 3.5 was more adept at searching for stored bookmarks by various criteria than Chrome, the browser from the company that's supposed to be known for search.
But I'm not exactly the only one screaming for functionality out here. Our own Fileforum features reviews from testers over the months who have explicitly asked why Chrome seems to be all chassis and no interface. "It's as useful as a chocolate fireguard," wrote madmike; "very bland, short on features, but competent," wrote bobad; and, "I wish they could make it look and act like Firefox," wrote CyberDoc999.
Next: Shelving basic functionality under "Other..."
Shelving basic functionality under "Other"
That the Google Chrome user might only keep eight or so Web sites on her New Tab page, plus a handful of "Other Bookmarks" in a menu that should never grow large enough to have to be scrolled; that History is a separate page and not a function you can use side-by-side with other pages; that Chrome lacks the ability to even add the searching, researching, and translating functionality that Google makes for its own Toolbar for IE and Firefox; and that the button for the home page is a new feature that's just now being tested, are all indications that Google only projects its browser will be used lightly and occasionally, by folks who'll do a Google query, read the result, and come back to Google. If that's truly the case, one wonders why Google actually bothers making its underlying JavaScript engine as good as it is -- effectively mounting a V8 engine to a tricycle.
In fairness, Mozilla Firefox also lacks that functionality. But Mozilla knows how to help users make Firefox more functional: through a wide array of add-ons, along with a developers' community that's nurtured and educated in the ways of making proper software without so much initial trial-and-error.
Plug-ins and add-ons to Chrome do exist, and forums such as this one have cropped up in anticipation of a burgeoning market in these things at some future date. But for now, the theme of these sites appears to be stuck with themes. Even now, when skinning of some applications has become an art form that has brought forth its own grass-roots competitive "Olympics," Chrome themes are a throwback to the Netscape Navigator era, sometimes comprised of celebrity photos cropped so that their faces fit just inside the tab area, decorated like the bedroom of some Disney Channel star.
Tell me you'd actually intentionally make your own Web browser look like a just-fertilized lawn.
While Internet Explorer is dog slow, and now slower by the month, version 8 has functionality and, for the first time in IE's existence, a reasonable degree of versatility. It also is relatively stable -- crashing is not its problem. Crashing is a Firefox trademark -- to this day, the "stable" version crashes on average 1.5 times per day for me, a fact which this "Firefox user" is not proud to share.
Yet even though it does exhibit greater stability, Chrome lacks the functionality that makes it adaptable to users' everyday purposes, and that enables them to take it beyond the realm of "general purpose" into "heavy duty." Google's complete inability to make that jump, to get the clue, to provide evidence of having listened to the smallest portion of tester sentiment, bewilders me completely as to whether the company has any realistic notion of what "beta" means anyway.
With Mozilla, the newest code is developed under a private track, which only means that the developers aren't taking comments from the public about it, even though it's publicly available. When it's developed enough to demonstrate in public, then it enters the "beta" track, which Mozilla code-names "Shiretoko" for 3.5 test code and "Namoroka" for 3.6. When Mozilla delays the rollout of a new build to the stable channel, it gets groans and moans from folks like me...but it's generally because real beta testers have found real problems, or have advised some really good ideas.
A full-featured browser chassis capable of running thoroughly debugged JavaScript add-ons that won't crash, and that contain the basic functionality that Microsoft and Mozilla discovered as far back as 2005, coupled with the proven superior V8 JavaScript engine, would clinch the alternative browser market in maybe one year's time. But that year has already passed for Chrome, which is already gaining a reputation as a browser that makes up for its performance superiority with slow and cumbersome functionality. As long as Google continues to not get this message, then we all need to face up to the fact that Google isn't exactly open, is it?

SEE THE FIREFOX/CHROME SHOWDOWN FROM THE TOP:
- Firefox 3.5 vs. Chrome 3 Showdown, Round 1: How private is private browsing?: Firefox 3.5 (1), Chrome 3 (0) after 1 heat
- Firefox 3.5 vs. Chrome 3 Showdown, Round 2: Are bookmarks outmoded?: Firefox 3.5 (2), Chrome 3 (0) after 2 heats
- Firefox 3.5 vs. Chrome 3 Showdown, Round 3: Finding a place for more tabs: Firefox 3.5 (2), Chrome 3 (1) after 3 heats
- Firefox 3.5 vs. Chrome 3 Showdown, Round 4: Finding a place for more tabs: Firefox 3.5 (3), Chrome 3 (1) after 4 heats
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Myka announces its latest Linux-based 'net top box'

Publié: novembre 6, 2009, 11:45pm CET par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Early in the summer, IPTV startup Myka delivered an impressive Linux-based device which was not quite a set-top box and not quite a home theater PC (HTPC). Though the device's identity was sort of nebulous, the company's goal was crystal clear: to easily make the tons of different types of Internet video content viewable on the TV.
This week, the company has announced its second device, the Myka ION, which pushes itself up against the HTPC category. Because it's equipped with a 1.6 GHz dual core Intel Atom 330 CPU, it could even be called a "net-top box."
Whatever you want to call it, Myka is really charging toward its goal of making the vast spectrum of Web video available in an easy and compact way. Since the ION is effectively an Ubuntu 9.10 mini ITX PC, it can run popular media manager software Boxee and XMBC alongside the Hulu desktop client -- a bit of useful software which neither Boxee nor XMBC can actually run themselves.
In case the name didn't already give it away, the Myka ION is equipped with an Nvidia ION GPU which supports DirectX 10 graphics, and full 1080p HD video without overtaxing the CPUs.
The company expects it to be shipping in about four weeks, and it will be available in various configurations, with different capacity hard drive sizes (up to 1 TB) and with additional options like a Blu-ray drive, and 802.11n wireless.
We'll give it a closer look when it becomes available before the holidays.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
What hath Mac wrought? A remembrance after a quarter-century

Publié: novembre 6, 2009, 10:02pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

[ME's NOTE: This article was originally published on January 30, 2009, here in Betanews. I'm reprinting it today in honor of the memory of a man I refer to in this article, who was one of my early mentors in computing and in business, and who passed away last October 26: Elmer Zen "E.Z." Million, the proprietor of the original Southwest Computer Conference, later the CEO of private aircraft services company Million Air, and occasional candidate for some lofty, high Oklahoma office. He was a brilliant businessman, a true fiscal conservative who really did teach me how to run a business, through long hours in his office poring over accurately written ledgers. And he was the absolute antithesis of everything people assumed a "computer pioneer" was, but he was all of that and more. I dedicate this to E.Z.'s enduring memory.]
The reason there's a Macintosh today is not because of some brilliant flash of engineering genius, as many revisionists like to believe. It's because Apple had the audacity to make a few big mistakes first, and learn from them.
The main reason I wasn't escorted out of those first computer conferences, even though they typically displayed signs that expressly forbade anyone under 18 from entering, was because I looked the part of someone older who knew what he was doing. The moustache and the tailored suit somehow helped, like a rookie NASCAR driver who wanted to fit in with the big boys in the pit crews.
It helped even more to know some people. Three decades ago now, I'd gotten to know a fellow who was one of the first great regional conference organizers, a promoter and business consultant whose given name truly was Elmer Zen Million. At first, he called me "The Kid," which always made me shrink a little because that's exactly what I tried not to look like at the time. After a few years, I was Scott to him and he was E.Z., and I was exempt from the 18-or-under rule...until one year when it finally didn't matter. I was a private consultant, earning a small living, and just introducing myself to the publishers who would soon jump-start my career.
It was the winter of 1983, one month before the rule wouldn't matter anymore. By this time, a local computer store called High Technology had become one of Apple Computer's top-selling independent retailers. I used to hang around that store and drum up business for myself, finding clients and helping them set up Apple II and Atari 800 computers. They didn't mind because I'd end up sending my own customers back to them for more software, which was a high-margin business then. Folks were more interested in buying a computer that ran something weird-sounding like VisiCalc or Electric Pencil if they knew they'd have the help of someone who could give them a hand.
So High Tech had purchased the prime space at one of E.Z.'s semi-annual computer conferences, and I was there to help set up. The store manager had reserved a big chunk of his floor display for the arrival of a computer he hadn't seen yet. It was coming directly from Apple, its delivery was already a few days late, and all we knew about it was that it was not the "Apple IV" that had been rumored, and that it would cost ten thousand dollars.
"So are you sure you want The Kid around?" asked one fellow. "Who, Scott?" replied the High Tech man. "Are you kidding? I don't even have an instruction manual for this thing. He's the only hope we have."
The crate arrived after lunch, literally looking like the "major award" shipped to Ralphie's dad in the movie A Christmas Story. We were told to move our food and drinks a respectable distance from this major device since we wouldn't know how delicate it would be, or how sensitive to soda pop drops and the grease from hot dogs. Some workmen gently extracted the device from its container, a process which consumed two hours, during which I probably consumed a six-pack of Dr. Pepper. And when it was eventually set up, it was missing its startup disk.
A High Tech associate eventually found it back at the store and drove it downtown, but in the meantime, we sat pondering what this new thing was going to do. "Lisa," we'd concluded, must be a code-name and not the final brand. Somebody thought it would eventually be the Apple IV anyway, but the High Tech manager had heard from Cupertino that the Roman numerals had been declared history after "III."
I saw that Lisa came with a "puck." At least that's what I thought it was called; two years earlier, hanging around another computer conference, a guy from Tektronix instructed me on how to use its CAD/CAM system. It came with a digitizer device that you placed on a table called a "puck," and you could also slide it along the left side of the table to select functions for the program.
I had met a guy the year before who called it a "mouse," but I thought it was a stupid name, and surely not the one anyone would settle upon. It was only several years later, after sorting through the mountain of business cards I'd collected over the years, that I realized, in one of those "holy-crap" moments, that the guy was Doug Engelbart.
And since I had also been privy to a demonstration of the Xerox STAR Workstation a year or so earlier (although the fellow there also refused to call it a "mouse"), I was the one designated to flip the switch on Lisa. It took me about an hour to figure out how to boot the thing. You couldn't even pull out the diskette by yourself; a software switch made the disk slide out slowly and deliberately, like teasing a sideways sloth and being teased back. Even E.Z. laughed at me as he walked by, at one point saying, "Who would've thought Apple would be the one to make The System That Stumped Scott?"
It was mid-afternoon, and only when the electric sloth stopped spitting out cherry-bomb icons did we start drawing a crowd. Although I did hear one fellow praise the cherry-bombs, with language that stuck with me: "You know, if you think about it, that's not a bad deal," he said. "Imagine an operating system that's so smart that it knows it's hosed."
We spent the next several hours trying to guess how this most "intuitive" of systems worked, and I took extensive notes. By "we" at this point, I mean about a few hundred people -- an audience had formed outside our table. Some brought out some Samsonite folding chairs, and E.Z. started making the rounds to make sure everyone was comfortable and had refreshments.
We guessed wrong far more often than we guessed right. Ideas for what to do next were being shouted fast and furiously from folks in the crowd. The idea with Lisa was that you had this document, which you tore off from this on-screen pad using the puck. Then you used a menu to decide what to do with this open scrap of paper. Once we found LisaDraw, we started going to town with it. That's when I could let the puck go for awhile and let other people (carefully, now, this thing costs ten grand) experiment with making the arrow move the way their hands moved.
The most amazing thing I remember was how many folks were afraid of it. Psychologists who've studied the history of advertising have pointed out that it's color that attracts people to a new gadget first and foremost. People thought of the Apple II, and even Apple's logo, as being about color; this thing was monochrome and beige, like a brick of vanilla ice cream left to melt in the sun. We had decided "Lisa" couldn't possibly have been Jobs' or Wozniak's girlfriend -- perhaps a junior-high-school Spanish teacher, but not anyone close.
[Photo credit: An original Lisa advertisement, from ComputerHistory.org]
Next: The world that made the Mac...
The world that made the Mac
When younger folks today (I don't have to pretend I'm old enough anymore) ask me what it felt like to experience a Macintosh for the first time, expecting a moment of revelation as though I'd set foot on Mars, it's hard for them to understand this embryo of the Mac in the context of the world we early developers lived in. While we appreciated the Apple II for having accelerated the pace of evolution in computing, and for having been smart enough to let people tinker with its insides like with the Altair 8800 a mere three years before the II premiered, most of us in the business had the sincere impression that Apple least of all understood what our work was about. The Apple III was proof -- the only way it could run good software was when it could step down into Apple II emulation mode. And the Lisa didn't even have that.
What it did have was Motorola's 68000 processor, and now we could really see what a world of difference it would eventually bring to our lives. Back in the early '80s, the CPU ran not only the operating system and the software but whatever graphics the software was capable of doing -- it wasn't shipped off to some co-processor. Simply watching the mouse pointer move fluidly on the screen was impressive to us at the time -- more amazing, even, then creating our first plaid-patterned polygons with LisaDraw for no particular reason.
But also, the world of computing was full of so many more great names than today. Sure, IBM was marching in and would set the tone for the next few decades, but we still had Commodore, Atari, Osborne, KayPro, Ohio Scientific, HP (which had its own designs for business computers at the time), Exidy, Sinclair, Apollo, and the brand which brought me into this business in the first place, Radio Shack. The world was full, and new ideas in hardware were coming out everywhere. Sure, some geniuses in particular rocked the world, but from our vantage point, that's what everyone was doing...that's what we were doing. Steve Jobs was one of our rock stars, sure. But we had a plethora of others -- Jay Miner, Adam Osborne, Chuck Peddle, Clive Sinclair; the writers like Rodnay Zaks and Peter McWilliams; the great publishers we loved (some whom I'd later work for) like David Ahl, David Bunnell, Wayne Green; and the brilliant man whose name is so long forgotten, but who may have contributed at least as much if not more to our foundation of computing than anyone else, Gary Kildall.
It started to come together with the advent of the Macintosh Plus, with 512K -- enough memory to actually run software -- and the numeric keypad.
So when the Macintosh first entered the scene for us, you have to understand, "new" for us came every three months or so. Even then, some of us were still puzzling over the Lisa. Though we all loved the "1984" ad, our expectations of the first Mac were based on our supposition that it would be an attempt to correct the failures of the Lisa. Being priced $8,000 less certainly helped.
But even the first Macs weren't brilliant, not really. They suffered from what we all perceived to be Steve Jobs' basic nature to go with whatever he had at the time, explaining that it's all by design, and if we didn't get it, then it's our fault. The first Mac was a closed system -- oh sure, it had a serial interface that was being "pioneered" by Apple, for the connection of external devices that we were promised but never actually saw. But we couldn't get hard drives to work with the first Macs, no matter how hard we tried (SCSI would only come later). The very first Mac-only conferences, sponsored by the nation's Apple II users' groups -- easily the most friendly and the greatest computer users who ever walked this planet at any time in our history -- were literally showered with businesses whose missions were to connect real peripherals to these things. We had laser printers, for crying out loud, and they were beautiful, but we had to fit our documents on these floppy diskettes; and without compression, we were using one diskette per document easily.
And because opening up one's Macintosh to do something horrible and unsanctioned, such as hiding a hard disk, constituted a violation of the sacred and sacrosanct Apple Warranty, none of these businesses were given accreditation by Apple, and many of them were scared to even employ the Apple logo in their brochures for fear of retribution. Thus the first Mac users' groups -- the offshoots of the Apple II groups -- flourished despite Apple. In fact, at about the time he was ousted from his CEO position, many leaders of the Apple community were tired of Steve Jobs and his bloviating nature, and were more than happy to see him replaced with the down-to-earth, all-business, no-frills approach offered by John Sculley.
Throughout the duration of the 1980s, the Macintosh was never the most powerful 68000-based computer you could buy. In terms of raw processing speed, the Atari ST (the focus of my career for about four years) blew the Mac away in every single challenge, yet that computer was being peddled by a company that was as clueless about computing as FEMA was about hurricanes. And for sheer fun and excitement and creativity, the Commodore Amiga ran circles around the Mac at warp speed. Both the ST and Amiga had orders of magnitude better software going into 1987. Meanwhile, the world's best software authors all wanted to write for Mac and were stymied by all the hoops Apple made them jump through just to be certified, to get development kits, to attend the seminars, and to be treated in kind. Then something happened round about 1988, in the era of the Mac SE and the Mac IIci, when the 68020 and 68030 processors roared to life. The software got better, the systems became more reliable...HyperCard entered the public vernacular. And Apple became more desperate, more humble, and more willing to let other companies enter into its realm. There was an opening, for the first time. System 7 took bold steps forward in functionality and principle. It really took five long, painful years for the Mac to truly be born.
Indeed, the Mac's greatness derives from its designers' willingness to break barriers. Not everything they tried was novel, and let's face it, a good deal of it (just like Windows) was stolen from someone else. Many of the concept's original ideas fell flat on their face, which is the key reason none of us boot up with Workshop disks today.
The first great Macintosh: The Mac SE
The true brilliance of Macintosh is the ideal that computing can have one way of working that we can believe in and stick to. That brilliance was inside the crate the Lisa was delivered in, but it may have been too hard to notice on day one, when I flipped the switch for the first time. Back in the late '70s and early '80s, when systems crashed, we lost everything we were working on, and sometimes the disk it was stored on; even the Lisa brought forth the idea that an operating system can be all-encompassing, that you could be "in" the Lisa rather than "in" dBASE or VisiCalc or Valdocs. The computer itself could define the way its user worked.
Granted, that was a great idea that was probably born in Gary Kildall's mind before anyone else's, but Apple made it work first. It took a lot of time and patience, and some swearing -- most of which has been forgotten by revisionist history. But if you were there in the room when the switch was flipped, or if you can imagine sitting there on a folding chair and watching it happen and sharing the joys and the frustrations in equal measure, then you can truly appreciate what the Mac has brought us.
[Photo credits: Scans of the Macintosh Plus (1985) and Mac SE (1986) from Byte Magazine]
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Video: Netflix on PlayStation 3

Publié: novembre 6, 2009, 8:52pm CET par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

As a PlayStation 3 owner, I did not have the luxury of Netflix Instant streaming through my video game console until today. Now, with the aid of Blu-ray's BD-Live and a free Netflix disc which must remain loaded in the PS3, I now have access to an experience similar to the one Xbox Live Gold subscribers had on their 360s.
These discs shipped out to subscribers this week and started landing in mailboxes today.
Since last year, I have used one of the Roku streamers to watch Netflix on my TV. It's a $99 investment I've gotten a lot of mileage out of, especially with the inclusion of Amazon On Demand, which gets a number of titles that Netflix does not. Unfortunately, for as handy and affordable as the Roku device has been, it does not allow movie titles to be browsed directly on the television. Users had to build an instant queue on their PC and only that content could be browsed.
With Netflix on PlayStation 3, not only can the Instant streaming catalog be browsed, but also lists of titles recommended for the user based on his viewing habits.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Early build of Moblin 2.1 improves connectivity, but not device support

Publié: novembre 6, 2009, 6:41pm CET par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Until recently, netbooks seemed to be computers designed by a subtractive process. That is, you start with a notebook design, and you scale back on the cost by equipping it with lower-power processors, less on-board storage, smaller screens, and either open source software or truncated desktop operating systems.
There really hasn't been a powerful example of a "netbook experience" that was built from the ground up to differentiate the devices from their full-powered counterparts.
In March, Betanews contributor Joe Wilcox wrote a column for eWeek called "The Problem with Netbooks" where he described two paths that the form factor could take: one leading to success, the other leading to a quick demise.
These paths differed depending on where you began.
To get on the path to success in the United States, netbooks would have to be fully integrated with mobile broadband carriers who heavily subsidize them, and they would have to have a specially designed version of Windows that isn't a stripped down desktop version or a built-up mobile version.
But in Europe, it's a different story altogether, and the devices are already on the right path. Carrier subsidies there are stronger, the devices fall more in line with smartphones than notebooks, and Linux-based operating systems are more popular.
And this is why Moblin has begun to look so promising. The Linux Foundation's open source operating system designed specifically for Intel Atom-powered devices was bumped up to a project release of Moblin version 2.1 for netbooks/nettops yesterday. This release knocks out several hundred bugs and adds a number of features critical to netbooks.
The most essential of the upgrades are related to wireless data connections. Support for Ericsson's 3G mobile broadband modules has been added, and the Connection Manager now supports Ethernet, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and 3G connections. Bluetooth discovery and pairing has also been added, which will allow users to tether their Bluetooth phone to their netbook as a 3G wireless modem.
However, Moblin has a critical shortcoming in that it doesn't yet support the Nvidia, ATI, or GMA-500 integrated graphics processor made by Imagination Technologies. The latter of these is used in all Atom Z500 series devices, also known as "Poulsbo."
While these graphics processors are found mostly in devices that wouldn't exactly fit in the netbook category -- they're MIDs, convertables, and "X-series" notebooks -- it's also used in the Nokia Booklet 3G, a 10-inch pseudo-netbook that could be a lock in Europe, and seems a perfect fit for Moblin.
Betanews sent an inquiry to the Linux Foundation asking about support for the device in Moblin 2.1, to find out whether it's been tested, whether it has to run in a reduced graphics mode or simply cannot run at all, or if there is a plan for a custom Moblin build as an alternative to Windows 7. We'll let you know what we hear back.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Early sales figures for Windows 7 nicely high, but do we know why?

Publié: novembre 6, 2009, 5:32pm CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The initial sales figures for Microsoft Windows 7 after its worldwide launch on October 22 are still being tabulated, but the early estimates sound very promising: According to industry analysis firm NPD, unit sales for Windows 7 software SKUs in the US were 234% higher -- better than triple -- the unit sales for Vista's launch, and US revenue from Win7 software sales was up 82% over Vista's launch.
But as Vista veterans will recall, that launch was botched somewhat, first by a costly delay, then by a decision to launch the product twice (first to businesses in October 2006, then to consumers in January 2007), and then by a lack of participation from partners. And there were still more reasons the Vista launch fizzled, one of which, believe it or not, included the scheduling of the launch on a Tuesday.
Windows 98, Windows Me, and Windows XP all launched on Thursdays, to moderate success or higher; and Windows 7 launched on a Thursday. You would think that since NPD's tabulation of sales figures runs between Sundays and Saturdays, the fact that the initial sales figures only reflect the first three days (plus all those pre-sales) of Windows 7 versus the first five days of Vista, would be even more impressive. Yet it's those pre-sales that may tell the real tale here, according to NPD vice president of industry analysis Stephen Baker, who credited a better-run pre-sale event from Microsoft and its retail partners as contributing to the more successful launch this time around. If you'll recall, the hype over Vista had fizzled long before January.
The top three selling SKUs in the three-day window were all upgrades: for Home Premium, followed by Professional (from Vista Business), and the Home Premium Family Pack. We don't know specific unit sales numbers, but can we draw any conclusions yet about who is doing the upgrading and why? For instance, are they XP users, or are those folks more likely to purchase new PCs with Win7 pre-installed (whose sales are not included in these NPD figures, but whose early estimates also appear positive)?
"Questions like that on hardware are hard to answer after three days of sales," Stephen Baker told Betanews this morning. "Some portion of the first three days of sales is just pent-up demand, driven by lack of product to sell in the first ten days. So in that respect, I am not sure what the initial motivators are."
In his blog post on launch day, Baker credited stores like Best Buy with their willingness this time around to cooperate with Microsoft, especially with little things like displaying Win7-based PCs -- not Vista -- during early October even before Win7 or the PCs with Win7 were available. Seeing those systems, and some of their new form factors, might contribute to some of that pent-up demand Baker told us about.
"In general, though, consumers rarely buy PCs for 'new' features," Baker told us, letting the air out of that balloon. "As a tool and a home communication necessity, PCs are most often bought on need. The latest form factor isn't or design isn't what motivates consumers to buy, it is what gets them to buy at the point-of-sale in the store. But getting them to make a decision to buy is based on need, price, and promotion."
We definitely saw the promotion part of that solution as early as August, with a respectable and, for once, not insulting advertising campaign that blanketed all media, including television. But this time around, OEMs were participating in that promotion as well, and were in sync with Microsoft's timetable, publishing early notices of markdown deals, and drumming October 22 into consumers' heads.
But that doesn't cover the need factor; and we wondered, how much did Vista contribute to that need. Since, after all, the top three selling SKUs were all upgrades, were folks really willing to dump Vista?
No, according to NPD's Baker: He believes that the factor that publishers like Betanews had been calling the "Vista perception problem" are not as pervasive as we make it out to be, especially in the consumer space. More importantly than how we may dramatize things, consumers were simply more motivated by the "refresh" aspect of the new system, says Baker.
"I would suspect that most of it is new look-and-feel, and a PC refresh without the cost," he told Betanews. "Bloggers may dislike Vista, but the vast majority of consumers really don't mind it."
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
The iPhone's China syndrome: Sales of 5,000 and climbing

Publié: novembre 6, 2009, 4:30pm CET

By Richard Adhikari, MacNewsWorld

The iPhone went on sale last week in China, and it landed more or less with a thud. Cupertino's carrier partner in that country, China Unicom, announced on Tuesday that only 5,000 customers had purchased the phone thus far. At this rate, the handset may have trouble meeting sales expectations. China Unicom had pledged to sell 1 million iPhones per year.
Price could be one deterrent -- the iPhone starts at around the equivalent of USD$730. Add in monthly subscriber fees, and you're soon looking at a rather pricey phone in a country where the average income of urban workers in 2008 was less than $4,300.
Another problem could be the wide choice of devices available to the Chinese consumer. In addition to cheaper gray-market iPhone sales -- which Kevin Wang, director of China research at iSuppli, had pegged at about 1 million units per year -- the iPhone has to contend with a number of competitors. These range from Nokia phones, which dominate the market, to iPhone knockoffs to Android phones.
"It's most likely a combination of all these factors," Brian Marshall, an analyst at Broadpoint AmTech, told MacNewsWorld. However, he's optimistic that things will pick up for the iPhone. "Over time, I think the iPhone scales nicely in China," Marshall said. "I think China Unicom's figure of 1 million iPhone sales a year is conservative."
Still, Apple may need to do something about price. It had a similar experience with the iPhone in India, according to BusinessWeek. The iPhone was launched in India in August of 2008, and by April 2009, total sales were reportedly less than 20,000. As is possibly the case in China, price and competition from an entrenched market leader -- Nokia again -- are making things difficult for the iPhone in India.
Taking care of business
On the enterprise front, the iPhone seems to be making some headway.
For one thing, Medallia, which helps companies track interactions with customers in near real-time, has announced an iPhone app for what it calls "enterprise feedback management". This lets users access, monitor and respond in real-time to customer feedback across all channels, including social media.
"More and more of our customers' employees are using the iPhone at work," Amy Pressman, Medallia's president and chief financial officer, told MacNewsWorld. These users range from vice presidents to managers of individual hotels and retail stores to front line staff.
Medallia's announcement follows in the footsteps of IBM. In October, Big Blue announced that Lotus Domino 8.5.1 would natively support the iPhone.
With more than 100,000 apps now in the app store, why are these apps important to investors? Because these are meat-and-potatoes apps that will be heavily used for business-critical purposes, and their use may spur more iPhone sales.
Also, the iTunes App Store and the iPhone will gain credibility as more enterprises pick up iPhone apps, opening up another new market for Apple. "We have found that our iPhone-using enterprise customers are more interested in applications beyond email than our customers who use other smartphones," Pressman said.

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Killing off Kindle?
Meanwhile, as has been widely expected, more and more iPhone owners are using the devices as e-readers, according to research by Flurry. Flurry offers analytics, deployment and monetization tools for mobile app developers.
In September, apps categorized as "books" on the App Store outnumbered those designated as "games" for the first time, Flurry found. In October, one out of every five new iPhone apps launched was a book. Flurry's survey sampled more than 2,500 apps, 40 million consumers and four platforms -- the iPhone and the iPod touch, the BlackBerry platform, JavaME, and Android.
Whether or not sales of Amazon's Kindle e-reader will be affected by people using the iPhone as an e-reader has yet to be seen. However, with Amazon stating that holiday sales of the Kindle might set new records, it could be that the iPhone might ride another new wave of demand and see a further boost in sales.
Apple will remain strong, said Broadpoint AmTech's Marshall. He's sticking with his price target of $235 a share.
Originally published on MacNewsWorld
© 2009 ECT News Network. All rights reserved.
© 2009 BetaNews.com. All rights reserved.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
New European counterpart to FCC will ensure 'a more neutral net'

Publié: novembre 6, 2009, 3:21am CET par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

During one of the more noteworthy weeks in Europe's modern history, as the 27 member nations of the European Union prepare for a newer and more centralized executive authority, the EU will also be making way for a powerful regulatory authority for telecommunications: the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC). This is the name for the new European Telecoms Authority; and whereas in the US, there remains considerable debate over whether the Federal Communications Commission can and should have regulatory authority over Internet transactions, in Europe, the debate has officially been settled: BEREC will have authority to propose regulations for telecommunications in all forms, including the Internet.
But the power for approving, exercising, and then administering those regulations has been delegated to the European Commission. So although the new telecoms authority will be comprised of the national telecom regulatory heads from each member nation, the EC will have the authority to overrule them. Negotiations over this single provision extended for hours and eventually days, according to the EC, with the central point of contention being this and only this provision.
But in the end, the agreement reached early Thursday morning essentially gave the EC everything it has asked for, without any hint of compromise.
"When the Commission, in close cooperation with BEREC, considers that a draft remedy notified by a national regulator would create a barrier to the single market," reads this morning's communiqué from the EC, referring to the continent-wide telecommunications market, "the Commission may issue a recommendation that requires the national regulator to amend or withdraw its planned remedy. The new rules also enable the Commission to adopt further harmonization measures in the form of recommendations or (binding) decisions, if divergences in the implementation of remedies persist across the EU in the longer term."
"Harmonization" is the EC's term for getting everyone's ducks in a row, and has been a favorite watch-word of Comm. Viviane Reding, whose authority over Europe's Internet industry has just increased.
Also within Comm. Reding's power will be the ability to order a country's telecom company, once it steps over the regulatory body, to divest itself of its services division if it wishes to maintain control of a majority of lines or transmitters in its given nation. This is the functional separation option introduced in the original proposal two years ago, based in principle on the spinoff of Openreach from UK-based parent BT in 2003, in one of the EC's first telecom-related antitrust actions.
A final draft of what's now called the Internet Freedom Provision will not, as some European journals had reported, guarantee broadband Internet access as a fundamental human right. What it will do, however, is guarantee that an individual's right to choose any available application over the Internet is not suppressed by a service provider's maintenance measures, privacy policies, or lack thereof. In its entirety, the new annex of the Provision reads as follows:
Measures taken by Member States regarding end-users' access to or use of services and applications through electronic communications networks shall respect the fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons, as guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and general principles of Community law.
Any of these measures regarding end-users' access to or use of services and applications through electronic communications networks liable to restrict those fundamental rights or freedoms may only be imposed if they are appropriate, proportionate and necessary within a democratic society, and their implementation shall be subject to adequate procedural safeguards in conformity with the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and general principles of Community law, including effective judicial protection and due process. Accordingly, these measures may only be taken with due respect for the principle of presumption of innocence and the right to privacy. A prior fair and impartial procedure shall be guaranteed, including the right to be heard of the person or persons concerned, subject to the need for appropriate conditions and procedural arrangements in duly substantiated cases of urgency in conformity with the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The right to an effective and timely judicial review shall be guaranteed.
Final votes in the European Parliament on the creation of BEREC will take place later this month, although at this point, they're seen to be largely ceremonial. The new authority -- and the authority over that authority -- could come into existence in the first quarter of 2010.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Verizon Wireless launches new Android, Chocolate, and ruggedized phones

Publié: novembre 6, 2009, 1:07am CET par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

In New York City today, Verizon Wireless rolled out new additions to its expanding Android and LG Chocolate phone families, while also delivering sneak previews of a new, consumer-friendly ruggedized phone called the Casio G'zOne Brigade (shown above).
Like its previously announced top-of-the-line Android phone, known simply as the Droid, the less expensive Droid Eris will be available for the first time in Verizon stores tomorrow -- which is also when pricing will be revealed.
Verizon hasn't yet set pricing or an availability date for the Brigade, but sales of the Push to Talk phone from Casio will start some time over the next few weeks, said Kris Dunlap, Verizon's Push to Talk product manager, during a demo at a press event in Manhattan.
In keeping with its lower price point, the Droid Eris has a lower resolution HVGA display in comparison to the Droid's WVGA screen, and a slower processor running at 528 MHz.
More significantly, the Eris currently runs Android 1.5, in comparison to the higher-end phone's GPS-enabled Android 2.0. That means it won't be able to handle Google's turn-by-turn voice navigation until a 2.0 upgrade becomes available for the phone, officials said at the event.
Both Verizon Android phones, though, will come with the same Google applications suite and Verizon's Visual Voicemail, and both will allow downloads from the 10,000+ applications in Google's online App store.
Unlike the Droid, which is made by Motorola, the Droid Eris is manufactured by HTC. The Eris is similar in form factor to HTC's Hero, a phone offered by Sprint, but it's slightly thinner.
In another demo at the event, Lauren Southwick, a Verizon marketing manager, showed an app called Join the Band running on the Chocolate Touch. Verizon's new touch-enabled Chocolate phone is strongly focused on music playback, with features that include an FM tuner, the ability to sync music from the phone to a PC, and a music player for MP3, WMA, and unprotected AAC and AAC+, for example. You can use a special button on the phone to upload photos taken with a built-in 3.2 megapixel camera to social networking sites like Facebook.
In Join the Band, you can play along with any song you choose on a virtual drum set or piano keyboard. I thought the piano did a fine job when I banged out "Chopsticks" on it.
The Chocolate Touch's video-capable camera can take four types of shots: Normal, Panorama, Intelligent, and Facial Makeover. Southwick sent a Panorama shot she took at the event to one of my e-mail addresses.
Verizon's upcoming Brigade, on the other hand, is the third in a series of ruggedized and water-resistant phones targeted not just at people who work out-of-doors, but at those who like to bike, camp out, fish, and do other outdoor hobbies in their spare time. Like the other two recent tough phones, it meets 810F military specifications for conditions such as vibration, humidity, fog, and low and high temperature storage, Dunlap said.
Verizon hasn't readied a spec sheet yet on the Brigade. But the new horizontal clamshell device -- which will be available to all Verizon Wireless users, not just Push to Talk customers -- will be the first ruggedized phone from Verizon to come with a hard QWERTY keyboard.
Dunlap also pointed to its large display, estimating that the Brigade's screen is about the same size as that of Verizon's Voyager. The Brigade will come with a 3.2 megapixel camera with flash, video capture, and LED light.
The Chocolate Touch and Brigade phones also support Verizon's V Cast video and music services and VZ Navigator turn-by-turn navigation, while the two Droid phones from Verizon do not. Chocolate Touch will be available from VZW starting tomorrow for $79.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009