Robert Allen

Opera 11.10 includes improved power saving features originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s upcoming iCloud service could have a negative effect on the NAND Flash market says IHS iSuppli. The market research firm suggests a change from phone and computer-based storage to online storage could lessen demand for flash memory in the future. Of course, iCloud in its current from is a sync service, but this could easily change to a streaming and storage service in the future.

This iCloud effect won’t be felt immediately. Apple is expected to scoop up 30% of the available supply of NAND flash memory in 2011 and should keep its position as the world’s largest buyer of NAND flash memory for the next several years.

As consumers gradually move their digital libraries online, the demand for on-device storage could decrease by as much as 100 GB per user. This drop could have a serious impact on NAND flash suppliers like Samsung or Toshiba.

[Via Digitimes]

iSuppli: Apple iCloud could affect NAND Flash market originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 18 Jul 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Since the launch of Bing, we’ve partnered with experts to bring you the best search results and help you make more informed decisions. Whether it’s Facebook and Twitter for the best social search experience, Kayak for comprehensive travel results or Fansnap for quick access to event tickets, our goal is to help you find what you’re looking for more quickly and help you make better decisions. Today we’re excited to extend this philosophy to Bing Finance: we are teaming with leading finance resources including Seeking Alpha, StockTwits.com, TheFlyOnTheWall and Trefis.com to help you make more informed financial decisions.

Seeking Alpha

If you are one of those people who needs to stay up to date on the latest news from Wall Street, Bing Finance is the place for you. With the addition of Seeking Alpha, a leading stock market blog, Bing Finance now provides you with real-time updates during market hours and news you should know just before the opening bell.

StockTwits.com

Additionally, to enable you to make more informed investment decisions, we’re partnering with StockTwits.com to surface real-time financial information into Bing. StockTwits.com helps you stay up to date on every day conversations on particular stocks and markets.

TheFlyOnTheWall

To track the latest updates and breaking news on a particular company, its competitors and its stock through the day, you can also get the latest updates from theflyonthewall.com located in the “Latest Updates” section in Bing Finance. This lets  you stay informed and make quick and informed decisions.

Trefis

With the addition of Trefis.com information in Bing, the data, tools, and analysis, currently only available to professional investors, is available to you. Ever wondered what affects the stock price of a particular company the most? What % of PepsiCo’s stock is Pepsi/Diet Pepsi? Now you have easy access to this level of information so you can make more informed financial decisions.

Not only do you get an estimate for a company’s stock but you can quickly access a comprehensive the entire analysis behind the price estimate in a visually engaging and interactive format. In a single snapshot, Bing lets you see which one of a company’s product lines or businesses impact the stock price most. In addition, in a fun, and easy-to-use framework you can modify estimates, test what-if scenarios, and ask questions to friends and experts. Now anyone can make better data-driven decisions, not just the professionals.

Compare and decide

Bing now provides a rich, comprehensive tool for users to compare stocks in one place. See how the stocks in your portfolio are performing relative to each other or compare performance of key competitors on various pivots – for e.g. earnings, news, analyst opinions, financials, stock history all together.

We hope you find these updates helpful when making important financial decisions. Let us know what you think.

Khushboo Taneja, Bing Finance

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The Tour de France is in full swing and cyclists around the world are watching the man in the yellow jersey, who at the writing of the post is Frenchman Thomas Voeckler, of Europcar. Here are five apps to help you keep up with the cycling action or even make your own:

Fantasy Cycling Tour ($1.99)

Fantasy Cycling Tour is a fantasy sports app for the cycling crowd. You can build a fantasy cycling team and race them in circuits around the world. You can hire new riders or trade talent to build the best team. You start off with a 50 million Euro budget and can supplement that cash reserve with winnings.

iMapMyRide+ ($1.99)

iMapMyRIDE+ is a ride tracking application that lets you hop on your bike and keep track of the distance traveled, calorie burned, speed and more. The app uses the iPhones built-in GPS and saves the information to your handset. The app can also pull down information from ANT+ devices that measures your heart rate, as well as other bicycle sensors from CyclOps. When you are done with your bike ride, you can upload your route to MapMyRide.com and look back at earlier rides.

Tour de France All access (Free)

Created by NBC Universal, Tour de France All Access lets you watch every stage of the Tour de France live on your iOS device ($4.99 in-app purchase required). All the news you need from the Tour de France can be found in this app. There are stage results, biker profiles, video clips, interviews, twitter stream and more. The app also hooks into Aquaphor Le Tour Challenge. This Challenge uses Versus and MapMyRide to track your own bike ride and compare it to the pros.

Atomic Softwares Bike Repair ($2.99)

Bike repair is a repair manual that you can store on your phone, not your tool bag. With over 220 photo, 50 detailed repair guides and explanations for 69 common problems, this app will lighten your load the next you start pedaling.

Tour de France 2011 : The Official Game ($2.99 for iPhone, $3.99 for iPad)

Tour de France 2011 : The Official Game lets you ride bicycling’s top stage race from the comfort of your armchair. The app lets you choose a team of riders, develop a riding strategy and race on all 21 stages of the Tour de France circuit. You can even wear the prestigious yellow jersey, green or polka dot jersey, if you are good enough.

Five apps for the cycling enthusiast originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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1. Download and install the Windows Phone Support Tool (x86 or x64) and the ChevronWP7 Updater (x86 or x64)
2. Launch ChevronWP7 Updater and select your language. If your language isn’t listed, stop and do not update.
3. If were running WP7 build 7004 (you can verify in Zune) then run the updater twice.

Install the Windows Phone 7 NoDo update regardless of your carrier originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been a couple weeks now since we got a very slight peek at what appeared to be a Samsung slider on Verizon. Let’s get a little closer look, shall we? The pic you see above (and a couple more after the break) just hit our inbox. And, sure enough, the as-yet unannounced device looks a whole lot like Sprint’s Samsung Epic 4G.

We’d imagine that if indeed this unnamed piece of Android goodness ends up seeing release on Verizon, it’ll be of the Galaxy S II variety. And while it’s nearly a dead ringer for the Epic 4G, the keyboard’s been tweaked every so slightly. The shift and fn buttons have been moved, and what appears to be an Internet shortcut key has been added, and the emoticon key — which ridiculously found itself as a dedicated key on the Epic 4G — has been relegated to secondary status on the space bar.

What else do we know? It looks like it’s running Android 2.3.4, which any release at this point of the year should definitely have.

Also note the 4G LTE icon in the status bar. We’ve all been wondering why the Motorola Droid 3 got such a low-key launch on Verizon. Jerry’s suspected that it was because the D3 is 3G only. And if this Samsung slider indeed sees release as a 4G device, it looks like he’ll be able to chalk that one in the win column.

Update: Got a few more details. The screen is described as “awesome.” (Never mind these blurrycam pics.) Better than the Fascinate, we’re told, and our tipster is thinking it could well be a Super AMOLED Plus screen, which packs in more subpixels than a mere Super AMOLED screen. It’s also said to run faster than the Fascinate. Internal storage is 2.17GB after hard reset. It’s got a 5MP camera on the back, and 1.3MP up front.

Couple more pics after the break.

Thanks, anon!

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Follow the links below for further information.

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0 SP1

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26701

Now Available - System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0 SP1

http://blogs.technet.com/b/vmmssp/archive/2011/07/11/now-available-system-center-virtual-machine-manager-self-service-portal-2-0-sp1.aspx

System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0 SP1 Overview and Quick Start

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg588340.aspx

System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0 SP1

http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/virtual-machine-manager/vmm-self-service-portal.aspx

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<Visiting from an iPad? Click here for an optimized version of this blog post: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=223315 >

In April we released Bing for iPad and needless to say, we were humbled by the positive response we received. In the first three months, we had more than 5,000 ratings in the App Store and an average score of 4.7 stars (out of five stars). But what we really liked was all the great feedback on areas to improve and features to add.

We’re pleased to release an update to Bing for iPad, rolling out later today  in the app store. In this release we made some improvements that you asked for and are excited to introduce a new feature called Lasso. Designed for touch-friendly devices, Lasso is a new way to search with the touch of a finger.

From our research, we know that many searches are inspired by things people see on the web. Today, it can be somewhat painful to search on a tablet when you’re engaged in reading something; just copying and pasting pieces of text from a webpage to a search box can take up to nine steps on the iPad. With Lasso you can circle and search in just two steps.

This release also includes: an improved movie experience that now lets you view multiple showtime days and theaters, the ability to swipe through the last six Bing homepage images, and hundreds of quality and performance improvements based on what we heard from you.

If you’re already using Bing for iPad, you should see an update for it in the App Store. Otherwise, you can download it here later today.

What you’re seeing today is only the beginning. Lasso moves Bing beyond the search box. Although it will only be available in Bing for iPad to begin with, we’re already thinking about how to take Lasso even further – so stay tuned.

As always, we’d love to hear what you think, so keep the feedback coming!

Tony Chor

Group Program Manager, Bing

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Andy Lees of the Windows Phone division says that tablets are PCs, and you won’t see his OS on forthcoming ones. But that means serious challenges for Microsoft’s programmers

Microsoft wants to move towards a single software ecosystem for both mobile phones, PCs, and devices in between including tablets and e-readers running its software, according to Andy Lees, the head of the Windows Phone division.

One ecosystem to rule them all

In a speech at the Windows Partners Conference in Los Angeles, Lees outlined a number of key trends which he said were leading to the changes: “it starts right at the core of the devices themselves,” he said, pointing to the demonstrations of Windows 8 running on systems-on-a-chip (SOC) that mean that PCs can take different form factors.

Lees then suggested that there will not be “an ecosystem for PCs and an ecosystem for phones [and] one for tablets. They’ll all come together.” He said that this did not mean replacing the PC: “our strategy is that these new form factors are within a single ecosystem and not new ecosystems themselves”.

Having Windows Phone 7 on a tablet would “conflict with this strategy”, he said. “We view a tablet as a sort of PC. We want people to be able to do the sorts of things that they expect on a PC on a tablet”. That includes connecting to networks, using networking tools, connecting USB drives, printing, and using Office.

But that has sparked heated - and urgent - dicussions about what a “unified ecosystem” is, and how it would work across multiple devices which run incompatible software.

Longtime Microsoft-watcher Mary Jo Foley suggests that for Microsoft, “ecosystem” doesn’t necessarily mean “dependent population of software and hardware built on a reference platform”, which is the meaning that every other organisation uses. She says it is instead “a broad-brush term that can mean anything from the development environment to its distribution channels.

And, she adds, being a “Windows device” doesn’t mean that that device is running “Windows” as you see on a PC. Windows Phone runs a version of Windows Embedded Compact with “a layer of Microsoft customization on top”. Xboxes actually run a substantially tweaked version of Windows NT.

But, she notes, if Microsoft has got Windows (proper) running on the ARM architecture, then maybe it could get it to run on Windows Phones.

Foley’s contacts say that that isn’t going to happen for the next upgrades of Windows 8 and Windows Phone in 2012 - which means that any change, and unification, isn’t going to happen until at least 2013.

Developers think that apps might be made to run on any of those interfaces, if you could bring them close enough together: one suggestion is that Silverlight, its browser plugin system (analogous to Adobe’s Flash), might fill the gap. Or maybe HTML5/Javascript/CSS will do the job, since Microsoft has talked about apps written for that running on Windows 8 (to the slight terror of some developers with years invested in Microsoft-specific development environments).

Unification will tear us apart

My opinion: trying to unify “Windows” - or create a unified operating system environment - across all those devices, and even across just tablets and PCs, will initially go swimmingly for Microsoft. Windows 8 is initially going to go great guns. It works on PCs and it’s got an interface that works on tablets too! What’s not to like? You can see corporations snapping it up. The idea of extending it (or extending its apps) to Windows Phone is ambitious, but I think that once they see what’s going to happen, they’ll pull back from trying to pull that in as well.

But pay attention to the key word: initially. Compare the approach of Apple and Google, which are developing a mobile OS that works on both smartphones and tablets, with Microsoft, which is developing a desktop OS that works on both PCs and tablets.

What sort of device is a tablet? Actually, don’t answer that yet. What sort of device is a smartphone? A mobile one - and one that is evolving at a furious rate. Video calling, voice-over-IP, GPS, near-field communications (NFC), gyroscopes, compasses, accelerometers, augmented reality (requiring real-time video processing plus location sensing plus internet) - they’ve all come to smartphones in the past few years. And the mobile OSs involved have had to evolve to be able to handle the inputs involved and process them - which means that to make them useful to developers, the OS has to evolve and offer APIs.

You only have to look at how far and how fast Apple’s iOS and especially Google’s Android have evolved since 2007 and 2008 respectively to realise that smartphone OS evolution is running at an astonishing rate. The iOS versions Wikipedia page and Android versions Wikipedia page show that the times between major upgrades can be less than a year.

Compare that to desktop OSs: both Apple and Microsoft are now on development cycles that take at least two years between major revisions. Windows 7 came out in 2009; Windows 8 is expected in 2012. Snow Leopard came out in August 2009; Lion is due, well, any day now. The development cycle for desktop OSs, even with service packs, is much slower than that for mobile phones.

So our next, crucial question: is a tablet more like a PC or a smartphone? I think this one pretty much answers itself. Despite what Lees says (or has been told to say following long strategy meetings with Steve Ballmer and Steve Sinofsky, the head of the Windows division), tablets get used in situations that are more mobile than they are static. They’re used in snatched moments between trains, or in homes, and particularly in situations where people don’t want to or can’t use laptops.

OK - you can argue that laptops are used in mobile situations too, and nobody suggests that they aren’t PCs. Fair enough: so we’ll let Microsoft determine that tablets are PCs, and let it produce the same OS for tablets as for desktop and laptop PCs.

Now the fun starts

For a year, those Windows tablets are going to look great. But during that time, Apple and Google (and not forgetting HP with its TouchPad/webOS and RIM with the PlayBook, if it’s still making it then) will be working as hard as they can to advance their mobile OSs to incorporate everything novel that crops up. They’ll build smartphones and tablets which will incorporate all sorts of new technology (which presently might be just a gleam in a researcher’s eye - we’re talking about 2013 here).

Meanwhile, those Windows tablets will begin to struggle, because Microsoft will have two choices: (1) come up with service packs that enable access to APIs for those technologies on tablets, which of course won’t be needed on desktops, lest they fall behind the competition, or (2) keep tablets moving at the slower pace of desktops.

The second doesn’t look good. The first is competitive - but that means both writing and testing the new software - hard enough - and, more to the point, working on a continuous upgrade and testing schedule which does not allow for any delays. Miss a trick in the tablet market, and someone else will step in and grab it. New APIs will have to be added to Windows tablets to compete with rivals; else they’ll not support new technologies, and look backward.

But the PC track and the tablet track aren’t going to be quite in sync; the tablet track will be moving far faster than the desktop track, if Microsoft is going to keep competitive with those rivals. Very few people need a gyroscope in their desktop PC. They do need GPU optimisation. Built-in 3G isn’t important for a desktop; you might like it in a tablet. Which should Microsoft develop first? If tablets are selling, that takes resources from the desktop development - unless you throw more bodies at both, in which case you have the inevitable problem of regression tests to make sure code improvements haven’t screwed up all your earlier work.

Another alternative is that the tablet track moves more slowly, in which case although the tablets will improve in speed (through Moore’s Law), they won’t benefit from integrated extra capabilities. If in 2014 rival tablets can handle iris recognition and voice recognition, will people wait for Microsoft to crank the handle on Windows to release a tablet update that enables it?

This is going to be extremely tricky for Microsoft to pull off. Recall that Windows Phone was significantly delayed, even though it used existing code (and is still built on ancient code going back to Windows Mobile). Vista was very delayed, because Sinofsky tore up the whole development process for Windows - which in theory is a lot more agile now. Even so, the risks of the tablet and desktop OSs diverging is very real; it already happens for Apple and Google. But it’s a bigger risk if you insist that you must be able to do the same things on the desktop as you can on the tablet - as Lees did.

In theory, Windows can be developed much more quickly now. That raises the question of why it’s taking three years between versions. If tablets and PCs are moving at different speeds, as we already know they are, Microsoft is going to struggle to prevent forking. Either it’s going to pull off the most amazing development feat ever - not that likely given its track record - or one of the two, tablets or PCs, is going to suffer in the development stakes.

Microsoft could of course get around this challenge by accepting that tablets work better with a mobile OS - which is sort of what Apple, Google, and latterly HP have proven. But to do that would sacrifice the Windows licence fee it hopes to extract from each Windows tablet under the new regime. The danger is that just as with its previous efforts on tablets, it’s going to sacrifice volume for value - and annoy its partners too.

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