RealNetworks has submitted to Apple a free application that will bring its $15-a-month Rhapsody subscription music service to anyone with an iPhone or iPod touch and an EDGE, 3G, or Wi-Fi connection–assuming it’s approved by Apple, which is anything but a sure thing at this point.
“Contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application, and continues to study it.” So begins Apple’s response to the FCC’s inquiry into its rejection of the app and of its App Store approval process. Seems Google Voice was withheld from the App Store not because of any ill feeling toward Google or a nefarious request from AT&T, but because it too closely mimics the iPhone OS.
Before the Federal Communications Commission begins doling out the $7.4 billion in federal grants up for grabs through national broadband stimulus programs, the agency must answer an important question: What is broadband? And so, in a public notice issued today, the Commission is requesting “tailored” public comment on what the definition of broadband should be.
Microsoft best get Windows Mobile 7 to market, and soon, because its delay may be causing the company to lose traction in the enterprise market. In a note to clients Thursday, UBS Securities analyst Maynard Um noted that Apple’s iPhone is making some inroads in the enterprise space and that they’re coming at Microsoft’s expense.
Though it was eagerly anticipated by the industry and Sirius subscribers, the satellite radio provider never expected that much from its new iPhone app. During a call with analysts Thursday, CEO Mel Karmazin said the app was intended more as a means of tempering subscriber churn than a means of driving new subscriptions.
Once the plucky underdog in the browser battle, Mozilla’s Firefox is today the second most popular browser worldwide, after Internet Explorer. Since it was first released in November 2004, the browser has succeeded not just in dislodging IE from its dominant market position, but in proving that an open-source project can become a widely used consumer application. At 7:47 am PDT this morning, the browser reached its billionth download.
The next iteration of Apple’s iPod touch will boast not just a camera, but a microphone as well. That’s the latest rumor, anyway–this one from a “well-connected” Wired source who claims the device is already being manufactured with an eye toward a September launch.
The mobile application market is clearly a large and growing one, but will it someday be “as big as the Internet”? According to independent app store GetJar, it will. In an interview with BBC News, GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs said the next decade will see such massive growth in the market that apps will rival the Web in popularity.
Google’s mission, to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible, has once again run afoul of the Chinese government, which has a similar goal, but would much prefer that certain information stay inaccessible. And so, on Wednesday evening, Chinese citizens found themselves once again unable to use Google, Gmail, and YouTube as their government condemned Google as a purveyor of porn.
The Ovi Store, Nokia’s much anticipated response to the wildly popular Apple App Store, debuted this morning–ignominiously by most accounts. Early criticisms point out the store’s paltry selection of apps, slow performance and sign-in errors, disappearing apps and a less-than-intuitive UI. Not the sort of grand opening you hope for when your smartphone market share has been tumbling, largely thanks to the growth of the iPhone and BlackBerry and their respective app stores.
With smartphones as apt to be running personal productivity apps as business productivity ones, the divide between enterprise devices and their consumer counterparts appears to have finally been bridged. To wit, these comments from Cisco CEO John Chambers, who says the days of the so-called corporate device are ending.
As if the Zune weren’t embarrassing enough… Microsoft and Verizon are reportedly discussing a touchscreen multimedia cellphone that could launch on the carrier’s network in 2010. The project is codenamed “Pink” and will apparently involve some ungodly combination of Windows Mobile and Zune software.
Verizon Wireless is reportedly working with Microsoft to develop a new smart-phone. Plus, layoffs at Nokia and Microsoft’s “societal network.”
Nokia, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, will soon be just a tad smaller. This morning the company said it will sack a further 450 employees in its mobile services business, a division charged with developing and delivering the Ovi-branded Internet services tied to Nokia devices. Seems the still souring economy has undermined Nokia’s ambitions in that area, and Apple’s success with the iPhone App Store has inspired it to look to third-party developers to bring new applications to its devices.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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