net

The Samsung T404G is one of those messaging phones you don't hear much about, offered by Net10, a prepaid wireless company you don't hear much about. With service ultimately supplied by TracFone Wireless, the Samsung T404G has a full, sliding QWERTY keyboard, a 2-megapixel camera and camcorder, and Bluetooth support. There's also mobile Internet, an MP3 player, and a microSD card slot with space for up to 16GB external memory. The T404G, released earlier this year, began at $79.99 without a contract.

After nearly 25 years of relative consistency and market dominance by the likes of EMC and NetApp, there's been a recent flurry of activity in the storage industry. In the past few weeks, Fusion-io was valued at nearly $1.95 billion after its first day of public trading and next-generation storage start-ups Pure Storage and Tintri each closed sizable new funding rounds ($28 million for Pure Storage, $18 million for Tintri).

Spurred by the rise of technological innovations like cloud computing and virtualization, storage is undergoing a major transition--the likes of which it hasn't experienced since the rise … Read more

Forget being limited to .com, .net, and .org.

The Internet's overseers today approved a plan to dramatically expand the number "generic top-level domains," or GTLDs, as soon as the end of 2012. There are only 22 such GTLDs today--others include .edu, .mil, and .biz--but the expansion could add dozens or potentially even hundreds more.

Among other implications, that means new opportunities and new complications for trademark holders.

"It opens up [what's] the right of the dot," said Rod Beckstrom, chief executive of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, speaking at … Read more

By sending signals that it's inclined to move Windows 8 coding toward HTML5 and JavaScript, and away from more familiar programming tools, Microsoft has "horrified" developers, according to a post at Ars Technica.

Citing a demo of Windows 8 given by Microsoft Vice President Julie Larson-Green at the recent D9 conference, Ars Technica author Peter Bright called attention to a comment several minutes into the video. Pointing to a new app in the upcoming Windows 8, Larson-Green said that "this application is written with our new developer platform, which is based on HTML5 and JavaScript."… Read more

Someone broke into the network of Japanese Internet service provider So-net Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corp., compromised e-mail accounts, and stole customer rewards points earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported today.

It's unknown if the breach is related to recent attacks on Sony that exposed personal data from more than 100 million accounts at Sony Online Entertainment and the PlayStation Network (PSN). And earlier today, a security firm said it found that the Sony Thailand site had been compromised and was being used in a phishing attack designed to steal information, ZDNet UK reported.

"Although … Read more

Capture .NET Free sounds like it might involve white-coated men carrying butterfly nets, but in fact it's a screen capture utility you'd be crazy not to try. That's just the beginning for this useful little toolkit, though. It also packs a calendar, analog clock, lunar phase display, and expandable ruler in its compact interface. There's a useful backup expert, too, as well as a file shredder, password and quick-launch tools, Post-it Notes, font manager, and still more, all in a portable freeware application that's only 716KB in size.

Capture .NET Free's interface is about … Read more

The 404 co-host and known iPhone user Wilson Tang joins us this week and gives us Android guys a fresh perspective on this week's Android news. Speaking of the news, getting around your carrier's tethering restrictions just got a bit harder with carriers blocking tethering apps in the Android Market; Amazon and Barnes & Noble prepare to go head-to-head in the next round of the tablet/e-reader war; and we get news of a whole slew of upcoming Android phones, including a massive 4.5-inch model and the first Android phone targeted specifically at women. All of that, plus the answers to your emails, on this week's episode of Android Atlas Weekly with Antuan Goodwin and Justin Eckhouse. … Read more

The head of the Federal Communications Commission will warn Congress not to repeal the controversial Internet regulations enacted last December, CNET has learned.

Undoing the agency's Net neutrality rules will "increase uncertainty, decrease investment, and hurt job creation," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will say, according to a draft of his prepared remarks.

Genachowski will offer an unyielding, point-by-point defense of the FCC's 3-2 vote, which fell along party lines, saying that it's already increased investment and that relying on antitrust laws to police errant behavior would be "problematic" and "ill-suited to the … Read more

The latest version of connection-tethering app PdaNet masks its tether from your phone service provider, just as major carriers move to block tethered connections that bypass their services and hide unapproved tethering apps from the Android marketplace when viewed over certain carriers' networks. Released on April 30, the major feature update in PdaNet 3.0 (download for Windows x86 | x64 | Mac | Android) is the tethering mask. Additionally, publisher June Fabrics Technologies noted unspecific performance and connection quality improvements.

In addition to supporting wired USB tethering, PdaNet 3.0 also includes support for Bluetooth DUN tethers, and offers an SMS agent … Read more