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BetaNews.Com (5 non lus)

HP to acquire Palm for $1.2 billion

Publié: avril 28, 2010, 10:41pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III and Tim Conneally

By Scott M. Fulton, III and Tim Conneally, Betanews

Perhaps the headline here should be, "HTC doesn't acquire Palm." In any event, our question from last week, "What if nobody wants Palm?" has just been rendered moot: Hewlett-Packard has just announced it has agreed to acquire the assets of Palm Inc. for $5.70 per share, or approximately $1.2 billion.
HP's announcement cites webOS in the first paragraph, indicating that the operating system was key to the company's offer.
The Personal Systems Group will apparently get control of the technology; what it will do with the people behind it is an unanswered question. HP Executive Vice President Todd Bradley's statement reads: "Palm's innovative operating system provides an ideal platform to expand HP's mobility strategy and create a unique HP experience spanning multiple mobile connected devices. And, Palm possesses significant IP assets and has a highly skilled team. The smartphone market is large, profitable and rapidly growing, and companies that can provide an integrated device and experience command a higher share. Advances in mobility are offering significant opportunities, and HP intends to be a leader in this market."
Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein delivered the usual note of excitement to be working with HP, but that doesn't answer the principal question of the Palm employees' fate. We may know that for certain in about a half-hour, when HP delivers a press conference.
Another era: The bustling activity of the Palm booth at the COMNET conference in Washington, DC, November 15, 2000.
The above photo was taken just four months after network hardware maker 3Com spun off from Palm and became an independent company. Earlier this month, HP completed its acquisition of 3Com for $2.7 billion in cash.
Since Palm has been very publicly struggling with profitability, dozens of publications in the last few months have weighed in with an editorial about who should have bought Palm.
Business Insider--Cisco should buy Palm
Engadget-- HTC should buy Palm
Gizmodo-- Google should buy Palm
Intomobile--RIM should buy Palm
All Things Digital--Intel should buy Palm
GigaOM -- Motorola should buy Palm
Betanews--Microsoft should buy Palm
and, of course Nobody should buy Palm.
HP, a company whose mobile presence was limited to a single smartphone in the last year, however, was largely overlooked.
5:30 pm ET April 28, 2010 · This early comment on the incredible news from Betanews contributing analyst Carmi Levy: "This is an abject lesson in why you can't let your existing IP -- in this case, the iPaq brand -- go stale. If HP had given its mobile unit the care and feeding it deserved through much of the decade, it wouldn't have had to buy Palm. Which begs the question of whether HP has what it takes to grow the battered seedling back into a competitively healthy player. I like the complementary potential between the two. It's the track record of both that gives me pause."
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Hello? Facebook login! Hello? Where are my piggies?

Publié: avril 28, 2010, 10:26pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

In an astonishing statistic released this morning, Web analytics service Experian Hitwise reported that of all the Web searches performed in the United States on the top three search engines Google, Yahoo, and Bing during the first four weeks of March, about two percent on average are for the word facebook. For Yahoo and Bing, Another one percent is for facebook.com, and just less than one percent is for facebook login.
Coupled with statistics for the same month from analytics service comScore, Experian's findings suggest that, from March 1 through March 27, searches for a way to get to Facebook other than through typing the address or clicking on a bookmark, accounted for as many as 175.84 million Google searches in the US, over 78.9 million Yahoo searches, and over 80 million Bing searches.
That means an estimated 2.2% of Americans' Web searches are for their Facebook front page.
Before one goes chocking this figure up completely to massive user inexperience: Although typing facebook into the address bar of Firefox brings up the home page of Facebook.com, typing facebook into the address bar of Internet Explorer and Google Chrome brings up results for a Web search for Facebook using the browser's default search engine, which for many users is typically Google.
On the other hand, it's difficult to ignore that -- once again coupling Experian's and comScore's numbers -- some 18.5 million Yahoo searches, and nearly 20.2 million Bing searches, in the US for the first four weeks of March, were for google.
The fact that tens of millions of searches every month are for the location of one of the most obvious Web portals on the planet, posed a problem for a very legitimate news site, ReadWriteWeb, last February. A news article whose headline was "Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login," ostensibly about the social service incorporating friends lists from multiple other services, became one of the leading search results on Google and other sites, for users typing facebook login.
The result was pandemonium, as thousands of folks confused about their new destination, commented to ReadWriteWeb wondering where their Facebook had gone...and worse, lamenting the fate of all their farm animals and crops they had tended to in the game of Farmville, a Facebook app that demands persistent participation.
But what's even more astonishing is that the parade of confused participants continues even as late as today (April 28), some eleven weeks after the article's original date of publication. Commenters (some for real...some perhaps pretending) continue to protest against what they believe to be a change in Facebook's format, including redecorating from blue to red, still pleading, "How do I log in?" Protesters join a sea of equally sad lampooners ridiculing the confused patrons along with, more recently, unsolicited advertisements from attention seekers.
Learning the lesson from this experience and leveraging their own gains from it, a number of sites have renamed or retitled themselves "Facebook Login," or something similar. Despite even that fact, the ReadWriteWeb article continues to be the #6 search result that Google provides, for the estimated 85.4 million US users who type facebook login every month.
That figure is astonishingly close to the number of people that Farmville reports as active users, as Web analyst and blogger Justin Kistner reported last month. Also putting two and two together, Kistner noted that the number of people Facebook reports to be playing Farmville in March (83.2 million) exceeds the number of people believed by independent estimates to be using Twitter (75 million).
Thus, if you couple these figures, the number of people who can't find Facebook outnumber those who can find Twitter.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
No, Microsoft did not say Android steps on its IP

Publié: avril 28, 2010, 8:37pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

A spokesperson for Microsoft's legal department confirmed to Betanews this afternoon that a precise legal interpretation of the company's patent agreement announced late yesterday with phone maker HTC is accurate, but interpretations of that announcement that imply Microsoft will charge royalties to HTC for its use of the Android operating system, are inaccurate.
"This agreement covers HTC's use of Microsoft technology that may appear in Android," the spokesperson told Betanews, affirming a specific interpretation of the language that we sought clarification on. As the announcement reads, "Microsoft Corp. and HTC Corp. have signed a patent agreement that provides broad coverage under Microsoft's patent portfolio for HTC's mobile phones running the Android mobile platform. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will receive royalties from HTC." (emphasis ours)
Our interpretation, which Microsoft affirmed, is that HTC will pay royalties to Microsoft for the use of technologies in phones that may (or may not) be adapted for use with Android...or, for that matter, any other mobile OS. Such an agreement enables HTC, for instance, to repurpose phones that were originally engineered for Windows Mobile, and also conceivably reuse software technologies such as HTC's Sense UI (which the manufacturer is already doing), in Android-based phones.
The agreement takes the opposite approach from Apple, which sued HTC last month, claiming that it had misappropriated certain patented technologies from iPhone. Now, with an agreement in hand that effectively acknowledges Microsoft permitted HTC to use certain categories of its technologies -- categories for which Apple claims exclusive rights -- HTC may be able to counter-claim that those claims are not exclusive since Microsoft holds patents for which HTC pays royalties.
So the agreement could help HTC in its fight against Apple. But it does not, as the Associated Press suggested earlier today, make Microsoft a party to the suit, nor does it bring Android into that mess.
The legal distinction here may seem trivial, but from another angle, it's actually colossal: The agreement permits HTC, as Microsoft confirmed to Betanews, to continue to use the technologies it's already using and for which it's already paying and will continue to pay royalties, in other phones besides the Windows Mobile-based models. From that angle, that means Microsoft is not permitting HTC to use the Microsoft technology that appears in Android (assuming it does appear there at all). It means Android may be adapted by HTC for use in other phones that have Microsoft technology.
That's not to say Microsoft does not have outstanding concerns about Android's use of possibly patented technologies, as the company's deputy general counsel, Horacio Gutierrez, told Betanews in a statement late this morning. There certainly are concerns, and they may yet be resolved.
"Microsoft has a decades-long record of investment in software platforms. As a result, we have built a significant patent portfolio in this field, and we have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to ensure that competitors do not free ride on our innovations," Gutierrez told us. "We have also consistently taken a proactive approach to licensing to resolve IP infringement by other companies, and have been talking with several device manufacturers to address our concerns relative to the Android mobile platform."
Though Gutierrez did not provide names, of course, one of those other manufacturers may be Motorola. Last year at this time, Motorola suspended its plans to release a certain class of phone, code-named "Heron," for Windows Mobile 6.5, opting to release it during the latter half of 2009 under Android. It never did so, perhaps because an agreement such as the one reached yesterday with HTC, has yet to be drawn.
In June 2007, Microsoft entered into a license agreement with LG, which at the time was said to cover the use of Microsoft technologies in devices that may include Linux. That broad agreement may have been a model for the HTC agreement yesterday, and it may also be covering LG right now. LG officially announced its first Android phones just today, the SU2300 slider and the SU950 widescreen, for debut this spring in South Korea and possibly Europe.
Unfortunately for the conspiracy theorists, the HTC/Microsoft agreement does not appear to be a line-in-the-sand battle against Apple or Google. Rather, it's good news for Android, as it means Microsoft is willing to extend its technology to other platforms (naturally, for a price). The presumption that Microsoft is taking sides against Android supporters, or that it's forcing them to pay Microsoft for their use of Android, is false.
Tim Conneally contributed significant facts and reporting for this story.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
10 reasons to get excited about the Nokia N8

Publié: avril 28, 2010, 6:06pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Move over Apple, Nokia isn't ready to give up its market share leading position just yet. After two failed flagship smartphone attempts -- the N97 and N900 -- Nokia has cued up the drool-worthy N8 for third quarter release. I'm suddenly excited about a Nokia handset again, and you should be, too. The N8 might also be the Nokia handset to crack the US market.
Nokia is leaning on its strengths in hardware innovation, while improving software and services. The handset manufacturer has long excelled at hardware, whereas Apple does much better with software. For example, Nokia shipped cell phones with great cameras years before Apple sold one iPhone. But Nokia has struggled to extend steller photo and video capabilities into the capacitive touchscreen era.
The N8 may change all that. Apple watchers might want to watch this Nokia smartphone, which should be available around the same time as or soon after the next iPhone. Now for those reasons:
1. Symbian^3. American bloggers may pine for iPhone OS 4, but Symbian is a maturer mobile operating system. Symbian^3 is all about social connections and capable widgets running in the background (not makeshift multitasking like the iPhone).
2. 12-megapixel camera. Nokia N-Series cameraphones are legendary for quality optics and sensor size. Nokia Conversations posted the first sample photos yesterday, and they are simply stunning and unedited straight from the handset. Click through the pics to the full-size images to see the detail captured and surprising low amount of distortion for a camerphone -- or many compact digital cameras. (My daughter has the same bike, but in red.)
Sample image from Nokia N8 smartphone. Click thru for full size.
3. Xenon flash. Nokia aficionados have debated N-Series flash since release of the N82, which packed Xenon rather than the typical single- or dual-LED. Old as the N82 is, Nokia fan sites continue to do flash and image quality comparisons between the cameraphone and newer N-Series smartphones. The N82 remains the gold standard for Nokia image quality, although the N8 promises much more.
4. 720p video. Now that YouTube supports HD, 640x480 simply isn't good enough. Apple's fourth-generation iPhone is rumored to have 720p, too. But will Apple's smartphone have Carl Zeiss optics and big sensor (for a handset)? The sample video below simply stunned me. It's simply the best quality I've seen produced by any cameraphone and most compact digital cameras.
Another sample image from Nokia N8. Click thru to see amazing facial detail.
5. Support for AT&T and T-Mobile. Nokia has shortchanged American users for way too long. Most handsets support AT&T 3G frequencies, while there is limited support for T-Mobile (Nuron and N900). The N8 adds support for the 1700MHz band, which along with 2100MHz, would allow the smartphone to use T-Mobile 3G. Could this be the Nokia smartphone that either US carrier carries at a reasonably affordable subsidized price?
6. Five colors. Kodak pioneered the five-color gadget concept during the late 1920s among several series of compact film cameras. Apple brought the five-color concept to new millennium gadgets with the iPod mini and later the iPod nano. Nokia will apply the concept to smartphones, with the N8, which will be available in black, silver, green, orange and blue. What's not to like about that?
7. Capacitive display. Apple popularized smartphone capacitive touchscreens (which respond to electrical impulses in the fingers), while Nokia largely stuck with resistive touchscreens (which require physical touch). Too few Nokia handsets ship with capacitive displays today. Nokia is a latecomer, and it's about time that one of the company's flagship phones used capacitive instead of resistive touchsreen.
Nokia N8 first HD video sample from Nokia Conversations on Vimeo.
8. HDMI. Given the 12-megapixel camera and 720p video capture capabilities, HDMI output is a sensible necessity.
9. Unified social networking. Already, Nokia's newer smartphones offer some of the best social networking features available on any handset. Apple is behind in this area in part because of its applications focus and iPhone's stunted multitasking. HTC also offers great out-of-the-box social with its Sense UI. Motorola's MotoBlur is another social-networking skin, and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 also offers social connections. N8 promises to be the social ladder climber of the summer (at least until the next, great smartphone announcement comes from somewhere else). As for iPhone, third party developers will have to do what Apple hasn't.
10. Price. Nokia has priced the N8 at €370, unsubsidized. At today's exchange rate, that's about US $486. The N8 looks to be Nokia's lowest-cost flagship smartphone ever. Unsubsidized, the 16GB N8 would cost about $110 less than what Apple charges carriers for the 16GB iPhone 3GS. However, to be truly competitive with iPhone 3GS or Android-based smartphones, Nokia needs subsidized US carrier distribution.
Regardless, photo and video capture quality promise to make the N8 a reasonable replacement for digital camera and pocket videocam. From that perspective, there is plenty of potential value in the one device to replace others. Oh, yeah, the N8 makes phone calls, too. :)
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
New hope for free encoding in Blu-ray videos with x264

Publié: avril 28, 2010, 2:39am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The problem for independent video producers and enthusiasts has been the inability to encode videos that can be burned to Blu-ray Discs, and then actually played on BD consoles. That changed yesterday as Jason Garrett-Glaser, the leader of the open source x264 project that has seen success with DVDs, announced his team was able to encode a playable Blu-ray video using entirely free software.
That disc is being released as a kind of "Hello, World" effort for the high-definition format. It contains free videos folks have probably seen before, such as the Creative Commons licensed cartoon "Big Buck Bunny." But the image was designed to be small enough (2 GB) to be burned to either a DVD or a BD, to further prove the software's versatility.
"With x264's powerful compression, as demonstrated by the incredibly popular BD-Rebuilder Blu-ray backup software, it's quite possible to author Blu-ray disks on DVD9s (dual-layer DVDs) or even DVD5s (single-layer DVDs) with a reasonable level of quality," Glaser wrote yesterday. "With a free software encoder and less need for an expensive Blu-ray burner, we are one step closer to putting HD optical media creation in the hands of the everyday user."
The x264 codec utilizes independently derived math to produce video that follows the H.264 format, so it can be decoded using commercial software and console firmware as though commercial encoders had rendered it. Independent tests indicate obvious superiority with handling artifacts and moving objects compared to Windows Media Video, especially in the comparison featured on this page (warning, several big images included, plus the site hosting it appeared to be a victim of DNS hijacking at the time we checked it).
The most recent comparison of average rate distortion curves (RD curves) over variable bitrates, by the Graphics & Media Lab of Moscow State University (PDF available here), reveals somewhat superior performance from last year's permutation of the x264 encoder, including against expensive competitors like MainConcept H.264. Engineers conducting the test suggested that x264 could actually be used as a benchmark against which all other codecs in the last five years could be judged.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010