HP talking with others on licensing WebOS

If HP has its way, you could see its WebOS operating system on more devices than just its own products. Bloomberg reports that HP's CEO Leo Apotheker, when asked if WebOS could be licensed by third parties, replied by saying, "We are talking to a number of companies I can share with you that a number of companies have expressed interest. We are continuing our conversations.” The same article states via unnamed sources that one of the companies that HP has talked to about licensing WebOS is Samsung. Apotheker would not confirm that those talks have taken place.
Obviously HP would love to see the WebOS platform, which it acquired back in 2010 along with Palm, show up on other smartphones and tablets much like Google's Android or Microsoft's Windows Phone 7. But there are other issues that HP will have to deal with if that happens. Shaw Wu, a financial analyst for Sterne Agee & Leach Inc, is quoted in the article as saying, "The reality is that Google and Apple are in the driving seat here and consumers are voting with their dollars. The problem for HP here is how do they license it without competing with their own products?”
Meanwhile the HP TouchPad tablet, powered by WebOS is getting ready for its public debut on Friday with two models coming out for $499 (16 GB) and $599 (32 GB). However an early review of the TouchPad by The Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg states that overall he "can’t recommend the TouchPad over the iPad 2."

Android smartphones plagued by high failure rate

A recently published survey claims Android smartphones suffer from a relatively high failure rate, at least compared to Apple, Microsoft and RIM.
According to British telecom consulting firm WDS, 14% of approximately 60,000 support calls over a 12-month period were related to Android hardware issues.

In contrast, Windows Phone 7 accounted for 9% of support calls, Apple's iPhone for 8%, while RIM's BlackBerry weighed in at an impressive 3.7%. 
WDS rep Craig Rich explained that "hardware faults" varied between Android handset OEMs, with certain brands showing a "propensity" towards display failures, keypad/button malfunctions and various battery issues.
"Android has been a runaway success and has been instrumental in bringing smartphone technology to the mass-market. Its open nature, coupled with the greater availability of hardware components and a reduction in manufacturing costs has seen some manufacturers bring the price-point of Android smartphones down below $100," said Rich.
"However, the Android ecosystem is not without its faults. Many of the factors that have led to Android's success are driving varying levels of hardware quality into the market, in turn delivering an inconsistent customer experience."
As James R. Hood of Consumer Affairs notes, other major platforms all maintain "tight control" over their hardware, while Google's Android, as a semi open-source platform, does not. 
"[For example], Windows Phone 7 licensed to only five manufacturers while both the iPhone and Blackberry have just one manufacturer each.
"In fact, both Apple and Blackberry-maker RIM manufacture their own phones and thus control every step of the design and manufacturing process."
Phandroid's Chris Chavez expressed similar sentiments and acknowledged that "just about any" Android user has been forced to deal with a hardware defect on at least one device.  
"It kind of comes with the turf. The sheer scope of Android manufacturers from all around the world is no doubt playing in a role in these failure rates and fanboys will no doubt make this a point.
"[Of course], what would be interesting to see is the amount of support calls dealing with specific OEM's. But same goes when comparing any kind of Android market share to the iPhone - I always like to see how one specific device is selling when compared the Apple's handset. Fair is fair, right?"

Sprint CEO planning 'nukes' to block AT&T, T-Mobile merger

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said in an interview that he plans to launch "nukes" in his fight to stop AT&T's proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA.
Hesse offered Bloomberg's Greg Bensinger a rare glimpse into the "White Room" where he plans his offensive against AT&T, using the room's nearly wall-to-wall whiteboards to "map out "nukes" in red, blue and green ink."
In addition to Sprint's resources, the CEO has invested his own personal resources in stopping AT&T. His strategy has included lobbying Congress, courting technology CEOs to speak out against the deal and convincing state regulators to examine the acquisition. And, according to the interview, Hesse has "other tactics" up his sleeve.
AT&T announced in March that it had reached an agreement to purchase T-Mobile USA from parent company Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion. The deal has quickly come under federal scrutiny, with the U.S. Senate, Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission all getting involved.
In May, Sprint filed a formal petition with the FCC objecting to the merger. AT&T responded by claiming the deal would have no effect on the competitive landscape.
For Hesse, the deal represents a life-or-death situation for Sprint. During a Senate hearing last month, senators asked him what Sprint's likelihood of survival would be if the proposed merger took place. "My position is that it would more difficult for Sprint to compete," he replied. "This would be a duopoly, and it would put Sprint to be acquired."
Hesse believes he's fighting not just for Sprint's survival but for the good of the industry and American consumers. “The industry just won’t be as innovative and as dynamic as it has been,” he said during the interview. “It’ll gum up the works when everything has to go through these two big tollbooths, one that’s called AT&T and one that’s called Verizon.”
However, AT&T maintains that the merger would help the wireless operator to operating more efficiently, cut costs, and thereby benefit customers. “Their arguments about prices going up just defy economic logic,” said AT&T General Counsel Wayne Watts. “We’ve had wireless transactions multiple times over the last ten years and prices have gone one direction: they’ve gone down.”
According to the report, the executive has enlisted "lobbyists, consulting groups, two former U.S. House Judiciary Committee counsels and lawyers at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP." Regardless, he may find himself outgunned, as AT&T outspent Sprint in Washington by more than 12-to-1. In 2009 and 2010, AT&T contributed $3.26 million to federal candidates, while Sprint donated just $257,500.
Interestingly enough, Hesse spent 23 years at AT&T, and ran the company's wireless business for three years before leaving in 2000. He insists, however, that his campaign against the deal isn't personal.
Analysts have voiced concerns over Sprint's long-term post-merger chances. “If the deal goes through, Sprint remains the No. 3 player in the industry; their ability to ever become an AT&T is shut off forever,” said Credit Suisse AG analyst Jonathan Chaplin, who expects the merger will be approved.
However, Hesse remains optimistic. “An underdog is not thinking about the point spread; they’re thinking about winning the game,” he said. “We can win this.”

Cellcrypt releases encrypted voice call app for iPhone

Cellcrypt released a version of its voice encryption software for Apple's iPhone on Tuesday, adding to its portfolio of software to prevent eavesdropping on calls.
The product, called Cellcrypt Mobile for iPhone, works with iOS4 on Apple's iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4. It is one of two voice encryption applications listed in the App Store, although there are other voice encryption applications for the iPhone platform from vendors such as Goldlock and SecurStar.
The iPhone application works in the same way as Cellcrypt's products for other platforms. It's a VoIP (voice over IP) application that uses either Wi-Fi or an operator's data channel on either GPRS, EDGE, 3G, or satellite networks to transmit voice.

Australian university failed to secure students' data

The detailed records of thousands of University of Sydney students past and present are being stored online where they can be easily downloaded and read via an internet connection.
It is understood the university was told about this security threat in February 2007, but did not move to secure the information.
This website was made aware of the breach after it revealed yesterday the university's website was sabotaged and altered at the weekend by a hacker. Details openly available on the university site include a student's full name, residential address, email address, which courses he/she studied and how much the course cost.

Office 365 goes live, gives SMBs a taste of the enterprise

Microsoft today launched Office 365, its cloud-based productivity and collaboration suite, in 40 countries around the world. Office 365 combines access to Exchange e-mail, Lync messaging, SharePoint collaboration, the Office Web Apps, all into one monthly subscription.
Seven different price plans are available; one for small businesses and individuals, at $6 per user per month, four enterprise plans from $10 to $27 per user per month, and two for kiosk workers, priced at $4 and $10 per person per month. The small business and enterprise plans all offer 25 GB of e-mail, SharePoint access, and Lync messaging; the more expensive price tiers then add Office Web App access, the full desktop Office suite, and Lync voice capabilities. There's also an à la carte option allowing mix-and-match selection of features if the standard plans don't fit an organization's needs. The enterprise plans are more expensive than the comparably featured small business plan, but offer better support—the small business plan has no phone support—and better security—HTTPS access to SharePoint is only found on enterprise plans.
Office 365 will also replace the current Live@edu set of cloud services for educational institutions. This service is still yet to go live, however.
Announcing the product's launch, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer particularly emphasized the value Office 365 can offer small businesses. Unlike BPOS, Microsoft's previous cloud-hosted Exchange, SharePoint, and Office Communications offering, which had a five-seat minimum, Office 365 can be used even for single-person businesses. Small organizations have access to the full range of Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync capabilities, with almost none of the administrative overhead. Ballmer claimed that this levels the playing field between small and large companies, saying that Office 365 gives "small and midsize businesses powerful collaboration tools that have given big businesses an edge for years."
With its new support for Office and Office Web Apps, Office 365 has a more extensive feature set than BPOS, drawing natural comparisons with cloud suites like Google Apps and Zoho. A unique strength Microsoft has in this area is the full desktop Office application—recognizing both that the Web applications are not yet suitable for all tasks, and that not all users are able to be online at all times. Support for sharing files with Office 365 will also be built in to the Mango update to Windows Phone, to provide better mobile access.
Microsoft promises 99.9 percent availability with Office 365. Its BPOS service has suffered numerous bouts of downtime lately—most recently, network connectivity problems preventing North American customers from using their e-mail. Though Office 365 is a different system from BPOS, it may be some time before the new platform can regain the trust lost by its predecessor.
Also released today is Office 2010 Service Pack 1. A comprehensive pack of security fixes, the release notes claim it updates Outlook to support Office 365.

Apple's iOS more secure than Google's Android

A Window Into Mobile Device Security," a 23-page document that details the security approaches employed by Apple and Google in their respective mobile operating systems. It also offers a closer look at past and possible future security holes found in the iOS and Android platforms.
In a head-to-head comparison, Symantec found that Apple's iOS is more secure than Google's Android. Specifically, iOS was characterized as having "full protection" against malware attacks, while Android was deemed to have "little protection."
iOS also has more protection than Android against resource abuse and service attacks, data loss, and data integrity attacks. Apple's platform was also found to have greater security feature implementation in the categories of access control, application provenance, and encryption.
In fact, Google's Android platform only topped iOS in one security category: isolation. There, Android received the highest marks, while iOS was said to offer "moderate protection."
In specifically discussing iOS, Symantec's report concluded that Apple's "provenance approach" acts as a strong security barrier, as every app that is to be released on the App Store goes through vetting procedures. This, according to the paper, has “proved a deterrent against malware attacks, data loss attacks, data integrity attacks, and denial of service attacks."
The report characterized iOS as "well designed and thus far...has proven largely resistant to attack."

However, Symantec did find vulnerabilities within iOS, namely 200 different security holes dating back to 2007. While any vulnerability is a weakness, the bulk of issues were found to be of lower severity, which, according to the report, would allow the assailant to "take control of a single process but not permit the attacker to take administrator-level control of the device."
The study did discover security concerns that could allow entry to administrator-level control, and were therefore of the highest severity. If an attacker had administrator-level control, it would reward them with access to "virtually all data and services on the device," 
  Report highlights what is likely the most public example of an iOS security breach, the iPhoneOS.Ikee worm released in November 2009. But that worm only affected devices that users have willingly "jailbroken," a term used to describe a warranty-voiding process that allows users to install unauthorized software on their iPhone, and something that Apple explicitly tells its customers is a major security concern.
Also highlighted in the report is iOS’s isolation model. While iOS "totally prevents traditional types of computer viruses and worms, and limits the data that spyware can access," Report said it does not "prevent all classes of data loss attacks, resource abuse attacks, or data integrity attacks."

Lastly, iOS’s permission model can safeguard access to the devices location as well as the SMS and Phone applications. This stops the attacker from knowing where you are, being able to send SMS messages, and phoning numbers without your consent.
As for Android,  although Google's mobile operating system is a considerable improvement over traditional desktop operating systems, it has two extreme weaknesses.
First, the provenance system in place "enables attackers to anonymously create and distribute malware," they found. In addition, its permission system "relies upon the user to make the important security decisions," and considering most of Android users are not of high technical capability, this causes problems.
During February this year, Sophos security researchers encouraged Google to cancel its over-the-air installation of apps. They urged Google because they expected it would allow the swift and quiet installation of malware to unsuspecting Android users.
Sophos warned that as soon as the "install" button was pressed on the website, the application would be installed on the device in the background, without any input from the user.
The review concluded that "mobile devices are a mixed bag when it comes to security." While they may have been built to be secure, they are made for the consumer market, which has has led to less security for more usability.

Archos announces its 35 Smart Home Phone and Home Connect

The French firm is branching out with more gadgets for the home. Both run Android 2.2 Froyo and use touchscreen technology.
Archos said, "Both cutting-edge ARCHOS Android-based home devices feature front facing webcams and can be used for video calling, baby monitoring and even room surveillance."

We're still waiting for the specifications for the Home Phone but the Home Connect will have a 1GHz processor and 4GB of internal storage that can be expended with via an SD card slot. We expect the Smart Home Phone to have similar specifications.
The 35 Smart Home Phone is a combination of a normal Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT) phone and a modern smartphone. It will run Google's Android operating system, like a lot of big name smartphones, and will have a front facing webcam.
It will have a 3.5in touchscreen and will be compatible with any ADSL box or phone line and uses standard DECT protocols. The webcam will allow for video chat and the phone will also run games like Angry Birds.

The 35 Home Connect is a multi-function hub type device. Its main function is internet radio with its stereo speakers but it can also use a webcam for video chat, as a baby monitor or for room surveillance.
Like the Smart Home Phone you will be able to download apps from the Android Market. Using the Archos Remote Control app you will be able to manage the Home Connect from any Android smartphone.
Both devices are expected to tip up in September along with Archos' next line of tablets that it announced recently. The 35 Home Smart Phone will cost £129 and the 35 Home Connect will set you back £119.

How to Clean Your Dirty Smartphone (Without Breaking Something)

We have already shown you how to clean your keyboard without breaking it, but did you know your smartphone can be just as dirty and covered with bacteria? Here is how to properly clean your smartphone.
Cell Phones have been repeatedly found to be one of the most disgusting things we regularly touch. In many tests, cell phones have tested to contain more germs than a toilet seat. Can you hear me now? You don’t want to put your head on a toilet seat. If you are going to reach out and touch someone your phone, make sure you rethink possibilities and clean your smartphone the right way.

Tools You’ll need

To get started you will need to collect a few supplies:

• Lint free microfiber cloth - You should be able to pick up a microfiber cloth from an eyeglass store or pharmacy if you don’t have one. Many computers and mobile devices come with one for free, so make sure you check your box before throwing it out.
• Cotton swabs – We recommend either wood shafted cotton swabs or Q-tips branded cotton swabs because the shafts won’t be as flimsy as the cheap off brands.
• Distilled water – This is for cleaning your screen and camera lens. We recommend you get distilled water because it won’t have the chemicals of tap water and won’t leave a film if it drys.
• Rubbing (isopropyl) alcohol – This is for cleaning your keypad and hard plastic.

Household chemicals and disinfectants are too harsh for most smartphones. Make sure you don’t use window cleaners, aerosol sprays, solvents, ammonia, ajax, CLR, or abrasives. These cleaners are guaranteed to stain your phone or remove the finish.

Cleaning Your Phone

Start by turning off your phone by holding the power button or finding an option in the phone to turn off or swap the battery.

You should also remove any case or cover on your phone if you use one.

If you have the ability, remove your battery from the phone prior to cleaning.

Be careful when removing a screen protector because the peeling action can cause cracks to spread. If you have major screen cracks it is recommended you leave the screen protector on because it will help keep moisture out of the phone and hold the screen together until you can buy a replacement.

If you have a keyboard or keypad start cleaning it with a cotton swab dipped in diluted rubbing alcohol. Be careful not to rub too hard and not to get any rubbing alcohol inside the phone or under the keyboard.

Next move to the rest of the phone plastics. For large areas like the battery cover it is fine to use rubbing alcohol. Use light pressure when cleaning plastic so you don’t remove any rubber coating or clear finish.
If you have metal trim on your phone, use a water dampened cotton swab instead of rubbing alcohol.

Once the outside is clean, use a dry cotton swab to clean out any dust under the battery cover. If you have any stubborn areas under the battery cover, use a very small amount of distilled water to clean it. Immediately dry any parts you clean with water so nothing gets inside the phone.

Dampen a cotton swab with water and clean your camera lens and flash using a spinning motion. Once the lens is clean quickly dry it with the other side of the cotton swab so that water doesn’t dry on the lens.

Now that the major portions of the phone have been cleaned, flip the screen over and dampen your lint free microfiber cloth. You don’t want the cloth dripping wet; the dampness will help remove crusted on streaks.
Clean the screen in single strokes from the ear piece down to the microphone. This motion will keep from spreading dirt into your ear piece. Don’t use circular motions because this can cause circular scratches.
Be very careful if you have a cracked screen because removing a screen protector or wiping the screen with pressure can cause the crack to spread. You may also want to forgo the damp cloth and just use a dry one to prevent any moisture from getting under the screen.
Some low end and older phones have plastic screens which can easily scratch. Make sure you use light pressure when cleaning your screen to stop scratches from forming. Most new Android phones and iPhones have hardened glass screens which won’t scratch as easily.

If you removed your screen protector, follow the directions that came with the protector to apply a new one after cleaning.
If you have an iPhone 4, remember that the front and back are made of glass so clean both sides the same way.
The iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, Google Nexus S, and quite a few other phones have an oleophobic (literally meaning “fear of oil”) coating which repels oil from your hands and face. This coating will wear over time so make sure you don’t rub too hard or use rubbing alcohol or you might speed up the wear process.
Give the phone a few minutes to dry, then re-assemble and turn it back on. You should now have a clean phone without those nasty germs.

Clean Your Case

If you use a plastic phone cover/case use diluted rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs to clean the inside and outside.
Let the case air dry before putting it back on the phone.

If you use a leather case or pouch you can use leather cleaner designed to clean and moisturize leather. The cleaner can be purchased at many automotive, online, and discount stores. You will want to follow the specific directions on the leather cleaner to make sure your leather is clean and conditioned.

HP tablet to get Facebook app before iPad?

Screenshot of a purported Facebook app running on a WebOS tablet.

iPad users have been very patient with Facebook.
They have been begging the social-networking giant for more than a year to release an iPad-native app. And it was reported recently that such an app was in final testing and would likely be released in just a few weeks.
That may still be the case, but now it's conceivable that iPad users may be waiting in line for a tablet app behind owners of the HP TouchPad, according to TechCrunch.
Screenshots published by the tech blog purportedly show the Facebook tablet app running on WebOS. Erick Schonfeld notes that the left-rail navigation bar pops in and out and that the Newsfeed can be viewed in the traditional stream view or a tablet-friendly tile version.
The app looks pretty polished, but there's no word on whether it will be released when HP's long-awaited tablet ships on Friday, as Schonfeld suggests will happen. Facebook's iPad app could still beat it out the door.
Facebook representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment but told Schonfeld later that "this app was not built by Facebook but by HP."

Mac OS X 10.6.8 Adds TRIM Support for Apple SSDs Leaves Third-Party SSDs Hanging

Apple released Mac OS X 10.6.8 last week while I was traveling and I managed to find a nice Wi-Fi connection to use to update my 13-inch MacBook Air. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with the new OS release until today. I found something nice while looking through the System Profiler for any changes. Mac OS X 10.6.8 had added TRIM support to all Macs that have SSD drives installed — a feature that will benefit my MacBook Air.

Apple has effectively activated TRIM support for all Apple systems that contain solid state hard drives (SSDs). TRIM allows SSDs to automatically handle garbage collection which prevents slowdowns by cleaning  up unused data blocks and prepping them for rewriting. Systems that don’t support TRIM can experience slowdowns due to the accumulation of garbage data that occurs over time.
This is a positive and surprising move since many Mac OS X Lion beta testers noted that the new OS supported TRIM and therefore it was unexpected for Apple to include it in what will probably be Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopards last update before the release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion next month. Prior to this support for TRIM was only available to MacBook Pro owners who purchased their notebooks this last February along with a special build of Mac OS X.
Now everyone can enjoy TRIM on their Apple branded SSDs, but the joy of having TRIM support doesn’t extend to users with third-party SSDs according to a colleague of mine. Non-Apple drives are left hanging — no TRIM support for you in Mac OS X 10.6.8.

Ruin may include Vita, PS3 play for one price—but it's up to Sony

Ruin was shown off during Sony's press event, and the hack-and-slash title looked solid. After playing the game on both the PS3 and the Vita, I'm convinced of the game's quality; this is a fun action title. Heavy attacks caused the bodies of the enemies to fly into the air, and the environment was nicely destructible. Jeff Litchford, VP of Production with Idol Minds, also showed off how easy it is to save the game on the PS3 and pick it up a moment later on the Vita, with your location and character transmitted through the cloud. I asked him the question everyone is wondering about: do you need two copies of the game to play it in this way?
If Sony decides that you need to buy the game twice to get cross-platform gaming to work—and Litchford told me they could also create multiplayer games in this genre that would allow you to use the Vita to play co-op with a friend on the PS3—then they're going to have angry consumers and a missed opportunity.
"Yes, you will need a copy of the game on your PS3 and on your Vita," he explained. "We have an opinion on whether that should cost money, but that's up to Sony marketing. You have an opinion, so you should let Sony marketing know what you think."
I said I could talk about this topic all day and Litchford nodded with enthusiasm. "Well then, speak up! Let's hear you say it!" he told me.
Attention, Sony marketing: Release the PS3 version of the game at retail product packed with a code to download the Vita version at no additional cost. You'll have a bunch of happy gamers as a result. It's pretty clear what the game's developer would prefer. The ball is in your court.

Hands-on with Shadow of the Colossus and ICO on PS3, in 3D

During Sony's booth tour at E3, I was given a choice of what games to see and quickly zeroed in on a personal favorite: Shadow of the Colossus. Set up on a 3DTV, the upcoming Shadow and ICO collection were hard to resist. I slid on my 3D glasses, and was brought back to one of my favorite gaming worlds.
This is not a quickie update. Textures have been re-worked, new particle effects have been added, depth has been implemented via 3D, and in the case of ICO, the game runs at a 16:9 aspect ratio for the first time. Shadow is locked in at 30 frames per second, a vast improvement from the uneven framerate of the original.
That being said, it's hard to go back. It took me a while to remember the controls, which remain idiosyncratic—Shadow doesn't really play like anything else on the market, for good or ill. While the 3D effect adds depth and makes the lumbering first Colossus look amazing, it also dims the image and muddies it up somewhat. The effect is neat, but what I want from the game is a crystal clear window into this alien world. While other games at E3 made me want a 3D television, this is a game I'll be playing in 2D.
It's a mixed bag. The updates are substantial, but these aren't modern games by any stretch of the imagination. Still, they're amazing titles that look better than ever, even if they require you to make some adjustments to get used to the controls and the pacing. The collection will be released for the PS3 on September 27 for $40, and will feature 7.1 surround sound, along with full support for trophies.

HP TouchPad to Become Available in July, to Cost Like Apple iPad.

Hewlett-Packard on Friday said that it would start selling its highly-anticipated TouchPad media tablet starting July 1, 2011. Depending on the version, the TouchPad with Wi-Fi will cost $499 or $599. HP hopes that the TouchPad will be very competitive on the market because of its feature-set and flexibility.
"What makes HP TouchPad a compelling alternative to competing products is webOS. The platform's unmatched features and flexibility will continue to differentiate HP products from the rest of the market for both personal and professional use. This is only the beginning of what HP's scale can do with webOS,” said Jon Rubinstein, senior vice president and general manager of Palm global business unit at HP.
HP TouchPad with Wi-Fi will be available from U.S. retailers, commercial resellers and direct from HP with the option of either 16 GB or 32 GB of internal storage for $499.99 and $599.99, respectively. Preorders in North America and Europe will begin June 19, 2011. HP also announced it will be partnering with AT&T to introduce a connected version of HP TouchPad later this summer.
HP TouchPad is based on Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8060 system-on-chip clocked at 1.20GHz that has two Scorpion application processing cores (ARM v7 instruction set, similar to Cortex-A8 design, but has significantly improved performance of SIMD operations), Adreno 220 graphics processing core, memory controller and so on. The device comes with 9.7" multi-touch screen with 1024*768 resolution, 1GB of random access memory, 16GB or 32GB of flash storage, front-facing 1.3MP webcam, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n controller, 3G or 4G module, Bluetooth support and so on. The TouchPad has 6300mAh battery and weighs 740 grams.
HP promises that webOS-based TouchPad will have a next-level multitasking, access to the web, premium audio playback with stereo speakers, the ability to find information on the device or in the cloud using the Just Type feature, integrated access to their information with HP Synergy, and HP's exclusive Touch to Share capability for sharing web addresses between HP TouchPad and compatible webOS phones. Even keeping in mind all the exclusive features, the question is how customizable will the system be and how many third-party applications will be available for the platform shortly after the launch.
HP's first webOS tablet will be available in the U.S., then in the U.K., Ireland, France and Germany a few days later and in Canada in mid-July, with availability scheduled to follow later this year in Italy and Spain, as well as in Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Singapore.

Microsoft loses i4i patent case before U.S. Supreme Court

In a stunning defeat. The country's highest court ruled against Microsoft in its appeal regarding XML patents.

A lower court had ruled that Microsoft violated i4i payments, which was upheld on appeal. Rather than seek a reversal on the patent claims, or address whether or not Microsoft essentially pilfered i4i's XML technologies, the software giant attacked the patent process and how evidence about it is presented in court.

the case had been closely watched because of its potential impact on U.S. patent law. Microsoft's defense essentially was an indictment of the whole patent system. The company wanted to change the standard of evidence proving a patent invalid -- from "clear and convincing" to "preponderance of the evidence."
Under the current standard, patent holders publicly disclose information in exchange for a temporary monopoly over the patented product. Conceptually, the "clear and convincing" standard offers patent holders better protection when the patent is challenged in court. However, the standard is based on the presumption that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office properly vetted the patent application, something Microsoft argued can't be assured.
However, the high court dismissed Microsoft argument, preserving the status quo. "The Court rejects Microsoft's contention that a defendant need only persuade the jury of a patent invalidity defense by a preponderance of the evidence," according to the ruling. "Also rejected is Microsoft's argument that a preponderance standard must at least apply where the evidence before the factfinder was not before the PTO during the examination process."
Had the Supreme Court ruled in Microsoft's favor, the standard for invalidating a patent would be lower. That's great when Microsoft or another company is looking to invalidate a patent -- tougher when they're the patent holder being challenged.
The Supreme Court case galvanized industry. Organizations filing amicus briefs on Microsoft's behalf included: Apple, Business Software Alliance, Cisco, CTIA, EMC, Google and Timex, among a handful of others. Lining up behind i4i -- a horde of supporters, including 3M, six former USPTO commissioners or directors, 10 universities, 19 venture capital firms, Bayer AG, Dolby Laboratories, Eli Lilly, Proctor and Gamble, San Diego Intellectual Property Law Association and the United States of America, among many others.
A Case in History
In 1994, Michel Vulpe, i4i founder, and Stephen Owens filed a patent for a "Method and system for manipulating the architecture and the content of a document separately from each other." The patent essentially covers deconstructing a document from its native structure, something XML came to do later on.
While it's fairly common for an inventor to obtain a patent for a process simply for the purpose of suing other companies -- better known as patent trolling -- i4i developed a product and established a sizable client base, particularly among pharmaceuticals such as Bayer, Merk and Schwartz Pharma. Microsoft showed interest during the development of Office 2003, for creating custom XML schemas. In March 2007, i4i filed a patent infringement suit alleging that Microsoft's approach to custom XML schemas in Office 2003 and 2007 violated U.S. patent 5,787,449.
In a decision undermining i4i's credibility, the lawsuit was filed in Tyler, Texas, which is a common venue for patent trolls. In May 2009, a jury found in favor of i4i, which was awarded $290 million in damages. In August 2009, a judge issued an injunction barring Microsoft from shipping Word 2007. The next day, I wrote about the case for the first time. When I started the reporting, I was ready to dismiss i4i as a patent troll, because Tyler, Texas is troll territory. But after examining the court documents, which also indicated i4i shared information with Microsoft about its XML technologies, I concluded that Microsoft probably was guilty of infringement. Microsoft lost its initial appeal in 2009 and its second appellate review in 2010.
To reiterate: Microsoft's Supreme Court case sidestepped infringement, whether deliberate or accidental, choosing instead to try and change the rules about how patents are enforced -- and even awarded.

Motorola's Photon 4G has a kickstand

Motorola on Thursday unveiled its first WiMAX-capable Android Smartphone which also happens to be Sprint's first dual-core device from Motorola, Photon 4G.
The specs of Photon 4G are indeed impressive. It has a 4.3" (540 x 960) touchscreen display, dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 Processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage with microSD support up to 32GB, worldwide GSM roaming, dual cameras (8MP/720p with dual flash, VGA), Android 2.3, mobile hotspot capability and and Motorola's impressive Webtop functionality first showcased by Atrix 4G. It is expected to launch later this summer, when Sprint will announce pricing and accessory support.
Even without knowing the device's price yet, it's very easy to see where this device will fit in. It's got power, 4G connectivity, and the thing that has come to be a defining feature for this class of smartphone: a kickstand.

It may seem like a classification as pointless as the feature itself, but I have come to regard the presence of a kickstand as an immediate indicator that a smartphone is too big to carry in my trouser pocket.
And though a kickstand comes in especially handy for video chatting or charging, practically every phone with a kickstand has been equipped with one for the purpose of watching video.
I say this because the majority* of kickstand phones have a 4.3" screen (EVO 4G, EVO 3D, Thunderbolt, Photon 4G) and are marketed as the acme of mobile video consumption. While not the absolute largest smartphone screens, they reside in an area the brushes up very closely to being classified as tablets.
The largest screen a device can have and still be called a smartphone is presently found on the Infuse 4G from Samsung which has a monstrous 4.5" Super AMOLED screen. The screen on the Dell Streak, by comparison, is just half an inch larger, and it is classified as a tablet.
That margin of .5" is currently the unofficial dividing line between smartphones and tablets, and the further manufacturers venture into it, the less pocketable your device becomes.
*noteworthy exceptions include the HTC 7 Surround, which has a kickstand to accommodate its stereo speaker, and the HTC Imagio which only has a 3.6" screen, but is billed as being "like having your TV and your computer in your pocket."

Webcam hacker uses "hot steam" ploy to get nude pics

This Apple repair tech wanted a little more than just the ability to remotely tap into women's webcams.

He wanted to increase his chance of seeing them naked. 20-year-old Trevor Harwell allegedly installed malware on the computers he was supposed to be fixing, which would cause them to randomly display the
 following bogus error message:

"You should fix your internal sensor soon. If unsure what to do, try putting your laptop near hot steam for several minutes to clean the sensor."
Harwell is reported to have been arrested, but only after his scheme actually worked, according to the local authorities.
While even the least tech-savvy person would probably be able to realize the error was bogus, all of the victims were clueless.
It took one of Harwell's customers' mother to realize how unusual the message was, as she's the one who kicked off the investigation.
According to a report in the LA Times, hundreds of thousands of pictures were taken from Harwell's PC as part of the criminal case against him.
This isn't the first time people taking their computers in somewhere to be fixed found they had been tampered with. There have been reports of people finding porn on their PC after sending it in for repairs, or of other malicious software being installed.
People bringing in their computers have also faced legal action, as companies like Geek Squad find child pornography or other illegal material during their check-up of a PC, which they turn over to authorities.
In short, be careful when you send something as personal as your computer into a third-party entity, because it's never fully safe

Motorola and Sprint debut Photon 4G in NYC

The Photon 4G - which debuted today in NYC - features a slew of tricked out specs, including Nvidia’s 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 chip, a 4.3-inch qHD touchscreen display, dual cameras and a kickstand for hands-free viewing.
The smartphone runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and features Motorola’s webtop app, which allows users to easily access and create content from a larger screen while connected to a Motorola accessory dock.


As noted above, the Photon boasts dual cameras: an 8 megapixel, dual-LED flash camera with front-facing webcam to store photos and videos directly on the device, and a VGA front-facing camera for video chat.
Additional specs include:

• 16GB of onboard memory, support for up to 32GB SD Card, for a total of 48GB.
• 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot capability, supporting up to eight devices on the Sprint 3G or 4G networks and one while roaming internationally on GSM.
• Worldphone capabilities to access emails, calendars and news from locations around the globe.
• Capable of using the webtop application while connected to a Motorola accessory dock to open, view, edit and send Microsoft Office documents using cloud-based web apps via the full Mozilla Firefox browser.
• Compliant with IT device security policies typically required by enterprises and government entities.
  

The Photon 4G is slated to be available this summer. Pricing, final specs and a full list of accessories will be provided by Motorola and Sprint closer to launch.

Mobile Minecraft debuts on Sony Ericsson Xperia Play at E3

Minecraft, the hugely popular independent PC and Mac game with over two million paid users, made its first pocket-sized appearance on the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play (aka the PlayStation Phone) at E3 this week.

For the uninitiated, Minecraft is a “sandbox” adventure game where you can build anything you want in the 3D world, cube by cube, and can explore your world on your own terms.
Mojang the game developer’s Daniel Kaplan told Cassandra Khaw from IndieGames that the changes between the Pocket Edition and the original are minor to accommodate the smaller screensize, lower processing power and shorter gaming sessions on mobile devices. For example, the Pocket Edition will have “shorter day [sic] circles” and “digging … have been made faster to allow for a more immediate experience.”
The Xperia Play is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor so it is capable of producing “3D graphics at least equivalent to the Sony PlayStation,” according to PCMag’s Will Greenwald. This capability along with the inclusion of familiar gamepad controls are what compelled Mojang to port the game to the Xperia Play first, “For the first time you could really play a first person game on a phone without really uncomfortable controls,” said Mojang Creator Markus Persson in an interview with Sony Ericsson Product Blog in Los Angeles this week.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 first impression review

The first true Honeycomb tablet went on sale yesterday -- preorders for most folks and actual hardware for people lucky enough to be in New York and close to the Best Buy Union Square. I got the 16GB Galaxy Tab 10.1 WiFi late Tuesday afternoon, from Samsung for review. I highly anticipated the Tab 10.1, simply because it's not iPad, it packs Android 3.1 "Honeycomb" and has impressive hardware specs.
A Matter of Dimensions
First impressions are everything with any new product. What's it like coming out of the box? Bad first impressions and the negative buzz that followed it doomed Windows Vista. People waited too long for the OS to boot up and then they were assaulted by seemingly endless popups whenever installing software or going on the Web. Vista wasn't a bad operating system, it just had a bad rap. First impression was major reason.
Galaxy Tab 10.1 failed to impress me out of the box. I don't like the dimensions. I find the Tab to be too long and too narrow. It's more rectangular than iPad 2. But I'm not making a comparison to iPad 2 here. This is about Tab 10.1, which feels top-heavy to me, even when held in both hands. It's 10.1-inches length-wise (wide when held horizontally). That also makes the tablet feel overly wide in landscape mode. I haven't handled the Motorola XOOM, but based on the specs, it's narrower than iPad 2 but about as long (wide), so the rectangular shape isn't as severe as Galaxy Tab 10.1.
This size thing is subjective, and perhaps other users won't mind. But it bugs me. I haven't done the math, but it's possible the dimensions are meant to more align with the 7-inch Galaxy Tab and/or Android smartphones, which conceptually would benefit apps running on the larger screen. It's about how they scale.
Dimensions aside, I like how the Galaxy Tab 10.1 feels compared to iPad 2. Tab 10.1's plastic back feels smoother and warmer to touch than iPad 2. Weight is about the same, but the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is lighter when Apple's tablet is outfitted with the Smart Cover, which increases the cold, metallic feeling compared to Tab 10.1's smoothness. I may adjust to the dimensions -- this is after all a first impressions review.

Plenty Fast Enough
Setup delivers a great first impression, and it will be familiar to anyone using Android -- although more visually pleasing. The device powered up as soon as I removed the clear protective plastic sheath, which surprised me (perhaps I hit a button). The Tab 10.1 then prompted to connect to a WiFi network, followed by inputting date and time; unexpected. Why not automatically set date and time when logging into the Google account? That setup followed. Since I have a Google account, it was easy -- and sign-in triggered the sync process, which restored apps and personal data stored in the Google cloud.
That brought me to my first impression of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 touchscreen (which is bright, pleasing and responsive) and of Honeycomb. I expected more from the 1280 by 800 screen resolution than I got, particularly compared to iPad 2's lower 1024 by 768 display. Within the basic user interface, the resolution pleased -- but not as much when working with the web browser (more on that). By the way, I find Android's font rendering to be more pleasing than that of iOS.
Navigating Honeycomb is surprisingly intuitive. There are four navigation areas, all smartly placed at each corner. Three icons in the lower left-hand corner provide main navigation. There is, moving left to right: back arrow; up arrow (for returning to the home screen); and two rectangular boxes (for popping up boxes of places/apps you've recently been). The lower-right hand corner displays, moving left to right: notifications (which Android phone owners know well, just not in this location); time; WiFi signal; and battery indicator.
In the upper right hand corner, moving right to left, there is a + symbol and "Apps." The symbol opens a split screen of the five home screens and collection of widgets or app shortcuts that can easily be placed among them. The "Apps" obviously opens the applications page. In the upper-left corner, moving right to left, are icons for accessing voice and Google device search (by text input).

Galaxy Tab 10.1 feels fast, more than does iPad 2. But it responds differently, with more fluidity and movement that may be as much about how the user interface behaves than the hardware driving it. Regardless, it makes a helluva good first impression. By the way, app installation is so freakin fast I got motion sickness. App installation on iOS 4.3 is like grandma driving 20 mph in the fast lane compared to Android 3.1 on Tab 10.1. Every Android app I tried, downloaded and installed in seconds.
By the way, to my surprise, all the dozen apps I tested scaled wonderfully. On iPad, iPhone apps don't scale at all. They generally appear the same size they would on the phone. But on Honeycomb, the apps filled the screen and they looked comfortably good, even though the majority were designed for Android smartphones. Now there's a great first impression.
I found myself wanting to explore and play with Tab 10.1 more than either the first- or second-generation iPads out of the box. Also, Honeycomb's overall look and feel is pleasing, much more than iPad 2. Interestingly, there is much about Honeycomb's use of black, grey and blue that reminds of Apple's forthcoming iOS 5. Apple borrows from Android, again.
Better Browsing but Flawed
After exploring the basic capabilities from the home screen, I moved to the most-important app -- the web browser. The overall first impression was mixed at best. Functionally, the Honeycomb browser is a real star. Its appearance is dark and murky -- quite appealing -- better for framing content than the drab grey typical of PC browsers. There is tabbed browsing, too. Real tabs -- unlike iOS on iPad, where users switch to another screen with open tabs laid out on a page. On Honeycomb, opening new tabs works just like in PC browsers.
The browser supports Chrome sync, which I set up with a couple taps of the screen -- and that imported my bookmarks in seconds. Whoa. Bookmarks appear as blue folders against a black background, with the content within laid out as thumbnails of the sites. The motif is more pleasing than the clunky text bookmark list common among PC browsers. It gives a very good first impression.

The browser is very fast and responsive -- that's the good. The bad: I found the vertical view to be too narrow and cramped, while horizontally the fonts were ginormous. Font size can be changed in settings from "normal," which makes browsing in landscape view acceptable but squinty the portrait way. Another problem, and one that gives a really bad first impression: Many popular websites, such as the New York Times, bring up their mobile sites. What the hell? Related: Some mobile sites, including the one for my Tumblr, site are many times bigger than ginormous. They're oversized for the legally blind, which I am without my glasses. I could read the sites fine, and that's not good. Of course, the rendering problem could be fixed with a software update that clearly identifies Honeycomb's browser as something other than mobile.
For this first-impressions review, I won't cover everything. But I would be remiss to ignore Adobe Flash. Samsung is making a big deal in its marketing material about Galaxy Tab 10.1 delivering the real web, because of Flash. So I was surprised when going to Hulu that Flash wasn't installed on the tablet. Hulu redirected to the Android Market, where I downloaded and installed Flash.
I was ready to watch Hulu on Android device for the first time. Finally. It was a thrilling moment that ended suddenly with this message: "Unfortunately, this video is not available on your platform, we apologize for any inconvenience." WTH? There is no Hulu app for Android, but it is available for iOS. No Hulu for me, or for you. How's that for a lousy first impression?
Yes, but what about another site? I hopped over to Syfy, which delivered the mobile site. Argh. I could watch Flash video but only in a small size window -- no full screen like a PC web browser. Uh-oh, get this: The video continually froze! Small size, and still it froze. Now there's another lousy first impression. Is Flash really that bad on a zippy Honeycomb tablet like Galaxy Tab 10.1? That's a question for the second impression review.

Silverlight Developers Rally Against Windows 8

"A legion of Silverlight developers have threatened revolt after Microsoft made no mention of Silverlight or .Net in the vendor's brief video preview for its upcoming Windows 8 operating system. Developers expressed fears Microsoft might let their investment in skills 'die on the vine' as Redmond finally embraces open standards. Microsoft, for their part, have told developers they can't say more until September."

Windows 8 inspired theme for Xbox 360 dashboard

Since Microsoft unveiled the first few snapshots of the new start menu for Windows 8 last week, there's been several hints along the way that the company want to create and integrate a user interface that is familiar across all of their products. Microsoft have previously stated that Windows 8, which is due to launch next year, would be able to work on a variety of products but how about that user interface that people would be used to, being on the Xbox 360 as well?

Earlier on in the day, Neowin reported the Xbox E3 conference in which Microsoft chose to reveal a number of future items coming to the gaming platform such as Live TV, Bing search and these screenshots, posted by Paul Thurrott show these new features in action. There is not an exact timeline in which users will see these changes but current word is in the last quarter of 2011.
The Xbox 360 as well as the recently launched Kinect have gone down well with consumers and its one of Microsoft's more successful brands. With several new games being released for the platform, many of those being compatible with Kinect, it will only strengthen the console's position. Amongst that list is the increasingly popular Minecraft game in which a world of blocks is your own, although how that will work with Kinect is anyone's guess.

Mario, Luigi Return for Innovative 3DS Games

Alongside other classic Nintendo franchises like Zelda, Star Fox and Kid Icarus, the company’s longtime mascots each have their own Nintendo 3DS game.
The new Super Mario might look like just another game in the series at first blush, but it’s actually a fresh take on the classic mushroom-stomping formula. Luigi’s Mansion 2 is the long-awaited sequel to a 2001 title that launched with the GameCube hardware, an action game in which Mario’s skittish little brother explores a haunted mansion filled with poltergeists and treasure.
Nintendo is deliberately focusing on making versions of its hard-core action games that will work well with the glasses-free 3-D display, said Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto at a roundtable discussion Tuesday at E3 Expo here.
“With Nintendo DS, because it was introducing a new play style with the touchscreen and stylus, we felt there was a need to introduce that to a broader audience,” with casual games like Brain Age, Miyamoto said. “3DS is more focused on bringing traditional gaming franchises to a 3-D screen.” There are many such games that Miyamoto wants to make, he said.
Wired.com’s hands-on impressions of the upcoming Mario games follow.

Super Mario

The first thing you need to know about Super Mario for the 3DS is that it’s not just a retread. In fact, it’s quite different from any other Mario game.
The Mario series split into two parts when videogames went polygonal. The 2-D games in the franchise featured linear levels with characters stuck on a horizontal plane, while 3-D titles featured wide-open levels with nonlinear gameplay. Super Mario is an amalgam of these two designs. You wander through 3-D levels that feel like something out of Super Mario Galaxy, but they’re roughly leading you down a predetermined path. You don’t have to move the camera — I’m not even sure if you can — because you’re always heading toward the other end of the level, wherever that happens to b
In the first level of the demo (called “World 2-1″), you begin by walking into the horizon, stomping Goombas and Piranha Plants with wild abandon. The A and B buttons jump and the Y and X buttons run (and attack, depending on what power you have). Pressing R makes Mario crouch, and pressing it when he’s running does a crouching slide — you can slide underneath a barrier and grab some coins, early on. R is also used for going down pipes. The L button is for butt-stomping while in the air.
Eventually in this level, you get the Leaf power-up, and this puts Mario in his old duds, the Tanooki Suit5. With this, Mario can wag his tail in midair to glide and get a little more distance from his jump, and also swing his tail around to smash blocks and enemies. At this point, the game has become more of a side-scroller. Star Coins (or whatever it was those bonus coins were called in Super Mario Galaxy 2) are scattered in hard-to-reach spots throughout the level, rewarding exploration and intelligence and such.
As you might have guessed from the Tanooki Suit, Super Mario on 3DS is something of a revival of the aesthetics of Super Mario Bros. 3 for NES. Besides the signature raccoon-tail power, there are other little nods to the game, like those white blocks with musical notes on them that you can bounce on, or the Koopa Kids‘ airships. That’s the second level of the demo; you traverse the automatically scrolling airship, jumping over Bullet Bills and those guys in the manholes that throw the monkey wrenches at you, then get to the Kid and stomp him into oblivion in a fight that uses the whole 3-D screen rather than locking you to a fixed plane.
My Super Mario experience wasn’t entirely positive. The third level I played was simply frustrating — I had to jump over a series of small, disappearing blocks with bottomless pits all around me, and I just couldn’t get Mario to jump where I wanted him to go. It felt like the camera was zoomed so far out that I couldn’t really gauge how far it was, 3-D effect or no, and Mario himself seemed to jump a little too sluggishly. I burned through five lives in record time and never finished the level.

Luigi’s Mansion 2

The Super Mario 3DS game is trying some new things, but Luigi’s Mansion 2 seems like it’s sticking pretty closely to the original formula.
Underappreciated in its day, the haunted-house game was a very different direction for the Mario series, ditching platform jumping for skulking around a mansion, vacuuming up ghosts and finding hidden secrets. It was quite a lot of fun and so is this version, which is developed by Next Level Games (creator of Punch-Out! for Wii, which means the studio knows how to re-create the fun of a classic Nintendo series).
In Luigi’s Mansion 2, the title character is shoved back into a series of ghost-filled old houses, and his job is to go ghostbusting with limited equipment. When you encounter a ghost, you first flash light in their eyes to shock them, then start sucking them in with the vacuum. As you pull them in, you’ll have to tap the A button at certain times to keep them within range. You’ll also have to run around and make sure that no other ghosts attack you while this is going on.
Besides ghosts, the mansions will be filled with all sorts of secrets — you can suck and blow with the vacuum, pushing and pulling various items to see what’s hidden beneath them. A blanket over a treasure chest can be removed so you can find what’s inside, for example, or you could pull in coins and dollar bills from a high shelf.
While it’s tough to really get a sense of how a slow, exploration-based game like this will work from a brief E3 demo, I can say that the controls feel good and the animations are occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. Nintendo says it will release Luigi’s Mansion 2 in 2012

Windows Thin PC Goes RTM

After the end of business on Monday I received the following in an email from Microsoft: "We appreciate your feedback and enthusiasm throughout the Windows Thin PC Community Technology Preview. Today, we are happy to announce that Windows Thin PC has been released to manufacturing (RTM), and will be available for our SA customers to download starting July 1, 2011." Anandtech published a brief but concise review of Windows Thin PC but here's a quick summary of my experience of this 32-bit only OS based on Windows Embedded Standard 7.
For in depth technical details, please refer to AnandTech's writeup as mine is just a brief review of my own experience which was somewhat limited in time and scope based on my own needs and curiosities.
I run Windows in a VirtualBox VM at the office but my desktop host only has 4 GB of RAM so I was eager to compare Thin PC to my 64-bit image of Windows 7. The file system foot print was around 2 Gb (including my apps) and it seemed to boot slightly faster but this would probably be better tested on bare metal hardware if you want to get more accurate comparisons.
I installed the Lync chat client, Outlook 2010, and a handful of other small utilities like IrfanView that I use on a semi-regular basis. The apps I did install function just as well as they do on my Win 7 guest OS but one thing I haven't tried is a simple Steam game or one of the games I've bought as part of the Humble Indie Bundle. I'm not sure that's their target market for this product and there's a chance it may not even have much of a life cycle once the slimmed down Windows 8 comes out.
But if your org plans on deploying a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure real soon then this might be worth a look -- especially if you're using deduplication to reduce the storage footprint on the back end. When I have more time I may try to implement Bitlocker or Applocker but my first pass was just a usability test and I'm not using System Center which allegedly makes such things simpler. If you have any experience with these features of Thin PC or have used any current or past iterations of Windows Embedded, I'd be curious to get feedback on your experience.

iPad Exhibit Future/Canvas 2 Shows Off Tablet’s Arty Side

Matthew Watkins' The Modern Sommelier was created using an iPad app.
Image courtesy Matthew Watkins

SAN FRANCISCO — As the World Wide Developers Conference celebrated Apple’s newest technology, a nearby exhibit showcased the latest in iPad artistry.
In a gutted speakeasy allegedly once owned by Al Capone, artists and developers showed off their creative takes on the tablet Monday at the opening of Future/Canvas 2, a show dedicated to “the emerging medium of iPad art.”
“What was once a product in the iStore can transform into art,” Josh Michaels, the event’s founder and creator of the Magic Window app, told Wired.com. “We tapped into something with the first go ’round. Now we’re getting all this energy back out.”
Michaels organized the first Future/Canvas exhibition in December 2010. Considering the newness of the iPad, he expected few queries about his project.
“The response floored me,” the San Francisco programmer said, smiling and waving his arms through the air to mimic an explosion. He approached Art.com and together they put together the free event to show off finished pieces produced using the iPad, in addition to apps that allow the user to be creative and interactive on their own.
“It’s nice when you can forget about the chart rankings for a while,” Michaels said, referencing the sales statistics Apple provides app makers.

At the Future/Canvas 2 opening, Jason Smith showed off his “particle” visualization app Uzu. Users manipulate a whirring field of pixels with various touch motions; the flow and relation of colored particles changes and alters, depending on the number of touch points and their orientation on the screen. Up to 10 fingers can manipulate the particles at one time.
“I’ve received e-mails from parents thanking me,” Smith said. “Their child has a debilitating handicap like cerebral palsy. Playing, creating with Uzu, together, is one of the few ways they say they feel like they’re connecting with them on a deeper level.”
Elsewhere at the exhibit, collections of prints, painted by conductive-bristle brushes on the iPad and printed on high-quality printers, hung from the venue’s weathered concrete walls. Brushes app creator Steve Sprang browsed the works and afterward nodded toward Matthew Watkins‘ display of prints near the entrance.
“This is some of the best use of Brushes I think I’ve ever seen,” Sprang said.
Other exhibits included Sandra Rauch’s massive homage to the Bay Area’s business evolution — from the Gold Rush to Google — all centered on an iPad.
Orion Elinzil’s Prisms app, which has not yet been released, let users manipulate beams of light through collections of shaped and colored prisms. It could easily swallow 20 minutes of your time, as there is a certain beauty in manipulating theoretical light and angles of refraction and watching what happens.
Sponsors ArtRage and Adobe had displays showing off their products’ new features.
The Future/Canvas 2 exhibit runs through June 23 at 998 Market St. in San Francisco.

This image, created using the not-yet-released Prisms app, shows how the iPad lets users manipulate manipulating theoretical beams of light.

Dell Launches New Compellent, EqualLogic Storage Packages

Dell, which paid $940 million for Compellent last year, is so enthralled with its new IP that it is rebranding its entire storage strategy after Compellent's Liquid Storage identifier.

It's noteworthy that both Hewlett-Packard and Dell, which each bought young, progressive storage companies last year, have taken their prized new IP and made it the centerpieces of their storage strategies only months after closing the deals.
We're not sure exactly what that says about the older storage products those well-established systems makers have been selling for years, but it does indicate the term "freshening up" was probably used by the buyers at some point in deciding to do both transactions.
HP announced this week that it is cross-pollinating software and services from the $2.35 billion 3PAR acquisition into its older array systems. On the other hand, Dell -- which paid a mere $940 million for Compellent -- is so enthralled with what it got that it is rebranding its entire storage strategy after Compellent's Liquid Storage identifier.
At its first all-storage customer and partner conference in Orlando this week (Dell Storage Forum, which continues through June 11) that combined the former Compellent and EqualLogic events, Dell introduced some new systems and a refresh of its old standby, PowerVault.
New-product and other highlights of the Fluid Data Architecture lineup:
-- Demonstration of 16Gbps Fibre Channel infrastructure interoperability at the show. Dell demonstrated compatibility between a Dell Compellent Storage Center SAN with a Brocade 6510 16Gb Fibre Channel switch and a Brocade 1860 16Gb Fabric Adapter. Dell said it will have 16Gbps Fibre Channel offerings available this fall.
-- Dell PowerVault MD3600f/MD3620f adds Fibre Channel to its menu choices. Key features: Eight 8Gbps Fibre Channel ports (four per controller); additional capacity can be added up to a maximum of 96 hard drives via the PowerVault MD1200 and/or MD1220 enclosures; users can mix 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch enclosures behind their base units for drive tiering; data protection options include snapshots, virtual disk copy and remote replication services.
-- Dell unveiled its first unified Dell EqualLogic platform. The EqualLogic FS7500 adds scalable network-attached storage (NAS) capability to the EqualLogic product line -- making it a high-performance, scale-out unified storage for midsize deployments. The FS7500 uses the Dell Scalable File System, which incorporates features formerly found only at the high end -- including snapshots, advanced caching, load balancing and multi-threading for fast I/O processing. Other features: N-way scalability with automated failover and a single namespace; scale-out CIFS and NFS support; scale a single share up to 510TB.
-- Dell EqualLogic software upgraded to v5.1. Key features: DCB Support is designed to improve quality of service with consistent and even traffic flow in a converged SAN/LAN networking fabric; enhanced load balancing capability provides the ability to automatically balance storage traffic between EqualLogic arrays; enhanced thin provisioning awareness with VMware vSphere 4.1 reduces recovery time and helps mitigate the risk of potential data loss.

'Windows 8' Needs Windows Phone Apps, Good Coding to Dent Apple iPad

Microsoft's 'Windows 8' on tablets will find itself head-to-head against the iPad. It'll need a media hub and perhaps Windows Phone apps if it wants to succeed.

Can “Windows 8” on a tablet undermine the Apple iPad’s dominance?
That’s perhaps the wrong question to ask. Over the past several months, several manufacturers have issued “iPad Killers” designed to dent Apple’s share of the consumer tablet market. Their effect has been less than spectacular, and recently a J.P. Morgan research note suggested those manufacturers are ratcheting back their tablet production in the face of weak sales.
“Non-Apple tablet hopefuls have adjusted to the weak showing so far,” J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz wrote, according to the International Business Times. “In our view, the technical and form-factor improvements of the iPad 2 stand to make it tougher for the first generation of competitive offerings to play catch-up, meaning actual shipments could fall well short of plan.”
Most of those iPad competitors have run Google’s Android operating system. Research In Motion is trying to carve its own niche with the PlayBook tablet, which runs a proprietary QNX-based operating system, and Hewlett-Packard will enter the market this summer with a tablet running webOS.
Last week, Microsoft unveiled the next-generation Windows, which the company internally refers to as “Windows 8.” This version of Windows will offer users a set of colorful tiles that open applications—a design that draws many of its visual cues from Windows Phone, Microsoft’s latest smartphone operating system. It will also appear on form factors ranging from desktops and laptops down to tablets.
Despite that early glimpse, Microsoft remains tight-lipped on Windows 8’s actual release date, although rumors suggest sometime in 2012. If that proves accurate, it’ll most likely place Windows-on-tablets head-to-head against the successor to the iPad 2, provided Apple sticks to its schedule of updating its tablet every year. While it’s unlikely that Windows 8 would immediately swallow a substantial portion of the tablet market from a popular and well-entrenched competitor, there are certainly steps Microsoft can take to ensure it manages to carve some significant market share in the first few quarters of release.
Add Windows Phone Apps
When Apple released the original iPad in 2010, it made a point of emphasizing that applications developed for the iPhone would be compatible with their new, larger-screened cousin. Granted, it wasn’t quite the same as having high-definition applications expressly designed for that added screen real estate, but the massive App Store was more than enough to tide users over until third-party developers could flood the market with iPad-specific applications.
In other words, if you’re launching a mobile device such as a tablet, best do so with a hefty collection of applications that will actually run. For the past several months, Microsoft has been diligently encouraging third-party developers to create for Windows Phone—and while its applications marketplace doesn’t rival Apple’s App Store or the Android Marketplace for size, there is certainly a respectable number of applications and games available for download. If Microsoft were to take steps to ensure those Windows Phone applications worked on Windows 8 tablets, it would go a long way toward convincing a broad array of users that the tablets have a viable place in their lives—and buy Microsoft time to churn out more Windows 8-tablet-specific applications.
The technical challenges in porting Windows Phone applications onto Windows 8 might make even the most stalwart engineering team’s heads collectively explode like something out of a David Cronenberg film. But it might be worth the effort for the aforementioned reasons.
Cloud It Up
For the past several months, Microsoft has embraced an “all-in” cloud strategy. The next big piece of that strategy is Office 365, the company’s cloud-based productivity platform and Google Apps competitor. And when it comes time to start pushing Windows 8 on tablets, Microsoft needs to ensure that all those cloud components interoperate smoothly with their new interface—in fact, given the strides that Apple is making with its iCloud, which will facilitate the storage and syncing of documents and media between multiple devices, Microsoft really has no choice.
Legacy Programs
In the same vein, Microsoft needs to ensure that legacy Windows programs like Office not only interoperate smoothly with the new operating system, but also that they appear and act within the user interface in ways that don’t alienate longtime Windows users. When it comes to tablets, Microsoft will also need to ensure these programs work well with touch control.
Emphasize the Entertainment
Despite attempts by other manufacturers to offer a viable alternative to iTunes and App Store, Apple remains dominant in that area. If Amazon goes through with its rumored plans to produce a tablet, then it could leverage its Cloud Drive and Cloud Player to port music and movies onto the device—and become a major new player in the market, as a result.
Microsoft should consider doing something similar with its own tablet efforts—either via its Zune service, or an all-new Hub that integrates Netflix and other assets. The alternative is losing out to companies that have made an art out of streamlined delivery of music and movies to user’s mobile devices.

Sony Introduces Inexpensive Stereo-3D Display for PlayStation 3 Owners.

In a bid to popularize stereoscopic 3D (S3D) Sony Computer Entertainment on Tuesday introduced a special 24" stereo-3D display with relatively affordable cost bundled with inexpensive active shutter glasses. The display is designed for PlayStation 3 gamers interested to play in S3D-supporting titles affordably.
The 3D Display (CECH-ZED1) features a 24" 1920x1080 (1080p) LCD display based on VA panel technology  that adopts quad-speed frame sequential display technology that is able to minimize crosstalk distortion. The 3D Display supports several 3D formats, including “frame packing,” “top and bottom” and “side by side,” which will offer users various options for using 3D. The display features high contrast (5000:1), wide viewing angle (176°) high response time (4ms GTG average). The display also sports stereo 2 channel with subwoofer speakers.
The 3D Glasses come with a rechargeable lithium ion battery to enable quick and efficient charging time. A three minute charge results in three hours of use, while a 45 minute charge provides 30 hours of use.

The display will have $499.99 recommended price and will include a pair of 3D glasses that will cost $69.99 when sold separately in the U.S.. The solution has a number of advantages over competing solutions, including cost and the quality of matrix technology. For example, Nvidia Corp.  sells an S3D Nvidia 3D Vision bundle with Acer GD245HQ LCD display (1080p, TN panel technology, etc.) for $628.
Sony's 3D Display will be available this fall in Japan, North America, Europe/PAL territories, and Asian countries/regions. For North America, the 3D Display comes bundled with 3D glasses, an HDMI cable and the highly anticipated Resistance 3 title from Insomniac Games for PlayStation 3.

Apple announces iOS 5.0

Today at the annual WWDC event, Steve Jobs took the stage to announce the new flagship of software suites for Mac and iDevices. Apple recently announced the upcoming iOS 5.0 firmware, but today it finally unveiled what the company has been working on for over a year now.
The company announced that to date, they have had more than 14 billion downloads, with over 90,000 iPad apps. They have paid developers more than $2.5 billion dollars so far.
Apple started off the new feature list with notifications. Apple has removed the old notification popup system for a more inline notification system, making it less annoying when you're watching a video or playing a game. The 'notification center' will act similar to Android, where your menu swipes down, revealing alerts for all of your phone, messages, emails and more. The notification center is even on your lock screen too.
The lock screen has received a major update, allowing for notifications from apps, messages, and even listening to voice mail without having to slide to unlock the phone.
iOS 5.0 also comes with 'Newsstand', a new subscription-based application that has a ton of newspaper and magazine companies on board, including New York Times, SF Chronicle, Daily Telegraph, and more.
Apple introduced a new Twitter integration for iOS 5.0, making it easier for users to post photos, maps, articles from Safari and attachments with a new 'Tweet' option.

Safari also received a number of updates, including the new reader button for your documents. Safari in iOS 5.0 now comes with a "reading list" feature, so you can come back and read a bookmarked page later, without saving it to your bookmarks.
Next up, mobile Safari now comes with tabs! No more annoying stacked option menu, but now it's located under your toolbar bookmark menu.
The camera app finally received a much deserved update, to include some of the new updates from Apple. First up, is a camera button shortcut on your lockscreen, making it easier to quickly take a picture of events that just can't wait. If the moment can't wait that long, you can use your volume up button to take pictures now, bypassing your lockscreen - but don't worry, your existing photos will be secure. Apple also included a photo touch-up app.
Apple is once again updating their mail app, adding new search, flag and spam and security options. There is even a built-in dictionary option, prompting the user with a popup when they click the "define" option.
If you've ever typed on the iPad, you may notice that reaching the keys in the middle can sometimes be difficult. Apple has now changed up the layout of the keyboard. There will not be two floating keyboards on either side, allowing you to just type with your thumbs while holding it firmly in your hands.
iOS 5.0 now does wireless syncing with iTunes. You'll be able to finally ditch the cable (other than charging) and sync and receive updates directly on your device, without having to connect to your PC or Mac.

The Game Center also is now more social network friendly, to make sharing and playing games with friends easier.
Last up, Apple introduced iMessage. The new instant messaging service allows any iDevice (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad) to communicate with each other. The new application is very similar to the SMS application, but is completely free. Similar to BBM (BlackBerry Messenger), the application allows you and your friends to instant message one another, from anywhere in the world, without the added roaming charges. iMessage requires WiFi or 3G to send and receive.
iOS 5.0 beta will be made available later today for the following iDevices:

• iPhone 4 (GSM and CDMA)
• iPhone 3GS
• iPod touch (4th generation)
• iPod touch (3rd generation)
• iPad 2 (GSM, CDMA and WiFi)
• iPad (GSM and WiFi)
• Apple TV 2G