Tech News

The Consumer Electronics Show is currently underway and here’s a little personal selection of highlights and other bits and pieces.

AOL ad revenue drops 18% on previous quarter, according to some number fudging from Imran Khan of J.P. Morgan. 

Move over Vista, the upgrade initiative for Windows 7 starts on July 1st. It’s crazy to think that Windows Vista has only been out just under two years and we’re already due for another bug-riddled nightmare. The exact point of Windows 7 has yet to be revealed to me.

I must assure you that this link is mandatory and you also are not imagining it: Official Hello Kitty touchscreen mobile phone.

A compelling case for managing nuclear assets at a co-operative international level rather than leaving individual nations with differing policies to get on with it.

I was browsing for a netbook the other day, for no other reason that I just want one so bad. As Engadget have pointed out, it’s not a huge amount of info but news that an Eee PC and Eee mobile phone running Android is mouth-wateringly tantalising.

The love of my technical life, a Cowon D2 PMP, will no doubt be throbbing at the thought of a 2Tb SD card expansion (firmware upgrade permitting). That’s right, 2,000Gb on one little card.

Google Chrome No Longer In Beta

Google have done the impossible and moved a product of theirs from Beta to general release in less than four months. Chrome is Google’s open source foray into the world of web browsers as part of their bid to bring together their suite of applications. Google sees the web as the future of computing for the average user, imagine a simple machine with a stripped-down operating system where all the application grunt work is managed server-side.

Such a move goes beyond a simple grudge match between Google and Microsoft in terms of whether Chrome is better than Internet Explorer as a web browser, Google are taking the bull by the horns and showing us a glimpse of what true cloud computing can do.  

[Source – Google]

India Wants To Ban Google Earth

An Indian court is under pressure to ban Google Earth in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks. The terrorists employed various bits of tech, one of which was apparently Google’s satellite image-based map system. International military have in the past asked for sensitive information to be censored but not called for an outright ban on the service. While it’s entirely credible that Google Earth was instrumental in the co-ordination of the attacks it’s pretty unlikely that anything will come of this, such was the vast array of technology they had at their disposal.

[Source – The Times]

Google-Topia Falling Back

The wonderful world of Google, maybe the most desired employer on the planet for the past few years, is starting to scale back on new projects, staff perks and a host of other little bits and pieces around the lucrative business.

From the WSJ:

“We have to behave as though we don’t know” what’s going to happen, says Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt. The company will curtail the “dark matter,” he says, projects that “haven’t really caught on” and “aren’t really that exciting.” He says the company is “not going to give” an engineer 20 people to work with on certain experimental projects anymore. “When the cycle comes back,” he says, “we will be able to fund his brilliant vision.”

Google Intends PCs Pre-Loaded With Chrome

Chrome, Google’s foray into the realm of web browsers, will be bundled with new computers if the search behemoth snuggles up to a few distributors. The browser is still in a beta stage with less than 1% of the market share but no doubt Google could well throw a few wheelbarrows of money at it to make it a real contender, one such way is the idea of pre-loading their products.

[Source – The Times]

Tech Industry Being Hit by Downturn

The tech industry, which has remained long-insulated from the economic downturn, partly due to lessons learnt following the dotcom bubble bust, is starting to feel the pressure of the problems.

John reported earlier this week that Google’s share price has crashed to below $300 and yesterday Sun Microsystems became the latest in a line of bellwethers to report heavy job cuts.

From The San Francisco Chronicle, story by Tom Abate:

Sun Microsystems said Friday it will eliminate 5,000 to 6,000 jobs, or more than 15 percent of its workforce, becoming the latest Silicon Valley firm to suffer from the widening economic downturn.

Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo, eBay, Applied Materials and SanDisk are among other tech firms that have announced deep cuts in recent weeks, and bellwether firms Intel and Cisco have preannounced sales slowdowns.

Many startups have also cut jobs as the economic slump that began in housing and infected the financial sector undermines tech niches from chips to computing.

After broadly managing to stay strong during the downturn, the crash in advertising and the cutbacks on technology spending across a number of sectors is starting to hit home for the manufacturers while the likes of eBay, Google and Yahoo are also starting to feel the heat from the consumer downturn, along with plateauing digital advertising spend levels. Times, it seems, are tough for all market sectors right now.

Google Share Prices Nosedive

Google’s shares have fallen below the $300 mark for the first time in years. Maybe the big players aren’t so safe from the financial turmoil as once thought? You only have to look at Germany’s recent slip in recession as further evidence that no-one will be spared in these wonderful times.

[Source – The Register]

Microsoft Shuffles Up To Verizon

Microsoft look prepared to drop sizeable notes on being the default search engine for Verizon’s internet-enabled phones. At somewhere around the half-billion dollar mark you’d certainly hope that it turns out to be worth it, especially considering a certain other search engine giant is making it’s fledging steps into the mobile phone domain.

[Source – All Things Digital]

Google Shoots for Skype

Google, the all-powerful and all-knowing and slightly disturbingly knowledgeable one, is looking to crush eBay’s Skype through the launch of Gmail video chat.

The actual offering does precisely what the tin says it will but one thing to keep in mind is this is from Google. I’m sat here right now using Google Chrome to access this blog page. I use Google for searches 100% of the time. I have a Gmail account as my primary address. What is to stop this from becoming as ubiquitous as all the others and possibly taking video calling over the tipping point after years of tepidity.

Add to this that the SMS functions will be arriving soon and Gmail will become a personal communications hub like no other. Scared or excited? I’m just not sure anymore.

Magic Android Confuses Ballmer

Shrinking violet and all-round nice guy Steve Ballmer doesn’t think Google’s Android operating system is a financial winner, what a surprise. I love how this company continue to baffle Microsoft with their apparently insane business models that when all’s said and done: they still make a terrifying amount of money.

[Source – ZDNet]

Time Magazine’s Gadget of the Year

The results are in for Time’s gadget of the year. While the list isn’t entirely unsurprising in it’s inclusion of Apple stalwharts as their current iteration of Macbook and iPod, what is surprising however is the appearance of products which have only recently become available to consumers. Wii Fit and the T-Mobile G1, the Android-powered joint venture between Google and T-Mobile, are neck and neck which is quite a result considering the G1 has only been out for less than two weeks. Still, it’s good to see my personal favourite the Eye Fi SD card do well. The thought of having a wireless-capable memory card is too tantalising for words, one to watch for 2009.

Read the full list here.