Miscellaneous

Micropayments are once again being broached as a way to pay for online content. It's not that micropayments have a proven track record. Some of the recent pieces on this topic include:

I'm with … Read more

I've been an Internet safety advocate since 1993 and right now I'm discouraged and angry about what's going on in this field. I'm angry because people who ought to know better are trying to mislead the public with false information about online risks which is diverting attention away from real risks. And I'm not alone. Many respected online safety organizations and leading youth-risk researchers are trying to shift the discussion away from mostly predator danger to youth behavior risk. Thanks to some politicians, it's an uphill battle.

Online safety groups and public officials should … Read more

Article edited at 2/10/09 at 8:00 PM to clarify the history of OneSearch for mobile.

Yahoo on Monday released an update to its voice-activated mobile search app, Yahoo OneSearch, that gets a handful of new capabilities for both its full-fledged app and OneSearch shortcut, plus new support for the Windows Mobile operating system. The OneSearch shortcut is a plug-in that lets you search by typing or speaking search terms into a search bar located on the home screen of your mobile phone.

After releasing a voice-enabled version of its OneSearch plug-in to a few Nokia phones last … Read more

Like millions of other people, I watched Katie Couric's interview with President Barack Obama from the comfort of my living room couch. But instead of watching it on TV. I was tuned into CBSNews.com. I watched Katie and the president on my 52-inch high-definition TV connected to a Windows PC.

It's long been possible to connect a PC to a TV, but doing it in 2009 is bucking the trend. Unlike previous years, we heard almost nothing about plugging PCs into TVs at last month's Consumer Electronics Show. Instead, companies were talking about a variety of … Read more

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

The LiMo Foundation on Monday said the second release of its Linux-based handset platform is on target. LiMo added that it will show off the latest platform at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, next week.

According to LiMo, its members are introducing reference implementations of the latest release (statement). The primary goals are to make the platform easier to deploy and add Web 2.0 features.

LiMo (all resources) is an open platform supported by a bevy of wireless-industry players.

Access, Azingo, LG Electronics, Purple Labs, and Samsung … Read more

The One Laptop per Child initiative seems to have found that imitation isn't simply a form of flattery, it's grounds for a new business model.

Speaking at the TED 2009 conference, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte said that the future of the initiative--which set out to put simple, durable, low-cost laptops in the hands of schoolchildren in developing nations--is to become, in essence, more commonplace, to "build something that everyone copies," according to Ethan Zuckerman, blogging from TED.

That copying has already begun, Negroponte said, pointing to the surging popularity in recent months of Netbooks--laptops built by … Read more

Intel has slashed solid-state drive prices, but probably not enough to sway many consumers.

Intel's mainstream, and currently most widely available, 80GB X18-M was cut to $390 from $595--about a 34 percent drop in price. But paying almost $400 for an 80GB drive may still be too much to ask of consumers when, for example, a 160GB, 7,200-rpm laptop hard-disk drive from Toshiba can be had for less than $100 on Amazon.

Solid-state drives, particularly the newest generation of SSDs, typically offer much better performance than hard-disk drives.

Hewlett-Packard, one of the largest users of Intel solid-state drives … Read more

Google wants to take you places you have never been before, and it's coming along for the ride.

Google Earth upped the cartographic ante, incorporating even more data from NASA, the BBC, National Geographic, and other proprietary sources to create one of the most unique map offerings ever, meshing comprehensive real-time data on Earth's surface with information on the oceans, the stars that we see, historical maps, and topographical information on Mars.

With Google Earth 5.0, users can now explore Mars in the same way they've been able to instantly view 3D images of much of … Read more

Boosted by government initiatives and green spending, China's IT market in 2009 will only be minimally affected by the global economic slowdown, according to a new report from Springboard Research.

IT spending in the country will reach $51.2 billion in 2009, a year-on-year growth of 11 percent, the research firm said in a statement Friday. This is only 2 percent shy of Springboard's previous estimate of 13.1 percent growth, or $52.1 billion.

China's IT market growth, noted Springboard, has largely been protected by the financial crisis as its export industry, the country's worst … Read more