Although we recently heard tell of a touchscreen-based test platform called Seaboard running Chrome OS , Google isn’t in a hurry to acknowledge that its browser OS is coming to tablets. I can’t blame them, either — with Android numbers increasing and Chrome OS unproven, it’d be foolish to dilute the market with a second tablet ecosystem. So they’re officially limiting it to Chromebooks for now[......]
Apple might want us to believe the Netbook is dead, but if sales of AMD’s all new Fusion series are any indication, the market is indeed alive and well. AMD claims it has shipped five million units of its Atom competitor since it launched back in January, and is struggling to meet demand .[......]
PayPal has filed a lawsuit against Google following the announcement of Google's new Wallet and Offers features, claiming that the company stole PayPal's "trade secrets" to create the services. PayPal notes in its complaint that a key PayPal employee moved to Google following failed negotiations for Google to adopt PayPal as its go-to payment platform on Android. Google Offers is a Groupon-like service that distributes coupons, while Google Wallet can store credit card and rewards information and communicate them with Near Field Communications (NFC) on capable Android phones. [......]
Trend Micro has released a public beta of Titanium Maximum Security 2012 , the latest incarnation of its feature-packed security suite. As is often the case with betas, it has a few issues to contend with. There's no firewall just yet, for instance, and we found application launch times seemed to lengthen considerably once the beta had been installed. [......]
A single laser beam has been used to transfer 26 terabits of data in one second by researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. The extreme data transfer was the equivalent of 700 DVDs being transferred in one second, speeds that we mere mortals can only dream of as we sit drumming our fingers on the desk while ripping a single CD, watching the progress bar slowly creep along the screen. It's not the fastest data transfer known to mankind, with Professor Wolfgang Freude, the paper's co-author, explaining, "Already a 100 terabits per second experiment has been demonstrated. [......]
Don't look now, but there's a slim chance you could order a GeForce GTX 560 (non-Ti) a day ahead of schedule. [......]
Attwell Baker Meredith Attwell Baker, one of the two Republican Commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission, plans to step down—and right into a top lobbying job at Comcast-NBC. The news, reported this afternoon by the Wall Street Journal , The Hill , and Politico , comes after the hugely controversial merger of Comcast and NBC earlier this year. [......]
Perhaps the question should be: "If I hold my breath waiting for Sony to answer and I die, can someone sue?" Because Sony's continued promises when PSN will be back up are like the kid who incessantly promises to clean his room and never does. Subscribers grow impatient, with the vast majority answering our poll are ready to switch to Xbox 360 and Xbox Live. Late last month, Sony promised partial PSN restoration -- gaming, music and video services -- on May 4, a pledge repeated on May 1 . [......]
You'll have to look real hard to find IE9 in NetApplications April browser user share data. IE9 doesn't even make NetApp's browser-version breakdown chart for all operating systems, although its usage share was 2.41 percent. By comparison, Firefox 4.0, which launched 7 days later, snatched 5.43 percent usage share[......]
The question of whether or not PlayStation Network users' credit card information had indeed been compromised was still unanswered Friday, closing in on two weeks after the breach had occurred. [......]
When SumoBags approached me about writing about one of their beanbag chairs, I figured that since we write about games and gamers like beanbag chairs that it might be a good match. Little did I know that the Sumo Titan is one of the biggest freaking beanbag chairs I’ve ever seen[......]
At this point, it almost seems silly to bother with releasing a white iPhone 4 device, a strangely elusive color for Apple that, for one reason or another, hasn't yet made it to market. The earliest hint that Apple might be on the verge of releasing a white iPhone 4 was the release of a white iPad 2, seemingly suggesting that whatever issue Apple was having has now been sorted out. However, recent rumors suggest a release later this week. [......]
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog—but they might now have an easy time finding your kennel. In a research paper and technical report presented at the USENIX Networked Systems Design and Implementation ( NDSI ) conference at the beginning of April, researchers from Northwestern University presented new methods for estimating the exact physical location of an IP address tens or hundreds of times more accurately than previously thought possible. The technique builds on existing approaches but adds a new element: it uses local businesses, government agencies, and educational institutions as landmarks, helping it achieve a median accuracy of just 690m—less than half a mile. [......]
