Cisco set to enter Tablet Industry with its Cius Tablet launch

 Will Cisco's Cius be an enterprise tablet game-changer or a tablet market also-ran? Time will provide the answer, but for the moment, as Cisco prepares to launch the Cius globally on July 31, Cisco is banking on enterprise business users wanting a tablet device that can provide more specific UC and enterprise-class features than their consumer-centric iPads and other tablets. In a media event this week, Cisco offered the most details yet on how it hopes to market Cius effectively with so much competition.

"We believe we sunk a lot of technology into this device," said Tom Puorro, senior director, product management, collaboration solutions at Cisco. "We've designed the device to be very broad in its capabilities, and [not just designed] for a particular use case. [This is] a lot of power focused on the enterprise user."
Here's a look at some of the finer points of Cisco's tablet contender.

Size And Specs

Cisco introduced the Cius tablet a year ago. It weighs 1.5 pounds, includes a front-mounted 720p HD camera, a 7-inch VGA touch-target display, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, and many other features. It runs an Intel Atom 1.6 Ghz processor, and sports 32 GB of flash memory.
The Cius can be sold and used without its docking base, but the docking base provides a phone handset, speakerphone and USB and Bluetooth ports for connecting keyboards, mice and other peripherals. All of the Cius' features, however -- including virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) -- can be accessed without the docking base. 

Pricing

Cisco has been cagey on Cius' final price, but this week reconfirmed an estimated street price of $750 for the Wi-Fi only version of the tablet. Volume discount programs will be available, and should bring the price-per-unit down to about $650, according to Cisco. The docking station is sold separately from the actual Cius unit, and Cisco executives told CRN this week that pricing is not finalized, but expected to be about $400.

Android

Cisco Cius is an Android tablet, and at launch, it runs version 2.2 of Google's Android mobile OS, also known as Froyo. Cisco told reporters this week that it will be skipping Android 3.0, also known as Honeycomb, and awaiting Google's release of Ice Cream Sandwich, a version of Android said to combine Honeycomb's tablet-focused software with elements of Gingerbread, also known as Android 2.3. Cisco's Puorro said Cisco worked closely with Google throughout the Cius' development to get the platform right.

Security

The Cius' on-board security, according to Cisco, is one of the key attributes that sets it apart from consumer-oriented tablet devices like Apple's iPad. According to Cisco, Cius comes with hardware-accelerated encryption, network security, certificate management, virtual private network, enterprise access, mobility security and policy management tools -- the only tablet out there with built in, enterprise-grade security, according to Puorro. IT managers can be as loose or as strict as they want with the level of security placed on Cius users in their organizations.

UC-Ready

What really makes Cius tick, according to Cisco, is that it extends the full firepower of Cisco's unified communications (UC) portfolio to the mobile edge. More specifically, Cius is supported by Cisco's UC Manager and natively supports Cisco TelePresence, Cisco's Jabber instant messaging client, Cisco's WebEx communications software, and Cisco Quad, Cisco's social networking collaboration platform. It also supports virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) using products and platforms from Citrix, VMware and Wyse. If a tablet is going to be a true business device, it has to do more than surf the Web and look nice, Cisco said this week.
"People are trying to use consumer-grade products in the enterprise, and a lot of that ends up as base functionality: e-mail, accessing the Web and watching movies," Puorro said. "[You] want more out of the device. This is a consolidation of many devices."

Solution Provider Appeal

The nice thing about Cius, according to Cisco's Richard McLeod, is that it's a device that cuts across all of Cisco's major business architectures -- a key component of Cisco's Borderless Networks strategy. Partners will be able to pinpoint network upgrade opportunities to run data, voice and video applications more effectively for customers, as well as drive professional and managed services behind Cius deployments and also leverage app development to expand their sales to customers that much more.
"The hope is to have apps living there that leverage Cius integration with U.C.," said McLeod, senior director, collaboration sales for Cisco's Worldwide Partner Organization. "You've taken those apps you're comfortable with, and they're tightly integrated with your business process. [That's] where the real power of a Cisco VAR steps in."

AppHQ

 

Cius users will be able to access Google's Android marketplace as they would on any other Android-based device. One key to Cius' appeal, though, is a newly released platform called AppHQ: an application storefront, hosted by Cisco in the cloud, through which organizations can acquire apps that have been pre-tested and pre-validated to work with Cisco and Cisco partner infrastructure. What that does, according to Cisco, is organize those applications that will be of most use to Cius users, and offer them a guarantee that the apps displayed in AppHQ have already been quality-tested and approved for use with Cisco products and security services.

Google launched it's new Social Networking Website "Google+"

Google Inc is making its boldest move to take on Facebook in the fast-growing social networking market and to maintain its dominance on the Web.


Google, which has been frustrated by a string of failed attempts to crack the social networking market, introduced a full-fledged social network on Tuesday dubbed Google+. It is the company's biggest foray into social networking since co-founder Larry Page took over as chief executive in April.
Page has made social networking a top priority at the world's No. 1 Internet search engine, whose position as the main gateway to online information could be at risk as people spend more time on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

"They had the luxury of making mistakes in the past with their social initiatives. They don't really have that luxury now," said Ray Valdes, an analyst at research firm Gartner, referring to Google.

"Companies that are successful with the social web will get the page views, they'll get the engagement and they'll eventually get the advertising dollars that are so important to Google," he said.

Google+, now available for testing, is structured in remarkably similar fashion to Facebook, with profile pictures and newsfeeds forming a central core. However, a user's friends or contacts are grouped into very specific circles of their choosing, versus the common pool of friends typical on Facebook.

 

A Google spokeswoman declined to say whether Google had resumed inviting people to join Google+ on Thursday or to specify what caused the suspension of invitations.

"We launched Google+ in a Field Trial in order to test the product out and gather more feedback," Google said in an emailed statement.

"As part of the Field Trial, we may open and close Google+ to new users at any time. We're thrilled so many people are interested in trying out a new approach to online sharing."

Google Launched it's new search Engine WHAT DO YOU LOVE (www.wdyl.com)

Google has launched a new website WDYL.com, that presents the results of searches across 20 different Google products on one page. 

It is a new search engine, which presents a diverse set of information about any topic that a person is interested in. 

WDYL.com features a simple gray page asking at-top "What do you love?" with a search bar to the side, the Los Angeles Times reports 

Once a user enters a search query, the site presents its results in 20 widgets containing many of Google's different types of searches, such as news, blogs, YouTube and Picasa photos. I typed GOOGLE itself and got the above results. It's half the page that I was able take the snapshot. Try it, it seems quite interesting.

The new website popped up online with no marketing or introduction by Google, but was reported first by TechCrunch, which posted a story after being tipped to the site's launch. 

The Search giant Google has also launched its new social networking website in its latest attempt to challenge Facebook.

Survey: Ereaders Outpace Tablets in U.S. Adoption

The increase in U.S. adults who own ereaders is outpacing the growth of tablet owners, according to a new phone survey by the Pew Internet Project.

Adults who owned ereaders like Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook doubled from 6 percent of the U.S. adult population in November 2010 to 12 percent in May 2011, according to the survey of 2,277 respondents aged 18 and over. The survey was conducted in both English and Spanish.
Over the same period, the share of adults who said they owned a tablet such as Apple's iPad grew as well, but by just 3 percentage points. About 5 percent of respondents in an earlier Pew survey from November of last year said they owned a tablet, while 8 percent said they did in the most recent one, conducted between April 26 and May 22.

Growth in tablet ownership seemed to be tailing off in the first five months of 2011, according to the research firm. About 7 percent of respondents to a January survey said they owned a tablet, meaning the increase in ownership between then and May was just a single percentage point, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

There was a healthy overlap in ereader and tablet ownership, according to Pew. Some 3 percent of adults said they owned both devices, while 9 percent owned just and ereader and 5 percent said they only had a tablet.
While ereaders and tablets have both shown better or comparable growth in recent months as measured against many other sorts of consumer electronics devices and personal computers, in terms of market penetration, the two devices have a ways to go before they catch up with cellphones, laptops, and the like.

By way of comparison, some 83 percent of respondents to Pew's most recent survey said they owned a cellphone (Pew doesn't appear to have broken out smartphones in its findings). Desktop PC ownership (57 percent) still trumps laptop ownership (56 percent), but just by a whisker, and well within the margin of error.
That's a far cry from Pew's earlier findings. In the November 2010 survey, desktop ownership was at 61 percent as compared with 53 percent ownership for laptops. Pew further reported that laptops have passed desktops in popularity with respondents under the age of 30, "and appear poised to do the same among older adults."

Meanwhile, 52 percent of surveyed adults said they own a DVR, and 44 percent said they had an MP3 player.

Microsoft Sets to tackle its Rival Google Apps

With a new package of online applications called Office 365 launching Tuesday, Microsoft Corp. is courting customers who have resisted running some of the company's most lucrative products: small- and medium-sized businesses.

If the Redmond, Wash., software maker succeeds with its online applications among those customers, it could tap into a new wave of growth for the venerable Office franchise, which is already used by more than one billion people world-wide, according to Microsoft.

The company also faces competitive issues: Google Inc. has won more converts to a rival set of online applications called Google Apps among small and mid-sized businesses than among large companies, according to analysts.

Office 365 includes the latest versions of Microsoft's familiar suite of productivity applications—Word, Outlook, Excel and others—combined with online versions of related software for server systems that most people never see. That includes Exchange for messaging, SharePoint for collaboration and Lync for conferencing and communication.

For roughly $6 per user a month, Office 365 customers will get the traditional Office applications, either accessing them through a Web browser or by installing them on their PCs. Microsoft will run all of the servers that manage the Office applications in its own data centers.

Even if they run the Office productivity applications, the targeted customers—which usually have 500 or fewer employees—have been especially reluctant to install and run Microsoft's Office server programs, in large part because of the costs associated with maintaining technology support staff and purchasing hardware.
Even Exchange, which is Microsoft's most successful Office server product in that market, is run by only about 30% of small- and medium-sized businesses, Microsoft says.

In an interview, Kurt DelBene, president of Microsoft's Office division, said he expects Office 365 to help the company expand in areas where it hasn't had success in the past and to help it get smaller business customers, who might otherwise stick with older Office software, to upgrade to the latest version of the product.
"We see this as a super-exiting way to grow our business," he said.

Mr. DelBene, citing estimates by research firm Gartner Inc., said small- and medium-sized businesses account for about 30% of total information technology spending, or roughly $100 billion a year.
Elia Wallen, president of Traveler's Haven LLC, a Denver-based provider of corporate housing, is one small company that was attracted to Microsoft's Office server software but didn't want to run them itself.
Mr. Wallen said Traveler's Haven, with about 35 employees, is subscribing to Office 365 because he doesn't want to have to research hardware products and run server programs himself. He considered Google Apps too, but didn't want to have to retrain employees to use a new set of applications.

"The biggest part of it was everyone knows the Office suite," he said.
Google sought to blunt the launch of Office 365 on Monday with a blog post in which Shan Sinha, Google Apps product manager, said the new Microsoft suite will be designed to run well primarily on Windows-based PCs, with less attention paid to devices running software made by other companies.
Mr. Sinha also said Google's business pricing for Google Apps—$5 per user a month—is simpler than that for Office 365, which varies up to $27 depending on the plan to which a customer subscribers.
"At times like these, it's worth considering a clean-slate: an approach based on entirely modern technologies, designed for today's world," Mr. Sinha wrote.

Microsoft believes its pricing is simple enough for customers to understand and says it's committed to making Office 365 run well on non-Windows devices.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303627104576412223191996248.html#ixzz1QXhwmO6B

User's guide: Google's Android operating system

Mobile phones that run Google's (GOOG) Android operating system come in various shapes, sizes and features, unlike Apple's (AAPL) iPhones. And while iPhone buyers are limited to AT&T and Verizon service, Android phones are also available from Sprint, T-Mobile and Boost Mobile, where a data plan can cost as little as $35 a month.

But despite the variety of Android phones, and of carriers, there are a lot of useful features common to all. Here are some tips on finding them:

The long press: The key to many of these tips is the long press: Instead of tapping a button, word or icon on the screen, press and hold your finger on it for two seconds. Often, this will bring up a menu of options specific to the type of item, like one to bookmark a Web link. You can also long press the hardware keys on the phone, and the background of the home screen, to reveal various options.

In general, long-press functions are intended to save you from tapping through a series of menus to perform a common task. It's the equivalent of right-clicking your mouse on a PC screen.

So, for example, you can long press the home key on your phone's case he one that looks like a little house -- to bring up a menu of your eight most recently used apps. This lets you hop quickly between, say, an email you are composing and your Web browser. 

Take photos of yourself: Android cameras without a second camera for self-portraits have a Self Portrait mode in the camera app. Tap it, and the camera will begin searching for faces in its viewfinder using facial-recognition software. The phone will shoot a new photo of you every few seconds, adding the pictures to your camera roll. It's more hit or miss than taking your photo in a mirror, but it's more fun, like mugging in an old-fashioned photo booth.

Faster sentences: Android picked up a trick from old-school BlackBerry phones: When typing a text or email message, you don't need to fumble for the period key at the end of a sentence. Just press the spacebar twice. Android will insert one period and one space much faster than you could type them yourself.

Email shortcuts: If you use Gmail on your Android phone, you can create separate shortcut icons, as described above, to specific accounts, folders and Gmail labels. This lets you have separate icons for work email and personal email, rather than opening whatever you last read when you tap the Gmail icon.
Silencing a call: Most users figure out they can get rid of a phone call by sliding the red arrow that appears onscreen when the phone is ringing. But not everyone realizes you can stop the phone from ringing by pressing the power button on top of the phone or either of the volume buttons on the right.

Find on page: To search for words within a Web page, press the menu key, tap More, and then tap "Find on page." A search box and keyboard will appear to let you type in search terms.

Share a page on Facebook: Another option on the browser's More menu is the Share page. One of the options to share is Facebook. Tapping it will open Facebook in the browser (rather than using Facebook's Android app) and set up the link to be shared, complete with a thumbnail image and a space to type your comments.

See today's date: Android shows the time but not the date on your home screen. If you drag down the notification tray at the top of the screen, today's date appears in the upper left corner.

Foreign language keyboards: Most domestic Android phones come with only English and Spanish keyboards installed for the touch screen. To add, say, a German keyboard, go to Android Market and search for "German keyboard." Expect to pay around $3 for most keyboard apps.

Comscore Report: iPad tallies 89 percent of tablet traffic

Apple's iPad is overwhelmingly dominating tablet traffic, a new report from ComScore has found.
According to the market researcher, Apple's iPad accounted for 89 percent of worldwide tablet traffic on the Internet in May, easily besting Android-based tablets and other slates.

On a country-by-country basis, iPad traffic was highest in Canada last month, accounting for 33.5 percent of all non-computer traffic. (Non-computer means anything besides a laptop, Netbook, or desktop.) Android devices were able to score just 0.4 percent market share in that category. In the U.S., the iPad represented 21.8 percent of all non-computer traffic, while Android accounted for 0.6 percent.

The iPad's much higher contribution to worldwide traffic compared with Android tablets isn't all that surprising. According to Apple, it has sold 25 million iPads since the tablet's launch in spring 2010. Moreover, iPad held 87 percent market share in 2010, according to research firm IDC. Another research firm, Gartner, said it believes the iPad will own 68.7 percent of the market in 2011. Android devices, on the other hand, will only have 19.9 percent share this year, the firm said.

ComScore's look at non-computer traffic around the world.

(Credit: ComScore Device Essentials)

 

ComScore also examined the smartphone market. In the U.S. last month, Android phones represented 35.6 percent of all non-computer traffic, followed by Apple's iPhone with 23.5 percent share. In most other countries, however, Android followed the iPhone in total traffic. In Canada, for example, Apple's smartphone
represented 34.6 percent of all traffic in May, followed by Android smartphones with 8.2 percent share.
So, how were people getting on the Web? According to ComScore, 47.5 percent of iPhone page views occurred over Wi-Fi last month, compared with 52.5 percent over mobile networks. On Android devices, 21.7 percent of page views came through Wi-Fi access vs. 78.3 percent over mobile networks.
On the tablet side, 91.9 percent of iPad page views came through Wi-Fi access, compared with 8.1 percent over mobile networks. ComScore said 65.2 percent of Android tablet page views occurred over Wi-Fi, while 34.8 percent were tallied via mobile-network access.

The breakdown of the tablet figures may surprise some industry watchers. Tablets are inherently mobile devices, making the use of mobile networks to access the Web more likely. However, it seems that iPad owners are still very much tied to Wi-Fi.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20074004-17/study-ipad-tallies-89-percent-of-tablet-traffic/#ixzz1QTvQbwvQ

Google Goggles learns Russian and gets a new view

Some of you may already be using the new optical character recognition (OCR) and translation of Russian in Google Goggles that we previewed at last week’s Inside Search event. Starting today, we’re pleased to introduce some additional new features, including a map view of your Search History and the ability to copy contact and text results to the clipboard. We’ve also changed the results interface to make it easier to view and navigate through your results.

Russian optical character recognition (OCR) and translation
Since Google Goggles first launched in 2009, it has been able to recognize and translate text in a number of different languages, as long as the language used Latin characters. With the launch of OCR for Russian, Goggles is now able to read Cyrillic characters. Goggles will recognize a picture of Russian text and allow you to translate the text into one of over 40 other languages. Russian OCR is also available for users of Google Goggles on the Google Search app for iOS. Очень полезно!

How to pick a password that's hard to hack

 If there's one lesson to be learned from the rash of hack attacks recently, it's the value of a strong password.

Just look at what the hacker group LulzSec dug up. After hacking into the websites of the CIA, PBS and Sony, it posted on the Internet the email addresses and passwords of 62,000 compromised accounts.

A quick scan of the list showed that most passwords were easy to remember — and easy to crack. Sample: "wildwoman," "coffeecup," "peterp," and "kindle."

Of course, the ideal password would be long, unintelligible and nearly impossible to predict. Like this: !co4D4)f%d. But good passwords are hard to remember, which is why so many people end up with easy ones or reuse the same password for multiple accounts.

Nowadays, passwords are the keys to your digital life, and they safeguard everything from your email accounts to your bank accounts against cyber criminals. Here are a few ways to protect yourself online:

• Use mnemonics. Pick a personal sentence, as I did for my college account: "I am an NYU student!" and take the first letter of every word to create a password "1iaanyus!" (NYU requires its students to add a number for extra security. And no, that password doesn't work anymore.)

• Know that longer is usually better, but not always. A six-character password such as 7cG&!s is more secure than a longer password that uses a word or a phrase, such as iloveyou.

• Change passwords to your bank accounts every few months.

• Write down the passwords on a list without user names. Keep it with your passport, car title, Social Security card or other papers you are not likely to lose.

• If you truly cannot remember passwords and tend to lose scraps of paper, use password-managing software such as LastPass or KeePass that encrypts and stores all your passwords. Some will automatically plug in your password at the appropriate sites. They're usually free or charge a nominal monthly fee for extra features.

• If you want the ultimate protection — and have the memory of an elephant — consider using a "random password generator" that you can find by doing an Internet search. It'll spit out passwords depending on how complicated you want them to be.

And a few things to avoid:

• Never use simple words or phrases, even if you spell them backward and add a number. Hackers have software that can predict commonly used words.

• Never have the same password for every account, especially for bank accounts and sites such as Amazon.com that can store your credit card information.

• Never email passwords to yourself. If hackers gain access to your email, they would then have the whole kit and caboodle.

• Avoid using personal details. Do not include your name, birthday or home address, which can be easily guessed by someone who knows you.

• Don't share your passwords with friends or family.

• Don't log into sensitive accounts when using public Wi-Fi.

Nokia Sea Ray Leaked

After Nokia's recent statement that the company would follow Apple's product secrecy methods for its WP7 devices, we were made to believe that the company would actually do what it stated. But CEO of Nokia Mr Stephen Elop seems to be having a hard time comprehending that, because he has unofficially unveiled the device at an event. The intention was to show the people present, what it looks like. Elop humbly asked the audience to not record or not take pictures, to avoid spreading of the same in the blogosphere or media.

As it turns out, unknown to Elop, one person was recording the whole event, even as he went forward with the unveiling. The new Nokia Windows Phone 7 handset, known as the Sea Ray for now, bears a striking resemblance to the Nokia N9. Elop explained and pointed out at the hardware camera button at the right hand side of the device, which is not present on the N9, before finally switching on the device. This handset was seen running on Windows Phone 7.5 a.k.a Mango. The official announcement is still a few months away, but that won't matter to people now, since the device has already been made public, and has been published all over the internet. The latter part of the video shows the features and functions of Windows Phone Mango on the Sea Ray.

The Sea Ray will feature an 8 MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics, which is the same as in the N9. Other specs could include a 1 GHz processor (a 1 GHz processor is a must for all WP7 devices) and 512 MB RAM. The back looks similar to the N9 apart from the positioning of the dual LED flash. Apart from these minor differences, the handset has a similar structure to the N9.

Some reports on the web have suggested that this was a staged leak to gain popularity and create hype. This does make sense since there's no loss of focus in the video capture, and the person recording the video doesn't seem to be hiding while recording the video. Nokia could have a couple of more WP7 handsets lined up, but for now it seems like this is going to be the first ever Nokia WP7 handset. Check out a few more leaked photos of the Sea Ray below:

HP launches TouchPad-exclusive magazine to promote webOS

The hardware giant is preparing to launch Pivot, a monthly digital publication exclusively offered on its forthcoming TouchPad tablet. Rather than running pure advertorial, the hybrid magazine/app guide will offer visually-driven features, reviews, columns and other content written by professional journalists and guest writers.
At first glance, Pivot appears to be yet another digital lifestyle magazine, but there’s actually a lot more going on. HP says Pivot’s core mission is to show off the TouchPad’s capabilities and developer community, while also educating users about the device’s new webOS app store.
Preaching to the converted through a device-locked publication is an expensive project, but it might be a necessary evil for HP. Last year the the company scooped up smartphone veteran Palm (and its webOS platform) for a hefty $1.2 billion. Since then, HP has been playing catch-up while working to integrate the webOS into mobile devices like the TouchPad.
Now that the TouchPad’s release is imminent, it’s up to projects like Pivot to remind consumers and developers alike that webOS is still alive and kicking.
“We want our partners to experience webOS as the growing platform of opportunity,” said Richard Kerris, HP’s vice president of webOS developer relations in the announcement. “We’re investing in new ways to help market their applications on our platform.”
Of course, Pivot is not a selfless endeavor. Both the unreleased TouchPad and webOS are already well behind powerhouses like Apple’s iPad and iOS in sales and marketshare. And while the iOS and Android app stores are steadily developing digital publishing prowess, webOS is in for an uphill climb — both as an app platform and as a viable outlet for digital publications.
Pivot is slated to hit digital shelves on July 1st alongside the TouchPad.

Three new updates to Google Sync for iPhone and iPad

Due to the increasingly number of people using the E-Mails from their mobile and particularly when they are mobile, the need to perfectly sync the mails, calendars becomes very important. Google has released some new features for their Google Sync users to be in absolute sync with their work.

Google Sync keeps your phone’s native mail and calendar apps in sync with your Gmail, Calendar and Contacts. Today, three new updates to Google Sync for iOS will allow you to:

• Search all your emails in Gmail, not just the emails stored locally by the iOS mail app.
  
  
  
  
• Accept, decline or edit calendar events from the iOS calendar app.
  
  
• Send email from the address you want. We recognize that some of you manage multiple email addresses from a single Gmail account.Gmail’s “Send Mail as” feature lets you send messages with another email address listed as the sender instead of your Gmail address, e.g. joe@altostrat.com instead of joe@gmail.com. Now the iOS mail app will respect these settings.

These three updates are available to both Gmail and Google Apps email accounts.
For more information, visit Setting up Google Sync with your iOS device

First 4G Android Tablet With Netflix Launches with Android 2.3

It’s a big day of firsts for Sprint. The carrier launched its first Android tablet on Friday compatible with the new 4G “Wi-Max” network. The device is also the first Android tablet out there capable of running Netflix.

Unfortunately, despite being first in line for 4G and Netflix, Sprint’s HTC Evo View tablet ships with the older version of Android: 2.3 (Gingerbread), not version 3.0 (Honeycomb). A future software update will bring Honeycomb, the version of Android made specifically for tablets, to the device.

That speaks to a larger problem of “fragmentation” on Android devices: the inability to implement the platform consistently across multiple types of hardware made by different manufacturers. Fragmentation is also the key reason why Android tablets have been slow getting popular video-streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu onto its devices. It presents a problem for making sure that Digital Rights Management technologies — or applications that make sure you aren’t ripping and recording any of the streaming content you’re watching — function across all devices.

“It’s not one type of gas that goes into every vehicle,” said Netflix head of communications Steve Swasey, in an interview. “DRM isn’t consistent across all Android devices, and unlike the iPad and iOS devices, there’s not one universal solution to it.”

Nonetheless, the HTC Evo View 4G’s compatibility with Wi-Max will be a significant for those who want to watch streaming media on their tablet devices, as the speed boost you’ll get moving from a 3G device to 4G is considerable.

The even better news for movie buffs: Unlike the multiple Android tablets that have already hit the market this year, it’s the first Android tablet to run Netflix at launch. The device will essentially come pre-bundled with the Netflix app (after a minor software update upon first powering up the tablet). As of today, only five Android phones are officially capable of running the Netflix app.

“This is a result of extensive testing of the Netflix app on the product to make sure it works smoothly on our network,” a Sprint spokeswoman told Wired.com.

Most tablets released in 2011 so far fall into two categories: Wi-Fi only, the type of device most manufacturers launch first, and a 3G or 3.5G networked device, like the original Samsung Galaxy Tab (on Sprint’s 3G network) or T-Mobile’s G-Slate (which is 3.5G at best). HTC introduced the Flyer, the Evo View’s Wi-Fi-only predecessor, in late May.

Under the hood, the Evo View 4G is no slouch. The tablet sports a 1.5-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, a gig of ram, front and back-facing cameras and a 7-inch 1024×600 screen. It’s also got a stylus pen, which (for a limited time) will be thrown in for free if you buy a two-year contract.

In addition to the Evo View tablet, Sprint also launched the Evo 3D, HTC’s first 3-D-video-capable Android smartphone. The Evo View and Evo 3D are both available in Sprint and Best Buy stores as well as online, for $400 and $200 respectively, if purchased in conjunction with a two-year contract.

Google shuts down the Power Meter

Google launched PowerMeter two years ago through its philanthropic arm as a Web application that can collect information from smart meters to show consumers detailed information on electricity use. With more detail, people can take steps to cut down on power.

As recently as April of this year, Weihl said in an interview that Google planned to keep developing and offering the product even though home electricity is a "complicated ecosystem." Google's former director of climate change initiatives, Dan Reicher, last year said that Google planned to add features, such as water and natural gas monitoring, as well as allowing consumers to tie into peak-power-shaving programs.

Google offered PowerMeter through utility partnerships and had made deals with electricity monitor device makers so that they could view real-time usage data from PowerMeter on a PC or smartphone.

But cracking beyond the group of energy-conscious consumers has proved elusive--and Google is not alone in that regard.

Microsoft earlier this year told CNET that it plans to refocus its Hohm residential energy management application onto electric-vehicle charging through a partnership with Ford. Hohm was similar to PowerMeter but provided specific recommendations on how to make a home more energy efficient.

At the same time, there are dozens of other companies, including many start-ups, hoping to build energy management systems to improve home energy control and efficiency.

Whether PowerMeter's demise will have a chilling effect remains to be seen, but even before 

Google is pulling the plug on its PowerMeter electricity-monitoring tool due to poor uptake, a sign of how tough it is to make money in home energy software.

In a company blog today, Google said that PowerMeter and Google Health Web applications were trailblazers as products, but just didn't catch on as hoped.

"We're pleased that PowerMeter has helped demonstrate the importance of this access and created something of a model. However, our efforts have not scaled as quickly as we would like, so we are retiring the service," wrote Bill Weihl, Google Green Energy czar. The service will be suspended September 16, giving people time to export their data.

Google's decision to unplug PowerMeter, smart-grid companies and home energy-monitoring companies have recognized that they need to develop simpler, low-cost products to penetrate beyond a small niche of consumers.

Wattvision, a start-up with a Web energy-monitoring application, said that Google's departure didn't affect its plans, but was thankful that Google set the stage for others.

"The attention that the Google brand brought to our space was quite a boon for us, as well. Without Google, we'll continue to work hard, make our customers happy, and generate our own excitement," the company wrote in its blog.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20074160-54/google-axes-powermeter-a-bad-sign-for-others/#ixzz1QEhD22AL

Galaxy Tab 10.1 Docking Keyboard Launched by Samsung : An intelligent move

On Tuesday, Samsung announced its accessory suite for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android tablet, which includes a desktop dock, a keyboard dock, USB adaptors, and cases available immediately, and an SD Card and USB adaptor and bluetooth keyboard later this summer.

For Samsung, competing against Apple's iPad means more than creating an excellent tablet--it also means creating a high-quality line of accessories. For the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Samsung is making a number of cases, keyboards, docks, and adapters, to entice customers.
In this photo we see the Keyboard dock ($69), which offers a full-size tactile keyboard for users interested in adapting the Galaxy Tab 10.1 for extensive word processing and e-mail.

New Android Phone Works Even After Bathing in Your Sweat

Sony Ericsson’s new smartphone was made for two kinds of people: sporty jogger types and those who sweat profusely.

Dubbed the Xperia Active, Sony Ericsson’s recently announced smartphone is built to withstand the elements. It’s dust proof, water-resistant and even incorporates “wet finger tracking” (which, admittedly, sounds somewhat gross).

The Active probably won’t withstand a dip in the lap pool (or an accidental drop in the toilet). It’s aimed more at those who want to browse the web while on the treadmill, or perhaps check out their Runkeeper stats while taking on their latest triathlon. One word of advice, though: last time we checked, it’s still not kosher to talk on your phone at the gym.

Along with the Active, Sony Ericsson also unveiled the Xperia Ray, a fairly bland, run-of-the-mill Android smartphone. It comes with a 1-GHz processor, 3.3-inch screen and 8.1-megapixel back-facing camera.
Sony Ericsson unveiled the devices at the CommunicAsia tech conference in Singapore on Wednesday.
Over the past few years, hardware manufacturers have been pushing out new Android smartphones to the public at a breakneck pace. The problem, however, is that most of the phones have similar hardware specifications, with little else for consumers to differentiate between each device. Handset makers have tried adding on different layers of software (or “skinning”) over the stock version of Android in order to give a different look and customized feel to its phone. But not all custom skins have proved popular with smartphone enthusiasts, and some prefer a bare-bones approach to the operating system.

Sony Ericsson has taken a different path by releasing novel hardware designs with minimal software modification. The company’s recent release of the Xperia Play (or “PlayStation phone”) included a built-in, slide-out PlayStation controller interface, the first of its kind seen on a smartphone. The release of the Xperia Active is in the same vein as the Play — curveball additions to the company’s smartphone line-up which aim to break from the indistinguishable crowd of available devices.

Google Translate welcomes you to the Indic web

 

Beginning today, you can explore the linguistic diversity of the Indian sub-continent with Google Translate, which now supports five new experimental alpha languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. In India and Bangladesh alone, more than 500 million people speak these five languages. Since 2009, we’ve launched a total of 11 alpha languages, bringing the current number of languages supported by Google Translate to 63.

Indic languages differ from English in many ways, presenting several exciting challenges when developing their respective translation systems. Indian languages often use the Subject Object Verb (SOV) ordering to form sentences, unlike English, which uses Subject Verb Object (SVO) ordering. This difference in sentence structure makes it harder to produce fluent translations; the more words that need to be reordered, the more chance there is to make mistakes when moving them. Tamil, Telugu and Kannada are also highly agglutinative, meaning a single word often includes affixes that represent additional meaning, like tense or number. Fortunately, our research to improve Japanese (an SOV language) translation helped us with the word order challenge, while our work translating languages like German, Turkish and Russian provided insight into the agglutination problem.

You can expect translations for these new alpha languages to be less fluent and include many more untranslated words than some of our more mature languages—like Spanish or Chinese—which have much more of the web content that powers our statistical machine translation approach. Despite these challenges, we release alpha languages when we believe that they help people better access the multilingual web. If you notice incorrect or missing translations for any of our languages, please correct us; we enjoy learning from our mistakes and your feedback helps us graduate new languages from alpha status. If you’re a translator, you’ll also be able to take advantage of our machine translated output when using the Google Translator Toolkit.

Since these languages each have their own unique scripts, we’ve enabled a transliterated input method for those of you without Indian language keyboards. For example, if you type in the word “nandri,” it will generate the Tamil word நன்றி (see what it means). To see all these beautiful scripts in action, you’ll need to install fonts* for each language.

We hope that the launch of these new alpha languages will help you better understand the Indic web and encourage the publication of new content in Indic languages, taking us five alpha steps closer to a web without language barriers.

Google releases Chrome extension to detect risky Javascript behavior

Google has created a new tool that allows those who install it to see security holes on websites, the company announced on their security blog Tuesday. Named DOM Snitch, the Chrome extension uses various ways of intercepting Javascript calls to spot the use of functions that can inject code from outside sources. Google intends it to help show developers where their client-side code needs work.

The company notes that, as Web applications become more complex, the number and kinds of attacks that can be successfully launched against them will increase. Google hopes that the tool will help developers, testers, and security professionals tie up more loose ends with their code and prevent client-side attacks.
While it's still in an experimental phase, DOM Snitch can intercept many different kinds of Javascript calls and then record the URLs accessed by a document and a complete stack trace. This set of information lets developers and testers see if any interlopers who intercept a call would be able to progress to "cross-site scripting, mixed content," or "insecure modifications to the same-origin policy for DOM access." Users can see DOM modifications in real time, and can export the results of the test to share with colleagues.
DOM Snitch seems like more of a teaching tool or sanity check than a must-have security essential, but it may still see wide use among those still learning how to write secure Javascript code. At least a few users won't be able to resist using the tool for a little public shaming of popular, security-negligent websites.

Apple awarded prized touchscreen patent

Amidst ongoing legal sparing over mobile technology, Apple has won a broad patent relating to the touchscreens found on its iPhone and iPad.  

Apple has locked up the patent rights on a key piece of technology that makes the iPhone and iPad so irresistible to consumers. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded Apple the patent on Tuesday. The patent is concerned primarily with the way in which Apple’s software responds to user input on the touchscreen — not simply the touchscreen itself.

Here’s the official abstract that leads the document:

“A computer-implemented method, for use in conjunction with a portable multifunction device with a touch screen display, comprises displaying a portion of page content, including a frame displaying a portion of frame content and also including other content of the page, on the touch screen display. An N-finger translation gesture is detected on or near the touch screen display. In response, the page content, including the displayed portion of the frame content and the other content of the page, is translated to display a new portion of page content on the touch screen display. An M-finger translation gesture is detected on or near the touch screen display, where M is a different number than N. In response, the frame content is translated to display a new portion of frame content on the touch screen display, without translating the other content of the page.”

 
Apple had applied for the patent back in 2007. In October 2009, Nokia launched a lawsuit against Apple, claiming ten different patent infringements related to the iPhone. Apple responded by filing a countersuit, citing thirteen claims of patent infringement perpetrated by Nokia. However, the two rivals may be ready to play nice. Nokia announced last week that it had reached a licensing agreement with Apple said to be worth over $600 million.

In April of this year, Apple went on the offensive by launching a lawsuit against Samsung. Apple’s suit alleged that Samsung’s popular smartphone lineup is in essence a copy of Apple’s own designs. Samsung responded predictably with a countersuit accusing Apple of violating ten patents related to its own wireless technology.
It’s not clear if Apple’s newly acquired touchscreen patent will bring about a new flurry of legal activity. But given the highly litigious nature of the tech world in 21^st century, we wouldn’t be surprised if Apple’s lawyers aren’t  already gearing up for yet another standoff.

Google becomes First Site Ever to Get a Billion Unique Visitors in One Month

Google sites raked in more than a billion unique visitors in the month of May, the first time an Internet company has reached that milestone, according to comScore data first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Traffic to Google properties has increased by 8.4 percent over the past year to reach the billion hit mark. Microsoft has maintained the second-place spot with 905 million unique visitors last month, a 15 percent increase. Facebook takes the No. 3 spot with about 714 million visitors, up 30 percent. Yahoo comes in at number four with 689 million unique visitors in May. While traffic to Yahoo increased by 10.8 percent, the company was leapfrogged by Facebook in October. Wikimedia sites rounded out the top five, with about 411 million visitors last month.
The WSJ notes that comScore started monitoring traffic to Google back in 2006, when it reported that Google had about 496 million unique visits per month. Back then, Microsoft and its MSN properties were the most-visited sites with roughly 536 million unique visitors each month. But in the years following, the game has changed; Google has vastly expanded its brand, launching Gmail, acquiring YouTube, and introducing a mobile platform with Android.
Perhaps more notable than the number of unique visitors is the amount of time spent on a website. Facebook is tops in this area. Last month, comScore says people spent 250 billion minutes on Facebook, two-thirds more time than they were spending on the social-networking site a year ago, and much more time than they're spending on any other property. By contrast, users spent 204 billion minutes on Microsoft sites in May, a 13.6 percent decrease, and they spent 200 billion minutes on Google sites, up 13 percent.
Google would not comment on comScore's stats.

Google Docs (Summer 2011) : A Report

Google Docs is everywhere, meaning you can use it wherever you have internet access and a web browser. It's the oldest of the online application suites, but it's gradually shed its earlier skins and developed sleek new ones. Other online-only suites, notably Zoho, have a bigger feature set, but Google Docs comes close to the ideal balance of features, speed, and convenience. I've heard too many horror stories from friends about hijacked Google accounts for me to trust my work exclusively to Google's cloud, and I like to be able to work even when I'm not connected to the Internet (in Microsoft Office 2010 or Microsoft Office for Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac), but Google Docs is the one service I use when I need to edit files from a public terminal or a friend's computer.

Continuous Saving: a Game Changer
If you've never used an online application suite, prepare to be pleasantly surprised by Google Docs. It loads reasonably quickly, depending on the speed of your internet connection, and Google's characteristically uncluttered interface lets you get to work instantly. You'll quickly get used to the idea that you never have to save your work, because Google Docs, like most other online application suites, quietly saves your document whenever you make a change. Desktop applications will finally get a similar continuous-saving feature after Apple ships OS X "Lion" in July and new versions of office applications arrive to support it. Meanwhile, it's the most anxiety-reducing feature of Google Docs. When you want to recover an earlier version of your work, you simply click on the undo and redo arrows in the toolbar, or you can consult a Revision History dialog and restore even ancient versions of your file. No desktop application or operating system has so convenient a revision feature.

Drag-and-Drop Convenience
Google Docs' interface is divided between two (or more) browser tabs that you can't view at the same time. One tab contains a control panel that lists your files, complete with a preview image of any file that you select from the list. The other tab or tabs contain individual documents. I like the way Google Docs lets me simply drag files and folders to the control panel tab in order to upload them—though this drag-and-drop feature works only with Firefox or Chrome. Internet Explorer and Safari users have to spend an extra two or three seconds selecting files from a dialog box before uploading.


All the Usual Document Types
Google Docs creates five different kinds of files—word processed documents, worksheets, presentations, vector-based drawings, and fill-in forms that you can either e-mail or embed in a webpage to conduct a survey or send out invitations. I could either create new documents from a menu in Google Docs or upload existing documents in current Microsoft Office formats and let Google Docs convert it to its own internal format, with reasonably good fidelity to the originals, despite the much smaller feature set in Google Docs than in Office. Google doesn't say what software it uses on its servers when editing your documents, but it seems to be a custom version of OpenOffice.org, the same engine used in different versions in LibreOffice and Lotus Symphony.

Easy Collaboration
When you need to collaborate on a document or a worksheet, a cloud-based application, where two or more people can edit the document at the same time, is infinitely more convenient than a desktop-based app that requires you to send the document back and forth to other people and keep track of which is the latest version. Google Docs supports real-time collaboration on documents, worksheets, and presentations. I routinely use worksheets in which three or four other people need to enter data, and Google Docs is ideal for this purpose. Up to 50 people can edit a document, worksheet, or presentation at the same time, and the screen includes an optional chat window that lets me communicate privately with each collaborator. The names of every editor currently working on the document appears at the top of screen.  


Worthy Word Processing
Google Docs' word processor lets me create good-looking documents in any of eighteen different typefaces. I can insert footnotes but not endnotes, build indexes and tables of contents, insert images, tables, formulas, and hyperlinks—but it won't let me create pages with two or more columns. If you're used to the original version of Google Docs, you'll remember that the old version only supported "straight" typewriter-style quotation marks; the new version automatically inserts far better-looking "curly" typographic quotation marks. Google Docs now offers an option called "Compact Controls," which hides the Google banner and other clutter at the top of the window, leaving only the topline menu and toolbar, and you can remove even those items by choosing a "Full Screen" option that leaves only your document itself in the browser window.
One feature that I'm especially grateful for is an option to switch between a "paginated" view (full-page, complete with headers and footers) and a "compact" view, which hides the page headers and footers, so that I can see the basic page layout, but a sentence that extends from one page to the next doesn't jump across two inches of empty header-and-footer space when it crosses the page break. This "compact" view is surprisingly rare—many word-processing apps offer only either a full-page view or a "draft" or "web" view that doesn't preserve page layout—and gives Google Docs one of the essential conveniences in its high-powered desktop rivals, Microsoft Word for Windows and Corel WordPerfect for Windows.