Let’s be honest for a second here: unless we’re talking about the Motorola Droid, which should be on Verizon Wireless within a few weeks, we might as well not be talking about Motorola. It’d be like talking about Real Madrid and only mentioning Granero or Drenthe and not Cristiano Ronaldo or Kaká. (Good, making references that all of 11 people will understand.) But we’re going to that such a thing right now in talking about the Motorola Aura Diamond Edition. It’s £3,500, which converts to, roughly, $5,700. Yeah…
On Thursday, October 21st, students, parents, and educators from the Washington, DC, area joined Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for a screening of an episode of the animated series Sid the Science Kid. Hosted at the Department of Education, event attendees watched Sid and his classroom friends as they learned about the flu and visited the school nurse to get vaccinated for influenza.
(HHS Photo by Chris Smith)
Just like Sid, government-wide efforts to prevent flu are all about the science. And, according to the scientists, using prevention measures, such as washing your hands and covering your cough, and getting a vaccine are the most important things you can do to stay healthy this flu season. Visit Flu.gov to learn more about H1N1 and seasonal flu vaccines and view additional resources for parents and children, including a number of Sesame Street PSAs that are available in English and Spanish.
The "Getting a Shot: You can do it!" episode was developed as part of a collaboration between Department of Health and Human Services and the Jim Henson Co. The episode will premiere on PBS Kids on Monday, October 26th, but here’s a preview of one of the songs:
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Nothing says “I’m a plugged-in, cool guy with lots of money and charm” like a small RFID-capable dongle that you can rub against your friend’s RFID dongles to pass pertinent information. With that hypothesis in mind, we’ve teamed up with Poken to offer 10 CrunchGear branded Poken Pulses for you and your friends. Here’s how to win.
To enter, simply tell one of your friends to read CrunchGear and tell them to comment introducing themselves to the site. When they comment, you need to reply to their original comment. We’ll pick 5 pairs of winners – one goes to the new reader and one goes to the person who told them about CrunchGear. You can invite more than one person but you have to comment after each new person. You can also, feasibly, put a fake name so you get two Poken for yourself but you won’t because you’re not a douche.
See below for an example in comments.
We’ll close this contest on noon Monday. Special thanks to Start Poken to and their new service, Pokenize, a B2B customizing service that helps companies extend their social reach by connecting with Poken users.
You may recall last year that the head of Warner Music Group, Edgar Bronfman Jr., demanded that music video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Bandweren’t paying enough for the music they used in the games, saying that the success of such games was “entirely dependent on the content we own and control.” As we mentioned at the time, this is the usual fallacy of the entertainment industry, to assume that the entire value of the product is in the content itself, rather than other aspects of it — such as the gameplay. It looks like the initial sales results of the massively overhyped Beatles Rockband is helping to prove this point. Despite all the attention and press and the fact that this was the Beatles’ music being offered in such a game for the first time, reader Eric alerts us to the news that sales of the game have massively underperformed expectations. Sales were less than 60% of what most analysts expected, and some of the quotes from people suggest why:
“[It] felt like an expansion to me, not a full release… [It was] cool, but not quite enough to be a stand alone game ($60) purchase.”
That’s just one quote, but others have expressed a similar sentiment. The music… that’s nice, but you can get Beatles’ music all over. It’s the game that makes this worth buying — or not worth buying. And just adding new music to an old game wasn’t nearly as exciting as many people hoped it would be. This isn’t to say the music is “worthless.” But it does suggest — yet again — that the entertainment industry overvalues the contribution of the content itself.
One of the highlights of Apple’s recent flurry of product releases was the arrival of its Magic Mouse — a sleekly designed, wireless, multitouch mouse that allows you to drag a finger up and down the middle of it to scroll. At $69 it’s expected to be a hot seller over the holidays. Not everybody can find it in their local Apple Store yet, though, but Olly Farshi found one in Helsinki and he provides an interesting video demonstration of it here. It looks cool.
More details today on the Dell Adamo XPS. Nothing official of course, but leaks happen and we’re finally getting to see exactly what’s hiding under that very flashy exterior.
So here’s what we know. The XPS will be running either a 1.4 or 1.9GHz dual core Intel CPU, integrated X4500MHD graphics, and 4GB of DDR3. You’ll be able to choose from either a 128 or 180GB SSD, and the screen only comes in a 13.4 inch size. There is some bad news (which might be why Dell is holding back currently), the machine apparently comes back with a Windows 7 Experience test rating of 3.3, which is not a good thing.
Additionally, that fancy flip screen thing won’t work if the batteries are dead. Not a huge issue, since I’m not sure why you’d need to open your notebook if it’s got no power, but still a little odd.
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Yesterday Energy Secretary Steven Chu and I had the opportunity to talk to a number of business and government leaders at the White House about how critical it is for America to play a leading role in the clean energy economy.
Despite the headlines that focus on what other countries are doing abroad, little prevents us from taking the lead in the business of clean energy. In fact, much of the energy technology being used around the world has its roots in the United States – but companies in other countries have often taken the lead in bringing those innovations to market.
There is simply no reason why this should be. We have all the smarts and all the resources we need to build light-weight car batteries or find a cheap and effective way to store power from the wind and sun here in America – we just need the willpower to act.
China is investing over $9 billion a month in clean energy and efficiency industries – not just to meet their own domestic energy and climate needs, but to satisfy the energy needs of the entire world.
If we don’t get our act together, we’re going to be watching the capital, the businesses and the well-paying jobs end up in China – rather than in communities across America. We simply cannot allow ourselves to wake up 10 years from now asking how Shanghai became the Silicon Valley of clean energy.
President Obama has asked every cabinet agency to play a role in promoting clean energy. Several agencies within the Commerce Department are playing a leading role in this effort:
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is leading the effort to develop technical standards that will be critical to building a reliable and robust smart electrical grid. A Smart Grid will revolutionize the use of electricity – from generation to transmission and distribution to consumption.
And patents and trademarks, issued by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, protect new technology and are a key factor in helping companies move their products into the open market.
Building a green economy isn’t going to be easy, but if government and businesses work together, America can and will be a world leader in clean energy.
SciClone begins a Phase II trial to evaluate how a new drug designed to stimulate the immune system fares against Hepatitis C.
SciClone starts hepatitis C drug trial
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
SciClone Pharmaceuticals Inc. enrolled the first patient in a mid-stage test of a hepatitis C treatment.
Foster City-based SciClone (NASDAQ: SCLN) signed up the patient in Atlanta to test SCV-07, a small molecule that stimulates the immune system. In this Phase II trial it’s being tested alone or in combination with ribavirin, another drug.
The technology industry has invested a lot of marketing energy and dollars into getting consumers excited about wireless power, the promise being that it will free us from the size and feature constraints imposed by batteries. There’s a consortium of bigwigs from Nokia to Dell trying to advance a standard called Qi, and Intel and WiTricity are trying to develop an even more compelling technology that will transfer power over the air. But we’re still a long way from cutting the cord.
Consumers intent on living a wireless life have two new options this holiday season — both of which are getting a lot of attention: mats on which they can wirelessly charge their mobile devices. Unfortunately this sounds far cooler than it really is. The two products — the Powermat, which goes on sale Sunday at Amazon, and the Duracell MyGrid, which went on sale earlier this month — use different techniques to charge a device, but both require the mat to be plugged into an outlet, which eliminates the wire to the device, but not the one to the wall.
Moreover, as I explain in a new report over at GigaOM Pro, (subscription required) these products aren’t likely to change the industry much unless consumers really want to shell out $140 or more to avoid inserting a micro USB adapter into the port on their phone. That’s a lot of money for convenience:
Wireless power mats are a lifestyle technology, says David Baarman, the director of advanced technologies at Fulton Innovation and the lead inventor of its eCoupled wireless charging technology. And lifestyle technologies, like Bluetooth, have to be standardized, cheap to implement and dead simple to gain mass adoption.
For real innovation, we’re going to have to wait for Intel and WiTricity to bring their wireless charging over the air capabilities to the mass market (or until solar or kinetic energy harvesting become efficient enough to deliver sufficient power quickly).
More news about The Pirate Bay to bore you all! (Seriously, it’s not like people are still talking about the old Suprnova or Torrentspy anymore, yet the TPB has stuck around.) Some time ago, a Dutch court ordered TPB to delete a number of torrents and block Dutch IP addresses from being able to visit the site. Using a sledgehammer on a thumbtack, yes. Then TPB protested, as it does all the time, saying that it had no idea about the court case to begin with, so it couldn’t make a proper defense, etc. The Dutch court agreed to give TPB a a little bit of time to work out its issues, and has now reached another, similar verdict: remove the torrents, and block Dutch IP addresses. Fun all around, really.
Of course, BREIN is behind all of this. (BREIN is sorta Holland’s equivalent of the RIAA, and has been after TPB for as long as I can remember.) In a perfect, BREIN-approved world, TPB would just go away and never return. That doesn’t look like that’s going to happen any time soon, no here we are.
The Dutch court gave TPB’s owners, whoever they are at this point, three months to comply with the ruling, lest they face a €5,000 (~$7,500) per day fine.
TPB is currently studying the ruling, which they may well appeal. I look forward to more courtroom shenanigans. Then again, I also look forward to the day when Hollywood, and its international equivalents, figure out a business model that clicks with the world in 2009, one that doesn’t involve trying to sue dumb Web sites into the ground. One day!
If you’re a Droid-chaser, you’ve no doubt been hooked to BGR for the past few weeks (more than normal, maybe?). We have our very own Motorola Droid handset, and although the software isn’t final, it’s solid enough where we feel comfortable giving you a nice preview of the unit. Remember, again, this isn’t a final unit and things can and will change for the better. Read on for our Motorola Droid Preview!
P.S. As we have been doing, we’ll follow up on this preview with a review based on a retail unit at release.
P.P.S. I just want to add that this is a Google Experience phone, and my line about Verizon and GPS was a joke. Verizon hasn’t and won’t touch or control any functionality on the Droid. GPS is 100% open, there’s Wi-Fi, Android Market, etc.
Hardware / Build quality:
When the Motorola Droid is released in the coming couple weeks, it will be the most advanced Android device on the market as far as specifications go. Software too, as it’s the only one said to be running Android 2.0 until months from now, but that’s for another section. There’s a 550MHz Texas Instruments OMAP3430 processor, separate PowerVR GPU, 256MB of RAM, CDMA Rev A., Wi-Fi, GPS, a digital magnetometer, accelerometer, proximity sensors, a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash, notification LED, four touch-sensitive navigation buttons, a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard, 3.5mm headset jack, microUSB port — jesus. In the last year or two, spec sheets really haven’t meant all that much to people. Rational people, that is. What means a lot more is the OS your phone is running since that’s what going to enable you to take bad ass pictures and immediately share them with a close group of friends, or edit work documents on your phone while conducting an online presentation, and so on. But what’s actually pretty funny is, Android devices have been a little underpowered, so the spec sheets do matter, and the Motorola Droid absolutely topples every single Android device ever released as far as the hardware specifications are concerned.
We love the build quality of this phone. It’s mostly metal, and while it’s heavy, it gives you a reassuring quality feel that you just don’t find much nowadays as handsets get thinner, lighter, smaller, and cheaper. It’s practically the opposite of the Motorola CLIQ as far as the physical attributes of the device goes. Really solid and it seems to be manufactured very well. The slider is not spring-assisted, but when you push the metal bezel around the gorgeous display upwards, you get a satisfying click. It does the same when you slide it closed as well.
Screen:
It’s the largest capacitive screen we’ve ever seen and it’s positively amazing. It’s crisp, sharp, vibrant, bright, and really, really responsive. It’s almost iPhone-level in terms of the capacitive touch. We’re not sure if the screen is glass or plastic (we’ve heard glass but it’s incredibly hard to tell), but it doesn’t seem like it would scratch easily regardless of the material. The 3.7 inch display powers a 854×480 resolution image and shows off Android’s true colors. You see what we did there?
What’s interesting is this whole touch-button phase. On the HTC Desire/Predator/Your face, it also features touch-sensitive buttons just like the Droid does. The great part about the Droid’s implementation is that there’s haptic feedback when you press a button and to be perfectly honest, we don’t mind them at all. Would we prefer physical keys? Yeah, sure, but these work just fine and we haven’t come across any problematic occurrences.
Keyboard:
Everyone is bitching over the keyboard. Well, it’s probably better than you’d think, but it’s not perfect. As has been discussed ad nauseum, the unit we have has two blank keys. They don’t press in at all, so it’s not just like there isn’t anything written on them, they are just flat. We had initially been told this was because the keyboard design wasn’t finalized, and if you’ve been Droid-chasing for a while you’ll have noticed many different keyboard revisions. Love it or hate it, this keyboard design is actually final and will be on the device you buy from your favorite Verizon Wireless store. As far as the actual ‘board goes, there isn’t as much feedback as we’d have liked from the keys, but since the phone is so darn thin, there had to be compromises somewhere. People have asked why Motorola didn’t just make the phone into a keyboard-less version, and our answer would have to be: they are. We like the keyboard on the Droid and we’re really anal about keyboards. The directional pad on the right is a little weird at first but it doesn’t hamper your typing too much, but there isn’t enough tactile feedback to make it perfect. Something that’s a little annoying is the proximity of one key to another key, but all in all we’ve been able to bang out emails, texts, and other forms of text entry very efficiently on the hardware keyboard very quickly after using the device. It’s not the best, but it certainly isn’t bad, and it’s definitely better than the T-Mobile G1’s keyboard.
And oh… a ton of people are asking, and we’re not sure why you wouldn’t assume it already, but you can indeed use the on-screen keyboard in portrait as well as landscape mode.
Phone calling / speaker / call quality:
The Droid sounds great as a phone. Calls with the handset over Verizon’s network sounded clear and the phone application itself performed really well. It’s speedy and there weren’t any hiccups unlike some other Android devices we’ve fooled around with. The dialpad is pretty standard and if you’ve used an Android device, you should be right at home as this is a straight Google affair after all. Google Voice obviously works flawlessly (we’re not sure why it wouldn’t, unless you’re talking about the animal sacrifices Verizon makes to disable GPS on the phone…) and the phone application is quick! That’s probably what we love most about it… number dialed. Call connected. Have a nice day.
OS:
Ah, Android 2.0. We’ve detailed it quite a bit, but we can definitely explore it a little more for you… I personally never liked Android 1.0. Well, that’s not true completely. I liked it, but I just didn’t see it being the OS we expected. It wasn’t polished, it wasn’t fluid, it offered very basic functionality — not a good way to start. What has happened between Android 1.0 and 2.0 is that a lot of missing functionality has been added, the UI has been made a little bit more streamlined in some places, and it generally brings the OS up to speed with other mobile platforms. Out of the box Exchange compatibility is our absolutely favorite new feature, but we’re sure people will appreciate the new unified email Inbox, voice commands / search, a new Google Maps, better multimedia support, a new browser, and the list goes on and on. Once you have a chance to use Android 2.0 on any device, whether it’s HTC or Motorola or Samsung, we think you’re going to love it.
Battery:
This might come as a shock to many, but the Motorola Droid has the best battery life out of any Android device we’ve ever tested. It completely smokes the Motorola CLIQ — obviously it’s not constantly pushing as much data, but it’s not even a fair comparison. With push Exchange configured, Facebook, and a linked push Google account (Gmail, contacts, etc.) we had no problem lasting through a whole day of usage. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi were disabled, but it’s still a pretty amazing performer as far as the battery is concerned. Yes, it has a user-replaceable battery, but it’s probably good enough to be sealed up to be honest. Motorola recently made a boo boo and let the Droid appear on their website, and official battery times are: 6.5hrs of continuous usage (phone + web + email + anything else, continually) or around 270 hours of standby time.
Accessories:
There’s a really cool accessory that we’re told will be available at launch and it’s a charging dock/multimedia station. It turns your phone into an alarm clock/weather display/music player by using a magnet to control and launch the corresponding application. We discovered that by putting the phone in our BlackBerry 9700 holster in a certain position, Car Home would launch.
We then moved the magnet and the multimedia mode launched, so we’re guessing there’s going to be some sort of car cradle/dock/thing that will be available as well in addition to the above station.
Conclusion:
You know how we roll at BGR, we don’t hold anything back — if it’s hot, it’s hot. If it’s not, it’s not, and we’re not afraid to call it like it is. The Motorola CLIQ was a pretty big disappointment for me personally, but oh man does the Droid make up for it. Sure, there’s a little hype sprinkled in because this is the first Android 2.0 device I’ve had the pleasure of using, but once you move past the initial “wow” factor, the Droid really delivers. Whether it’s Verizon’s ad campaign or Motorola’s that pits the Droid against the iPhone it doesn’t matter. The Droid isn’t an iPhone competitor because nothing at this point in time is an iPhone competitor besides the new iPhone. And things don’t have to be right now. Everyone can eat. So will the Motorola Droid be successful? Absolutely, we think. It will eat in to BlackBerry sales, Windows Mobile sales, and positively murder any lingering Palm Pre sales. It’s that good. Did you notice how Verizon still hasn’t announced the BlackBerry Storm2?
We really enjoyed using the Motorola Droid and think you’re going to love it. It’s not as straight forward as an iPhone and a little more involved than a BlackBerry, but if you’re up for the challenge, so is the Droid.
Hello, gorgeous! What a nice way to wake up on a Friday morning. You roll out of bed to make yourself some eggs, hop online to start the daily rituals, and bam! Shots of the unreleased, Android-powered Sony Ericsson XPERIA X3 are sitting in your inbox.
Danny Sullivan has an excellent analysis of some of the more ridiculous statements from WSJ managing editor, Robert Thompson, trashing pretty much everything online. Most of Sullivan’s analysis focuses on how ridiculous it is for Thompson to claim that Google makes news readers “promiscuous,” so I won’t address that again (though, you really should read Sullivan’s writeup). Instead, I wanted to focus in one little bit that Sullivan mentions, but doesn’t explore too much (other than to mention how insulting it is). Thompson declares that there are “three types of people” online, starting with:
There are the net neanderthals who think everything should be free all the time.
Pretty scary that someone who’s the managing editor of the most well known and well-respected business newspaper out there thinks this, huh? First off, I don’t know anyone who thinks “everything should be free all the time.” People are more than willing to pay for scarce goods of value. Where they fundamentally have issues is with being charged for content that can be made free at no additional cost. And that’s not “neanderthal” thinking, it’s good old classic economics — the kind we thought the WSJ supported.
And, of course, this also shows Thompson fundamentally not understanding the debate. For many, many years there’s been plenty of “free content” in the terms of “free to the consumer” but which is supported in other ways. As Sullivan points out, News Corp., which owns the WSJ, also owns Fox — which delivers free content, over the air, to consumers, but supported by advertising. Is that a Neanderthal opinion?
It really makes you wonder what they’re thinking over at the WSJ or what sort of business smarts they have when they both consider Google to be a problem and think that basic economics on content pricing is “Neanderthal.” It should call into question their thinking on other business topics as well. And, remember, this is the same company that is lashing out at “aggregators” like Google News, at the very same time that it’s offering its own aggregator as well. If Thompson thinks Google News makes people promiscuous, why does his own site offer something similar?
Facebook has just rolled out an updated version of its news feed that lets users switch between viewing a live version and an older one, where they can see what’s happened since they last logged in. Screenshots of possible news feeds Facebook was testing out began circulating around the web earlier this month.
The social network overhauled the design of its news feed back in the spring to put the stream of real-time updates down the center of the page — similar to micromessaging site Twitter. It also created a “Highlights” section on the right-hand side of the page that contained select older content about your friends’ activity on the site, such as recently uploaded photo albums and links to articles and videos your friends shared. The new version is moving the “Highlights” section to the middle of the page, where it was located prior to the spring redesign.
When asked if Facebook is rolling out the new version to get away from looking similar to Twitter, Facebook product manager Peter Deng said, “I don’t think we were trying to be like Twitter. Status updates have been on the page since 2006.” He added: “We’re showing you content that’s more popular when you first log in. But when you switch to live feed, it looks how it does today.”
The latest news feed design just went live; it will be gradually rolled out to all of Facebook’s 300 million users throughout the day.
Books, books, books! The American Booksellers Association, a trade group that represents small bookstores (not Barnes and Noble and the other big guys), has asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether or not Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target have “[devalued] the very concept of the book” with their ongoing price war. Well, they’re actually asking for an investigation into their selling practices. That is, because Amazon wants to outsell Wal-Mart, and Wal-Mart wants to outsell Amazon, they both sell the latest book (think Stephen King, Dan Brown, etc.) for some really low price, like $10. When you consider that the average hardcover “should” cost something like $20-$30, just based on the wildly outdated economics of book-selling, then you understand why the ABA is so upset.
Here’s what the ABA is thinking: it represents The Little Guy, the indie bookstore on Main Street, USA that doesn’t have the clout of Barnes and Noble or Borders. If these big guys keep trying to undercut each other, it lowers the price Main Street can set for a book. Why would someone pay $30 for a book when they can buy it for $10 from Wal-Mart? The problem becomes, after Main Street goes out of business, that limits the amount of information (books) out there. And what if some author releases a crazy book about some controversial topic, one that Wal-Mart refuses to carry because it doesn’t want to “offend” its customers or whatever? Now there’s no Main Street bookstore to turn to, and that information never gets out there. Then the marketplace of ideas suffers, and we’re all worse off. That’s the ABA’s thinking, at least, and it’s not entirely unreasonable, I don’t think.
If you want, this topic could easily balloon into a much deeper, philosophical discussion on the entire book industry—remember, Barnes and Noble said the other day that the book industry is still bigger than Hollywood, video games, etc.—but other, better people have already begun to tackle that debate.
And why is this on CrunchGear? Yup, e-books. You can make the argument, and the ABA has done just that, that it was the initial release of the Kindle that got this whole dangerous price war started. Amazon needed to jumpstart the public’s acceptance of e-books, so they did the inverse of what game companies do when they release a new system: game companies make money on the software and lose money on the hardware (at least initially), while Amazon was selling these e-books for something like one-third their “actual” value. Gotta get those Kindles out there!
So that’s basically it. The ABA is concerned that a price war, started by the introduction of the Kindle, will eventually limit the number and quality of ideas available to y’all. You’re free to disagree, and I get the feeling that many of you will.
Microsoft’s Windows 7 is released yesterday, and the boys and girls at Redmond are probably feeling very pleased with the news that pre-orders on Amazon for its latest OS have broken records. Windows 7 is now the biggest pre-order product in Amazon’s history.
Not to be outdone, Apple is busy breaking records too. At the Web 2.0 Summit this week, Morgan Stanley’s Managing Director Mary Meeker revealed that the iPhone/iPod touch is the fastest growing consumer electronics platform in history. And she had some charts to prove it. TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld picked through her 60+ page presentation to focus on three iPhone-relevant slides.
Catchy title, no? But impressive. The iPhone/iPod touch has seen far steeper user adoption than that of other popular consumer electronics platforms, including other iPods.
However, Gizmodo’s Dan Nosowitz very wisely points out:
Comparing one gadget to another in a different category is messy and inconclusive. iPhone adoption is different than, say, Wii adoption for lots of reasons: The iPhone is a phone, a gadget which pretty much everybody has and needs, and it combined the capabilities of a phone with that of an established hit, the iPod. In contrast, the Wii is a videogame system, a category with a totally different demographic, requiring different kinds of software and accessories. They’re just not the same (and I only mentioned a couple reasons), and comparing unit shipments doesn’t necessarily prove anything.
A slightly busier one, this illustrates how, in the two year period following its launch, the iPhone/iPod touch’s mobile internet user base has enjoyed a faster, higher adoption rate (57 million) than NTT Docomo’s mobile internet platform imode (25 million) and even desktop Internet legend AOL (7 million).
Of course, it’s important to remember that Apple benefits (at least a little) from the changing times. Both AOL and imode enjoyed their super-growth in the mid to late 1990’s — the Internet’s Stone Age. While the iPhone platform is undoubtedly sophisticated, it takes advantage of extraordinary advances in hardware and software engineering that, a decade ago, were merely the stuff of geek dreams. Also, let’s not forget that — relative to the Internet’s ubiquity and sophistication today — the mobile and desktop Internet of the 90’s was far more expensive, harder to use and much less rewarding of an experience. Still, these are impressive numbers nonetheless. It’s just helpful to put them into perspective.
If you want a chart that demonstrates just exactly why AT&T’s network is trembling at the knees beneath the strain of millions of data-hungry iPhones, look no further. Schonfeld added two arrows to pinpoint the June 2007 and July 2008 launches of, respectively, the iPhone and iPhone 3G. If you’re an iPhone owner and you don’t spend more time using the thing for email and web browsing than, y’know, actually talking to people, you’re in the minority. iPhone owners love their unlimited data.
You can bet your bottom dollar Steve’s next keynote presentation will extrapolate some of this data (of course, his charts will contain no numbers but look way more sexy).
View or download the entire presentation from Scribd, and tell me in the comments how no one uses the word “Pwns” any more.
Last spring, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), launched a bold Efficiency Review initiative to make DHS a leaner, smarter agency better equipped to protect the nation.
As part of the Efficiency Review, we are already taking steps big and small to build a green culture across the Department.
A few examples include:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is configuring it computers to automatically shut down/standby when they are not being used to avoid energy costs.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection will reduce energy usage by 25% by incorporating solar power in its new Border Patrol Sector Station in El Paso, Texas.
The new U.S. Coast Guard headquarters facility currently under construction will receive LEED Silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, incorporating state-of-the-art efficiency technologies like green roofs, landscaped courtyards to capture and reuse surface water runoff, and innovative heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.
That’s why I’m excited by the GreenGov Challenge that runs through the end of the month. It gives federal employees and our men and women in uniform a chance to submit their ideas to make us more environmentally responsible while cutting costs and streamlining operations.
You can submit your ideas at www.WhiteHouse.gov/GreenGov through the end of the month. Together, we can make a difference in creating a more efficient and sustainable federal government.
Janet Napolitano is Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security
Anyone who would continue to frame the consumer PC market in 1980s terms, as a continuance of the old war between Microsoft and Apple, would be sorely disappointed by this morning’s earnings news from Microsoft. The measured candor that continues to emerge from CFO Chris Liddell suggests that Macintosh and iPhone are not even on the company’s radar at the moment, and that his real battle is against a tougher and more menacing foe: Vista.
As of yesterday, it was officially okay for Microsoft to pronounce Vista part of its past, to “un-support” it from a marketing standpoint (though certainly not from a service standpoint). Steering Microsoft clear of the perfect storm — the effects of the global recession, coupled with the peak in negative attitude toward Vista — means putting Vista behind it, placing it in the adversarial role normally characterized by someone who looks a lot more like Justin Long than John Hodgman.
If Microsoft had continued on its unprecedented downward slope, as it was forced to report on last July, analysts might have concluded the company was in a recession of its own — a kind of corollary of the “two consecutive quarters of decline” rule normally applied to the country’s economic state. But the slope was not so down this time, and literally all the credit was bestowed upon the company’s newest, bravest warrior, Windows 7.
“To put the quarter results into perspective, Q1 represented the highest number of Windows licenses sold in one quarter, ever,” pronounced Investor Relations GM Bill Koefoed, “and September was the highest single month of Windows unit sales ever. In summary, it was a very solid quarter for the Windows division; and with Windows 7, we have a great product for the recovering PC market.”
During the low point of the economic crisis, what kept the PC market from collapsing altogether was the ability to shift its product mix towards netbooks — the lowest-priced segment, but certainly the lowest-margin end of the business as well. As Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell reported, netbooks went from 0 to 12% of the overall consumer PC market in just one year’s time. During that same year, Windows was able to find itself installed on 90% of those systems.
“Find itself” is actually a very accurate phrase, because this wasn’t really what Microsoft intended, and it actually became something of a real problem. At a time when the company needed to tout Service Pack 2 as the life saver for Vista, the netbook surge presented consumers with the single biggest confirmation of Vista’s inadequacy to date: the presence of Windows XP, not Vista, on nearly all of those netbooks.
“People are clearly willing to pay for having Windows on their netbooks, so that’s the first and most important fundamental,” Liddell told a Deutsche Bank analyst this morning. “Then in terms of Windows 7 reaction, clearly [we’ve] yet to see, but early indications in terms of the OEM builds that we’re having, and the mix that they’re putting in terms of Windows 7, is encouraging…in terms of their expectations of the number of people who are going to want to see a Windows 7 on their netbook as opposed to an XP. In terms of the ASP [average selling price], clearly it’s almost twice on Windows 7 what it would be on XP, or a significant premium…So it’s going to be beneficial, but I think it’s more important symbolically from our point of view that people see value in Windows 7 and are willing to pay for it. Netbooks, even though they’ve grown fast, are still a relatively small component of the overall demand, so it’s not going to have a massive financial impact, but it’ll certainly help in terms of ASP comparisons year-over-year, if we get the sort of good attach of Windows 7 that we’re starting to see in the early days.”
As it did during Vista’s premiere, Microsoft has opted to defer about $1.5 billion of revenue from pre-orders of Windows 7 from OEMs and retail customers, until the following quarter. Still, the activity surrounding Win7 in this past quarter indicated that the period of time in which customers were deferring their operating system investments had clearly ceased. Operating income from its client division, now called the “Windows and Windows Live” division (reflecting the realignment of online software around the core product, and away from online services like Bing), dropped only marginally on an annual basis to $2.81 billion, on revenue just 3.3% lower at $3.98 billion. With Server & Tools and Entertainment & Devices income slightly higher on the year on revenue that was basically flat, the company was able to sustain a huge hit from the declining value of its stock awards — essentially a $2.2 billion write-down.
So total income was down about 25.3% annually to $4.48 billion — not good, but not unexpected in the wake of last quarter. And besides a little bit of credit given to the success of Halo 3 on the Xbox 360 game platform, Windows 7 enthusiasm was credited for keeping income from business operations stable.
“What I think we’re seeing is the robustness of the concept of a PC,” Liddell told an RBC Capital analyst this morning. “Even through an economic reset, it’s something that people want to spend money on, and I think that gives us confidence in the sort of long-term trend, the long-term ability to have good, potentially double-digit growth in PC demand. That’s clearly helped by the fact that we’ve got new form factors, Windows 7 helps clearly. You’re just seeing a general positive trend on a long-term basis [for] a reset.”
The next battlefield for Microsoft will be getting Vista off of business desktops and notebooks. Toward that end, the cards could finally be stacked in Windows 7’s favor, for reasons Liddell alluded to today. Existing business PCs can be perceived as slow, for either of two reasons: If they’re five years old or more, they’re probably single-core. And if they’re newer than that, they’re probably stuck with Vista. Either way, they’re slow, and that perception may play into business’ decision to make a PC investment during calendar year 2010.
At least maybe. “The big variable in my mind is business PCs,” stated CFO Liddell candidly. “That’s been a significant negative, that’s decreased double-digits over most of the last few quarters, and it’s dragged down the numbers. That can’t continue forever. Eventually those PCs wear out and have to be replaced, so the big variable in terms of rebound is going to be the strength and speed of the business PC refresh cycle. We hope and expect that to be next year…We’re probably still relatively cautious, but when you start to see a rebound in that, plus what you’re seeing in the consumer side, we feel pretty good about what we see demand’s going to look like in the next calendar year.”
Liddell did let something slip a bit when he said that revenue for the Business Division should recover in the near term when business spending in general recovers, “combined with the impact of Office 2010.” That’s a product whose release window even now is the entire next year, but Liddell’s framework seems to put O10 someplace closer to late second-quarter, early third-quarter.
Reader Louis sent in this longish missive about his own experiences installing a Psystar Hackintosh. We were stymied last night by the authentification procedure so we didn’t even get as far as Louis but it seems that the install, while fairly seamless, is fraught with problems. The speakers on our HP, for example, don’t work and while Apple’s Ink feature shows up in the control panel, the touchscreen is about useless.
Here’s Louis’ take:
I saw your article about the success you’ve had. I’d like to share my experience to date.
I’m running a G31M-ES2L and an 8800GT. It’s an original PsyStar machine with an upgraded video card.
I purchased the app yesterday. Followed install instructions posted .
The SL install reports a failure but I could boot to the desktop in SL with the Rebel EFI CD. (The instructions have since been revised to reflect this).
Note: I also had to use a PS2 kbd in order to select the HD option when booting from the PsyStar CD (USB doesn’t work for me until I get to the desktop).
Went through the normal OS registration info that comes up after install.
The machine is basically crippled without an activation code for the Rebel EFI application ( it installs the kexts etc needed to properly recognize your HW) and Psystar is behind on sending them out (Just spoke with a very nice support person).
So, all in all, things proceeded as they should have up to that point.
Received the authentication code today and authenticated the app.
However, the app errored out with my account info in the next step.
Apparently you can’t get phone support for this app. I spoke with a tech who noted I had to send an email for support. He was very nice but couldn’t help.
I rebooted and tried the authentication code a second time and the app won’t even accept it. It simply errors out now.
REBEL EFI doesn’t appear to be ready for prime time yet, IMO.
Who wants to wait days for support for something that’s supposed to simplify a process?
FTR I do own Apple HW and this is mostly a fun/tinkering machine for secondary use.
Let’s be honest for a second here: unless we’re talking about the Motorola Droid, which should be on Verizon Wireless within a few weeks, we might as well not be talking about Motorola. It’d be like talking about Real Madrid and only mentioning Granero or Drenthe and not Cristiano Ronaldo or Kaká. (Good, making references that all of 11 people will understand.) But we’re going to that such a thing right now in talking about the Motorola Aura Diamond Edition. It’s £3,500, which converts to, roughly, $5,700. Yeah…
One of the highlights of Apple’s 
More details today on the 
Facebook has just rolled out an updated version of its news feed that lets users switch between viewing a live version and an older one, where they can see what’s happened since they last logged in. 
Reader Louis sent in this longish missive about his own experiences installing a Psystar Hackintosh. We were stymied last night by the authentification procedure so we didn’t even get as far as Louis but it seems that the install, while fairly seamless, is fraught with problems. The speakers on our HP, for example, don’t work and while Apple’s Ink feature shows up in the control panel, the touchscreen is about useless.