By Joe Wilcox, Betanews
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts on Flash” memo is a rare glimpse into the mind of the rarest breed: A high-tech, cult figure who isn’t a geek. Apple posted the nearly 1,700-word essay earlier today, in response to the ongoing debate about Adobe Flash on iPhone OS devices. Or perhaps more directly: Adobe’s April 20 announcement that it had abandoned Flash development for iPhone OS devices; primary focus is shifting to Android.
Read More...Skyfire, the third party mobile browser famous for its ability to handle nearly every major browser plug-in and web technology has finally arrived in the Android Market today.
At the beginning of April, the browser was released in a very limited alpha program which received overwhelming interest from users. The Skyfire team said it had to stop taking email requests for the software almost immediately because of the sheer volume of messages. Well, those masses now have something they can sink their teeth into.
Read More...By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews
There are a handful of issues of contention that broadcasters (who transmit content over the public airwaves) have with the Federal Communications Commission’s Broadband Plan. One such outstanding dispute concerns the FCC’s proposed reallocation of unused digital spectrum from broadcast to broadband purposes — a way to get at least some of the estimated 180 MHz of spectrum wireless operators say they need, without another complete re-auction.
By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews
The problem for independent video producers and enthusiasts has been the inability to encode videos that can be burned to Blu-ray Discs, and then actually played on BD consoles. That changed yesterday as Jason Garrett-Glaser, the leader of the open source x264 project that has seen success with DVDs, announced his team was able to encode a playable Blu-ray video using entirely free software.
Read More...By Joe Wilcox, Betanews
Yesterday, I asked Betanews readers: “Should the police have been allowed to raid [Jason] Chen’s home and confiscate his computers?” How did you answer? I’ve randomly picked some of the responses — hoping to filter out some of the noise for better readability (There are more than 135 comments as I write this post).
Read More...First announced just two weeks after Windows Embedded Standard 2009 was released, Windows Embedded Standard 7 has at last been released to manufacturers, Microsoft announced today. The company says that new devices built on the platform should be arriving soon, and that we should expect to see some “exciting developments” in Windows 7 consumer devices at Computex in June.
Read More...By Joe Wilcox, Betanews
Gizmodo’s big “next iPhone” scoop has generated more than pageviews. Now it’s the police raid. Late this afternoon — actually at stock market close — the gadget blog posted about the police raid, which occurred Friday night at the residence of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen. Law enforcement exercised a search warrant before confiscating — count `em — four PCs and two servers.
Read More...By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews
One of Silverlight video’s biggest advantages to date has been the server’s ability to tweak the bitrate of video playback as it’s being played back, and as the bandwidth of the connection varies. It’s the smooth streaming feature that premiered last June with Silverlight 3. Now, with Silverlight 4 already well under way, Microsoft today premiered a public beta of a forthcoming release of Windows Home Server, which will be capable of smooth-streaming video to any Silverlight-enhanced client via the Web.
By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews
A slow, but steadily increasing, trickle of messages on Apple’s iPad discussion forums appears to confirm the findings of Princeton University’s Network Systems engineers, who dealt this month with a rapid influx of iPads over a concentrated area. What they’ve been noticing is that Wi-Fi on iPads that are set for dynamic DHCP leases — assignments of IP addresses to clients for limited time periods — are failing to renew those leases when time expires, often after just a few hours.
Read More...By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews
A process of elimination which has, apparently since February, cast aside a who’s-who of possible suitors, has left Lenovo as the only prospective suitor for Palm, Inc. still standing, after everyone else told Reuters no. It could mean Lenovo is genuinely interested, though it could also mean the only ones giving Palm any positive value…are in the press.
Read More...