During a keynote address at WWDC today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the next revision of the company's iconic iPhone hardware. Dubbed "iPhone 4," Jobs called the new iPhone model "the biggest leap since the original iPhone." He said that the new device has over 100 new features, but he detailed just eight of them during his presentation.
Physically, the new iPhone resembles the prototypes that were leaked earlier by Gizmodo and Tinh tế. In particular, Jobs noted that it was 9.3mm thick, or 24 percent thinner than the iPhone 3GS. Jobs called the iPhone 4 the "thinnest smartphone ever."
2. When Google Stopped Doing Windows
It's always a heart-warming occasion when some company or organization opts not to use Windows, and that's nothing if not an increasingly common phenomenon. But when said company is none other than Google -- and when it's done in an apparently public way, with explicit mention of Linux as a preferable alternative -- and when Microsoft feels worried enough to try to "set the record straight" soon afterward -- well, parties just have to break out in the Linux blogosphere.
3. Tech Heavies Join Forces for Better Gadgetry Through Linux
A group of high-tech firms, led by ARM, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments, have formed a nonprofit organization to promote the use of Linux software on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. To that end, the organization, called "Linaro," will develop tools, applications, kernel, graphics and boot codes to help the various Linux-based distributions -- Android, LiMo, MeeGo, Ubuntu and webOS -- work as effectively as possible with the high-performance, low-power processors these devices require.
4. Google Apps highlights – 6/4/2010
Over the last couple of weeks we continued to improve the new versions of Google documents and spreadsheets, introduced some features to Gmail and made it easier for businesses and schools to switch to Google Apps.
Advanced sorting in Google spreadsheets
We added some powerful data sorting controls to the new version of Google spreadsheets. Rather than sorting an entire worksheet by values in a single column, you can now sort any range of cells and sort by the contents of multiple columns.
5. Hands-on with Rdio: a solid idea that needs more music
Rdio, a new music streaming service started by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, is meant to be a step up from most other traditional streaming services. Not only can you listen to thousands of major-label and indie songs on-demand, but you can also replicate your own local music collection on the site so that you always have access to your music when you're away from home. For $9.99 per month, users will be able to stream music over the Web to their computers and mobile devices, and for $4.99, users can stick to just the Web.
Following our coverage Thursday on the beta launch of Rdio, the team gave us early access to check out the service ahead of public launch. Our initial takeaway is that the concept is neat and has potential if fleshed out. But as it stands now, we'd be hard pressed to fork over the cost of an album every month to use it.
Detailed analyses of last year’s impact on Jupiter by an asteroid was released by NASA on Thursday. By coincidence, Jupiter was impacted yet again on the same day by an unknown object. This time, the impact was caught on live video.The impact happened at 20:31UTC June 3, 2010. It was first noticed by Anthony Wesley in Australia, who issued an alert. The discovery was immediately confirmed by Christopher Go in the Philippines, who happened to be taking a video of Jupiter in which the impact was caught live. The fact that the impact flash was captured by two independent observers separated thousands of kilometers from each other makes this discovery highly credible.
7. Magic quantum wand does not vanish hard math
Hands up, who remembers D-Wave? No? Well, don't worry; it's still around. D-Wave is a company that is pursuing the development of a scalable quantum computer. And, just in case you forgot about them, they wheeled out a black boxthat apparently calculates stuff. It does this slower than your average iPad, but, you know, it's just a prototype.
Cynicism aside, the company's approach, called adiabatic quantum computing, actually has some interesting properties, and early studies indicated that it might be able to do exciting mathematical things. Unfortunately, a couple of snags have gotten in the way of further progress: adiabatic quantum computing has been shown to be identical to normal quantum computing, and there are no verifiable experimental results. Now, just to really put the screws on any optimists out there, a new paper has shown that adiabatic computers are actually quite bad at hard math problems.
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