On Thursday at a conference for its field sales for, Microsoft discussed its newest version of Windows which is currently being developed under the codename “7″ (The OS formally known as Windows Vienna). I was sitting here pondering where they may have come up with the name from, but couldn’t quite nail it down. My first reaction was well, this is the 7th major release of Windows if you take out all the ones that didn’t count such as Windows ME and Windows Vista (Well, I guess the verdict is still out on Vista). Then I thought well, maybe they named it after the number of years it took them to get their last OS out the door.
Archive for the ‘New Technology News’ Category
According to an article posted on Georgia Tech’s website, researchers there have achieved 15 gigabits per second wireless data-transfer rates at a distance of 1 meter. While not as fast as the speeds that I am sure MacGyver could achieve with 3 paper clips, a stick of chewing gum and some tin foil, I have to admit these are some pretty impressive speeds. The article discusses real world application of these speeds such as a rack full of servers with no network cables connecting them, or downloading DVD movies to a cell phone wirelessly in a matter of seconds. Another application mentioned in the article that I would love to see would be having backup drives that are currently connected via USB or Firewire backing up data wirelessly.
An announcement has been made on the Google Lat Long Blog (Never knew it existed till today) that ImageAmerica has been acquired by Google. The company builds high resolution cameras for aerial imagery.
Google and ImageAmerica have worked together in the past creating high resolution imagery of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. I tried to reach ImageAmerica’s site to give some more details on the company, but it appears that Google has replaced their site with a small announcement and the Google logo.
“Google has acquired ImageAmerica. For media inquiries, please contact press@google.com.”
| OKay, OKay… I was half tempted to switch over to Blackberry before I touched the Holy Grail of phones the iPhone from Apple. But, you have to give credit to RIM for trying. Their latest BlackBerrys have added some class to the boring business device. RIM announced the Blackberry 8820 on Tuesday which is the first Wi-Fi enabled BlackBerry. I have to give kudos to BlackBerry on all their efforts lately. They have taken the black hockey puck of cell phones and made it into a sophisticated looking business device. While Wi-Fi enabling their devices and making them prettier is a great idea, I think the biggest boost in their popularity will come from the full QWERTY keyboards on their newer devices. One of the major downfalls though with BlackBerry is having to purchase their overpriced push software for syncing the device over the air. Their syncing is the one thing they have that they can hang over Apple’s head right now in the competition, but rumors are swirling all over the internet about a deal between Microsoft and Apple to license ActiveSync and push technology to work on the iPhone.
All in all the BlackBerry 8820 looks great and I am sure will be wildly popular with die-hard blackberry fans, at least the ones that have never heard of the iPhone. |
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| The team over at Firefox released version 2.0.0.5 earlier today patching 8 security holes and fixing several bugs in the Firefox browser. These security fixes included some that would simply crash the browser along with one that allows remote code execution and one that allows privilege escalation. According to my favorite security gurus over at the Internet Storm Center, one of these exploits is launched from Internet Explorer where IE calls the URL handler and provides the path to add additional options that lead to increased scripting rights inside of Firefox.
Reports have been surfacing all week about the gaining popularity of Firefox as statistics show it taking huge bites out of Internet Explorer’s market share. As the browser gains more market share, I am sure we will see more and more exploits becoming available at a more rapid pace. For now though, Firefox still tops my chart as the internet browser of choice. |
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Having used the iPhone since release day in a metropolitan area (Tampa) the cell service has been decent, although crossing the bridges I did have some dropped calls / lost service and in one of the large department stores on the first floor the phone lost service. So I got to thinking / worrying, as I had just ported my number over from Verizon to AT&T, how would the iPhone on AT&T perform while not in my home area. So I booked a flight to the mountains of Colorado to do some testing (actually it was a planned family vacation).
Results after the break
July10
Digg.com on the Apple iPhone
| Kevin Rose and the good folks over at Digg.com have officially launched an iPhone compatible version of Digg. The iPhone version of Digg offers Native iPhone like story reading, mini permalink pages with top 5 comments, Login, digging and much more.
I gave it a test run on my iPhone and it works quite nicely. I am of course using my wifi because the Edge network is unbearably slow, but it displays the content very well in landscape or portrait mode. I did notice one quirk though that I hadn’t noticed with other sites yet, and that is during the login it really slowed the iPhone down. I literally typed my entire username on the keypad befor it started to type on the screen. Then after that it did about 1 letter a second till the word was done. May be totally unrelated to digg, but that is the only site it has happened on so far. Head over to digg on your iPhone at http://www.digg.com/iphone Happy digging! |
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July10
FileMaker Pro 9 Announced
FileMaker Pro 9 was announced earlier today by the software maker FileMaker (Coincidence, I think not!). FileMaker Pro is a database software and was one of the first applications to run on OS X back in 2001. This new release touts a quick start screen, Send Link which lets you send clickable links to the database via email, the ability to connect to an External SQL Data Source to integrate with live data from Microsoft SQL Server, and Software update notification along with many other new features. Continue reading for a link and pricing.
Dell unveiled its new Vostro line of desktop and notebook computers designed specifically for small businesses with 1-25 employees (So those of you with 26 employees are out of luck).
This line of machines is based on Dell’s recent decision to actually listen to what the customer wants, then design a product around it. Some of the notable features include 1 year of 10GB DataSafe Online Backup and Dell Remote Troubleshooting. These new machines also come without any trialware installed which will keep me from having to do the clean operating system reinstall the minute I get a new PC thing I have been doing all these years to get the garbage off of the machine that the big computer makers put on there.
Click below for the full article.
Listen as we go through some of the stuff we like and dislike about our Apple iPhones covering topics such as battery life, email support for Microsoft Exchange, WiFi, Syncing contacts and calendar with Microsoft Exchange, SMS (Texting), Internet (Safari), the Wow Factor, Ring tones, Flash support, Activation tricks and other Misc items.