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Posts Tagged ‘Decade’

feature: Why new hard disks might not be much fun for XP users

A rather surprising article hit the front page of the BBC on Tuesday: the next generation of hard disks could cause slowdowns for XP users. Not normally the kind of thing you’d expect to be placed so prominently, but the warning it gives is a worthy one, if timed a bit oddly. The world of hard disks is set to change, and the impact could be severe. In the remarkably conservative world of PC hardware, it’s not often that a 30-year-old convention gets discarded. Even this change has been almost a decade in the making.

The problem is hard disk sectors. A sector is the smallest unit of a hard disk that software can read or write. Even though a file might only be a single byte long, the operating system has to read or write at least 512 bytes to read or write that file.

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Editorial: the American phone subsidy model is a RAZR way of thinking in an iPhone world

The concept is simple enough — pay more, get more. So it has gone (historically, anyway) with phone subsidies in this part of the world, a system that has served us admirably for well over a decade. It made sense, and although it was never spelled out at the customer service counter quite as clearly as any of us would’ve liked, it was fairly straightforward to understand: you bought a phone on a multi-dimensional sliding scale of attractiveness, functionality, and novelty. By and large, there was a pricing scale that matched up with it one-to-one. You understood that if you wanted a color external display, a megapixel camera, or MP3 playback, you’d pay a few more dollars, and you also understood that you could knock a couple hundred dollars off of that number by signing up to a two-year contract. In exchange for a guaranteed revenue stream, your carrier’s willing to throw you a few bucks off a handset — a square deal, all things considered. So why’s the FCC in a tizzy, and how can we make it better?

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Editorial: the American phone subsidy model is a RAZR way of thinking in an iPhone world originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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YouTube Puts Another Nail in the IE6 Coffin

We have to say, you know the end is near when entire countries advise its citizens to move on, but the final kicker comes when Google says that after this date, it will no longer support the browser that’s been with us for nearly a decade.

Google-owned YouTube will end support for Internet Explorer 6 on March 13, just two weeks after ending support on Google Docs.

We suspect that YouTube will affect a larger portion of IE6 users and may be a final tipping point.

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Internet Explorer 6 was first released in August, 2001 and has since come pre-installed with Windows XP, which still accounted for over 60% of browsers world-wide in December of last year.

Ars Technica explains that Microsoft refuses to force its users to upgrade, even tho it “has stated time and time again that it wants to see IE6 disappear as much as anyone else”. Currently, IE6 accounts for about 20% of surfers worldwide, with IE8 currently the most popular version.

According to Google, users running IE6 and other old browsers will still be able to watch videos, but will be shown an interstitial, as seen above, to remind them to upgrade every two weeks. Some features will not be available to these users until they upgrade. Google considers old browsers to be anything older than IE7, Firefox 3.0, Chrome 4.0 and Safari 3.0.

In other news, we can only hope that this is a signal that we will be seeing some cool new features rolling out in the near future for YouTube. And perhaps more companies will come out against the now-ancient browser and help to put it out of it’s, and web designers’ everywhere, misery.

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Skout’s Location-Based Dating: The Quest for Love and Profit

Less than a decade ago, online dating was by no way considered mainstream. Not only were you judged for putting your profile up on a dating site, but your choice of site between Lavalife, Match and Nerve Singles told others whether you were there to date, get married or make friends with benefits. Today, location-based dating sites are quickly gaining ground. With the increasing mainstream acceptance of services like Foursquare and Gowalla, new opportunities within the dating space have emerged. Forget badges and points, geo-locational apps already have the power to promise you love.

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ReadWriteWeb caught up with Skout CEO Christian Wiklund. Last month we covered Wiklund’s transition from building a location-based network to a dating site.

When asked how proximity-based dating is different than regular dating he explained, “With mobile location-enabled dating sites we can make serendipity happen. Skout cares about ‘when and where’ you are. We refrain from matching singles on 100+ dimensions or requiring you to fill out pesky forms. This is about the conversation that you have with a person, similar to how you would engage a potential love interest in real life.”

Wiklund’s casual approach to dating takes into account the context of a place coupled with looks as being key connection indicators. Essentially, if you find someone attractive and they hang out in a place you hang out, then you can contact each other and meet up. He is so sure that users will find others, that this Valentine’s Day he’s offering premium members a money back guarantee if they don’t find a date for Sunday. Then again, what sad soul would be bold enough to ask for their money back?

Nevertheless, the fact that Wiklund’s site is already charging for services like unlimited chat, premium placement and unlimited browsing access, shows a stark mind shift between dating and general apps like Gowalla and Foursquare. Those using Foursquare might not be willing to spend freely on virtual gifts or currencies, but even ten years ago, dating site users were used to the idea of winks, flirts and chat at a premium. This fact, coupled with the biological urge to mate, means that dating might turn out to be among the most lucrative categories for geo-locational services.

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Internet Explorer 8 Takes the Top Spot… Or Does It?

Internet Explorer 8 has regained the top spot in the never-ending browser battle today, or so says the Guardian, citing statistics from Net Applications. According to the statistics, IE 8 has taken a 5% lead over Firefox 3.5, but this is not only unsurprising, but likely temporary.

We also have some numbers from StatCounter that show the race to be much closer than Net Applications would have you believe.

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According to the Guardian article, “the decade-old IE6 had a transitory spot at the top of the chart because of IE7 users switching to IE8,” but now IE8 has finally taken the lead from IE 6 because of the decline of Windows XP. We have to assume that there are a number of other reasons at play. According to Net Applications, IE 8 leads all browser versions with 22% of the market, IE 6 comes in second with 20% and Firefox 3.5 comes in with 17%.

StatCounter, on the other hand, shows IE 8 and Firefox 3.5 in a virtual tie, with 21% each, and IE 7 coming next with 19%.

In December, we reported that Firefox 3.5 had overtaken all versions of Internet Explorer for the top spot, but that was only looking at statistics from StatCounter. We’re inclined to believe the StatCounter numbers over the Net Applications numbers for a few reasons. Take a look at the StatCounter graph of the same period.

A lot has happened in the browser wars since we declared Firefox 3.5 the number one browser version. When word hit that Internet Explorer was at fault for the Google hacks in China, both France and Germany recommended that their citizens switch browsers. This caused a large number of people to flee Internet Explorer and adopt other browsers, such as Firefox, in its place. At the same time, Firefox finished multiple rounds of release candidates before finally releasing Firefox 3.6. This release caused a lot of people to stop using Firefox 3.5 and switch to the newer version, causing the numbers for 3.5 to drop slightly.

While we can see these drops in the graph provided by StatCounter, the Net Applications graph shows a steady climb for IE 8. We find ourselves unable to declare a current leader in the never-ending war of browsers superiority, and, in all honesty, think it would be futile do so at this moment in time. With new versions and public relations battles over security, everything is shifting and we think it will be a while before any browser clearly pulls ahead.

That said, it won’t stop us from taking a look the next time the numbers change.

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Windows Mobile 7 roadmap elucidated, starts with MWC 2010 demo
You know, January is all but expired now. Gone are the heady (or is that headless?) days of CES 2010, and we’re nearly past the rumor euphoria of the decade, so what do we have to look forward to? According to CNET’s sources, WinMo 7. This year. Sure, we heard as much from DigiTimes, but it’s always good to put a more legitimate source to what is quite the juicy forecast. Confirmation that Microsoft is planning to finalize all code by this summer also meshes with an earlier leak of an LG Windows Mobile 7 handset set for a September release, while the latest Pink phone rumors are also reiterated. At any rate, it all kicks off in Barcelona come February 15, with Microsoft also circling its MIX 2010 web development conference a month later as the time it’ll start dishing the dirt on how to code for the new OS. So there we have it, new consumer phones and a long overdue WinMo overhaul all coming to you within the next few months.

Windows Mobile 7 roadmap elucidated, starts with MWC 2010 demo originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 02:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel’s FTC response hints at depth of AMD mismanagement

Intel has posted a detailed, 25-page rebuttal to the antitrust complaint that the FTC filed against the chipmaker this past November. It can be paraphrased as: “We deny almost all of the charges, except for the charges that are bogus because the FTC doesn’t even understand the basics of the processor business.”

But much more interesting than the Intel rebuttal (which, like the FTC complaint, is eminently worth reading for educational value) is what some of the material in the document appears to reveal about the depth of AMD’s mismanagement over the past decade. Specifically, the filing quotes some 2004 comments from former AMD marketing chief Henri Richard, who had some surprisingly disparaging things to say about AMD’s processors in an internal memo:

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Week in Apple: 10 years of Mac OS X, tons of tablet rumors, future Macs

Tablet gossip is reaching fever pitch this week as the rumors keep coming. In the meantime, we take a look at 10 years of Mac OS X reviews, talk about OpenGL in upcoming Snow Leopard builds, and a prototype Apple Store makeover. Read on to catch up:

Here’s to the crazy ones: a decade of Mac OS X reviews: Ars Technica’s John Siracusa looks back with a decade’s hindsight at his early reviews of Mac OS X. He talks about what went right, what went wrong, and what he’s still waiting on.

Intel’s MacBook Pro update slip: what to expect: It looks as though Intel has outed a forthcoming MacBook Pro update featuring Core i5 processors. We consider what to expect if Apple announces something later this month.

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