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BetaNews.Com (10 non lus)

AT&T lays out plans to switch off 2G networks

Publié: août 3, 2012, 11:58pm CEST par Tim Conneally

National wireless carrier AT&T plans to move completely past 2G wireless connectivity by 2017, a recent 10-Q filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission revealed.

Due to the impending 'spectrum crisis' that has been slowly edging toward wireless providers for the last three years, AT&T plans to eventually shutter its 2G network, and redeploy it for use on next-gen mobile broadband networks.

As of June 30, 2012, just about one-third of AT&T's smartphone subscribers were using "4G-capable device," and because of these types of devices, the demand for more wireless broadband connections is increasing at a rate greater than is manageable.

It should be noted that AT&T's figure here is somewhat padded, since the carrier considers HSPA+ to be a 4G technology, even though it is not sanctioned as such by the Third Generation Partnership Project. It is sometimes considered "3.5G" or "3.75G." Even still, the traffic continues to increase.

"We intend to redeploy spectrum currently used for basic 2G services to support more advanced mobile Internet services on our 3G and 4G networks. We will manage this process consistent with previous network upgrades and will transition customers on a market-by-market basis from our Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) networks (referred to as 2G networks) to our more advanced 3G and 4G networks," AT&T's filing says.

"We expect to fully discontinue service on our 2G networks by approximately January 1, 2017. Throughout this multi-year upgrade process, we will work proactively with our customers to manage the process of moving to 3G and 4G devices, which will help minimize customer churn."

AT&T said approximately 12 percent of its subscribers were still using 2G handsets at the end of June, but the company doesn't expect to feel any "material impact" from a forced upgrade for these customers.

Photo credit: Dr.OGA/Shutterstock
CodeAcademy adds Python to the list of languages you can learn for free

Publié: août 3, 2012, 10:24pm CEST par Patrick Roanhouse

CodeAcademy, the free site for learning how to code, has just added the Python programming language to its tutorial platform.

CodeAcademy made a big impression on the Web back in August of 2011 when its cofounders, two graduates of the y-combinator startup training camp, Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinski, announced the service on the ycombinator Hacker News forum. Since then, the site has seen extensive growth, and it currently offers a few hundred exercises in HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery.

While the site has a substantial list of lessons already, the inclusion of Python marks a major turning point for CodeAcademy. Co-founder Zach Sims said in the the CodeAcademy LABS blog that CodeAcademy has been "Focused on client-side languages and markup - Javascript, HTML, and CSS...this is the beginning of new language support on CodeAcademy – Python is only the first server side language you’ll see."

Python programming language has been around for 21 years, and it is frequently used as part of the development framework for interactive Web applications. Python is even is one of the official five languages that Google uses, and its uses range from cross-platform scripting to powering backend services like the Google App Engine web apps hosting platform. The Python programming language is also used in a lot of NASA projects too, particularly in streamlining mission design processes.
Hardcopy lets you print out your desktop or program window with a single click

Publié: août 3, 2012, 9:27pm CEST par Nick Peers

While it’s true the simplest apps are often the best, you invariably find yourself torn over loving their simplicity while yearning for additional functionality. Imagine, then, an app that can fill a void you didn’t know existed – the need to quickly print out your entire desktop or an active window to paper – while providing all those extra features you don’t yet realize you want?

You can stop imagining, because that app exists. It’s been around for over a decade, benefits from frequent updates (it’s fully Windows 8 compatible, for instance) and – most pleasing of all – is completely free.

Step forward, please, Hardcopy.

Hardcopy’s basic functionality is refreshingly simple. You want to print out your desktop? Just press the [Print Screen] key. You’d rather print out the active window instead? Look for the little green Hardcopy icon that appears when a window is in focus, click it, and wait while the window – menus, toolbars and all – is output to your printer. Don’t want to click? Press [Alt] + [Print Screen] instead.

There’s your simplicity right there, but then eventually you decide you need more. No problem: Hardcopy has just about every conceivable function you could need, all controlled through its editing window, where you’ll find image-capturing and editing features to cover most bases: grab rectangular sections of the screen, or select specific objects. You can even use Hardcopy to pull bitmaps and icons out of program and DLL files, plus save your grabs in a myriad of different formats.

Hardcopy also allows you to group a load of different image files or screen grabs together for printing in one batch. And with annotation, editing and titling functions jostling with image-editing functions covering everything from colour correction to effects and filters, you’re looking at one fully featured tool that should satisfy most people’s screen-printing needs.

The app is one of those that has been around for what feels like forever – it’s compatible with PCs running Windows 98 or later – but which continues to benefit from frequent updates. The latest version, for example, features adjustments to work better with the forthcoming Office 2013, while another recent build added full support for Windows 8’s new tile-based Start menu. Sadly, one area that could use a facelift – at the expense of compatibility we suspect – is the user interface, which looks dated compared to contemporary apps. It’s not a deal-breaker, though.

Hardcopy 2012.08.01 is a freeware download for PCs running Windows 98 through to Windows 8. Registration – for around $17.50 – unlocks several new features, including automatic updates for a year.
What's in a name? Metro becomes a bad word at Microsoft

Publié: août 3, 2012, 8:07pm CEST par Ed Oswald

Microsoft isn't known for its ability in picking catchy names, so it was somewhat shocking when the Redmond, Wash. company began referring to its clean, typography-first interface as "Metro". It was beautifully simple, and just seemed to fit.

Not anymore.

For whatever reason, Microsoft appears to have decided Metro is a bad word, and has instructed its teams to stop using the brand name.

We don't exactly know why, either. Tom Warren at The Verge initially reported Thursday that the change had to do with a possible trademark dispute involving a German company called Metro AG, Mary Jo Foley heard similar rumors from her own sources, but added the move away from Metro could be due to overuse.

Was Metro getting played out like .NET did nearly a decade ago? Was its meaning being muddied as a result, and Microsoft decided its overexposure was doing more harm than good? We just don't know, and the statement we received doesn't explain much either.

"We have used Metro style as a code name during the product development cycle across many of our product lines", Microsoft representatives told BetaNews. "As we get closer to launch and transition from industry dialog to a broad consumer dialog we will use our commercial names".

That was news to us. For what it's worth, Metro was never offered just as a code name. Typically, Microsoft code names are not so commonly used in both marketing materials and in public if there's no intention of holding on to it.

Metro had become a brand -- a recognizable term to describe the drastic change in Windows UI design. But now we're being told that it should never be spoken of again, and it just seems mighty strange so close to the public availability of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, where Metro (or apparently now, Windows 8 Style UI) plays a big part.

So where do we go from here? Although Microsoft would not comment further on the situation, elsewhere it was reported that the company could debut a new term to replace Metro as early as this weekend. I think we all share the hope that the new name doesn't go back to the clunky nomenclature that Microsoft has too often used in the past.

Until then, I guess we'll still be calling it Metro, and I'm willing to bet a lot of other people will too, regardless of the new name.

Photo: Imagestalk/Shutterstock
Android leads, iOS follows, Windows Phone shows surprising growth

Publié: août 3, 2012, 7:36pm CEST par Mihaita Bamburic

Canalys released its latest report on the state of the smartphone market based on shipments in Q2 2012, and the results provided by the estimates are going to stir some emotions among Android and iOS fans. Android dominates the market with iOS following its lead, but not from up close.

Android, Google’s smartphone operating system, shipped in 107.8 million devices in Q2 2012, a 100.10 percent increase over Q2 2011 when Android smartphone shipments reached 51.2 million units. Shipments have more than doubled year over year, and at the same time the share in shipments increased as well. In Q2 2011, Android shipments accounted for 47.6 percent of the smartphone market, and in Q2 2012 they have grown to 68.1 percent which is a 43.06 percent increase over the same period last year.

How does Apple's operating system fare against Google’s Android? iOS shipments accounted for 20.3 million units sold in Q2 2011 and year over year they have grown in Q2 2012 to 26 million, a 28.07 percent increase. How did the increase in Apple smartphone sales affect the share in shipments? Despite increased volumes, iOS only accounted for 16.4 percent market share in smartphone shipments in Q2 2012, a 13.22 percent decrease from the 18.9 percent share in shipments from Q2 2011.

As we have seen again and again throughout the last few years, Android and iOS are the two top-tier mobile ecosystems. But what happens with the rest of the pack? Let’s start with Windows Phone, which is faring better than it did in Q2 2011.

Windows Phone has actually managed to grow. Shipments have increased from 1.3 million in Q2 2011 by 292.30 percent to 5.1 million units sold in Q2 2012. Not only shipments have grown, but share in shipments as well, from 1.2 percent in Q2 2011 to 3.2 percent in Q2 2012, a 166.66 percent increase year over year.

Nokia’s preferred operating system was Symbian not long ago, but as it has fallen out of the upper echelon of manufacturers in the smartphone market, the consequences are still being felt. Symbian accounted for 18.1 million units sold in Q2 2011, but it has decreased by 64.64 percent year over year to 6.4 million devices in Q2 2012. Not only that, but share in shipments followed, dropping from 16.8 percent in Q2 2011 by 75.59 percent year over year to 4.1 percent in Q2 2012.

RIM hasn’t been forgotten, and it too has been affected through the decline of BlackBerry as the preferred smartphone operating system. BlackBerry accounted for 12.5 million units sold in Q2 2011, but has lost 32 percent in shipments year over year, which only account for 8.5 million devices sold in Q2 2012. If BlackBerry accounted for a share in shipments of 11.6 percent in Q2 2011, it can only claim 5.4 percent of it, down by 53.44 percent year over year.

Smartphone shipments increased year over year from 107.7 million in Q2 2011 to 158.3 million in Q2 2012, a 46.98 percent increase. If the U.S. market apparently reached its peak, the smartphone market has room to grow worldwide.

Apple, despite selling more smartphones (iPhones) hasn’t succeeded in gaining a higher share in shipments, losing over the same quarter last year, but Android manufacturers have managed to both sell more devices and gain a higher share in shipments. In report to Android sales, the iPhone sales are indeed slowing. Android is more popular than it was before and there are the numbers that prove it, while iOS is clearly far away from the little green robot. Compared to Android, iPhone sales used to be 2.51 times less than Android in Q2 2011, but in Q2 2012 iPhone sales are 4.14 times lower than Android sales. In other words, a 39.37 percent decrease year over year.

Microsoft should be pleased by Windows Phone as shipments and its share in shipments have grown as well and it’s the only operating system besides Android that actually managed to have better sales year over year. RIM is going through tough financial times and no new smartphones are to be released this year. The situation will only get worse, despite yesterday’s announcement of the 4G LTE BackBerry Playbook and from the currently available information it’s the only new product to be released until 2013.

Considering the estimates, RIM's retirement until 2013 and Symbian's abandonment, three main players will share the market: Android, iOS and Windows Phone. Who will come on top next year? Odds are Android, iOS and Windows Phone will rule the smartphone market in this order, but who's to say there will be no surprises?
Promodity's marketing campaign management service for small businesses goes free

Publié: août 3, 2012, 6:48pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Still reeling from the $1.5 million in funding it secured in July, Israeli startup Promodity on Friday announced its advertising campaign management platform for small businesses will now be free.

One of the main goals of Promodity's service is optimizing conversion rates, which is more or less the Golden Goose of Web marketing. The conversion rate, in short, is the ratio of people simply browsing to people actively buying. Of course, "buying" isn't always the goal for marketers, sometimes getting a website viewer to become a member is the goal, sometimes getting them to download an app or piece of software is the goal.

Essentially, though, the goal is this: marketers want to turn non-customers into customers, and Promodity combines many popular tools for doing this with tools for testing and tracking in a single Web interface.

Promodity lets businesses track their online marketing campaigns of all types: Media coverage, advertising, as well as social, affiliate, direct, and e-mail marketing, and lets them optimize their campaigns and even design new content directly from their Web-based campaign management dashboard.

Promodity looks at all the major aspects that gauge a campaign's progress: payment per click in content networks, clicks per minute and cost per click in display advertising, exposure in social media channels, and of course, Web traffic based on geography, language, time of day, and so forth. All of this information is presented in real time so the user can most effectively tailor his marketing budget for maximum efficiency.

Now that the company has secured the funding to develop its product even further, it wants small businesses to try Promodity out for free and give the team feedback on how it can grow the product.

This is itself a form of marketing (promotion), and you're reading this in a marketing channel (the media), but if you're in marketing, you knew that already. The important thing is that you can track the efficacy of something like this very article in Promodity to help your software business or website, and you can do it for free right now.

Photo: Arkady/Shutterstock
Windows 8 looks like it was designed by a bunch of two year-olds wired from watching too much Barney

Publié: août 3, 2012, 6:02pm CEST par Randall C. Kennedy

I hate flat things. Flat tires. Flat musical notes. Flat soda bottles because my teenage son can't bring himself to tighten the cap properly. I just can't stand stuff that lacks in one dimension or another.

So you can imagine my reaction to the recently leaked screenshots of the final Windows 8 RTM build's UI. Not only has Microsoft done away with the last vestiges of Aero, the company has taken a virtual steamroller to the entire Windows landscape.

From buttons to widgets to menus, all traces of the 3D richness that began with Windows XP, was transformed with Vista and finally perfected in Windows 7, have been erased from the UI. Transparency, too, has been given the heave-ho in favor of a return to the crayons and finger paint look of Windows XP Luna. It's like someone attached a digital hose to the side of every Windows 8 PC and sucked all of the the visual dynamism and character out of the user experience.

Has Microsoft really gone Flat Earth on us? The official line from the company is that the UI changes in Windows 8 are all about touch friendliness -- that, and some vaguely defined "energy savings" to be gained by using a less hardware resource-demanding look & feel.

It's this latter point that I have the most trouble with. Modern mobile computing platforms have long incorporated power-efficient graphics cores that render Microsoft's justification arguments moot. Going back as far as Vista's heyday (such as it was), many business class systems included "switchable" graphics for this very reason. For Microsoft to trot out this straw man today seems more like lame excuse making than a valid line of reasoning.

The touch-friendliness argument, on the other hand, makes perfect sense -- especially when you consider it within the context of Microsoft's broader failure to touch-enable the whole of the Windows OS. In fact, given how often Windows 8 and RT users will be blown out of the Metro (can we still call it that?) bubble and into the nasty, touch-unfriendly desktop, any changes that will help to gloss over this jarring transition are clearly welcome.

And there you have it. Microsoft has steamrolled the Windows UI because it is utterly incapable of delivering a fully-baked touch experience on its flagship OS. All of which points to the even broader issue of internal politics at Microsoft, one that I covered in previous post to this very website. The Office team still isn't fully on board with the "don't-call-it-Metro" UI transition, and the result is that -- after nearly two years gestating within the bowel of divisional president Steven Sinofsky -- Windows 8 still looks like it was designed by a bunch of two year-olds wired from watching an all-day Barney the Dinosaur marathon.

Pretty, neutral colors. Lots of simple lines. No transparency. Welcome to Windows Kindergarten edition, brought to you by the new Microsoft Flat Earth Society.

Catch Randall C. Kennedy's smart analysis of tech trends every Tuesday and Friday here at BetaNews.
Anti-Patent Troll bill to 'save high-tech innovators' hits House

Publié: août 3, 2012, 3:57pm CEST par Patrick Roanhouse

"Patent trolls," or non-producing companies that buy up patents in hopes of litigating their way to profit, have been in the technology news for years. They have, in effect, created a cottage industry within tech where one company after another uses poorly written and overly broad patents to block new products, squash competing products from reaching the market, or just to try to defend themselves from possible legal extortion. However, a new bipartisan bill coming from the desk of US Congressional Representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR), cosponsored by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) will be the first legislative deterrent to predatory patent troll lawsuits. The bill's goal is to amend Chapter 29 of title 35 of United States legal Code.

The new bill, H.R 6245 112th Congress, 2011–2012, 'Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes (SHIELD) Act' [GovTrack] could change the patent lawsuit game. The introduction to the bill states:

"To provide for the recovery of computer hardware and software patent litigation costs in cases where the court finds the claimant did not have a reasonable likelihood of succeeding, and for other purposes."

If a person or company files a patent lawsuit, and the court believes that the suit has weak credible patent usage, the person or company that filed the patent suit would have to pay for the legal costs of the defendant. So the SHEILD act would turn the once easy profit from patent licensing into a potential loss for the plaintiff if there is not justifiable damage being done.

In a public statement on his website, Rep Peter DeFazio stated:

Patent trolls don’t create new technology and they don’t create American jobs, They pad their pockets by buying patents on products they didn’t create … suing the innovators who did the hard work and created the product. These egregious lawsuits hurt American innovation and small technology start ups, and they cost jobs. My legislation would force patent trolls to take financial responsibility for their frivolous lawsuits.

In a June 2012 report by Boston University School of Law, it was estimated that "patent trolls" cost US bodies $29 billion just in the basic litigation fees.

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) staff attorney Julie Samuels agrees, making a public EFF statement blog post opening with "Finally, a moment of sanity..."

Further, Samuels states that "Fee shifting, often called 'loser pays,' is not a new idea. It's long existed in copyright law, for instance, allowing a court to award a winning party costs and fees in certain cases. In patent litigation, this type of provision would help tilt the playing field slightly more in favor of the good guys."

Photo: Livestockimages/Shutterstock
Smartphone users claim more service issues than feature phone users

Publié: août 3, 2012, 3:42pm CEST par Mihaita Bamburic

The Pew Research Center conducted a survey on the usage of mobile phones in the United States, detailing problems encountered in daily use focusing on dropped calls, unwanted calls, spam and download problems. Satisfaction is the key word when using any phone, be it a smartphone or otherwise, and the results of this survey show that smartphone users experience more disruptions that could lead to a drop in satisfaction.

According to the survey, 88 percent of U.S. adults own a mobile phone, of which 72 percent seldom experience dropped calls, while 32 percent of them face a recurrent drop in calls minimally a few times a week.

Unwanted marketing or sales calls are experienced by 68 percent of mobile phone owners receiving one at some point, per the survey; furthermore the problem is pointed out by 25 percent of owners who receive such calls at a minimum of a few times a week. When it comes to texting the survey claims that 79 percent of phone owners use texts. Texting spam or unwanted texts are received by 69 percent of mobile phone owners, while 25 percent of them are faced with the problem on a weekly basis at the minimum.

How about Internet connectivity speeds? According to the survey, 55 percent of owners claim to use their phone to go online. That is, they use their phone to browse the Web, send/receive mails, or download applications. In the process of using the Internet on their mobile phones, 77 percent of mobile phone Internet users have experienced a slower than desired download speed, while 46 percent of the users are faced with slow download speeds on weekly basis at the minimum.

28 percent of feature phone owners experience dropped calls at least on a weekly basis, but a higher 35 percent of smartphone owners are faced with the same problem, 25 percent more to be exact. 49 percent of smartphone owners experience slow download speeds at least weekly, compared to 31 percent of feature phone owners, which is 36.73 percent less than smartphone users, a significantly higher number.

Unwanted sales and marketing calls are received by 26 percent of smartphone owners, while only 23 percent of feature phone owners report it as at least a weekly occurrence, 11.53 percent less. Unwanted texts and spam are received by 20 percent of feature phone users, while 29 percent of smartphone owners are faced with the problem on a minimum weekly basis a significant 45 percent higher.

According to the survey, smartphone users face the exact same problems as non-smartphone users, but as a whole, they report more of them. The data from the survey is based on interviews conducted from March 15 to April 3, 2012 by the Princeton Survey Research Associates International on a sample of 2,254 adults, 18 years of age or older and when comparing 2,254 adults with the entire adult population of the United States there are significant differences, so this survey must be tread carefully because the sample is not significant among U.S. adults.

Photo: Frank Fennema/Shutterstock
PicEdit: feeble image editing, but check out those annotation tools [review]

Publié: août 3, 2012, 3:26pm CEST par Mike Williams

As image editors go, PicEdit is what you might call "limited." There are manual tweaks for brightness, contrast, hue and saturation, for instance, and a very short list of filters and effects (Mosaic, Blur, Sharpen, Noise, Invert, Grayscale), but that’s about it. You don’t even get a Resize tool.

PicEdit is fairly useless when it comes to photo corrections, then. But if you want to draw or annotate your images then it’s an entirely different story, because here the program turns out to be surprisingly capable.

Open the Stamps library, for instance, and you’ll find assorted images and icons which are ready to be added to your grab. Assorted mouse cursor images ("left click," "right click," "click and drag") will help if you’re documenting software; assorted arrows, ticks, crosses and other icons will be more generally useful, and there are odd bits of clipart thrown in. You only get a few in total (just under 40), but there are already enough to be useful, plus you can import new stamps in a click or two.

The Watermark tool makes it easy to customize your images. Just point PicEdit at the watermark image and you’re able to set its position, angle, opacity and more.

Need to add a text caption? The Text and Callout tools provide plenty of styles – boxes, thought and speech bubbles, more – all of which have customisable colours, line thicknesses and more. (They’re also confusing at first because clicking one of these and typing doesn’t display anything on your image, but once you realise that clicking and dragging on the picture displays your caption then all is well.)

And the surprising extras continue elsewhere. So when we clicked the Arrow tool, for instance, we expected just to be able to click and drag to draw a single straight arrow. But you actually get no less than nine arrow styles; we’ve seen flowcharting programs which offer less.

PicEdit is still too short on useful correction options to recommend as a general photo editor, of course. But if you already have your finished images and now want to dress them up with arrows, icons, watermarks or more then it could be useful, and we’ll be interested to see how the program develops in future.