1. Smaller iPhone 2011
Smaller iPhone 2011 – Apple is reportedly prepping a new smaller iPhone model for a Q2 2011 release that is one-third the size of the iPhone 4 and will work on any carrier network.
Apple is reportedly considering selling the new smaller iPhone for about $200, but without obligating users to sign a two-year service contract, according to a Bloomberg News report.
Apple may unveil the iPhone near mid-year, but the introduction may be delayed or scrapped, a source said. Only a few Apple employees know the details of the secretive project, that person said.
The prototype iPhone was about one-third smaller than the iPhone 4 and it had no “home” button, said the source after seeing it late last year.
The iPhone prototype could be sold at a very low price even without carrier subsidies because the phone will use the same processor, display and many other components used in the current model.
Apple is also working on a technology called a universal SIM, which would let future iPhone users select a carrier from a variety of GSM networks without having to switch out their SIM cards when changing carriers.
And that’s the latest update from Solaria Sun on the new smaller iPhone 2011.
2. How Do We Love Linux? Counting the Many Ways
Well, it's been a tempestuous few weeks here in the Linux blogosphere, and our favorite operating system has been buffeted about by the fickle winds even more than usual. Among the highlights, of course, was HP's debut last week of multiple devices running webOS and -- even more importantly -- its announcement that it would be shipping the Linux-based operating system in printers and PCs as well. That's Linux 1, Windows 0 -- not that we're keeping track or anything. More good news came to Linux users with Canonical's release to the public of its database of 1,300 or so certified Linux-friendly components.
3. Can this man topple Google?
Stephen Wolfram had a dream: to invent a search engine that could work stuff out for us. Alex Bellos meets the scientist who might just change the way we use the internet.
The British scientist Stephen Wolfram has a clear vision for the future - a vision that dates back to his childhood in the 1960s and 70s. In those days, we didn't prophesise that computer technology would bring us convenient ways to shop, or new ways to talk to our friends in short sentences. The dream was much grander - that computers would work out stuff for us, a bit like Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey (without the murderous intent).
It was with this aspiration that Wolfram launched Wolfram|Alpha (wolframalpha.com), a website that aims to be able to answer any factual question asked of it. Wolfram says he wanted to create an "insanely ambitious thing, like the science fiction computers of old". Currently, for example, when we want to know something on the web, our default action is to Google it, but this just searches for words rather than calculating answers, so leads you only to what has already been written, which may or may not be what you want to know. Wolfram|Alpha, on the other hand, is an attempt to change the way we interact with knowledge on the web, to make the web more intelligent - by providing bespoke, freshly computed answers from a curated database of sourced facts.
When Wolfram|Alpha was launched in 2009, it was initially hailed a Google-killer. Users flocked to the site to ask it the sort of question you ask Google, but when it didn't do what they wanted, they grumbled and didn't return. Some users, for example, typed in their own names, and the engine failed to give any response. Or they asked a complicated question, didn't get an answer and so felt it wasn't intelligent enough. Wolfram has said the site went live because it was at the stage in development when it needed to understand the sorts of questions people would ask it - the hype, he says, was useful, even if the site didn't live up to users' initial expectations. "If you look at most web phenomena - Google, Facebook - you only tend to know about them when they have gotten pretty big," he says. "We happened to launch with a big spike."
4. Telstra super-fast 4G wireless sparks debate over NBN
Telstra reveals plans for 4G network by year's end, intended to increase wireless speed and data efficiency in Australian capital cities.
Telstra will significantly upgrade its mobile network to take advantage of fast 4G technology that will allow users to obtain speeds similar to home ADSL broadband connections while on the go.
The move has sparked fresh debate over the viability of the national broadband network (NBN).
The telco will use new 4G technology to boost mobile internet speeds in capital cities and some regional areas by the end of the year.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Telstra chief executive David Thodey said the "leading-edge" technology would help the company meet growing demands for mobile data, "which is doubling every year as customers move to adopt data-hungry smartphones, mobile modems and tablets".
The announcement comes on the back of a government-commissioned report warning uptake to its $36 billion network could be stifled by wireless technologies.
The federal government aims to connect 93 per cent of Australian households with high-speed optical fibres by 2020. The NBN Co, the company charged with building the network, has said it will eventually deliver speeds of 1 gigabit per second.
The federal opposition says wireless services make the project less viable.
"This [wireless technology] is going to be a real competitive force," opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull told ABC Radio.
The NBN business case assumes the increase in demand for wireless broadband will not continue, he said.
"The problem, of course, is that wireless broadband is improving as well."
In a statement, Telstra said its new technology was "not related to the NBN" and that it was "business as usual".
"This announcement relates to the ongoing upgrade of Telstra’s flagship Next G wireless broadband network," it said. "Wireless and fixed networks are complementary – our customers use both depending on need and circumstances and Telstra continues to invest in both."
5. Searching for answers to the mystery of 'na pohybel janas'
Google Insights for Search show searches by Australians on "na pohybel janas" surged over the past month but then flatlined recently.
A mysterious search query has got web users in a tizzy after it inexplicably popped up in Google's fastest rising search queries and has remained there for the past month.
The term "na pohybel janas" has been the seventh fastest-rising search query on Google by Australians over the past 30 days, behind terms such as "cyclone yasi", "australian open", "biggest loser" and "egypt". It even sits above "big day out", according to Google Insights for Search.
But it's not just Australians who are searching the mystery term - worldwide it is the sixth fastest rising term over the past month and the phrase also appears on the list for virtually every region examined by this website, including India, the US and Britain.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Some web users noticed the trending term and in online forums have speculated that it is a terrorist plot or related to a malicious virus. Others have noticed it pop up in their web history when they have no recollection of ever searching it.
"I have recently noticed a recurring search in my web history and have no recollection of searching it," wrote one user on Google's help forum.
"'Na pohybel janas' has been searched several times on my computer in pairs at times when I know I've been on my computer with my husband watching various shows on the internet."
Using online translation tools reveals that, in Polish, the term means "Death to Janas". Janas is a Polish and Czech name, and it is also believed to be a term of endearment.
"I found that Janas is a female name that in Czechoslovakian, Polish, and Dutch means 'God's Gracious Gift' and in Arabic it means 'Harvest of Fruit'," wrote one blogger who investigated the mystery.
Combining the Polish meaning of Janas with the Polish translation of the phrase gives the literal translation "Death to God's gracious gift".
Combing YouTube for the term throws up a video of a Slavic rock band singing a song called Na Pohybel Janas.
But none of this explains the rising popularity of the term, particularly in a country such as Australia.
A Google Australia spokeswoman refused to comment on the search term, but noted that a "fastest rising" term was not the same as most popular.
"This term may not have been a top search overall - its appearance on the 'fastest rising' list just indicates that it saw much more query volume in the last 30 days than it did in the 30 days before that," the spokeswoman said.
Perhaps the mystery will never be solved, as it appears searches for the term have flatlined over the past week.
6. HTC unveils Facebook phones, tablet
An employee demonstrates the new HTC "Flyer" tablet device to visitors at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Photo: Bloomberg
Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC unveiled overnight two social networking phone models, with a focus on Facebook access, and introduced its first tablet computer to a crowded marketplace.
The world's fifth-largest smartphone maker also introduced new versions of its hit models Desire, Wildfire and Incredible.
All six new devices will run Google's Android software, which ended the 10-year reign of Nokia's Symbian as the pre-eminent smartphone platform last quarter.
"We believe customers want choice; one size does not fit all," said Philip Blair, product director at HTC Europe.
In a statement, local carrier Telstra said it would exclusively carry the HTC Desire S in Australia. It would be available in the first half of this year.
HTC's strong push into smartphones using Google's Android operating system has helped the company to grow market share against bigger rivals like Nokia and Samsung.
It held 9 per cent of the global smartphone market in the December quarter, according to research firm IDC.
HTC joined the throng of tablet makers with its Flyer model, which comes with a 7-inch screen and a separate stylus.
According to PRTM Management Consultants before the show there were 102 tablets either for sale or in development by 64 manufacturers.
HTC positioned the tablet in the premium price category, but said its was ready to sell new social networking phones at keenly competitive price levels.
"We are really trying to for the young and mass market. We will try to be as aggressive as we can," Blair said.
HTC is hoping to replicate the success of smaller vendor INQ Mobile, which has built a business by focusing solely on social networking models.
HTC's new social networking models come with a dedicated hard-key for Facebook, enabling users to post information to their Facebook account with just one keystroke.
Mobile is an increasingly important driver of traffic to Facebook, which says 250 million users per month access the social network on mobile devices.
All six devices use Qualcomm's chipsets.
7. Is Mozilla's 2011 roadmap unrealistically ambitious?
Mozilla has published an updated roadmap in which it lays out its plans for 2011. The organization hopes to significantly shorten its release cycle and deliver a total of four major releases during 2011, cranking the browser up to version 7 by the end of the year.
Some of Mozilla's key technical priorities include improving responsiveness, integrating social sharing, refining the user interface, supporting 64-bit Windows and Android tablet form factors, finally delivering process isolation for tabs, and supporting emerging standards like CSS 3D transforms and WebSockets. In terms of features, Mozilla's 2011 roadmap is compelling and achievable. There is room for skepticism, however, about the organization's new release management strategy. Instead of aiming to roll all of this functionality out in a major release next year, Mozilla intends to push it out to users incrementally, using a series of three releases after the upcoming launch of Firefox 4.
Smaller iPhone 2011 – Apple is reportedly prepping a new smaller iPhone model for a Q2 2011 release that is one-third the size of the iPhone 4 and will work on any carrier network.
Apple may unveil the iPhone near mid-year, but the introduction may be delayed or scrapped, a source said. Only a few Apple employees know the details of the secretive project, that person said.
The prototype iPhone was about one-third smaller than the iPhone 4 and it had no “home” button, said the source after seeing it late last year.
The iPhone prototype could be sold at a very low price even without carrier subsidies because the phone will use the same processor, display and many other components used in the current model.
Apple is also working on a technology called a universal SIM, which would let future iPhone users select a carrier from a variety of GSM networks without having to switch out their SIM cards when changing carriers.
And that’s the latest update from Solaria Sun on the new smaller iPhone 2011.
2. How Do We Love Linux? Counting the Many Ways
Well, it's been a tempestuous few weeks here in the Linux blogosphere, and our favorite operating system has been buffeted about by the fickle winds even more than usual. Among the highlights, of course, was HP's debut last week of multiple devices running webOS and -- even more importantly -- its announcement that it would be shipping the Linux-based operating system in printers and PCs as well. That's Linux 1, Windows 0 -- not that we're keeping track or anything. More good news came to Linux users with Canonical's release to the public of its database of 1,300 or so certified Linux-friendly components.
3. Can this man topple Google?
Stephen Wolfram had a dream: to invent a search engine that could work stuff out for us. Alex Bellos meets the scientist who might just change the way we use the internet.
The British scientist Stephen Wolfram has a clear vision for the future - a vision that dates back to his childhood in the 1960s and 70s. In those days, we didn't prophesise that computer technology would bring us convenient ways to shop, or new ways to talk to our friends in short sentences. The dream was much grander - that computers would work out stuff for us, a bit like Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey (without the murderous intent).
It was with this aspiration that Wolfram launched Wolfram|Alpha (wolframalpha.com), a website that aims to be able to answer any factual question asked of it. Wolfram says he wanted to create an "insanely ambitious thing, like the science fiction computers of old". Currently, for example, when we want to know something on the web, our default action is to Google it, but this just searches for words rather than calculating answers, so leads you only to what has already been written, which may or may not be what you want to know. Wolfram|Alpha, on the other hand, is an attempt to change the way we interact with knowledge on the web, to make the web more intelligent - by providing bespoke, freshly computed answers from a curated database of sourced facts.
When Wolfram|Alpha was launched in 2009, it was initially hailed a Google-killer. Users flocked to the site to ask it the sort of question you ask Google, but when it didn't do what they wanted, they grumbled and didn't return. Some users, for example, typed in their own names, and the engine failed to give any response. Or they asked a complicated question, didn't get an answer and so felt it wasn't intelligent enough. Wolfram has said the site went live because it was at the stage in development when it needed to understand the sorts of questions people would ask it - the hype, he says, was useful, even if the site didn't live up to users' initial expectations. "If you look at most web phenomena - Google, Facebook - you only tend to know about them when they have gotten pretty big," he says. "We happened to launch with a big spike."
4. Telstra super-fast 4G wireless sparks debate over NBN
Telstra reveals plans for 4G network by year's end, intended to increase wireless speed and data efficiency in Australian capital cities.
Telstra will significantly upgrade its mobile network to take advantage of fast 4G technology that will allow users to obtain speeds similar to home ADSL broadband connections while on the go.
The move has sparked fresh debate over the viability of the national broadband network (NBN).
The telco will use new 4G technology to boost mobile internet speeds in capital cities and some regional areas by the end of the year.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Telstra chief executive David Thodey said the "leading-edge" technology would help the company meet growing demands for mobile data, "which is doubling every year as customers move to adopt data-hungry smartphones, mobile modems and tablets".
The announcement comes on the back of a government-commissioned report warning uptake to its $36 billion network could be stifled by wireless technologies.
The federal government aims to connect 93 per cent of Australian households with high-speed optical fibres by 2020. The NBN Co, the company charged with building the network, has said it will eventually deliver speeds of 1 gigabit per second.
The federal opposition says wireless services make the project less viable.
"This [wireless technology] is going to be a real competitive force," opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull told ABC Radio.
The NBN business case assumes the increase in demand for wireless broadband will not continue, he said.
"The problem, of course, is that wireless broadband is improving as well."
In a statement, Telstra said its new technology was "not related to the NBN" and that it was "business as usual".
"This announcement relates to the ongoing upgrade of Telstra’s flagship Next G wireless broadband network," it said. "Wireless and fixed networks are complementary – our customers use both depending on need and circumstances and Telstra continues to invest in both."
5. Searching for answers to the mystery of 'na pohybel janas'
Google Insights for Search show searches by Australians on "na pohybel janas" surged over the past month but then flatlined recently.
A mysterious search query has got web users in a tizzy after it inexplicably popped up in Google's fastest rising search queries and has remained there for the past month.
The term "na pohybel janas" has been the seventh fastest-rising search query on Google by Australians over the past 30 days, behind terms such as "cyclone yasi", "australian open", "biggest loser" and "egypt". It even sits above "big day out", according to Google Insights for Search.
But it's not just Australians who are searching the mystery term - worldwide it is the sixth fastest rising term over the past month and the phrase also appears on the list for virtually every region examined by this website, including India, the US and Britain.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Some web users noticed the trending term and in online forums have speculated that it is a terrorist plot or related to a malicious virus. Others have noticed it pop up in their web history when they have no recollection of ever searching it.
"I have recently noticed a recurring search in my web history and have no recollection of searching it," wrote one user on Google's help forum.
"'Na pohybel janas' has been searched several times on my computer in pairs at times when I know I've been on my computer with my husband watching various shows on the internet."
Using online translation tools reveals that, in Polish, the term means "Death to Janas". Janas is a Polish and Czech name, and it is also believed to be a term of endearment.
"I found that Janas is a female name that in Czechoslovakian, Polish, and Dutch means 'God's Gracious Gift' and in Arabic it means 'Harvest of Fruit'," wrote one blogger who investigated the mystery.
Combining the Polish meaning of Janas with the Polish translation of the phrase gives the literal translation "Death to God's gracious gift".
Combing YouTube for the term throws up a video of a Slavic rock band singing a song called Na Pohybel Janas.
But none of this explains the rising popularity of the term, particularly in a country such as Australia.
A Google Australia spokeswoman refused to comment on the search term, but noted that a "fastest rising" term was not the same as most popular.
"This term may not have been a top search overall - its appearance on the 'fastest rising' list just indicates that it saw much more query volume in the last 30 days than it did in the 30 days before that," the spokeswoman said.
Perhaps the mystery will never be solved, as it appears searches for the term have flatlined over the past week.
6. HTC unveils Facebook phones, tablet
Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC unveiled overnight two social networking phone models, with a focus on Facebook access, and introduced its first tablet computer to a crowded marketplace.
The world's fifth-largest smartphone maker also introduced new versions of its hit models Desire, Wildfire and Incredible.
All six new devices will run Google's Android software, which ended the 10-year reign of Nokia's Symbian as the pre-eminent smartphone platform last quarter.
"We believe customers want choice; one size does not fit all," said Philip Blair, product director at HTC Europe.
In a statement, local carrier Telstra said it would exclusively carry the HTC Desire S in Australia. It would be available in the first half of this year.
HTC's strong push into smartphones using Google's Android operating system has helped the company to grow market share against bigger rivals like Nokia and Samsung.
It held 9 per cent of the global smartphone market in the December quarter, according to research firm IDC.
HTC joined the throng of tablet makers with its Flyer model, which comes with a 7-inch screen and a separate stylus.
According to PRTM Management Consultants before the show there were 102 tablets either for sale or in development by 64 manufacturers.
HTC positioned the tablet in the premium price category, but said its was ready to sell new social networking phones at keenly competitive price levels.
"We are really trying to for the young and mass market. We will try to be as aggressive as we can," Blair said.
HTC is hoping to replicate the success of smaller vendor INQ Mobile, which has built a business by focusing solely on social networking models.
HTC's new social networking models come with a dedicated hard-key for Facebook, enabling users to post information to their Facebook account with just one keystroke.
Mobile is an increasingly important driver of traffic to Facebook, which says 250 million users per month access the social network on mobile devices.
All six devices use Qualcomm's chipsets.
7. Is Mozilla's 2011 roadmap unrealistically ambitious?
Mozilla has published an updated roadmap in which it lays out its plans for 2011. The organization hopes to significantly shorten its release cycle and deliver a total of four major releases during 2011, cranking the browser up to version 7 by the end of the year.
Some of Mozilla's key technical priorities include improving responsiveness, integrating social sharing, refining the user interface, supporting 64-bit Windows and Android tablet form factors, finally delivering process isolation for tabs, and supporting emerging standards like CSS 3D transforms and WebSockets. In terms of features, Mozilla's 2011 roadmap is compelling and achievable. There is room for skepticism, however, about the organization's new release management strategy. Instead of aiming to roll all of this functionality out in a major release next year, Mozilla intends to push it out to users incrementally, using a series of three releases after the upcoming launch of Firefox 4.
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