By BBC News 26 August 2009
Sony has launched a wireless e-reader which allows users to download electronic books on the go. Analysts said Sony's Reader Daily Edition is a direct challenge to Amazon's best-selling Kindle device. The $399 (£250) touch-screen device is able to store up to 1,000 novels and can download books over a high-speed mobile network. It also has an application that can be used to "borrow" books from local libraries for 21 days. "By going open, Sony helps compensate for its biggest weakness: its lacklustre eBookstore, which pales in comparison with Amazon.com," said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst with Forrester Research in her blog. "Enabling consumers to access free eBooks via the public library network and Google's public domain collection (which now tops 1 million volumes) - and letting consumers buy ePub books from other sources and read them on Sony's devices -greatly expands the value proposition of its devices," said Ms Rotman Epps. Sony said it would announce deals with newspapers later in the year.
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Snow Leopard Is a Pale Imitation of Windows 7
By Randall C. Kennedy, Aug 25, 2009
"Where's the beef?" That's the idiom that jumps to mind as I work my way through Galen Gruman's "The 7 best features in Mac OS X Snow Leopard." I knew the features list would be lean -- Apple has deliberately undersold Snow Leopard by pitching it as a relatively minor release -- but please! Gruman's article reads like a laundry list of borrowed features and derivative works. It's as if someone at Apple grabbed a copy of the Windows 7 beta and simply Xeroxed the release notes. For example: 64-bitness: Yippee,! Apple finally goes 64-bit -- BFD! As a Windows user, I've been livin' la vida 64-bit for more than three years. Vista was the first mainstream desktop OS to deliver a viable 64-bit experience, and Windows 7 has taken this migration further by making it the preferred flavor for business users. Meanwhile, Apple can't even deliver a fully 64-bit implementation. Snow Leopard boots into a 32-bit kernel by default -- something about a lack of 64-bit device drivers, which is ironic when you consider how small a hardware ecosystem Apple must govern when compared to Microsoft and its burden of having to run on just about anything with an Intel-compatible CPU.
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"Where's the beef?" That's the idiom that jumps to mind as I work my way through Galen Gruman's "The 7 best features in Mac OS X Snow Leopard." I knew the features list would be lean -- Apple has deliberately undersold Snow Leopard by pitching it as a relatively minor release -- but please! Gruman's article reads like a laundry list of borrowed features and derivative works. It's as if someone at Apple grabbed a copy of the Windows 7 beta and simply Xeroxed the release notes. For example: 64-bitness: Yippee,! Apple finally goes 64-bit -- BFD! As a Windows user, I've been livin' la vida 64-bit for more than three years. Vista was the first mainstream desktop OS to deliver a viable 64-bit experience, and Windows 7 has taken this migration further by making it the preferred flavor for business users. Meanwhile, Apple can't even deliver a fully 64-bit implementation. Snow Leopard boots into a 32-bit kernel by default -- something about a lack of 64-bit device drivers, which is ironic when you consider how small a hardware ecosystem Apple must govern when compared to Microsoft and its burden of having to run on just about anything with an Intel-compatible CPU.
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U.S. lags other nations in Internet speed
by Lance Whitney August 25, 2009
The average Internet download speed in the U.S. is slower than that in 27 other countries, according to a new report by the Communications Workers of America. Web surfing in the U.S. averages around 5.1 megabits per second (mbps), lagging far behind top-ranked South Korea, where speeds average more than 20 mbps. In 2007, the U.S. download speed was 3.5 mbps, inching up only 1.6 mbps since then. At that rate, notes the report, it will take the U.S. 15 years to catch up with South Korea. The CWA's 2009 Report on Internet Speeds also compared Internet performance throughout all 50 U.S. states. The report discovered that Internet users who live in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic regions enjoy faster speeds than those in the South or West. The five fastest states included Delaware (9.9 mbps), Rhode Island (9.8 mbps), New Jersey (8.9 mbps), Massachusetts (8.6 mbps), and New York (8.4 mbps). States on the slow end were Mississippi (3.7 mbps), South Carolina (3.6 mbps), Arkansas (3.1 mbps), Idaho (2.6 mbps), and Alaska (2.3 mbps). "Every American should have affordable access to high-speed Internet, no matter where they live. This is essential to economic growth and will help maintain our global competitiveness," said Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America. "Unfortunately, fragmented government programs and uneven private sector responses to build out Internet access have left a digital divide across the country." The U.S. is the only country without a national policy to promote high-speed Internet access, noted the report. But that may be about to change.
Read more here -->Link
The average Internet download speed in the U.S. is slower than that in 27 other countries, according to a new report by the Communications Workers of America. Web surfing in the U.S. averages around 5.1 megabits per second (mbps), lagging far behind top-ranked South Korea, where speeds average more than 20 mbps. In 2007, the U.S. download speed was 3.5 mbps, inching up only 1.6 mbps since then. At that rate, notes the report, it will take the U.S. 15 years to catch up with South Korea. The CWA's 2009 Report on Internet Speeds also compared Internet performance throughout all 50 U.S. states. The report discovered that Internet users who live in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic regions enjoy faster speeds than those in the South or West. The five fastest states included Delaware (9.9 mbps), Rhode Island (9.8 mbps), New Jersey (8.9 mbps), Massachusetts (8.6 mbps), and New York (8.4 mbps). States on the slow end were Mississippi (3.7 mbps), South Carolina (3.6 mbps), Arkansas (3.1 mbps), Idaho (2.6 mbps), and Alaska (2.3 mbps). "Every American should have affordable access to high-speed Internet, no matter where they live. This is essential to economic growth and will help maintain our global competitiveness," said Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America. "Unfortunately, fragmented government programs and uneven private sector responses to build out Internet access have left a digital divide across the country." The U.S. is the only country without a national policy to promote high-speed Internet access, noted the report. But that may be about to change.
Read more here -->Link
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