[WEB2] On Fifth Avenue, no Leopard fans spotted yet
[WEB2] Three AIR-based Twitter apps: Spaz, Snitter, and Tweetr
I've been experimenting with Twittercasting live Web news lately (see Facebook press conference and Web 2.0 Summit reports). But I found doing so from Twitter.com itself a little tedious. So I went searching for desktop Twitter applications. Previously I've used Twitteroo, which is solid if light on features. But there are new Twitter apps being written for Adobe's AIR platform. Here are three that I've tried and like. Spaz, Snitter, Tweetr. Gesundheit. Spaz is a great-looki...
[WEB2] One helluva week for Microsoft, Leopard notwithstanding
During the Microsoft antitrust trial, one of the company's PR execs named Mark Murray would dutifully approach the press microphone on the courthouse steps in Washington, D.C., each afternoon to declare: "It was another good day for Microsoft." That was called playing the part of loyal soldier in the face of debatable circumstances. But if Murray were called upon to sum up this week's events, I think he would describe it as a very good week for Microsoft. And he'd be right. In fa...
[WEB2] Just how many electric car start-ups are there?
I woke up today ready to write a story on the three-wheeled electric cars coming from Venture Vehicles when a question dawned on me. How many electric car and plug-in start-ups are there in the world today? Electra glide in silver (Credit: Zenn Motors ) I count 16. They are: Tesla Motors (sports cars), Wrightspeed (sports cars and plug-in drivetrains for trucks), Fisker Automotive (electric sedans), Zap (low-speed and sports cars), Miles Automotive (low speed), Zenn Motors (low speed), AC...
[WEB2] Dreaming of first class on the A380
Sky high style(Credit: Singapore Airlines) Though CNET News.com's Daniel Terdiman already covered the first commercial flight of the Airbus A380 in his blog, as a fellow aviation nut, I just had to weigh in on the aircraft's interior. This morning I drooled over the photos taken by Luke Anderson from ZDNet Australia on his tour of the Singapore Airlines A380 in Sydney (where can I get that gig?). The pictures of the economy class section are nice, but let's be honest, who really likes economy...
[WEB2] Senators want probe of Comcast's BitTorrent 'discrimination'
Comcast's reportedly aggressive filtering of BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic is drawing calls for a U.S. Senate hearing--and a renewed push for Net neutrality laws. Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) on Friday sent a letter asking Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) to convene a hearing as soon as possible to investigate "the topic of service discrimination by phone and cable companies." The request isn't new: Dorgan and Snowe both made a similar plea af...
[WEB2] Dwight Schrute gets a 'Second Life,' still needs a first one
(Credit: NBC TV)On Thursday night's episode of The Office on NBC, dweeby Dwight Schrute (played by Rainn Wilson) revealed himself to be a Second Life addict--something that doesn't require any suspension of disbelief. The Second Life banter began when Dwight's notably less nerdy co-worker, Jim (played by John Krasinski), asked Dwight if he was "playing that game again." "Second Life is not a game," Dwight replied authoritatively. "It is a multi-user virtual environment. It doesn't have po...
[WEB2] eBook evolution marches on
The publisher Hachette Book Group USA, a member of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), has decided to go with the digital publishing organization's recommended standard for distributing books in digital format. Starting with its December 2007 launch titles, HBG plans to release its bestsellers in the .epub eBook format, the company announced Friday. The .epub is an XML file format for reflowable digital books that includes Open Publication Structure (OPS), Open Packaging For...
[WEB2] You can't keep Nokia down
We're No. 1! Nokia remains the king of the cell phone world and it shows no signs of being pushed from its throne anytime soon. According to figures that IDC released yesterday, the Finnish mobile giant held a 38.6 percent worldwide market in the third quarter this year, an increase from 34.8 percent during the same period a year earlier. As for phone shipments, Nokia shipped 111.7 million devices in the third quarter. That's a big jump from 88.5 million devices in the third quarter of 2006, ...
[WEB2] Attack of the mini laptops!
The Intel Classmate and Asus Eee We were recently lamenting the vaporware status of many of the small, low-cost laptops tech types have been buzzing about this year. Apparently, this whole blogging this really works, 'cause less than a month later, two of our MIA systems are sitting right here in the CNET Lab. First up is the Asus Eee PC. The company's 2-pound, 7-inch, Linux-based laptop built up a lot of buzz for promising a reasonably functional machine for about $200. In reality, it end...
[WEB2] How Wal-Mart is saving millions with clean tech
The Cleantech Forum that took place in Toronto this week had an interesting guest--Rand Waddoups, senior director of corporate strategy and sustainability at Wal-Mart, who regaled the audience with a pretty interesting array of facts and figures on the retailer's green push, according to Cleantech's news site. Wal-Mart started to revamp its practices and become more green two years ago. The campaign revolves around good public relations, but also cutting costs. When you managed millions of sq...
[WEB2] Reports: Time Machine needs wires
If you want to use the Time Machine feature in Mac OS X Leopard to set up automatic backups, you'll have to find a networking cable. In the advance marketing material for Leopard, which goes on sale later today, Apple had promoted the ability to connect an external USB hard drive to an AirPort Extreme wireless router (Airport Disk) and use Time Machine to wirelessly back up the hard drives of Macbooks scattered around a home. Time Machine, one of the more universally liked features in Leopard (...
[WEB2] Red Hat coder moving to Mozilla
I'm a week late with this, but in case others also didn't notice, Christopher Blizzard, who has been a prominent programmer for Red Hat for nine years, has left to take a new job with Mozilla. He announced the move on his blog. Mozilla backs the development of both the Firefox Web browser and the Thunderbird e-mail client.(Credit: Mozilla) "Starting in mid-November I will be joining the evangelism team at Mozilla Corp....to help tell the story of the Open Web. My role will be to work...
[WEB2] Rain, wind don't deter NYC's Leopard hunters
Here, kitty kitty kitty! Rain-soaked Apple nerds wait for Leopard.(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET Networks) NEW YORK--On Friday afternoon at the hour that Apple launched its latest operating system, Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, it was pouring rain in Manhattan. It was also windy and chilly. That didn't stop several hundred people from lining up outside the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue to get their hands on the new software, huddled underneath Gore-Tex jackets and umbrellas. "It's the cult," comment...
[WEB2] Sprint to unlock its phones
Could it be that Sprint has a heart? According to a proposed settlement for a California class action lawsuit it may just have one. Sprint announced today that if the settlement is reached the carrier will provide customers with the necessary codes to unlock their handsets for use on other carrier networks. If enacted, the move would allow departing Sprint customers to take their phones with them when they leave the carrier. Locked phones, or handsets that are tied to one carrier, have ha...
[WEB2] Apple's Leopard arrives in San Francisco
As Yogi might say, it was deja vu all over again on Stockton Street as Apple released Mac OS X Leopard to the general public.(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News.com) It wasn't exactly iPhone Day, but hundreds of people lined up on Stockton Street on Friday outside the San Francisco Apple store to get their hands on Mac OS X Leopard, the newest version of Apple's operating system. About 30 minutes before the doors of the store opened at 6 p.m., the line stretched up Stockton and around the corner ont...
[WEB2] Handvertising: Marketing (re)discovers the human body
(Credit: Photo illustration by Handvertising USA) Advertising space is scarce. No wonder advertisers are innovative when it comes to taking advantage of underutilized real estate--such as the human skin. Handvertising USA is an Orange County-based company that connects advertisers with customers willing to display ads on their hands. "Almost everyone has been to a county fair, swap meet, bar or club and had had their hand stamped for proof of entry. We have found a better use for this spa...
[WEB2] World's largest passenger plane carries passengers for the first time
Since I'm kind of an airplane nut--of the amateur variety--this is somewhat of a Homer Simpson moment. Mmmmmm...A380. Singapore Airlines flew the first commercial flight of the Airbus A380 Thursday. And it was apparently a big party in the sky.(Credit: Pascal Parrot/Getty Images) Singapore Airlines flight SQ380, from Singapore to Sydney, took to the air Thursday and in the process made aviation history as the first commercial flight of the long-awaited mammoth flying machine, the A...
[WEB2] SanDisk sues a score of flash storage vendors
SanDisk is suing 25 companies for infringing on its patents on removable flash storage devices. The flash memory maker filed a suit with a U.S. District Court in Wisconsin and another with the U.S. International Trade Commission Wednesday evening, seeking damages, a permanent injunction and an order from the ITC banning the importation of the products. SanDisk is suing other memory vendors that make products like this CompactFlash card.(Credit: SanDisk) The roll call of the companies ...
[WEB2] Darwin the robot to play soccer
(Credit: RoboCup) Finally, a happy convergence of Darwin and intelligent design. Students at Virginia Tech started building a two-legged robot so they could emulate the way humans walk and then develop prosthetic limbs for patients. But their robot Darwin is skilled enough at walking that it secured a spot to compete in RoboCup, an international robotic soccer competition, according to Virginia Tech. The team, which is from Virginia Tech's Robotics & Mechanisms Lab (RoMeLa), said Darw...