Archive for June 18th, 2009

One month after the launch of the App Store in 2008, Apple had seen over 60 million downloads of its apps. The Palm Pre hasn’t been out for a month yet, but it’s about halfway there, so how close is it to that number? Not close at all. Not in the same ballpark. Not even in the same city.

Palm’s App Catalog has seen roughly 666,000 app downloads in its first 12 days, according to the mobile analytics firm Medialets. And what’s worse is that the download momentum is slightly slowing down since the initial launch. So don’t be too surprised if one month after the launch, the App Catalog downloads are near 1 million. Yes, 1/60th of what the App Store was doing last year.

After a whirlwind tour of East Asia with GeeksOnAPlane (see my assessment posts for China and Japan here and here), I’m back in the states and almost fully recovered from a potent bout of jet lag. I’m not complaining, however, since several other members of our group came down with a nasty stomach flu on the return flight. And one member, Mike Su of Break Media, actually got picked up by the Chinese authorities in Beijing on suspicion of swine flu, only to be stuck in quarantine for five days before getting cleared and released.

Mike, who had skipped the Tokyo leg of the trip and joined us in Beijing only a couple of days earlier, took his poorly timed incarceration in stride. Since he needed no real medical attention whatsoever (the officials nabbed him because he had sat two rows away from someone on the plane over who indeed carried swine flu), Mike was left to sit alone in a hotel room for days on end with just his thoughts and a computer. Finding nothing else meaningful to do, he decided to blog his entire experience for the rest of us to enjoy.

There may be some folks out there talking up Android as the OS of choice of smartbooks, but it looks like you can’t count NVIDIA among them. Speaking with ComputerWorld, NVIDIA’s Mike Rayfield (general manager of the company’s mobile business unit) says that NVIDIA actually prefers Windows CE over Android for ARM-based smartbooks due to its maturity and lack of a “rough user interface.” To that end, Rayfield also confirmed that NVIDIA is working with Microsoft to optimize Windows CE for Tegra-based systems although, as we’ve seen, that hasn’t stopped some folks from pairing Android with Tegra whether NVIDIA likes it or not. Incidentally, Rayfield was also asked about those rumors about Tegra powering the Zune HD, and he didn’t exactly issue a flat out denial, saying simply that, “Microsoft hasn’t confirmed that … so until they comment, I can’t.”

Filed under: Handhelds, Laptops

NVIDIA says Windows CE is better for smartbooks than Android originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Never underestimate the power of first-mover advantage, especially when being one of the first movers gets you bought by Google. Back in August, 1999, Pyra Labs launched Blogger. LiveJournal had launched six months before and Open Diary in October of the previous year. But it was Pyra Labs which was acquired by Google in February, 2003, and the rest was history. Now, nearly ten years later, Blogger is still the dominant hosted blogging platform. In May, 52 million individual people from the U.S. visited a Blogger blog, almost twice as many as the 28 million who visited a blog hosted by Wordpress.com (comScore). Six Apart properties, including Typepad.com, attracted 14 million.

Millions of bloggers still use Blogger because it is easy. However, Wordpress.com is making steady gains and growing its aggregate audience in the U.S. at more than twice the annual rate of Blogger (40 percent versus 14 percent). These numbers don’t count all the blogs that host Wordpress on their own servers, such as Techcrunch.

Researchers at MIT have developed an ultra-broadband radio chip that’s faster than any existing RF spectrum analyzer, while consuming 100 times less power. The RF Cochlea mimics the neural signal processing of the human cochlea, which uses fluid mechanics, piezoelectrics and neural signal processing to convert sound waves into electrical signals which travel to the brain. “The more I started to look at the ear,” said Rahul Sarpeshkar, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, “the more I realized it’s like a super radio with 3,500 parallel channels.” The team has recently filed for a patent to incorporate the chip in a universal or software radio architecture that will process a broad spectrum of signals including cellular phone, wireless Internet, FM, and other signals. Ultimately, this tech could be used to build a universal radio that could receive a broad range of frequencies. Meet Professor Sarpeshkar in the video after the break.

[Via Daily Tech]

Continue reading MIT scientists reverse engineer the ear for ultra-broadband, low power RF chip

Filed under: Science

MIT scientists reverse engineer the ear for ultra-broadband, low power RF chip originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung has been making promises about a 32GB DDR3 memory module since it rolled out its first 50nm 4Gb DDR3 memory chip way back in January, but it looks like it’s now finally delivered. While it won’t be headed for regular desktops or laptops just yet, the company does have a new 1.35 volt 32GB module for servers which, in addition to packing that record-breaking capacity, also boasts a 20% better throughput compared to previous 1.5 volt modules and, of course, a lower power consumption to boot. As some math not performed by us will reveal, the module itself is made up of 72 of those 4Gb memory chips, which are lined up in rows of nine quad-die packaged 16Gb DDR3s mounted on each side of the circuit board. No word on pricing just yet, nor is there any word about Samsung’s promised desktop and laptop memory, which are apparently still in the works — in the form of 8GB DIMMs, at least.

Filed under: Desktops

Samsung debuts first 32GB DDR3 memory module originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The thing that saved television watching for me was the advent of the digital video recorder (DVR). I love the idea that you can be watching something, but have to stop to do something else, so you just pause it, and it will record it so you can come back later and pick up where you left off. Now you can have the same functionality on the live-streaming video site, Justin.tv.

While most live-streaming services offer archives of live recorded video, the nice feature here is the simple way to pick up just where you left off watching something. The feature, rolling out his afternoon, will offer a bar under each video that will read, “Continue watching this later.” If you click on it, all that live video will be recorded so that you can come back to it at a time of your choosing. You’ll receive a link to a place to come back and watch it with a message that looks like:

Facebook has had a big week. The social network finally caught up to MySpace in the U.S., according to ComScore. News leaked of its upcoming Everyone button. And Facebook made some significant improvements to its search capabilities. Now the social network is improving its inbox’s interface, which previously was a little clunky and difficult to organize.

The new design gives you filter options at the top of your inbox to help you identify unread messages as well as to report any spam, or unwanted messages you receive.

In 2004, it was all about iPodding your BMW, but in 2009, it’s all about Palming it. No, not “palming” as in concealing your car in the palm of your hand — “Palming,” you know, as in the act of hardwiring a Touchstone into your center console so that you can charge a Pre on the road with the greatest of ease. Ironically, this modern marvel of technology is mounted right where the iDrive controller in most newer models would normally go, which means you’re stuck making the nearly impossible choice between this hack and BMW’s.

[Thanks, Mike]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Dude hardwires Palm Touchstone into BMW, charging ensues originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A few months ago, Twitter significantly updated its new follower email alerts to show you information such as how many followers that person has, how many tweets they’ve sent, and how many users they were following. It’s a decent indication of if the person is someone you actually would want to follow back, rather than making you click through to the site to get that information. However, it was still lacking some context, such as what that person actually tweets about. The service FriendFeed has rolled out an update that adds this context.

Now, when get an email alert from FriendFeed that you have a new subscriber, you get a big FriendFeed logo, followed by the user’s icon and a link to easily “Subscribe back.” Below that though is the key part. You now see: “Here are some of the things XXXXX has recently shared on FriendFeed,” followed by three recent FriendFeed updates from that user. On each of those items there are also links to easily comment or “like” any of the items.