Sony Aino has touchscreen issues in the UK

Users of the Sony Aino smartphone in the UK are finding some problems when using the device’s touchscreen interface, according to a Thursday report. Only a small numbers of the devices in Britain are affected, says Sony Ericsson spokesperson Mattias Holm, and the company is working on resolving the issue. Details of the problem have not been disclosed, however.

This problem follows another issue with another Sony Ericsson handset earlier this week, the Satio. Because of a software issue, it was pulled from the shelves of Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4U in the UK. There have not yet been any reports of stores pulling the Aino off store shelves, however.

The problems come at a bad time for the company, as they may affect the company’s sales and profits in a key holiday shopping time.

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Next Windows again on 3-year schedule

Microsoft should once again release its next mainstream version of Windows about three years after the last, a roadmap obtained this week reveals. The schedule has the major revision, tentatively titled “Windows 8,” launching in 2012 or about three years after Windows 7. It will purportedly keep in step with a rhythm developed by Microsoft that has Microsoft launching major releases four years apart, as Windows Server 2008 is considered a major release where its R2 upgrade and even Windows 7 are both treated as “release updates.”

Continue reading Microsoft roadmap puts Windows 8 in 2012 →

Google provided its first public details of Chrome OS at a special event today. Electronista supplied coverage of the just-ended even; all updates are listed in reverse chronological order. Among the news unveiled are the first public view of the OS, that there will be no beta today and that the platform is being open-sourced early as Chromium OS a year ahead of its planned late 2010 release.

2:21PM: Real-time notification is important: will use W3C’s notification API for things like IM chat. Web platform should be ideal for multi-computer homes as it makes things easier to manage. Event ends.

2:18PM: Sergey Brin on stage. Apps won’t need signatures, only the core OS. No multi-boot or separate “instant on” OS (Chrome OS is the instant-on OS). Will try to make important devices work, but cameras and similar will work as mass storage devices (as demoed earlier).

2:10PM: As of today, no Android apps will run in Chrome OS since all apps are web apps. ARM and x86 will be supported [ed: x86 likely first priority given the partners]. Stresses that the OS will be free. No plans to put in ads besides the regular OS.

2:02PM: Other browsers can run, but it will have to be through an open-source modification of the OS itself since Chrome is the main browser. Hardware won’t be detailed until around the middle of next year, but the focus is on netbooks for 2010.

1:57PM: Google assumes this will be a secondary system meant to get on the web easily. No problem if users don’t think it’ll be right for them; not intended for everyone. Every codec supported in Chrome browser will work with Chrome OS, but more should be added for the OS. Hardware acceleration will happen whenever possible.

1:54PM: Q&A: Not sure what prices for netbooks will be; too early to tell. No price target, though. Demo system was an off-the-shelf Eee PC. Computer makers aren’t being given a pre-set development guideline, but documentation will exist to show them what to do. W3C, Khronos Group (OpenGL, etc.) being talked to as part of ensuring Chrome OS meets standards.

1:47PM: Showing a promo video explaining Chrome OS: emphasizing the importance of getting on the Internet first and of having all features in the cloud, not local.

 

Continue reading Google’s Chrome OS event + Download Link →

Public Chrome OS preview soon
Google’s rumored Chrome OS release should primarily center on its first public demo of the platform, a notice tonight. An event is said due on Thursday that should include a “complete overview” of the web-centric OS, including its technical underpinnings as well as demos. It’s now thought by TechCrunch that a code release is possible but that a more formal release isn’t coming until 2010.

Officially, Google has only promised Chrome OS for the latter half of 2010 and primarily expects it to surface on netbooks, nettops and other low-end PCs where low performance and storage are better-suited to a lightweight OS.

The software is poised to threaten Microsoft’s control of netbooks, where Windows is on the vast majority of systems but has also added to the costs of the base systems. Google hasn’t detailed its Chrome OS licensing but is basing it on Linux and some of its own existing technology from Android and Chrome, which in combination could reduce the cost of using Google’s software versus the $30 Microsoft usually charges for Windows 7 Starter.

Its existence has been controversial as it forced Google chief Eric Schmidt to resign from Apple’s board over an increasing conflict of interest.

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MS’ Ozzie claims mobile apps secondary
Mobile apps aren’t an important factor in the success of a smartphone platform, Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie claimed today. Interviewed at the company’s Professional Developer Conference, the veteran developer tried to downplay apps as a lure and insisted that “all the apps that count” will be available on every smartphone as the time to write and port code is much shorter than on the desktop. Ozzie instead implied that it was the OS itself and its built-in features that would make the difference.

The comments are considered by attendees and critics to be a spin downplaying Windows Mobile’s weaknesses. Microsoft held an early lead in the number and preference for mobile apps but lost this within a year of Apple opening the iPhone’s App Store. It has over 100,000 apps where Microsoft now has just a fraction of that amount, although observers have noted that many iPhone apps are narrow-purpose and sometimes more limited due to Apple’s tighter store guidelines.

Microsoft has simultaneously acknowledged that its platform by itself needs a major update and is set to launch Windows Mobile 7 in the second half of 2010 with multi-touch input widely considered overdue. Zune media features are also known to be making the transition to the new OS.

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AMD and Intel agree to stop disputes
(Updated with info from conference calls) AMD and Intel this morning unveiled a surprise deal to end all of their respective antitrust and patent cross-licensing disputes. The move ends AMD’s lawsuits against Intel in both the US and Japan as well as its “regulatory complaints” worldwide. In exchange, Intel promises to pay AMD $1.25 billion and to abide by a new set of business practices. The two have also entered into a five-year cross-licensing deal for each other’s technology.

The agreement doesn’t immediately affect the progress of the New York antitrust case or $1.45 billion European fine but does remove one of the key arguments in these and two Japanese cases. AMD has often instigated or publicly supported these cases by accusing Intel of unfairly excluding AMD from the market through several alleged tactics, such as by price dumping, paying PC builders to limit or omit AMD in their lineups, and threatening firms with retaliation if they promote AMD systems.

The two firms are conducting back-to-back conference calls explaining the moves and should clarify some aspects of the deal soon.

Update: AMD says that the new business practices specifically ban Intel from making sales of its products dependent on excluding AMD or to offer inducements to keep AMD out. It will also stop Intel from writing code compilers and other code to artificially slow down AMD hardware.

The agreement also no longer requires that AMD treat its spin-off GlobalFoundries as a subsidiary and that the cross-licensing is broad enough to cover all technologies, not just the x86 processors and chipsets that have been at the heart of the disputes.

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Quad-core iMac near 3X faster than past gen

Electronista has received one of the first Core i5 iMacs and is putting it through its paces. Since many already are already familiar with the 27-inch iMac in Core 2 Duo form, we’ll provide impressions specific to the faster model. We also have some of the first benchmarks of the system, which is Apple’s first quad-core system ever outside of its Mac Pro workstations.

It should be no surprise that, subjectively, the Core i5 model will feel very fast — especially for those running Mac desktops using mobile Intel processors, such as earlier iMac generations or the Mac mini. Most apps load almost instantly, even when several are loaded in succession. Not surprisingly, Expose and other tasks refuse to bog down under load.

Continue reading Core i5 iMac arrives: first benchmarks →

I needed the ability to detect if a user was browsing from a mobile device or a normal web browser and redirect to the appropriate version of my site. I found very little ASP.NET tutorials that worked. So I decided to take a few different methods and language options I found on the net and put them into one simple ASP.NET method.
this code of codeproject

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Designed for today’s serial applications and tomorrow’s software innovators. Intel brings simplified, end-to-end parallelism to Microsoft Visual Studio* C/C++ developers with Intel Parallel Studio. Leveraging more than 25 years of parallel software and high-performance expertise, Intel provides advanced tools to optimize client applications. Create parallel applications for the desktop and compete in a multicore industry.

• End-to-end product suite for parallelism: Ease implementation at every stage in the development cycle for designing, coding, debugging, and tuning applications
• Forward scaling: Prepare applications to take advantage of multicore and scale for manycore
• Visual Studio and Visual C++ compatible: Leverages investment in the latest Visual Studio development environments (except Express editions) with multicore-based competitive edge
• Ease parallelism onramp: Minimize learning curve and improve productivity to accelerate return on hardware and software investments
• Support multiple ways to exploit parallelism: Increase flexibility with both data and task parallel programming

Verizon this morning preceded the launch of the Motorola Droid two expected new smartphones, including its second Android phone. The HTC Droid Eris, also known as the Desire, is Verizon’s interpretation of the Hero and comes in an all-black design with touch-sensitive buttons below the 3.2-inch screen as well as a trackball for one-handed use. It still carries the 5-megapixel camera, GPS and Wi-Fi, and still uses HTC’s original Sense UI layer and built-in web browser Flash.

Continue reading Verizon ships Droid Eris, Curve 8530 →