Posts Tagged ‘gadgets/news’

Verizon and AT&T continue slap fight over “Map for That” ads

// November 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Verizon and AT&T are playing out their 3G coverage spat in court, with Verizon asserting that “the truth hurts” when it comes to AT&T’s 3G coverage. Verizon’s statement is just the latest in the legal battle that started earlier this month when AT&T filed a lawsuit over Verizon’s “There’s a Map for That” ad campaign—the gloves are off, and it’s clear that both companies are willing to go to great lengths to push their own marketing agendas. If these two companies were five-year-olds, AT&T would be screaming “VERIZON STARTED IT!” The network began running ads in October—meant to directly target Apple’s and AT&T’s ” There’s an App for That ” ads—that showed a Verizon coverage map next to AT&T’s. Verizon’s map showed significantly more 3G coverage, and the ad stated ” There’s a Map for That ” with the implication that AT&T’s devices are no good if you can’t get any coverage out in the middle of Podunk City, Iowa. The ads even stated flat out that AT&T’s customers were “out of touch” where 3G coverage wasn’t available. Oh snap, Verizon!

Tip of the hat: Fedora 12 a strong update

// November 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Red Hat announced today the official release of Fedora 12, the latest version of the popular open source Linux distribution. This release brings some impressive new features and a lot of much-needed bugfixes. It’s a strong update that puts the distro on the right track forward and addresses the serious installation problems that we encountered when we tested Fedora 11. Fedora 12, codenamed Constantine, brings improved power management, performance optimizations, new virtualization enhancements, and a lot of other great stuff. A lot of the improvements will boost Fedora’s suitability for netbooks. A new Moblin spin is available that allows users to easily test Moblin’s specialized user interface on top of Fedora 12.

A flat world: Ars interviews Square-Enix CEO Yoichi Wada

// November 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

The Japanese games industry is in trouble. At least, that seems to be the consensus of a number of high-profile developers from that region, especially after this year’s Tokyo Game Show. But Square-Enix—the developer best known for role-playing series like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest —isn’t taking the news lying down. Instead, the company has done everything it can to appeal to a more global audience, from publishing and development deals to new acquisitions. Ars sat down with president and CEO Yoichi Wada at the Montreal International Game Summit to discuss the apparent turmoil in the Japanese game industry and what Square-Enix hopes to do about it.

Ars Technica Holiday Gift Guide 2009

// November 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Geeks, technophiles, early adopters, giant nerds—these are hard people to shop for, because by definition they’re always more up on the latest and greatest than their peers. That’s why every year at Christmas time, loved ones and significant others struggle to find gifts for that special geek that fit the following three criteria: 1) they want it, 2) they don’t already have it, and 3) it won’t break the bank if you buy it for them. And, every year, the Ars Technica Holiday Gift Guide is here to help. Most tech-oriented gift guides are filled with gadgets and gear that only meet criterion #1 above—truth be told, we at Ars have written a few guides that fit this description in the past. That’s why with our 2009 guide, we put our heads together and came up with an assortment of gift ideas that, for the most part, should fit all three criteria for the nerd in your life. We asked ourselves not “what is the top X or Y of 2008?”, or “what should everyone have at least one of?”, but “what is it that we’ve come across in the past year that we actually wanted, for whatever crazy reason?” We then threw all of the suggestions in a giant pile, and sorted them into some basic groups. We admit that this process produced a list with a few super-random items in in it—ninja star coat hooks, a chess set that you hang on your wall, a wand-shaped remote that lets you go all Harry Potter on your entertainment system—but we challenge you to find another guide this year that contains more items that you’ll actually want to buy, either for a loved one or for yourself. So take a look through the Holiday Gift Guide 2009, and keep the plastic handy, because you won’t find a more entertaining, geek-appropriate collection of gift ideas this holiday season. Table of Contents PC and Mac Accessories : things go with your PC or Mac PC Hardware : storage and portables iPhone : for the iPhone power-user Kitchen : Top Chef wannabees will want these Apparel : get your geek on Camera : just in case you’re camera shopping Fitness : drop some pounds, post-holiday Consumer Electronics : stick this in your entertainment center Games : ten games that you’ll want (to get for yourself) Gaming Hardware and Gear : not quite what it sounds like, so prepare for surprises Books and Movies : read and watch Time : keep track of it (Very) Odds and Ends : who comes up with this stuff?

Qualcomm hopes Snapdragon smartbooks take bite out of Atom

// November 12th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor is finally coming to little laptops. The chip company has confirmed that its speedy ARM offering has been adopted by Lenovo for a new product with a netbook form-factor. The device will be available from AT&T, presumably offered with some kind of contract subsidy. Despite being named after a flower, the Snapdragon has serious bite. Its Cortex-A8 core packs 1GHz of processing power, delivering an impressive balance of performance and energy efficiency. The chip is already being used in a handful of ultra high-end smartphones, including the HTC HD2 and Sony Ericsson’s upcoming Xperia X10 Android handset. The company hopes to bring it to more mainstream phones and other devices in the future.

A single smartphone can DoS federal wiretaps

// November 12th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

As the telecommunications world went wireless and digital, the tried-and-true method law enforcement agencies used for wiretaps—splicing into the local loop—was in danger of becoming an anachronism. In 1994, Congress passed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act , which required telecommunications switches to incorporate a capacity for government monitoring of phone calls and other communications. That requirement ultimately produced an ANSI standard, J-STD-025, that dictated the capabilities of the hardware interface used by law enforcement agencies. A team of academic researchers has now put that standard to the test, and found that it’s vulnerable to various forms of denial and obfuscation attacks. As the authors note, the monitoring of domestic communications has been a source of controversy in recent years; others have questioned whether having a standard capacity built into every piece of communication hardware leaves the US communications infrastructure at risk of external attack. They avoid these issues, however, and focus on a simpler question: how well does the J-standard actually work?

Hands on: Zune HD gets new games, now with 3D and actual fun

// November 11th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Six new games, several of them in 3D, have arrived on the Zune Marketplace—and they’re meant to show off the power of the Zune HD’s NVIDIA-built Tegra processor . They do that well enough, but even better than the graphics is the fact that these games, unlike the first batch, have some actual replay value. In other words, they’re fun . The same couldn’t be said of the first round of Zune HD apps, which featured nearly unbelievable load times, simple 2D graphics, and an unfortunate tendency to make the eyes glaze over. They also came with unexpected “pre-roll” ads for products like the Kia Soul, but hey, they were free, right?

Verizon’s $350 early termination fee rubs senator wrong way

// November 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Verizon has gotten on the bad side of US Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who publicly criticized the company this week for its decision to significantly jack up early termination fees (ETFs) for some customers. Not only did Klobuchar send a letter to Verizon president and CEO Lowell C. McAdam calling the move “anti-consumer and anti-competitive,” she also wrote the Federal Communications Commission asking for a review of the decision. Verizon has its reasons for the increase, however, and points out that customers are more than welcome to purchase devices at their full retail price with no threat of an ETF. Verizon announced last week that, beginning November 15, its early termination fees for customers buying “Advanced Devices” (smartphones) would double from $175 to $350. Every month that passes, that fee is reduced by $10. This means if you buy a Droid with a two-year contract with Verizon, but decide to switch providers after 12 months, you’ll find yourself shelling out $230 to Verizon for exiting the contract early—still higher than the entire old fee altogether.

Go: new open source programming language from Google

// November 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Every computer programmer has a copious pile of opinions about how their programming language of choice could be improved. Who doesn’t want more syntactic sugar, better runtime performance, and faster compilation? That’s one of the reasons why there are so many programming languages. Creating a compiler is practically a rite of passage for computer science students, and half of the top vendors in the software industry eventually make their own programming language or extend an existing one to the point where it’s marginally recognizable. Despite the large amount of enthusiasm for language design, modern mainstream programming languages don’t fall far from the C tree. The best that Microsoft, Sun, and Apple have to offer are just variations on that theme, with the addition of predictable object models and conveniences like garbage collection. The slim minority of language geeks who have rebelled against bracist tyranny and stumbled over to innovative languages like Haskell and Erlang are doomed to toil in relative obscurity.

Kindle for PC adds flexibility, but not a whole lot more

// November 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Kindle for PC , Amazon’s e-reader software for Windows, has finally been released to the throngs of Kindle users who want to read their books on the computer. The software, which was announced late last month, offers yet another way for customers to read their electronic books—this time in full color. In a world where e-books—particularly those from Amazon—are riddled with restrictive DRM, this is sort of Amazon’s way of throwing customers a bone and letting them read in (almost) any format. The software is currently available for Windows XP SP2, Vista, and 7, with a Mac version “coming soon.” Though it’s designed to supplement an actual Kindle device, no Kindle is required if you want to simply use the software and buy from Amazon’s Kindle store.

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