Windows 7 Tablet Demo

Everybody wants to be in the tablet game.

"Smartbook" Category Crushed by Tablets, at Least for the Moment

Whatever became of “smartbooks”? At last January’s Consumer Electronics Show, some big hardware companies were using that name to describe new low-end computing devices that look like small laptops but use different chips and software. But that was before the iPad.

Now industry buzz has shifted pretty dramatically away from smartbooks to forthcoming slate-style devices that are expected to challenge Apple’s latest hit. “It’s fair to say the iPad and tablets are resetting everybody’s roadmap and forcing them to think about they are going to do next in a different light,” says Henri Richard, senior vice president and chief sales and marketing officer for Freescale Semiconductor, which has been marketing chips for smartbooks.

But backers of the concept say it’s not so much that smartbooks are stalled. Rather, there are simply so many new hardware and software options–and consumer preferences are so uncertain–that it’s too early to tell exactly what the most popular designs will be and what people will wind up calling them.

“This market between the phone and the laptop is an area that is undefined,” says Steve Mollenkopf, a Qualcomm executive vice president who is also president of its chip unit. “You will see a proliferation of different devices.”

Whether there is a single tablet category or possibly multiple categories, or whether tablets simply reshape existing categories, is yet to be determined. What does seem to be clear is that all the devices are intended to be "always connected."

From a suppliers’ perspective, companies that make cellphones or components for them want to expand their turf into larger products. That includes companies like Qualcomm, Freescale, Nvidia and others that have offered chips for the handset market based on technology from ARM Holdings. They can’t offer the ability to run conventional PC programs, but can boast long battery life and stress the “instant-on” nature of their machines–two of the chief selling points of smartbooks.

At the same time, makers of conventional laptops and their suppliers are trying to get into smaller devices. Chip giant Intel, for example, has helped popularized low-priced laptops called netbooks that mainly run Microsoft Windows. Intel has also been talking for some time about an even smaller, keyboardless category called MIDS, or mobile Internet devices–a term that seems to have been overshadowed by small-sized tablets.

But another way to look at the situation stems from what tasks a user is tackling. For example, touching the screen is the most efficient way to get some kinds of things done; for some chores–like composing a long document–a physical keyboard is the way to go.

Either way, at least for the moment, tablets have sucked all the oxygen out of the room.

Sprint HTC Evo: the Video

Ad for the new Sprint HTC Evo, coming June 4.

Verizon Says it Has No Immediate Plans to Sell iPhone

The  longest-running rumor many of us can cite at the moment is the nearly-constant expectation that Verizon Wireless is going to carry the Apple iPhone. Alas, the rumors, which have heated up again recently, seem to be equally false. No iPhone at Verizon for the foreseeable future, it seems.

Froyo Feature: Threaded call log | Android Central

Android 2.2 (Froyo) features threaded call logs that collapse multiple calls from the same person or entity into a single pane that can be tapped to expand the list. It saves screen real estate.

Cisco Releases Annual Global Bandwidth Forecast

Cisco's latest visual networking index shows the expected "up to the right" growth curve. No surprise there.

The growth in traffic will continue to be dominated by video, exceeding 91 percent of global consumer IP traffic by 2014. That statistic simply screams for network management to ensure the quality of video experience.

Apple Wants to Replace, Not Compete, in Search

Apple CEO Steve Jobs says his company will not take on Google in the search business. That's a bit of legalese, one might argue. Apple does not so much want to compete in search as to make it irrelevant in a mobile context.

"Competing" implies one wishes to win something. "Displacing and replacing " is more like what Apple wants to do.

Many of Apple’s 200,000 app downloads, for example, are simply shortcuts to the web which eliminates the need for Google’s search functions.

Apple already competes against Google in the mobile phone, mobile advertising and operating systems areas, and soon there will be competition from Google in the music and mobile apps arenas as well.

Apple Says It Will Not Take On Google In Search, But It Already Has – 24/7 Wall St.

Google Indexes Mobile Apps

Sometimes, when you use a smartphone, the best search result is not a web page, it's an application.

That's probably the reason why Google added an OneBox for iPhone and Android apps. If you enter a query that includes keywords like 'download', 'application' or 'app' on an iPhone or on an Android phone, you'll see a list of results from Apple's App Store or from the Android Market. link

As of today, if you go to Google.com on your iPhone or Android-powered device and search for an app, we’ll show special links and content at the top of the search results.

You can tap these links to go directly to the app’s Android Market or iPhone App Store page. You can also get a quick look at some of the app’s basic details including the price, rating, and publisher. These results will appear when your search pertains to a mobile application and relevant, well-rated apps are found.

Google Indexes Mobile Apps

Facebook, Music, Navigation, News Top Smartphone Apps

Though there are some differences by smartphone platform, users tend to use social networking, especially Facebook, listen to music and navigate and search for places on their smartphones most frequently.

(click on the image for a larger view; you might have to click to toggle views onthe new page)

They also seem to use the Weather Channel app frequently, and access news as well.

Dell Shows "Streak" Tablet

The new Dell "Streak" tablet will have quite a different form factor than the iPad.

Steve Jobs Talks about Why It Created the iPhone

Steve Jobs talks about the iPhone and why Apple wanted to create it.

Steve Jobs on Apple's iAd Network

Steve Jobs talks about the iAd network at "All Things Digital."

Steve Jobs on Where Apple is Going

Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, expounding on a number of subjects at "All Things Digital." Jobs says Apple is not interested in search or TV. But Apple also said it was not interested in phones. I seem to recall that Apple wasn't all that hot on tablets, either.

No More Windows at Google?

According to the Financial Times, Google has banned the use of the Microsoft operating system, company wide. read the story here.


“We’re not doing any more Windows," said one Google employee. New hires are now given the option of using Apple’s Mac computers or PCs running the Linux operating system.

link

Can Google Apps Save a Business Money?

Many enterprises would have a really hard time quantifying the benefits from cloud applications, hosted applications or software as a service.

Google claims it can help businesses quantify how much they can save by switching to Google Apps. Smaller organizations might buy the logic.

Hulu Growth Flattens

Hulu's growth, at least as measured by views, appears to have flattened over the last six months. On the other hand, it appears to be profitable, if not by much.

As it gears up to offer subscription plans, and more content moves behind a pay wall, growth might even dip a bit.

That's the challenge for any content provider that opts for pay walls: fewer users but more revenue.

Games, Music, Social Networking, News and Maps Top Smartphone Downloads

About 21 percent of American wireless subscribers had a smartphone in the fourth quarter of 2009, up from 19 percent in the previous quarter and significantly higher than the 14 percent at the end of 2008.

About 14 percent of mobile subscribers have downloaded an app in the last 30 days. Games, music and social networking apps seem to be high on the list for both smartphone and feature phone users.

News and map applications get much higher use by smartphone users.
link

U.S. Users Watched 30.3 Billion Videos in April 2010

U.S. Internet users watched 30.3 billion videos in April, with Google Sites ranking as the top video property with 13.1 billion videos, representing 43.2 percent of all videos viewed online.

YouTube accounted for the vast majority of videos viewed at the property. Hulu ranked second with 958 million videos, or 3.2 percent of all online videos viewed. Microsoft Sites ranked third with 644 million (2.1 percent), followed by Viacom Digital with 384 million (1.3 percent) and Yahoo! Sites with 371 million (1.2 percent).

Some 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month. Recently launched in December 2009, Vevo (which includes viewing from the Vevo channel on YouTube) attracted 43.6 million viewers in April, representing a quarter of the U.S. online video audience.

comScore Releases April 2010 U.S. Online Video Rankings - comScore, Inc

Yota LTE Shift Raises Questions About Mobile WiMAX

Russian operator Yota says it will cover its next 15 cities with Long Term Evolution instead of WiMAX, and that it would cover Moscow and St. Petersburg with LTE by the end of 2011.

Many industry watchers assumed that Yota would deploy TD-LTE. However, Yota may have acquired additional spectrum to deploy FD-LTE instead.

“If the speculation that Yota is considering FD-LTE deployment and that it will continue running its WiMAX networks in the meantime is true, this shows Yota’s intent to use LTE for fully mobile applications with international roaming," ABI Research practice director Philip Solis says.

Debated Shift from WiMAX to LTE: Yota is First to Move from Talk to Action, According to ABI Research | Business Wire

Latest Version of Junaio Augmented Reality App Now at Android Market

  Junaio, Metaio’s free Augmented Reality Browser for mobile devices, is available for download in the Android Market and a new vesion will soon be available at the Apple App store as well.

The latest version allows users to take and submit images of objects to a centralized server, where these images are identified using software and a result is returned. For example, a user could take a picture of a book and submit that image for decoding. The response returned could be the book title or other information about the book.

As you might expect, this approach is a bit more complex than tagging items with 2D barcodes, which return a web page. The Junaio approach uses image recognition and object tracking to identify an object through the phone’s camera, access object relevant information through visual search and then virtually “glue” such information displays onto the object itself.

By moving the object or the camera the user is able to intuitively interact with the “glued on” augmented reality layer in order to navigate through information, rotate 3D displays, issue game commands or provide feedback.