Google is moving into your market. For tech companies, few words are more frightening, and yesterday we saw why. The mere announcement of Google Maps Navigation sent shares of established GPS device makers like Garmin and TomTom into an ugly downward spiral.
In the rhetorical battle over net neutrality, Google may have regulatory capitalism with which to bludgeon and batter AT&T, but AT&T has Benedictine nuns, an entire convent of them. In a 13-page letter to the Federal Communications Commission Wednesday, the carrier took issue with Google’s claim that its Google Voice service only blocks calls to adult sex chat lines, asserting that it also blocks calls to small businesses and Benedictine nuns.
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.
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.
It was more than a decade ago that Microsoft’s Outlook email client first became accessible over the Web. Now the rest of the company’s flagship Office suite is following suit. At the opening of its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans this morning, Microsoft announced a “technical preview” of Office 2010 and revealed that some of its key applications–Word, Excel and PowerPoint–will be available over the Web in 2010. For free.
The total cost of all 55,732 apps in Apple’s iTunes App store as of Monday, July 6? $144,326.06, according to the folks at metrics outfit Busted Loop, who note that the average app price is about $2.59, if you don’t include free apps.
Despite some glaring omissions in its channel lineup, Sirius XM’s new iPhone app has earned considerable traction in the iTunes App Store. It was downloaded more than one million times in the first two weeks it was available–this despite the fact that the app doesn’t include access to Howard Stern, the personality Sirius often claims is responsible for driving more subscriptions than any other.
If you’re reading this on an HP Pavilion or Compaq Presario laptop, you might want to switch from battery to AC power before reading the remainder of this post. Fearing they might burst into flame, Hewlett-Packard is recalling 70,000 lithium-ion batteries that shipped with several types of its portable machines.
Tenacious guy, that Kevin Martin. The December meeting at which the Federal Communications Commission was to vote on his free wireless broadband plan has been canceled. And the plan itself is, by his own admission, dead in the water; yet the FCC chairman continues to push it forward.
Since its July debut, some 10,000 iPhone applications have been released to Apple’s App Store and 9,887 of them are still available for purchase. 10,000 apps. An impressively broad ecosystem for just under five months of development. Apple’s year-end list of Top App Store Downloads for 2008, then, is both handy and timely.
The Federal Communications Commission has concluded that a free national broadband network established in the so-called “white spaces” of the AWS-3 band would not cause major interference with other services, paving the way for a sale of those airwaves at a federal auction. An unfortunate turn of events for T-Mobile, which has been aggressively lobbying against the idea.
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.
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.
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.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
Don't miss a post! Sign up for our Daily Email and get AllThingsD.com delivered each day.
Get columns, blogs and video from D and All Things Digital on your iPhone. Download now »
