Will AT&T Lose Their iPhone Exclusivity On Wednesday?
It's sort of hard to believe all the hype from CES is already over and done with. Larger companies spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to introduce and showcase new products at the show, and now all anyone wants to talk about in the tech world is Apple. Must be nice to be Steve Jobs (or an investor). The company that gave the world the iPod and iPhone is planning a media event on the 27th of this month, and while the world tends to believe a tablet or slate of some sort is planned, there has been no definite
Read More ...
Hulu Considering A Fee-Based Subscription Service?
What started out as a simple, innocent "plan to destroy the world" may actually, in fact, destroy the world. Hulu has always been something that's "too good to be true." Free programming on-demand, wherever you have an Internet connection? Even with pre-roll ads, it's still a solid deal for the consumer, but it may not always be that way. In an effort to tweak its business model to find new sources of revenue, reports are suggesting that Hulu may end up charging users to watch some of the more popular shows.
Read More ...
Nokia Announces Free Voice Navigation For Select Handsets
The personal navigation device market just got a bit more competitive. Following in Google's footsteps of offering free navigation to users of Motorola's DROID smartphone, Nokia recently announced its own plans to begin offering free map updates and navigation services to smartphone users. As Jukka Hosio, director of Nokia's services marketing, told a press conference in Helsinki, "We are offering global car and pedestrian navigation in 74 countries, in 46 languages ... Ovi Maps becomes completely free from
Read More ...
Mozilla Delivers Firefox 3.6
Just over five months after the browser first entered public testing with an alpha release, Mozilla released Firefox 3.6. Although we had previously heard about delays for the latest version of this popular browser, the actual delay was much shorter than some had expected. So what will you get with Firefox 3.6? Well, for starters, Mozilla is touting the browser's speed improvements, claiming that Firefox 3.6 is more than 20% faster than Firefox 3.5. This improvement is due to "extensive under the hood work"
Read More ...
Kids Spend More Time Consuming Entertainment Media Than You Do Working
Though it likely doesn't come as a huge shock to anyone, the amount of time that 8- to 18-year-olds spend engrossed in entertainment media of some sort or another — TV, music, Internet, video games, movies and even (GASP!) print — has increased dramatically over the past five years.In fact, on average, the young'uns are spending as much time focusing on entertainment daily as the average adult does at work. Even more, if you consider the average work week is just five days, while this is spread over seven days,
Read More ...
Hulu Considering A Fee-Based Subscription Service?
What started out as a simple, innocent "plan to destroy the world" mayactually, in fact, destroy the world. Hulu has always been somethingthat's "too good to be true." Free programming on-demand, wherever youhave an Internet connection? Even with pre-roll ads, it's still a soliddeal for the consumer, but it may not always be that way.In an effort to tweak its business model to find new sources ofrevenue, reports are suggesting that Hulu may end up charging users towatch some of the more popular shows. Namely, 30 Rock, Modern Familyand House. The site is still weighing its options, so nothing is set instone just yet, but the writing seems to be on the wall.
Reportedly, those behind Hulu's magic has been intently studying "howto strike a balance between what people expect to watch free online andwhat they would be willing to pay for," with one plan in particulargiving users five of the most recent episodes of a program for free;after that, you'd need to pay a $4.99/month subscription fee to watcholder episodes. Of course, the site believes it will need at least 20series in order to make that model attractive--no one wants to pay forcontent until there's a lot of content to be consumed.
We'll have to wait until Hulu opens up and comments on the rumorsbefore knowing anything for certain, but if it's free TV you love, youshould probably watch lots and lots of it this weekend.
Read More ...
Nokia Announces Free Voice Navigation For Select Handsets
The personal navigation device market just got a bit more competitive. Following in Google's footsteps of offering free navigation to users of Motorola's DROID smartphone, Nokia recently announced its own plans to begin offering free map updates and navigation services to smartphone users. As Jukka Hosio, director of Nokia's services marketing, told a press conference in Helsinki, "We are offering global car and pedestrian navigation in 74 countries, in 46 languages ... Ovi Maps becomes completely free from this moment onwards."With the announcement, Nokia increases pressure on PND manufacturers such as Garmin and TomTom, who are likely to suffer as smartphone sales with built-in navigation capabilities continue to increase. In September, consultancy firm iSupply said it expected the GPS market to decrease for the first time in 2009 after enjoying years of booming growth. iSupply further predicted that GPS sales will continue to fall in the long term after a short rebound. By 2014, it is expected that the number of smartphones with navigational programs will exceed the number of GPS devices. Today, there are twice as many GPS devices compared to smartphones.
Nokia's PND features will become globally available in March on 10 phones, four of which are currently available as unlocked models in the U.S. These include the 5800 Navigation Edition, N97 Mini, 5800 Xpress Music, and E72. Additional models are set to follow. For customers who currently own one of the compatible phones, you can download the application from www.nokia.com/maps. The PND phones aren't available through AT&T, and the downloads will not be available to phones that are locked to AT&T.
Read More ...
Blurry Screen in Vista
I'm getting this blurry screen on my computer 15-20 minutes into playing a video game on my computer. The video game itself is not the culprit, I've tried a few different ones.
Basically it makes everything seem slightly out of phase and makes text very hard to read, I had to rub my eyes a few times just to make sure it wasn't me. Changing the resolution does not make it go away, the only thing that returns it to normal is restarting my computer. I've updated my laptop video card drivers to no avail. I wish I could take a screenshot and show you what I mean, but any screenshot I take comes out normal.
Are my gaming days on this laptop over? Any suggestions?
Read More ...
Kids Spend More Time Consuming Entertainment Media Than You Do Working
Though it likely doesn't come as a huge shock to anyone, the amount of time that 8- to 18-year-olds spend engrossed in entertainment media of some sort or another — TV, music, Internet, video games, movies and even (GASP!) print — has increased dramatically over the past five years.Infact, on average, the young'uns are spending as much time focusing onentertainment daily as the average adult does at work. Even more, ifyou consider the average work week is just five days, while this isspread over seven days, the Kaiser Family Foundation found in its mostrecent study.
Here's a quick breakdown of some of the key findings:- 7 hours and 38 minutes: Amount of time devoted to entertainmentmedia on a typical day (in 2004, that number was only 6 hours and 31minutes)
- 53 hours: Time spent in an average week.
- 10 hours and 45 minutes: actual amount ofآ content consumed inthe average day, as the subjects tended to "media multitask" often,meaning they might be on the computer while watching television orlistening to music
If you do the math, these pre-teens, tweens and teens are, onaverage, consuming somewhere in the vicinity of 75 hours of media aweek.
Mobile devices such as iPods and smartphones are the primeculprit in this increased consumption, as even television watching isno longer confined to the home.
From the study, here are some other interesting findings:- Reading. آ Over the past 5 years, time spent readingbooks remained steady at about :25 a day, but time with magazines andnewspapers dropped (from :14 to :09 for magazines, and from :06 to :03 fornewspapers).آ The proportion of youngpeople who read a newspaper in a typical day dropped from 42% in 1999 to 23% in2009. آ On the other hand, young peoplenow spend an average of :02 a day reading magazines or newspapers online.
- Media andhomework. آ About half of young people say they use mediaeither "most" (31%) or "some" (25%) of the time they’re doing their homework.
- Rules aboutmedia content. آ Fewer than half of all 8- to 18-year-olds saythey have rules about what TV shows they can watch (46%), video games they canplay (30%), or music they’re allowed to listen to (26%).آ Half (52%) say they have rules about whatthey can do on the computer.
- Gender gap. آ Girls spendmore time than boys using social networking sites (:25 vs. :19), listening tomusic (2:33 vs. 2:06), and reading (:43 vs. :33). آ Boys spend more time than girls playingconsole video games (:56 vs.: 14), computer games (:25 vs. :08), and going tovideo websites like YouTube (:17 vs. :12).
- Tweens andmedia. آ Media use increases substantially whenchildren hit the 11-14 year-old age group, an increase of 1:22 with TV content,1:14 with music, 1:00 using the computer, and :24 playing video games, fortotal media exposure of 11:53 per day (vs. 7:51 for 8-10 year-olds).آ
And,although the study didn't establish causality, it did note that themore media used, the lower the user's grades. Heavy users - consumingmore than 16 hours of entertainment a day, 21 percent of the studysubjects - said they usually got mostly Cs or worse. The light usersaccounted for 17 percent of the study subjects and consume less thanthree hours a day and reported better grades. Take from that what youwill.
The survey was conductedbetween October 2008 and May 2009 among 2,002 students in third through12th grades. The students completed surveys in school. Media use forschool research was not included in the figures above, and time spenton the phone or texting also was not accounted for in the report.
Youcan download the full PDF here.
Read More ...
Guys, XFX Needs Your Help!
Read More ...
Mozilla Delivers Firefox 3.6
Just over five months after the browser first entered public testing with an alpha release, Mozilla released Firefox 3.6. Although we had previously heard about delays for the latest version of this popular browser, the actual delay was much shorter than some had expected.So what will you get with Firefox 3.6? Well, for starters, Mozilla is touting the browser's speed improvements, claiming that Firefox 3.6 is more than 20% faster than Firefox 3.5. This improvement is due to "extensive under the hood work" that is designed to improve performance for everyday tasks such as email, uploading photos, social networking, and more. The browser also features support for a wide variety of Web standards, access to more than 6,000 free add-ons, customizable browser themes called Personas, a Plugin updater, improved JavaScript performance, and more.
What’s new in Firefox 3.6:
- Personas: Personalize the look of your Firefox by selecting new themes called Personas in a single click and without a restart
- Plugin Updater: To keep you safe from potential security vulnerabilities, Firefox will now detect out of date plugins
- Stability improvements: Firefox 3.6 significantly decreased crashes caused by third party software – all without sacrificing our extensibility in any way
- Form Complete: When filling out an online form, Firefox suggests information for fields based on your common answers in similar field
- Performance: Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness, and startup time
- Open Video and Audio: With the world’s best implementation of HTML 5 audio and video support, now video can be displayed full screen and supports poster frames
What’s New Under the Hood for Developers
- Support for the latest HTML5 specification, including the File API for local file handling
- Font Support: In addition to OpenType and TrueType fonts, 3.6 now supports the new Web Open Font Format (WOFF)
- CSS gradients: Supports linear and radial CSS gradients which allow for a smoother transition between colors
- Device orientation: Firefox 3.6 exposes the orientation of the laptop or device to Web pages
Read More ...
No comments:
Post a Comment