Down Time

Apple's iPad tablet computer, one of the hottest items of the holiday shopping season got a price cut on the company's website Friday.

People who buy the iPad online Friday will save $41, making the lowest price for the device $458 for a model without a 3G connection and with 16 gigabytes of storage space.The top-end model, with a 3G connection and 64 gigabytes of storage, is also discounted $41, making it $788.

That's about an 8 percent discount on the base-level model and a 5 percent discount on the highest-end iPad.

Those one-day sale prices probably still sound expensive to many consumers, but the Black Friday sale is getting buzz from tech blogs because Apple rarely discounts the price of its high-end electronics and because the iPad is said to be one of the most sought-after gifts of the year.

The iPad was the No. 1 item on the electronics wish lists of kids ages 6 to 12, according to a survey from Nielsen. It was the fourth-most-sought-after item among kids older than 13. Computers, TVs and smartphones were higher on the list for the older kids.

"Given the continued pressure on consumer spending, it is difficult to know how robust a holiday season this will be for tech devices, but this survey suggests the electronics aisle will be heavily traveled this season," that survey said.


Apple also listed discounts for several other items on its website. All of these deals are good until the end of Friday only. Among them:

• $101 off the 13-inch MacBook Air
• $101 off the MacBook Pro
• $101 off the iMac
• $41 off the iPod Touch
• $21 off the iPod Nano

Opera Software will release the mobile version of its browser for Android-based smartphones within a month, the Norwegian company said in a blog post on Thursday.

Opera Mobile for Android will offer a faster browsing experience by using hardware acceleration and a new pinch-to-zoom feature. The existing versions of Opera Mobile and its Mini browser have two levels of zoom; one for the full page width and one for zooming in to read the text. The new feature will zoom from page-width down to the text you want to focus on in one fluid motion, according to Opera.

Opera Mobile will be available on all versions of Android.

For Android-based smartphones, Opera already offers the Mini version, which sends Web traffic via Opera's servers, compresses it and then forwards the content to the phone. The result is that less data is sent to the phone, but it also means that the browser can't show streaming video. The Mobile version works like a traditional browser and does all the processing on the phone, which, for example, results in better JavaScript performance, according to an Opera spokesman.

The browser battle on Android is starting to heat up. Last week, Mozilla released a beta version of Firefox 4 for Android-based smartphones, but it isn't saying when the final version will arrive. Opera Mobile and Firefox join the likes of Skyfire and Dolphin HD.

Microsoft said on Wednesday that it will make Security Essentials, its free anti-virus software, available to small businesses in October.

The announcement is a u-turn in licensing from earlier this year. Microsoft originally insisted that the product was strictly for home use and OEMs building home retail machines. Microsoft’s change of heart means small businesses will be able to download and install the product on up to 10 PCs in early October.

Microsoft says the reason is due to a change in the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) that allows small business customers to legally download the software onto individually managed business PCs. “This new availability will allow small businesses to take advantage of Microsoft’s no-cost antimalware service that will help them save time, save money and remain productive while protecting them from viruses, spyware and other malicious threats”, wrote Microsoft’s Eric Foster in a blog posting on Wednesday.

Microsoft is currently readying a new version of Security Essentials. An early beta, released in July this year, shows that the future version will include a new protection engine and inspection system. Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is designed to work on Windows XP, Vista and 7 and protects end users against virus threats and spy ware. MSE is Microsoft’s free anti-virus and anti-spyware product that replaced Microsoft’s paid Windows Live OneCare subscription service which was withdrawn last year.

The Hotmail team was hard a work over the summer, releasing a major update to Windows Live Hotmail that included a new design, faster inbox and many other cool features. Even though the update was released two months ago, the Hotmail team announced some more exciting changes, something that might just blow the competition away.

Shipment Tracking

First up on the changes is shipment tracking within your email. Hotmail will automatically detect the shipping tracking number and provide real-time shipping information. Once the update rolls out, users will be able to track USPS and Fedex shipments right from inside their email, without having to visit the shippers website. DHL and UPS are also supported, but will provide links to the shipper’s website for more detailed information.

Facebook Chat

Earlier this month, we posted information that Facebook Chat will soon be coming to Windows Live Hotmail, and now the Hotmail team is ready to roll out this major update. Users can already chat with Facebook friends through Windows Live Essentials 2011 and Windows Live Messenger for the iPhone.
Microsoft also mentioned that they will be making the signout button more noticeable for users to see, based on feedback from some users.

Attachment Upgrade

Windows Live Hotmail became the first email provider to allow up to 10GB of photos in a single email, by creating a new album inside of SkyDrive and connecting it with your email. This allows friends and family to share high resolution photos with one another. Hotmail users share more than 1.5 billion photos a month on Hotmail, and with the ever increasing demand, the Hotmail team is increasing total filesizes to 25MB per email. You’ll now be able to have larger attachments per email.

Dailymotion & Justin.tv

During the summer rollout, Hotmail announced you’ll be able to watch Hulu and YouTube videos right inside of an email. The next update rollout will now support videos from Dailymotion and Justin.tv.

Subfolders

The new Hotmail update will allow you to create subfolders in your inbox, so you can put folders in your folders (yo dawg yo). A great new feature for people wanting to stay organized, but have a massive list of folders in their inbox, now you’ll be able to separate your email using the Hotmail filters but keep a neat and tidy inbox.

Hotmail didn’t give an estimated time for the release, only saying they would be rolling out the update immediately. The process may take a few weeks to reflect on everyone’s account.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock then you may have heard that Microsoft recently released a public beta version of Internet Explorer 9. Microsoft officials showed off some impressive stats against their competitors, claiming the first and only browser to deliver full hardware acceleration of all HTML5 content. Being first is great but is being second more important?

Microsoft’s bold claims are accurate but one has to remember the product is still in beta. Google on the other hand has a remarkable way of dishing out product updates with lightning speed. The web search giant is currently readying Chrome 7 which it claims will be 60 times faster than Chrome 6. 2D graphics performance and canvas acceleration is now available in trunk and canary builds of Chrome 7. “This system picks the best graphics API to use on each OS that Chromium supports: Windows XP/Vista/7, Mac OS and Linux”, wrote James Robinson, Software Engineer at Google.

During our early tests at Neowin using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer test drive site, IE9 still wins in canvas speed demos but Chrome 7 is greatly improved over previous versions. It’s important to remember that Chrome 7 is still in the very early beta stage so this could change significantly before it’s fully released. Google isn’t the only other browser looking at hardware acceleration. The latest beta builds of Mozilla’s Firefox also include hardware accelerated components for improved performance. It’s not yet clear when Chrome 7 will be available in non-dev form but Robinson says it’s coming. “With Google Chrome’s fast release cycles, we expect to be able to get these enhancements to users quickly and add new performance improvements over time.”

Google has also created a series of demos, ranging from an aquarium to 3D walls of photos. The demos show what is possible with the 2D accelerated APIs.

After the Success of Samsung Wave S8500 Samsung yet again come back with their brand new Smartphone the Samsung Galaxy Tab. This smartphone will be available soon in the United States through all four major wireless carriers. The Apple iPad has already sold millions and has a significant head start on tablet competitors like the Galaxy Tab, but the Galaxy Tab has a variety of compelling features and functions that could sway the decision between the two.

Lets review the Samsung Galaxy Tab with Seven Major Points of its success.

1. Size. The Samsung Galaxy Tab has a 7-inch display. The display is smaller than the iPad's 9.7 inches, but is still large enough to be functional and differentiate it from simply being a large smartphone (like the Dell Streak).

2. Weight. At just over 13 ounces, the Galaxy Tab is about half the weight of the iPad. When holding it one-handed for extended periods of time, the Galaxy Tab will be less strenuous and more comfortable than the one and a half pound iPad.

3. SD Memory Card. The Galaxy Tab only comes in 16Gb and 32Gb models, compared with the iPad's 16Gb, 32Gb, and 64Gb models, but it has an SD memory card slot that can add an additional 32Gb of storage and bring it up to 64Gb. The memory card option also adds versatility and endless storage because it can be swapped out and provides a means of transferring data between the Galaxy Tab and other devices.

4. Cameras. While few will adopt the Galaxy Tab as their portable camera of choice, having the option to snap photos is a plus. More importantly, having a front-facing camera and video chat and Web conferencing capabilities is a benefit from a business perspective. There is a reason that cameras were one of the most speculated features before the iPad launched without them, and why they are the most rumored feature of the upcoming next-generation iPad.

5. Flash. Apple has recently softened its position slightly on Flash, but there is still no direct Flash Player compatibility within the iPad. For those who feel Flash is an important element of the Web surfing experience, the Galaxy Tab is the way to go.

6. RAM. The Galaxy Tab has 512Mb of RAM--twice as much as the Apple iPad. More RAM means more apps can be actively run in memory without bogging the system down.

7. Multitasking. Android has true multitasking. Currently, the iPad has no multitasking other than the core apps like the iPod player that Apple chose to allow to run in the background. When the iPad gets iOS 4.2 in November, it will get the iOS 4 multitasking, but that is still a limited pseudo-multitasking that isn't as robust as what the Galaxy Tab has to offer.

Calling Samsung Wave S8500, The most powerful Smart phone by Samsung wouldn’t be wrong. The best thing about the beautiful phone which makes it different from all of the other phones is its Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen. Some more features which are rarely found in some of the latest phones. Which can be purchased from best mobile contracts.

• Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate
• Multi-touch input method
• Proximity sensor for auto turn-off
• Scratch-resistant surface
• TouchWiz UI 3.0
• Handwriting recognition
• Smart unlock

The Operating System this tremendous phone uses is Bada OS, With over Thousands of Applications making it a best customizable phone. With CPU as powerful as ARM Cortex A8 1GHz, 1.5 GB system storage, 390 MB user available storage and over 32GB Expandable external MicroSD.

Availability of connectivity features like Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 2 Mbps, Class 10, 236.8 kbps, Bluetooth 3.0. While Infrared port to be discontinued because of no use now in global market
With Powerful Camera (5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash Geo-tagging, face, smile and blink detection, image stablilization, touch focus) And Video (720p@30fps, video light). A-GPS support, Samsung Mobile Navigator.

With Some Additional supported features

• Digital compass
• TV-Out
• MP3/WAV/WMA/eAAC+ player
• MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV/Xvid/DivX video player
• Organizer
• Image editor
• Voice memo
• T9

Samsung Wave S8500 which is only available in single color(Ebony Gray) and have over standby of 600 Hours, Talktime 15 Hours & Music Play up to 35 Hours.

Microsoft released a beta refresh for Windows Live Essentials which saw a new feature in Messenger allowing people to chat with their Facebook friends just like talking to their Messenger friends. However, this ability was not made available on the Web version of Messenger and people could only chat to their Messenger friends. But this looks set to change.

Click to Enlarge

On the Windows Live Phone service (which Microsoft has recently tweaked), that we wrote about last week, it can be seen that a refined header is being used with a few new options and it features Facebook Chat integration. When hovering over the Messenger link in the header a Facebook category appears on this site. The status of contacts is shown just like within Messenger, if a friend is available to chat to they have a green icon and an orange one for away; if you are also friends with them in Messenger then they can also be set to busy which is a red icon.

The chat box has also been tweaked to reflect the Facebook Chat addition as it is now possible to select which chat protocol is being used for the conversation. This feature also allows people to select SMS as a chat option. This feature has also leaked in upcoming Windows Live Messenger 2011 Screenshots.

One final feature that was spotted by Liveside is that when a user is signed in to Messenger on a PC it’s not possible to have a conversation via Web Messenger as Messenger windows will now force themselves to be used. However if a user is not signed in to Messenger then it is possible to chat to people in the browser. Before this refinement it was possible to chat to people via both Messenger and Web Messenger at the same time. (Signing into Messenger when conversations in Windows Live Phone were open sees them closed, however when navigating to a different Windows Live site the conversation reopens. Microsoft have yet to update the Web Messenger across most of the Windows Live sites.)

It has been rumoured that Microsoft will make available a release candidate of Windows Live Essentials 2011 soon and it’s likely that at a similar time they will also update the Windows Live sites.

When Google introduced their instant live search earlier this week, some curious web enthusiasts looked towards Bing to answer back at Google, including Long Zheng from istartedsomething.

Back in August 2009, Long Zheng developed a tool using Bing’s public API’s that gave the search engine an instant live search. What’s more shocking is, this could have easily been added to Bing, with as much as a simple JavaScript file, according to Zheng.

12-months later and Bing still hasn’t included any feature similar to instant search, however, during Apple WWDC 2010, Bing showed off a brand new version of the site, powered by HTML5 with some very exciting and cool features.

The early future Bing preview showed a smooth transition between your query and your results, a feature close to instant search. The HTML5 version of Bing also included a quick tab preview of weather, maps and other features just by hovering over the menus, reducing the amount of clicks and page loading.

The video also demonstrates a brand new mobile version of Bing, including endless image scrolling and seamless transitions between images, all using the iPhone or iPod’s touch screen. The mobile Bing preview also includes the background image, giving the appearance of a native app, all within Safari.

Bing in HTML5 could be Microsoft’s response to Google’s instant search, and we could likely see this being released by the first quarter of next year, right around the Internet Explorer 9 launch.

Google initially rejected the ad shown here for keywords like "google eric schmidt" saying it violated its policies on using trademarks in ads, although it does allow their use in some cases.

After initially rejecting three AdWords ads submitted by a major critic of its policies, Google has now approved the ads following a complaint by the advertiser.

Click to Enlarge Image

Last week Consumer Watchdog--an intense and sometimes disingenuous Google critic--submitted three text ads to Google designed to promote the over-the-top video it created of Google CEO Eric Schmidt in order to criticize Google on privacy issues. The ads targeting keywords such as "Google CEO Eric Schmidt" were purchased on September 2, the same day Consumer Watchdog released the video, but Google rejected them the next day citing its policy on trademarks in the text of ads, according to John Simpson, a spokesman for the group.

On Thursday, Consumer Watchdog complained about the ad rejection in an open letter published on its site, and a Google representative confirmed Friday that Google had overturned the original decision but did not admit making any error.

"As the trademark owner, upon becoming aware of their letter, we decided--regardless of whether these particular ads violate our policies or not--to authorize them to run," a Google representative said.

Google's policy on trademarks in text of ads allows advertisers to use trademarks when "the primary purpose of the landing page of the ad must be to provide informative details about the goods or services corresponding to the trademark term." Consumer Watchdog's ads linked to a site called InsideGoogle.com, which is extremely critical of the company but is basically just a blog.

Internet users are spending a bit more time these days socializing on Facebook than searching on Google, according to new data from market researcher ComScore.

In August, people spent 41.1 million minutes on Facebook, accounting for 9.9 percent of the total number of minutes they spent online for the month. That inched past the 39.8 million minutes, or 9.6 percent of total time, that Net users spent on all of Google's sites combined, including its search engine, YouTube, Gmail, and Google News, ComScore said Thursday.

For the month, Yahoo proved the third most popular online hangout, with people spending 37.7 million minutes, or 9.1 percent of total time, on Yahoo sites. In July, Facebook slipped past Yahoo in the number of minutes spent online for the first time, noted ComScore.

The latest stats contrast with August 2009 in which Internet users spent less than 5 percent of their time on Facebook, about the same amount on Google sites, and almost 12 percent of their monthly minutes on Yahoo.

ComScore also cited data from August 2007. Back then, Web surfers spent less than 2 percent of their monthly time on Facebook, under 4 percent on Google, and slightly more than 12 percent at Yahoo.
To compile its figures, ComScore relies on feedback from a panel of around 2 million users as well as data captured from various Web sites.

Facebook recently hit the 500 million member mark. Some reports indicate that its growth, at least in the United States, has slowed the past few months following its meteoric rise the past few years. However, the network still has considerable room to grow outside the U.S., particularly in such countries as Russia, Japan, and South Korea, according to ComScore.

One country where Facebook has caught on is India, where it recently surpassed Google's Orkut social network in the number of users. The latest data from ComScore shows that Facebook's membership grew 179 percent in India year over year to 20.9 million users. Orkut's membership grew 16 percent there year over year to 19.9 million people.