Mobile Technology News

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Contrary to popular opinion, the competition between e-reader hardware manufacturers is nothing compared to the competition between e-book retailers. Tuesday, second place book retailer Borders revised its aggressive strategy for e-reader sales, slashing the price of its two e-ink readers before the arrival of its Android-based tablet readers from Velocity Micro.

In June, Borders unveiled its 9.99 Kobo e-reader, which was met with considerable consumer interest due in large part to its low retail price. After Kobo’s launch, both Barnes and Noble and Amazon reduced the prices of their respective e-readers from 9.00 down to 9.99.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

TiVo today has finally launched the full QWERTY TiVo Slide Remote control. The remote was extensively demonstrated at the TiVO Premiere launch in March.

“This is the first ever DVR remote with a full QWERTY keyboard, and we are certain that users will be excited to get their thumbs on it. The slick design has the same fun look of the classic TiVo remote, but makes it even easier to get more from your TV experience,” Jim Denney, vice president and general manager of product marketing for TiVo said today.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

At Gamescom, the annual video game tradeshow in Cologne, Germany, Sony Computer Entertainment unveiled a new PlayStation 3 bundle that includes not only the new PlayStation Move motion controller, but also the Playstation 3 with the largest hard drive ever.

In conjunction with the launch of Sony’s PlayStation Move motion controller, the new 320GB PlayStation 3 slim will launch on September 19 for 9.99, and will include the PlayStation Move motion controller, PlayStation Eye camera, and a motion-based game entitled Sports Champions.

By Ed Oswald, Betanews

Google confirmed Tuesday that police visited its Seoul offices to seize information related to an investigation surrounding its Street View product. South Korea is the latest in a series of governments probing the company’s data collection methods.

Police were specifically looking for information surrounding how the Street View cars collect data. Law enforcement said that its seizures were related to the expected launch of the product later this year within the country. Officers with the Cyber Terror Center of the National Police Agency took hard drives and paper documents, the Korea Herald reported.

By Ed Oswald, Betanews

Apple confirmed over the weekend that mobile phone head Mark Papermaster has left the company, and will be replaced by computer engineering chief Bob Mansfield. The company has declined to give further details on Papermaster’s departure.

Speculation and blog reports indicate that he was likely was let go for reasons surrounding the iPhone 4′s antenna, as well as problems related with hardware on other products that he had some influence over. Others reported that Papermaster had an increasingly strained relationship with CEO Steve Jobs.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Microsoft’s Mac business unit today released the final pricing of Office for Mac 2011 when it is released in late October. The productivity suite will come in three different editions, and will include a couple of multi-pack options.

Office for Mac Home & Student Edition will come with Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Messenger 8 and will be available for 9 for a single install, or as a Family Pack (3 installs) for 9. This particular edition does not include Outlook for Mac, but it can be added through an online upgrade program.

By Ed Oswald, Betanews

Palo Alto, Calif. based Flipboard launched what it called the “first social magazine” for the iPad Wednesday, however it quickly found out that a much-hyped launch can lead to trouble in keeping the service online for its users.

Tech luminary Richard Scoble twittered incessantly in the hours leading up to the launch, giving few details on the product other than calling it the “killer app” for the iPad and “revolutionary.”

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Today, to celebrate the 500 million user milestone, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of Facebook Stories, a new application dedicated to all the stories of people using Facebook in unique and inspirational ways.

These stories are arranged either by geographic location (as shown on a Bing Map) or by theme. The themes include: Crime Fighting, Movements, Causes, Grief, Rescues, Small Business, Support Groups, and many more.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Keeping the Kindle momentum high, Amazon has announced the next generation of Kindle DX is available for pre-order today, and will be shipping on July 7th.

The new Kindle DX has the same 9.7″ screen size, and the same free 3G wireless, but features a new graphite chassis and a higher contrast e-ink screen with a purported 50% improvement in contrast. Furthermore, all of this is available at a price about 25% less than the first generation DX.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

XStreamHD has always looked exciting on paper, but has had difficulties existing in the real world. Since we first started watching the company in 2008, there have been some serious delays in its 1080p high def TV over fixed satellite (FSS) service, but it is finally beginning to look like it is becoming a reality this year.

Today, XStreamHD signed a long-term agreement with EchoStar Satellite Service which will let XStreamHD use some of EchoStar’s satellite transport capacity on the AMC-16 communications satellite.