Amazon thrown into the WebOS buyout rumour mix

30.09.2011, 13:56

Amazon is the latest company to be linked to the buyout of Palm, with the e-tailer heavily linked to purchasing the likes of WebOS from HP.

Amazon has been busy of late, announcing its first tablet, the Kindle Fire, and both a cheaper and touchscreen variant of its Kindle ebook reader.

Given that the Kindle Fire has come packing Android, the idea that the company would want WebOS is an interesting one.

HP has said that Amazon would make an ideal partner for WebOS but Amazon has not mentioned whether it would be interested in buying Palm.

In Amazon’s basket?

If it was to buy Palm, and with it WebOS, it would mean the company would avoid any messy Android licensing problems in the future but it would also mean that – due to the fact it has only just announced new products – the company would have to wait at least six months to launch anything with WebOS on it.

One fact that is giving this rumour some weight is that former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein, now at HP as a ‘product innovator, is part of Amazon’s board, so will have some clout as to whether Palm is acquired or not.

If it were to buy Palm, it would have to dig deep into its pockets – HP paid $1.2 billion for the company is 2010, although its price to a potential buyer will be far lower than this.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus announced

30.09.2011, 13:28

Samsung has announced the arrival of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus – a Honeycomb version of its 7-inch tablet range.

Samsung seems to be loving the 7-inch section of the tablet market, probably because it is a place where Apple can’t put them through the courts.

While the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 offers up a superior screen, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus has some impressive specs.

Android 3.2

The Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus runs the latest Android Honeycomb 3.2 and has been given a 1.2GHz dual core processor (up from 1GHz), 1GB of RAM, either 16GB or 32GB of built-in storage, 3-megapixel and 2-megapixel cameras on the back and front, respectively.

So far so Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 old version, but the chassis has been given a trim as well, it’s now 9.96mm and the tablet has been made lighter, too – weighing in a 345g.

Other features include a microSD card slot, Wi-Fi, 3G (HSPA+), Bluetooth 3.0, USB 2.0 and Wi-Fi Direct.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus UK release date is “later this year” with pricing to be announced.

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HP’s new CEO will take a $1 salary

30.09.2011, 12:13

Hewlett Packard’s new CEO Meg Whitman will take a base salary of just $1, with Leo Apotheker’s replacement looking to performance bonuses and share options to make her money.

Whitman was brought in after Apotheker’s now infamous claim that HP was looking to spin off or sell its hardware business.

The former eBay CEO will not be expecting her wage to keep (much) food on her table, with the details of her ‘compensation package’ announced by the company, including the dollar base.

Stocks

We’re doubting that Whitman will be struggling to pay her heating bills, however; with any measure of success bringing significant bonuses and an option to purchase 1.9 million shares if HP under its 2004 stock incentive plan.

It won’t be too hard for technophiles to name another CEO who opted to take just a dollar as a salary.

Steve Jobs famously took the 100 cents whilst he was in charge at Apple, and Whitman will be delighted if she can provide as much success for HP.

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Kindle owns Amazon top 10 list

30.09.2011, 11:31

Amazon’s US top 100 electronics sales list has shown just how powerful its Kindle brand, with the all but the top offering made up of the various flavours of ebook reader, and the Kindle Fire tablet taking top slot with a bullet.

There was little doubt that the newly announced Kindle family would sell well, but even pre-orders have taken the rankings by storm.

It is Amazon’s Android tablet the Kindle Fire which dominates; a $200 price point is seen as the key factor, and it looks as if the internet giant has got a smash hit on its hands.

Thrift

Second place goes to the new entry-level special offer Kindle at $79 – with the thrift-seeker’s ebook reader clearly catching the eye.

The more expensive Kindle Touch offerings are at positions three (Wi-Fi only) and four (3G), and the newly reduced $99 dollar old style Kindle – now called Kindle Keyboard is up to number five in the sales charts.

Kindle touch

UK Kindle

In the UK, the only new Kindle to be announced for sale is the keyboard-less new-style Kindle priced at £89 – and it is in at number one, with the £109 Kindle Keyboard Wi-Fi only at number two and the 3G keyboard version at three.

We are still haranguing Amazon UK for a UK release date and prices for the Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire but the company has steadfastly refused to give us one just yet.

That almost certainly suggests that the UK will not get the first generation products in 2011.

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eBay expects 70% phone surge ahead of iPhone 5 release

30.09.2011, 10:13

With the iPhone 5 expected to be announced on 4 October, eBay is battening down the hatches and preparing its coffers for an influx of older iPhone models.

The online auction site reckons it’ll see a 70 per cent rise in sales of previous iPhone models as people make room in their telephonic life for the new iPhone.

iPhones have enjoyed a wealth of popularity on eBay.co.uk, with over half a million iPhones changing hands since the first was launched, culminating in one being sold every two minutes on the UK site in 2010.

Battening down the hatches

It’s the iPhone 4 that will get a second day in the sun after the new iPhone 5 release, with eBay pegging the aging handset for a surge in the run up to Christmas.

Why? Because last year, sales of the iPhone 3G on eBay outstripped the newer iPhone 4 as people hunted for a smartphone bargain.

“Our figures show that savvy shoppers are ready and waiting to get their hands on the iPhone 4 at a cut-down price,” said Angus McCarey, retail director at eBay UK.

“The UK leads Europe in terms of smartphone adoption, which is helping to drive the triple digit growth of mobile shopping on eBay. Mobile is fundamentally changing retail as shoppers can now browse and shop on and offline in a seamless way.”

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YouTube hits earn Mortal Kombat a reboot

30.09.2011, 10:10

A Mortal Kombat web video that became a huge hit on YouTube has netted the director the chance to reboot the famous gaming franchise for the silver screen.

Kevin Tancharoen converted a script from Oren Uziel into an eight minute unauthorised short called Mortal Kombat: Rebirth, proving that the fighting game could make a return to cinemas and that he could cut it as a director of action films.

A web series called Mortal Kombat: Legacy followed which started in April this year, with the stars of the original – including Jeri Ryan – reprising their roles and garnering big audiences.

Fatality!

The success of those two offerings has now led to New Line signing up Tancharoen and Uziel for a new Mortal Kombat movie.

The gaming franchise made its debut in 1995 and performed well, but a series of flops on TV and cinema have followed.

It remains to be seen if this manages to catch the attention in the same way as the freely available shorts managed, but it will be interesting if the internet has served as the best possible trailer to reboot a franchise.

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Spotify brings ‘private listening’ to Facebook

30.09.2011, 10:07

Spotify has responded to widespread complaints from its user base that they did not want everything they listened to published to Facebook by bringing in a ‘private listening’ option.

Spotify has often reacted quickly to user feedback, and after many disconnected their accounts soon after adding them into Facebook because they did not want their every musical whim broadcast to their friends and family, the music streaming company has made changes.

“Now you can temporarily hide your guilty pleasures,” read the tweet. “We call it “Private listening” and you can find it in the Spotify/File menu.”

The news was announced on Spotify’s Twitter account, and was greeted with immediate pleasure by followers.

Guilty pleasures

Spotify’s partnership with Facebook was announced at the F8 conference, which focused heavily on the integration of music and playlists into the social network.

Founder Daniel Ek was invited to the stage to showcase Spotify on Facebook, illustrating the growing sway of the music streaming service which was founded in Sweden and launched in 2008.

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Blu-ray player sales to overtake DVD players by 2015

30.09.2011, 9:54

Global sales of Blu-ray players are expected to eclipse that of DVD players within four years, according to a report from research company In-Stat.

Its figures predict 105 million hi-def disc-spinners will be sold in 2015 – although that is still some way off the 141 million DVD players that shipped in 2006 in the format’s heyday.

In-Stat has also hammered the last nail into the coffin of DVD recorders, claiming that the technology would effectively die out completely in the next three years.

“Blu-ray recorders will replace DVD recorders,” said Norm Bogen, VP digital entertainment with In-Stat.

“Many consumers of recorders will even drop the physical disk media option altogether and instead opt for a player with a large hard drive, or digital media storage.”

Hand of VOD

Of course, this is something that manufacturers have already picked up on – disc-based recorder stalwart Panasonic recently announced a range of HDD recorders that also offer VOD services.

DVD recorders would only really continue to sell in Japan, reckons In-Stat – the same place where Blu-ray recorders are most likely to be bought. So it seems the watch-n-wipe culture promoted by TiVo and Sky+ is yet to catch on in the Far East.

While the predicted shipment figures are good news for the Blu-ray Disc Association, it may be concerned by In-Stat’s findings that Blu-ray is on the wane in China, where the more affordable China Blue High-Definition (CBHD) format is taking hold.

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Amazon’s Silk browser en route to other devices?

29.09.2011, 15:26

Amazon has been on a URL shopping spree, splashing out on over 500 new domain names to add to its arsenal – including among them amazonsilkforandroid.com, amazonsilkformac.com and amazonsilkforpc.com.

Catchy dot coms they may not be, but the new URLs certainly suggest that Amazon’s Kindle Fire browser, Silk, could be making its way on to other devices in the future.

It’s no guarantee – Amazon may just be babysitting the domains so no one else can nab them, particularly given that the purchases were made through MarkMonitor, a brand protection agency – but it’s an interesting proposition, and one that makes a modicum of sense.

Silky smooth

Announced yesterday, Silk is currently only on the Kindle Fire tablet, and uses a nifty combo of caching and the cloud to make web browsing super speedy and less power intensive for the tablet itself.

If these new URLs are to be believed, we could see this web capability come to other Android tablets and smartphones, as well as to the desktop PC and Mac computers.

For the time being though, we’d settle for Amazon to bring Silk to the UK on the Kindle Fire – a UK release date and pricing is nowhere to be seen.

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Opera congratulates Amazon for ‘catching up’ with Silk

29.09.2011, 13:29

Opera has responded to the arrival of the Amazon Silk browser – which has some remarkably similar technology to the Opera Turbo feature – by praising the internet giant for ‘catching up’.

Norwegian company Opera has established a reputation of providing some of the greatest browser innovations, including tabs and the speed dial – familiar sights on the likes of Chrome.

At the launch of the Kindle Fire, Amazon showed off its first foray into the browser world with Amazon Silk, which will use Amazon’s cloud computer system to make browsing faster and less needful of a powerful device.

Although Silk takes the concept of a cloud browser much further than Turbo – the server taking some of the load is certainly an idea explored in the Opera feature – which compresses web pages to suit devices on more limited networks.

Not stinging

“You know, we’re a huge player in this field,” Opera’s Phillip Grønvold told TechRadar. “With more than 128 million users each month using Opera Mini it is clear the market for cloud based computing is in rapid growth.

“Each month we are adding millions of users who are participating in the Web and we feel good that other big time players like Amazon are catching on to the idea.”

It’s not exactly a stinging rebuke – although we’d not expect such from the always-polite Opera.

But it’s clear that Opera’s track record of influence in the browser sphere is continuing.

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