Over the break, there’s been a bit of discussion by some of the big names regarding the reasons why Windows Phone 7 handsets haven’t been flying off the shelves this holiday season. Charlie Kindel started the debate with “Windows Phone is Superior; Why Hasn’t It Taken Off?” and largely faults the relationship between the OEMs, Microsoft and the carriers.

MG Siegler responded with a fairly weak response largely citing the mantra of “too late and not enough apps” but as can be seen from today’s news of 50,000 apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace, the latter argument really isn’t that valid.

As usual, Robert Scoble hits the nail on the head. People buy Android or iOS because it’s a safe bet and they don’t want to look stupid or uncool by buying something else. Microsoft Windows Phone 7 and RIM’s Blackberries simply don’t have the gold-plated appeal of a sure-thing.

And he’s right. I was a big Palm fan and look how that turned out. I do feel stupid. After spending years waiting for Palm to move from PalmOS to WebOS and then HP promising to do big things. I bought in with a succession of Pre phones and pre-ordered a TouchPad. Maybe I shouldn’t be so shallow and have a less of an ego, because WebOS is a great operating system and even with the smaller app selection, it does 99% of what I need a phone to do. But when everyone else is, “Have you got this app and that app” on their Galaxy S IIs and iPhone 4Ss, you do feel a bit of a chump.

So thanks, HP. I feel stupid.

In a surprise move, HP has announced that it will give WebOS to the open source community while continuing to support and develop the platform. HP believes that the combination of the superb WebOS platform combined with open source innovation and corporate support from HP, will foster innovation, creating a compelling user experience.

“WebOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable,” said Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer. “By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.”

HP has said that it will work with the open source community to define the charter of the open source project based on four principles.

• The goal of the project is to accelerate the open development of the webOS platform
• HP will be an active participant and investor in the project
• Good, transparent and inclusive governance to avoid fragmentation
• Software will be provided as a pure open source project

No news was provided regarding other partners, new hardware or the specific handover timescale.

Undoubtedly more news will filter out over the coming days but it’s interesting move that may work out for HP and WebOS. HP gets to retain the patents it acquired from Palm to protect itself (and presumably WebOS) from attack, while hoping that the open source community and the homebrew scene will move the platform forwards. Future devices could appear from any OEM manufacturer, not just HP, but it will be interesting to see what the next WebOS product will be. Personally, I think it will be a printer.

Another week with no news from HP, another investigation by the WebOS Internals crew. This time they’ve directed their attention at HP’s App Catalog for WebOS to reveal everything you ever wanted to know…and probably some stuff you didn’t really care about.

- There are 8399 unique apps.
- There are 3514 apps that work on all WebOS devices.
- There are 5562 apps for the TouchPad.
- There are 6454 apps for the Pre 3.
- There are 6440 apps for the Veer.
- There are 7116 apps for the Pre 2.
- There are 6024 apps for the Pixi.
- There are 6761 apps for the Pre and Pre Plus.
- There are 1904 app contributors.
- There are 2642 apps that are free and 84 that cost $10 or more. 2638 cost 99c.
- Accuweather is the first app in the Catalog.
- Mayo Clinic High Blood Pressure is the largest app at 1.6 GB.
- It would cost $13,293.15 to download all the apps.
- It would take a 90 GB WebOS device to install them all. (Go on HP, let’s see a 128 GB TouchPad 2.)

Well, that’s probably enough for now. If you want to keep up-to-date on WebOS Internal’s work, you can follow @webosinternals on Twitter.

HP has still hasn’t decided what to do with WebOS but appears to be taking the decision seriously. At an all-employee meeting last night with the WebOS team in Sunnyvale, new CEO Meg Whitman, reportedly said, “It’s really important to me to make the right decision, not the fast decision,” and “If HP decides to do this,we’re going to do  it in a very significant way over a multi-year period.”

Setting this against reports coming out of Reuters that HP had engaged with Bank of America Merrill Lynch to sell WebOS for just hundreds of millions of dollars, rather than the $1.2 billion HP paid for Palm, it seems clear that Meg Whitman is seriously evaluating all the options for the future of the mobile operating system. She’s reportedly also said, ”The question now before us is what do we do with webOS software and do we come back to market with webOS devices? It obviously will not be the same device but it will be version 2.0.”

What does seem to be clear is that any future thoughts focus on tablets rather than mobile phones. At the all-hands meeting, Whitman reportedly said that, ”Things get more complicated if you add in phones.” While the TouchPad may continue, it sounds like Pre and Veer are dead as product lines whatever happens, but you never know.

On one hand, it’s easy to criticise HP for continuing to dither, but to me it appears that Meg Whitman is doing a proper evaluation of the options available, rather than taking the somewhat whimsical approach take by her predecessor Leo Apotheker. If WebOS is retained by HP in addition to the PSG group, it will be one of the biggest corporate turnarounds in history!

Over the weekend, an amazing piece of detective work by the WebOS Internals team and some crowd-sourcing via Twitter has revealed that there approximately 4.2 million WebOS users, give or take.

Every WebOS phone or tablet user has to create a profile in order to use their device. Each profile has a unique identifier, a number that appears to simply increment by 1 as each new profile is created. Early Palm Pre adopters have identifiers typically in the 10,000s whereas those who started with the TouchPad are in the milllons. The profile identifier cannot normally be seen by the user but a Homebrew program called Impostah, developed by Rod Whitby and WebOS Internals, allowed this number to be revealed.

Using Twitter, WebOS owners were encouraged to come forwards with their identifier and the date they signed up so that a graph of identifiers against time could be plotted, showing the rise of WebOS and key moments in the timeline, such as the release of new devices. The graph, courtesy of WebOS Internals, is shown below and what you can see is a fairly steady rise reaching around 4.2 million. The most notable point is probably when HP had the TouchPad firesale and the graph climbs steeply. Click on the graph for more detail.

The number of profiles is slightly ambiguous when trying to convert to numbers of users or number of devices because while you can only have one phone per profile, you can have a phone and a tablet. For example, if you had both a Veer and a Pre 3 you would need two profiles, but if you had a Pre 3 and a TouchPad you’d only need one profile. Obviously, there are also accounts that have become dormant when the owner has moved to another platform.

In comparison to iOS and Android, both of which have in excess of 100 million users each, the 4 million-odd WebOS users are a drop in the ocean. Regardless, the graph shows that there was slow but steady adoption of a little under 2 million per year. Of course, HP continues to dither over the future of WebOS.

The WebOS Internals team are a bunch of hackers (in the best sense of the word) who created a whole Homebrew ecosystem under the Preware moniker that allowed Pre owners to add easily add patches and other software outside of the official App Catalog.  They’re probably WebOS’s best last chance.

ZDNet is reporting that Canonical is intending to make the next release of Ubuntu, 12.04, a LTS (Long Term Support) release with intention of then expanding Ubuntu beyond desktops and laptops into smartphones, tablets and smart TVs, with a target of 2014 for an all-platform release.

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, in an interview said, “This is a natural expansion of our idea as Ubuntu as Linux for human beings. As people have moved from desktop to new form factors for computing, it’s important for us to reach out to out community on these platforms. So, we’ll embrace the challenge of how to use Ubuntu on smartphones, tablets and smart-screens.” The full announcement is expected at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, which starts tomorrow and runs for a week in Orlando, Florida.

Having already been in discussions with partners for around 18 months, it seems that this is more than wishful thinking, but one can’t help feel that the whole Palm-HP-WebOS debacle bodes badly for any company wanting to get in on the smartphone and tablet space. If HP can’t make it happen with a solid OS and Zen of Palm, what hope has Canonical? When quizzed about this, Shuttleworth said that he saw “Android as its primary competitor…..We’ve also already heard from people who are already shipping tablets that they want Ubuntu on the tablet.” And of course, “Ubuntu already has a developer and customer base.”

While there’s no doubt that the mobile space is still maturing and there’s plenty of change still to come,  I have a hard time seeing Ubuntu on anything but a small niche of tablets and an even smaller niche of smartphones. iOS and Android have their foothold and Microsoft will be a solid third if Windows Phone 7 continues to deliver and Windows 8 delivers as expected. A fourth player is going to have difficulty making inroads, especially one as relatively unknown as Canonical and Ubuntu.

Smart TVs are a more plausible destination as the internal software is of less concern to the consumer. Most people buying a TV are looking at the exterior brand such as Sony, Samsung or LG, and not what’s inside, although this may change if a “Powered by Roku” or “Google TV inside” campaign runs. Plenty of change to come in this space too.

I wish Ubuntu every success.

The rumours continue to swirl around HP and WebOS but AppleInsider is claiming that the fate of WebOS could be decided today (11th October). Reports suggest that the initial bidding process is complete and that an annoucement may be made after a meeting today to confirm the next step in the sale process.

There’s been much speculation as to who the prospective bidders might be. At various times HTC, Samsung, Qualcomm and Facebook have all been in the picture, some more realistically than others, and one of the current hot favourites is Amazon. Looking back at when Palm was up for sale and HP purchased it, BusinessInsider claimed there were five serious suitors, suggesting Apple, Lenovo, Research in Motion (RIM), Google and of course, HP. Which of these would still be interested given the success that HP made of Palm?

Some were after Palm’s considerable patent portfolio rather than WebOS itself, and the famous “smartphone” patent in particular. Even HP were pretty upfront about this with Mark Hurd saying that HP wasn’t buying Palm to be in the smartphone business. (How prophetic was that?)  Ultimately the nature of the sale may depend on HP’s feelings towards WebOS. Do they want to simply get as much as they can of their $1.2 billion back as quickly as they can, or do they want WebOS to succeed, even if HP was unable to make it a winner. Only time will tell.

Read related articles at GNC for HP, Palm and WebOS.

It’s been an insane day and evening here in the UK if you were interested in HP’s TouchPad firesale. Rumours persisted throughout the day as to when various on-line retailers were going to cut the prices and there was disbelief that the prices were going to be as good as the US $100. Word leaked out that it was going to be £89 for the 16 GB and £115 for the 32 GB but no-one was ready to believe it.

The DSG group stores blinked first with Dixons, Currys and PC World all selling out within minutes, but the price had been confirmed as true. Carphone Warehouse then dropped their prices and within minutes were totally crushed under the load and the website went offline. Comet came on next and were slammed but many people managed to get orders in by refreshing the browser. I managed to snag a 32 GB one to upgrade my 16 GB but it took me an hour to get through all the steps. Amazon seemed late to the party with just the 16 GB on offer but also sold out pretty quickly.

No doubt more stores will drop their prices tomorrow and there will be another frenzy. HP.com is still to drop its prices and they should have a pile. The Pre 3 may also come to the firesale as well and I’ll snap one up if I can. But it tells you one thing…people are hungry for tablets but they can’t afford an iPad. For once it’s not all about apps, it’s about cash.

In exiting a market, HP has propelled the TouchPad to the #2 tablet slot. Can they capitalise on this and turn WebOS into a success or have they simply jumped the shark?

It’s finally the end of the line for Palm and WebOS. HP killed off the Palm name a few months ago and it now looks like it’s fatal for WebOS too.

In a press release today, HP reported “that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward. ”

I’m writing this on a Pre 2 and there’s a TouchPad on my desk, the last in a long line of Palm devices, starting with a Palm III, followed by a IIIxe, a Sony Clie SJ30 and a Clie TH55, possibly the greatest PDA of all time. There was a Tapwave Zodiac 2 somewhere too. Then the era of the smartphone arrived with a Palm Treo 650 and 680, before the long wait for WebOS and the Palm Pre. That’s about fifteen years of close personal friendship.

There’s a small glimmer of hope that WebOS will continue without the devices or perhaps it will be picked up by another manufacturer, but let’s be honest, it’s not looking good.

Farewell, friend.

The HP TouchPad came on to the market with two main criticisms, first the lack of apps, and second, pricing was on a par with the iPad 2. Even with these two points, most reviews gave the TouchPad the number 2 tablet slot for WebOS’s ease-of-use.

A month on from the TouchPad’s launch, much of the original criticism can be deflected. HP has reduced the price of the TouchPad by $100 in the US and by similar amounts in most other territories, making the 16GB version $400 and the 32 GB $500. Early purchasers have been taken care of with a $50 credit to buy apps from the App Catalog.

As for the apps, a bundle of new apps get added to the App Catalog every day and there’s usually one or two key apps each week that round out the TouchPad’s portfolio. This week saw UPnP AV Player and a Google Reader client, TouchFeeds, released amongst others and while there are other similar apps in the App Catalog, these are the first that don’t deserve a beta version moniker. There are plenty of really good apps in the Catalog and there are more coming through as developers get to grips with the platform. Twitter app – check; Facebook app – check; Flickr app – check; ToodleDo app – check; digital music store app – check; ebay app – check; WordPress app – check. It’s definitely getting there.

There’s also some evidence that it’s beginning to pay off for developers who have invested in the platform. PreCentral reports that OneCrayon, developer of TapNote, has seen sales jump significantly since the TouchPad went on sale. Regrettably the graph that accompanies the article doesn’t have any units on the y-axis but it certainly looks impressive.

HP’s done something a little different as well. Each month it produces a digital magazine called Pivot, which showcases apps in a glossy setting. It’s even customised for the particular country, so the UK version is a little different from the US one. Overall, it’s a nice touch.

It’s looking up for the TouchPad and at $100 less that the iPad 2 with apps coming every day, it’s a bargain.

My HP TouchPad arrived on my doorstep last Tuesday and it’s been an interesting week since I opened the box. Here are a few thoughts on the first WebOS tablet.

First impressions do count and the box itself started well. It has an almost airtight sliding drawer construction that makes it impossible to open quickly. This slowly reveals the TouchPad as it pulls gently out. Once you eventually have the ‘Pad in your hand, it’s obvious that this is a well-constructed device. The front is glass, presumably of the Gorilla variety, and the black is a hard shiny plastic with the HP logo in the centre. It is heavier than I was expecting but not uncomfortably so.

As a Pre 2 owner, I was right at home with WebOS from the start. Some of the gestures are missing, such as the back swipe, but the main upwards swipe from the bottom of the screen persists. Along with the multitasking this is the heart of WebOS. And it works very well. I’m probably biased but I definitely think that WebOS is the best tablet OS by far.

This would be for naught if there weren’t the apps to run on the OS. And it would be wrong to say that there are loads, becuase there aren’t. But they’re coming and each day new apps are released specifically for the TouchPad. Most of the phone-based apps also work in a kind of emulator but you don’t get the benefit of the big screen. The TouchPad apps are pretty good and there’s some nice free stuff that HP has presumably helped with. The Epicurious app is chock full of great recipes and there are Sky News and USA Today apps as well. Of course, Angry Birds makes its obligatory appearance.

Other commentators have mentioned that the TouchPad is a bit laggy. Laggy is the wrong word – it pauses sometimes. When you are actually doing stuff, it’s pretty quick – I have no complaints there. For example, doing a bit of web surfing is as quick as you’d get at your laptop, but if I switch to the email app and I change to a different email account, the app sometimes seems to pause as if it’s checking for new email. These are generally minor irritations - looking at my TouchPad now, I’m listening to music with a weather app, email and three web browsing sessions open. Flicking between the apps is smooth and they respond instantly once they pop to the foreground.

What else is good? The Beats Audio is very impressive – I think it’s possibly the best MP3 player I’ve listened to.
The Skype client is integrated into the Messaging App and seems to work well. I Skype-d my father with video from the UK to Shanghai and there was a bit of lag at the beginning of the call but the call got better as it went on. (Of course there are a number of factors involved in Skype calls).
Ms Office document editing isn’t ready yet but the viewer has handled all the Office docs and Adobe .pdfs that I’ve thrown at it.
Video plays well but the hi-res screen shows up the limitations of the source. What looked really crisp on my phone now looks a bit pixellated in places. Perhaps I should have bought the 32 GB version after all.
Flash works as well as Flash ever does. The BBC’s iPlayer works ok but I had a bit of trouble with Channel 4′s on demand programming.
Bizarrely, there’s no calculator app. C’mon guys – how long would it have taken to take the basic calculator from the Pre and re-skin it?

There’s a nice three pane app interface that I hadn’t seen before. It’s used to good advantage in the email app, with the left column showing accounts, the middle showing the email headers and the right showing the email body. By tapping on a little III icon, you can get the pane to expand over the panes to the left. It’s very slick and very handy.

One personal peeve is that certain apps insist on running in a particular orientation, which as far as I’m concerned is upside down when I’m holding the TouchPad in my hand. I can understand that some apps want to run in landscape rather than portrait but wanting to run a particular way up is nonsense.

Overall, I’m pleased with my purchase - for the purposes of disclosure this was a personal purchase and not a review unit. There are some rough edges and there is a lack of apps, but there’s nothing a few software updates won’t fix.

Add Pad by Dragongears is one of those little apps that you never knew you needed, but now that it’s on your smartphone, it’s indispensable. Add Pad can simply be described as a notebook that adds up. Any number encountered in the text is added to a running total shown in the bottom right of each note.

The top level screen shows the total values for each note.

The uses are myriad. You can use it to keep track of mileage for expenses or what you spend your cash on. I personally find it excellent for is calculating how much wood I need for little garden projects. It’s not perfect, as when I need four uprights, I have to enter the number (70 in this case) four times, but it does make it very flexible. The only other mathematical function supported is minus, so -10 will subtract 10 from the total.

Add Pad lets you set different units for each note and whether the unit comes before or after the number. The notes can also get coloured marks so that can be used for basic categorisation, e.g. business or personal.

Available now for HP Palm WebOS devices from the App Catalog. If you’re quick, you can get it for free.

Even in the absence of any real musical ability, sometimes it’s fun to bash away on a drum kit. Most of the various application catalogues for smartphones have little virtual drum kits so you can drum away whenever the urge to jam comes on. The HP App Catalog for WebOS (that’s the Palm Pre series, the Pixi and the Veer) has a selection of drum kit apps, so here’s a quick round up of the offerings – Natural Drums, Drummer, Music Instruments and AudioScape.

Natural Drums lays the instruments out as they might be in real-life with a cartoonish top-down view, as you can see from the screen shot. It has the fewest number of kits with only two, switching between acoustic and electronic, coming with 8 instruments in the former and 7 in the latter. There’s no discernible lag between hitting the screen and the sound coming out, and multitouch is supported, so you can hit several things at once. This is my drum kit of choice and the best bit is that it’s free.

Natural Drums - Acoustic

Natural Drums - Electronic

In comparison with the other apps, Drummer is simply a bit dull and not as polished as the other three. The kit is laid out in uninspiring grey 2 x 4 grid and seems to be only capable of two multitouches at once. The simple layout may suit some who just want to get down to making noise. On the plus side, there are three kits available, Acoustic, Synthesized and Warped. Currently on sale in the App Catalog for £0.99 which doesn’t compare well with the free alternatives.

Drummer

Music Instruments takes the drum kit app and turns it up to 11, with lots of percussion instruments including the infamous cowbell, gong, triangle, tambourine, castanets and xylophone in addition to drums, bongos and cymbals. All the instruments are photorealistic which looks great and works well when there are only one a few instruments shown. However, I find that some of the instruments are too close together on the drum kit to bash with confidence. Multitouch is supported – I was able to test up to four at once and there’s no lag that I can hear. There’s a lot of noise here for no money. More cowbell….

Music Instruments

Music Instruments

Finally, AudioScape is more of a sound machine rather than a pure drum kit. As you’ll see from the picture it lays out the instruments in a 3 x 3 grid with an abstract background pattern. Not sure if it was just me, but I could only get the first six instruments of any set to work. There is a plethora of drum kits including Acoustic Drums, Bongos & Congas, Distorted Drums, Electro Drums 1 and Electro Drums 2. There are also sound boards for Animals, Body Noises, Electric Guitar, Guitar, Piano, Sound Effects 1 and Sound Effects 2. And you can even make your own sound boards by transferring sound files across to the Pre via USB. Multitouch is supported and I was able to produce four noises at once. Another free bargain.

AudioScape

Overall, Natural Drums is my favourite for a bit of jamming. Good looking interface and an app that does what it sets out to do, and do it well. Music Instruments is pretty cool too, with lovely graphics and an unequalled range of percussion instruments. AudioScope is a good app, but it is more of a sound machine and may appeal more to a younger audience who can never get enough of cows mooing and dogs barking. Bringing up the rear is Drummer which is simply eclipsed by its rivals in terms of both features and price.

Reviews carried out an HP Pre 2 running WebOS 2.1.

HP and AT&T today announced that the brand new Veer 4G smartphone would be available from 15th May for $99 on a 2 year contract. The Veer is the first of three new devices coming from HP Palm, the others being the TouchPad and the Pre 3.

Running WebOS 2.1, the Veer is a tiny smartphone “the size of a credit card and no thicker than a deck of cards” weighing only 3.6 oz, but still sporting a slide-out keyboard, as you can seen from the picture. Available in both black and white, it’s intended to replace the Pixi in the smartphone range. Given the tiny size I’ll be interested to see one in the flesh, as it were.

I’m not completely au fait with all the 4G terminology but it’s “4G speeds delivered by HSPA+ with enhanced backhaul” so I assume that it’s not a pure 4G phone with LTE or WiMax.

The Palm name is all but gone but it’s good to see that they’re still in the game, albeit now as an independent business unit within HP. With Android and iOS dominating the smartphone race, the first and second positions are pretty much locked in. Third place is wide open with RIM, Microsoft, Nokia and HP all in the running. This starts HP’s chase as they’re definitely coming from behind according to some of the latest figures from Nielson, which gives Palm only about 3% market share.

As regular listeners to the podcast will know, the Geek News Central website is powered by WordPress. Until now, I’ve always used the web interface to write posts. “It works” is about the kindest thing you can say about it.

Browsing the Palm App Catalog, I came across Poster for WordPress, an app that allows blogging from the Palm Pre and other WebOS devices. It had lots of good reviews so I paid up and downloaded Poster.

Poster can link to multiple blogs and obviously the first thing to do is to setup accounts for the WordPress sites that you want to access.

After setting up access to Geek News Central, Poster shows the last five posts on the site. More can be loaded if needed.

This is entire blog post is written entirely in Poster. You can embolden, italicise, underline and do all three. You can insert pictures or in this case, a screenshot of Poster’s editing screen.

When uploading images, there a four preset sizes you can choose from. Of course, hyperlinks are there too – here’s a link to the App Catalog. This doesn’t quite work perfectly in-line as the image or hyperlink seems to go at the end of the text. Not a problem if you write and edit linearly. However, if you are like me and write before editing in the pictures and hyperlinks, it’s a bit of a pain.

All is not lost as Poster offers three editing modes – Visual, Visual without images and HTML. So in this instance, you can swap to HTML view and then copy’n'paste to move stuff around.

Work in progress drafts can be saved to the blog but once the post is ready, tags and categories can be set before finally changing the status to Published and uploading it. The tags and categories are downloaded from the website itself so everything connects up.

Although I haven’t explored the app further, it also looks like you can work with comments, which could be pretty handy for the active blogger.

Overall, I’m impressed by this app and provided the end result – the post on GNC – is good, this app comes highly recommended.

Poster for WordPress by Gabriele Nizzoli is available from the AppCatalog for £1.59.

Update – I was pretty happy with way the post came out but to be upfront with the review, I added in a few extra links using the web interface and made one correction to the formatting.

Emerald Brooke of Bigstar.TV (www.bigstar.tv) presents the Bigstar.TV streaming service, which has a lot of independent films and older TV shows available to stream to many different devices including iPhone, iPad, Roku, Palm Pre and Android devices.

Interview by Jeffry Powers of Geekazine and Esby Larsen of MrNetCast.com

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With a reported 150,000 units sold in the first week, and a nearly instant price cut, the Blackberry Torch doesn’t appear to have met RIM’s expectations.  But I’m unsure how it could have been any other way.

To start with, 150,000 units is a good opening figure for any company with the single exception of Apple.  Compare it with the HTC Evo 4G and Palm Pre, both of which sold in broadly similar numbers.  Frankly, this tells me that at any one time, there are only about 150,000 people ready to upgrade.

 Secondly, while I know plenty of people who have work-supplied Blackberries, I know of only one friend who has one as a personal phone.  Thirdly, companies tend to purchase in batches and rarely upgrade to the latest phone just because it’s out.  Consequently, I think 150,000 units for business-orientated (smart)phone are good opening figures.

RIM with the Blackberry brand has something that no other phone really has – its association with business.  If you have a Blackberry, it says you are serious about business.  Obviously, RIM has to defend its territory and often the best form of attack is defence, but it’s too easy to get into Apple-beating mode when faced with the iPhone threat.

There’s no doubt that the battle lines are drawn between Apple, RIM and Android.  All are vying for the top spot but RIM has the corporate foundation to push out from.  With Microsoft down and out at the moment, RIM should be locking down the business market tight.  The Torch is a great phone for that as it’s generally considered to be the best Blackberry ever from the reviews, even if it’s not quite up to Android, iOS and WebOS standard.

RIM needs to forget about the opening numbers game and go for the long-term.

Here in the UK, we live in a strange a mix of imperial (English) and metric units.  We buy fruit and veg by the kilo but ask someone their weight, it’s in stones and pounds.  When it’s cold, it’s “a few degrees” (C) but when it’s hot, it’s “in the 80s” (F).  You can buy pints of milk but in the supermarket, you’ll pick up 2 litres.  No one gets too bothered about it, (except readers of The Daily Mail who regularly get worked up about the loss of imperial units).

Distance and speed are still resolutely in miles and mph, but height is usually in metres.  So you can have this strange anomaly where you are driving at 60 mph with 20 miles to your destination on a road at 800 m.

And this is where my problem arose – I was using gpsDashboard+ on my Palm Pre Plus which allows you to toggle between miles/feet or km/metre.  But if I chose imperial, my distance and speed are good, but height is in feet.  What I wanted was imperial distance and speed but metric height.

I contacted the author of gpsDashboard+, Brad Graber, at 2.15 on Monday afternoon.  By 3pm he’d make the changes and he re-submitted gpsDashboard+ to Palm later that day.  At 7.30 on Wednesday morning, I download the updated version to my Pre and gpsDashboard+ now has a special UK units setting just for me!

I’m grateful to Brad for the change but the speed from which it went from “I’ve got a problem” to “Problem fixed” was amazing, especially when you hear how long it takes apps to get updated in certain other app stores.  Great job Brad, and great job Palm.  Fantastic service.

Palm is definitely the uber-underdog in the battle of the smartphones with RIM, Apple and Android battling it out for supremacy.  Palm has been struggling for mindshare but with its acquisition of HP last month ago, it’s looking stronger

The Palm Pre Plus was launched in the UK on O2 back in May.  I have to confess that I already had a Pre that I’d obtained via ebay but as my contract was up, I renewed and got myself the Plus version.  I did seriously think about jumping to Android but in the end, I loved the underdog too much.

I’ve been using the Pre Plus now for about 3 months so I thought I’d give it a quick review for real-life usage rather than the feature-driven reviews that appear when devices first come out.

By far the best feature of the Palm smartphones is contactless charging using the Touchstone.  You place the phone on the Touchstone and it charges.  Simple and brilliant.  The Touchstone doubles as a desktop cradle, angling the Pre Plus so you can see the screen.

Battery life isn’t great and I’m seriously thinking about getting a second battery.  On quiet days, I can get through the day without charging but if I’m making lots of calls or using plenty of data, then I’ll get to mid afternoon before needing a charge.

Shape and construction.  The curved back and soft-touch rubber makes the Pre Plus feel great in the hand.  Apparently Palm were aiming for a water-worn pebble aesthetic.  The front is a bit plasticky and a metal surround would have been an improvement.

The slider mechanism has come in for criticism on the various Palm forums but I’ve had both a Pre and the current Pre Plus and neither have exhibited any problems.  If anything, it’s actually quite satisfying when you pop it closed.

The keyboard works well too.  Even as a man with biggish hands, I have no problems typing.  Ok, so you aren’t going to be writing “War and Peace” on it but for banging out some emails or text messages, it’s fine.

I’ve dropped the Pre Plus from waist height on two occasions, once onto concrete and amazingly, it survived albeit with a few dings in the plastic.  Thumbs up for overall construction.

Moving onto the operating system and software, WebOS is pretty good.  The multitasking of apps works seamlessly and on the Pre Plus, I’ve had over ten apps open at once.  This makes working with multiple information sources really easy – you can move between apps with a couple of flicks of the finger.

The other piece of brilliance is the Synergy technology which sucks in data from multiple sources into a single view.  For example, if I have a friend who is on LinkedIn, Facebook and in my Google contacts, I see only one entry for that friend in the Pre’s Contact app instead of three.  Genius.

The Pre lives in the cloud and I think it’s the way to go.  There’s no direct syncing with your desktop (unless you buy a third party product) but I have everything in Google – Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, Bookmarks and Docs. Other clouds such as Yahoo! are also options.  I’ve never measured what data rate I get out of 3G but it’s fast enough for me to download podcasts without thinking about it.  Having sync’d via the cloud, I’d never go back to a wired solution.

The Palm App Catalog has the smallest number of apps (2524 in UK at time of writing) compared to iOS and Android but this ignores quality over quantity.  There are some deficiences which I will come to shortly but frankly, there’s pretty much all you need available.  The basics (calendar / diary, contacts, web-browser, music player, video player, picture viewer)  are all built-in.  There are also apps for YouTube and Google Maps.  I’ve listed some of the other apps I have loaded below.

Social Media – LinkedIn, Facebook, Tweed (for Twitter)
Media – Evernote, Feeds (for RSS), drPodder (for podcasts), pReader (for e-books), Flickr Addict
Tasks & Projects – ToDo Classic, Outline Tracker
Security – SplashID
Money - ClearCheckbook, AuctionMate (for ebay)
Games – Hawx, Sudoku, Min-Golf, Brain Challenge and lots of other little games.

The one major deficiency is in Microsoft Office editing.  There is a viewer app for Word, Excel and Powerpoint but it’s viewing only.  Most of the time it’s not a problem, but there have been one or two occasions where it would have been handy.

The App Catalog itself is pretty simple to use and it’s all too easy to splurge on a few apps and games.

Finally, Palm has embraced the developer community, both official and unofficial, which has taken on the moniker of “homebrew”.  There are loads of patches which customise WebOS and apps in little (and not so little) ways.  You want more icons on each page? – you got it.  Want to be able to download YouTube videos? – you got it.  The heart of homebrew community is over at PreCentral and there’s loads of general information over there too.

So what don’t I like about the Pre Plus?  As I mentioned earlier, the front is a bit plasticky.  The door that covers the USB slot is poor but fortunately I rarely have to connect physically.  There’s no Flash support though it’s coming real soon now.  And the lack of market share means that it’s often the last to get an app or support.  For instance, there’s no Google Latitude or StreetView support.  It also means that it’s rare to meet someone else with a Palm – I work in IT with a hundred-odd colleagues and no-one else has Pre or Pixi - so I never get to say, “Did you see that new app GeeWhizzBang?”

But these are minor niggles in the overall picture.  Would I buy again? Definitely.  Choosing your next smartphone is never easy but if you are thinking of getting a new phone, don’t just head straight for the iPhone – the Palm Pre Plus or Pixi Plus deserve a look.

Stitcher Logo

I’ve been using Stitcher to listen to most Podcasts. The only frustrating thing was that every time I got a call or had to check on something with the phone, I would have to re-open the program.

Not anymore.

Stitcher’s newest release features the option to run in the background. Therefore, you can read a text message, send an email, read your horoscope, check stocks and more while your favorite podcasts are playing.

Of course, we know that iPhone OS4 was bringing background application options. This was an application that truly needed it.

Stitcher is a way to get all podcasts through your iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Palm Pre. Stitcher is also partnered with Ford to give you podcasts while driving.

I am a Happy Camper…

IDC‘s latest press release on mobile phones and smartphones in Europe shows the sector grew 8% in the past year, that smartphones represent over a quarter of all phones shipped and that current leader Nokia is losing market share.

The total mobile market grew 8% year-on-year with over 42 million units shipped in the first quarter of 2010.  Of this, smartphones were 12 million units, representing 28% of the market and up 57% on last year.  Mobile phones actually dropped 4% showing the trend towards the more powerful devices.

Overall, Nokia still rules the mobile market, with just under 33% of the market in the first quarter but this is down 9% in the year.  Samsung runs a close second with 29% of the market.  No-one else has anywhere near the  market share of these two.  Even Apple and RIM only have 7.0% and 5.6% respectively.

Looking at just the smartphone market, Nokia is still out front with nearly 41% market share, but again this is well down from 57% last year.  Apple is second with 25%, closely followed by RIM with 20%.

HTC comes fourth with 7.5% and consequently, Android outsold Windows Mobile for the first time.  No sign at all of Palm’s WebOS devices which anecdotally have only sold well in Germany.

To honest, anyone familiar with the space doesn’t need IDC to tell them that Nokia is struggling.  Partly it’s because the smartphone range isn’t great, but I think Nokia just isn’t hip anymore.  Forgive me if I’m being shallow but Apple = cool.  Blackberry = cool.  Android = cool.

The full tables are in the press release but they’re not labelled very well.  The first table is the total mobile phone market, the second table is the smartphone market.

Toward the end week, HP made some major moves. First, they bought Palm for 1.2 Billion. HP then mentioned that the Slate tablet will be put on hiatus (first thought cancelled). Now there are reports that a “Web OS” will most likely be put on the Slate. Wait a minute – wouldn’t that be “Palm”?

Of course, earlier in the week, we heard that Palm OS was purchased by HP for 1.2 billion. While some say it cost too much, there may be some good reasons why it happened this way. One big reason: HP might have been in a bidding war. Still, Palm OS could become the mobile OS HP has been looking for and that 1.2 billion might net them 20 times that amount.

HP Owns 20th Century PDA

I know that doesn’t like much, but think of it this way – HP Jornada, Compaq iPaq, Handspring Visor, Palm OS. That is what HP owns now. The only early PDA assets HP doesn’t own is those from  Apple (Newton), Casio (Cassiopeia), Sony (Clie) or RIM (Blackberry) – Casio ended their PDA run and Sony changed focus to mobile gaming. So HP now has the majority of technology for early PDA and the patents within. While this won’t be a shield to any patent infringement lawsuit, one would definitely need a good iron clad case for legal action.

Slate

We are entering into the “Keyboardless” era – where you don’t need any peripheral attached to use a machine. iPad shows we can have a decent computing experience without keyboard or mouse. iPad also feels that you don’t need to connect USB devices, so they left all those items off their tablet.

In the meantime, what was first thought as full cancellation, turned out to be more of a “restart” for the Slate tablet. Windows is out, that is for sure. The obvious reality was that Palm OS is in. A good move for HP, but why not have 2 versions?

An engineer at HP was overheard saying Windows 7 was a powerhog. That may be true, nonetheless, are people going to see Palm OS as a good alternative OS? I suppose only time will tell.

Palm’s future: Where else will we see the OS?

With the idea that iPad runs a mobile OS, some are starting to realize the versatility. One OS for your phone, tablet, TV,  car, etc.

Last month I went out to HP to talk about Converged infrastructure. In layman’s terms: a fancy way to say “Server administration”. The idea that you can set up a server room and have anyone administer from anywhere on the planet. However, as I was interviewing presenters, one mentioned something I hadn’t thought about:

… there is no good way to administer a printer….

Most printer problems require physical attention: replace a cartridge, fix a paper jam, etc. But beyond the web page administration of a printer, there has not been much innovation to printer OS technology. What if something like Palm OS was ported to a printer?

Let’s take another approach. HP has another OS called HP-UX; It’s their Unix solution. In a “Converged Infrastructure” world, connecting to servers like the HP-UX is important. So why not have a moble OS solution that can really integrate with this idea?

Consumer Level OS

HP has really pushed their lines of consumer products in the last couple years. From netbooks to touchscreen machines, they have brought a lot of innovation to the machine. But they still rely on other Operating systems to really power the experience.

With a mobile OS solution, they can bring an experience to all these devices, some with option to have both on the computer. If you need Windows or just a device that can access the internet to make a Skype call or send an email.

So there are a lot of places Palm could become integrated. Items that HP could have implemented already with other Operating Systems, but they would still be other companies OS’s. This Palm acquisition can give the mobility HP is looking for in more than one way. That, might be worth the 1.2 billion.

Do not ever buy any charging device from Mophie. I explain in my show tonight on how this is the worst designed after-market i Phone charger and my experience with three failed units. Listen to learn how to win a Roku. We will give another one away next week. Next show will be recorded in Albuquerque New Mexico.

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Listener Links:
Progress Launch from ISS!
UK Technology Policy Debate
ASUS Keyboard with Speakers.
ASUS Keyboard Review.
Japanese Space Yacht.
Listener shares his Apps on his phone.
Inflatable Booster Seat.
Create your Online School.
Online Tattoo Simulator.
Digital Makeup Mirror.
Incredible ISS Pictures.
Aliens = No Contact.

Show Links:
Oil Everywhere!
Water from Space.
Progress to ISS.
Chile wins big Telescope.
Sony TV’s with Intel Inside.
HP and Palm good match or bad?
Steve Jobs Talks Down Flash.
TomTom to save itself with Apps?
T-Mobile and Bandwidth Caps.
No Tethering yet from AT&T?
Space Balloon – 1 SUV – 0
No G’s for the iPhone.
Hotel Wi-Fi Ratings.
Gov’t Request and Google.
Thats my iPhone story and i’m sticking to it.
1 Million dollars for rights to cell Mobile ads to iPhone?
Is Facebook the New Mob?
40 Uses for Floppies.
2nd Chrome Patch Available.
NASA says no Life on Mars, Yet.
Gov. Palin email trial deadlocked.
OLED used for Infrared?
I can raise my own kids thank you!
iPad 3g Pricing!
Polaroid Lives.
Spirit sets a Record!
College Students Attendance Tracked!
Windows 7 Worst Features.

Send in your stories to geeknews@gmail.com and be sure to provide a link to your websites!

The news that Hewlett-Packard has bought Palm has rocked the tech world and has even been covered by some of the mainstream media (BBC).  It’s possibly second only to the next-gen iPhone debacle.  But all of this has been adequately covered elsewhere.

I’m a long-time Palm owner.  I started out with a Palm III, buying it in Heathrow’s duty-free shop out of my first pay packet as a business consultant.  I think that was back in February 1999.  Since then I’ve had a further three PDAs (defecting to Sony Palms for awhile), before getting into smartphones with the Treo 650.  I’m now on the Pre, which I like.

This isn’t meant to be a demonstration of fanboy-ism, but rather a reflection that for over ten years, I’ve probably had a Palm device in my hand almost every single day of the year.  It’s become integrated into my life in a way that no other device, website or even person has. It knows what I’m doing, when I’m doing it and who with.  It knows what I’m reading, what I’m playing, what I’m watching, what I’m listening.  It’s my bank balance, my stocks, my shares, my Christmas wishlist.

It’s me.

So while HP might have been buying Palm, it’s also bought me and thousands of other Palm owners whose devices are a daily part of their lives.  Welcome to the family, HP.

My Faithful audio recording machine refused to record tonight, but we had the backup recording machine and everything went as planned. Congrats to Jeff that won the Ring Central contest and will get a years free worth of service. On Friday’s show we will give away the Roku to a lucky listener plus we will pick the iPhone application developer winner as well. Great show tonight with lots of great content.

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Listener Links:
Home Made WiFi Extenders
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Show Links:
Laptop Falls from the Sky!
Radioshack kills Palm Pre Line!
Mac Docks
Brain Implants.
Logitech Squeezebox Touch
Apple iPhone 4th Gen
Are they Thieves?
Ten Computer Scams.
No Upgrade of 13 inch Macbook Pro.
Two Universities ban iPads.
More Fiber cuts between UK and Middle East.
Akamai Ranks Cities.
Akamai and Mobile Internet!
South Korea Average Speed Down 24%.
Google lost Authentication Software!
Calacanis versus TWIT.
Network Solutions Web Services Hacked!
Ebay self Bidder found Guilty.
Computer + Remote + TV = Easy
Zune HD hacked!
Is NASA holding out?
School Webcam Scandal gets worse.
Microsoft introduces Fix It.
North Carolina wants your Amazon History!
Married via a Webcam.
Facebook Like or Hate?
Top 10 NASA Flubs.
San Fran Network Admin awaits Jury.
CS Student? Better Read!
Cows get Carbon Credits for Treadmill Usage.
East Coast Next for Ash Cloud?
Towing Company gets a Taste of Web Vengeance.
Airlines want to Fly.

Send in your stories to geeknews@gmail.com and be sure to provide a link to your websites!

Late last week Palm pushed out an upgrade to its WebOS operating system for the Palm Pre and Pixi phones, taking them to version 1.4.  In the past few weeks, Palm has taken a fair amount of flak, primarily from analysts but also from users.  Its performance in Europe hasn’t exactly been stellar though it seems to have done well enough in Germany and even the US numbers weren’t as good as expected. 

However, with WebOS 1.4 I feel the phone and the platform is really getting somewhere and Palm is starting to get it right.

First of all 1.4 was pretty much released simultaneously to all phone users.  Previously, there were weeks between the CDMA version coming out and then the GSM version being released.  As a GSM owner, nothing irked more than a new version coming out on CDMA and everyone talking about features you couldn’t yet have.

Secondly, not only are bugs being fixed, but new features are being added.  For example, in addition to video recording, there is now video editing on the phone.  Brilliant for taking videos of the kids,  removing the rubbish parts and forwarding to the grandparents.  I played around with the video recording over the weekend and it’s surprisingly good.

Thirdly, the WebOS is ready for Flash, which is coming Real Soon Now via a download from the AppCatalog.   And by the way, the browser scores 92/100 on the Acid 3 test.

Fourth, the AppCatalog is filling up nicely (albeit there still aren’t paid apps in Europe yet either.  That’s coming RSN too.)  I’ve got to the point where I’m only waiting on two apps to be released before I can leave the legacy PalmOS apps behind and one of these is already available in the US.  The other – DataViz’s Documents To Go - is hotly anticipated by many Pre and Pixi owners.

Fifth, Palm Synergy might be Palm’s unique selling point tying on-line calendars, contacts and email back to the phone and merging them seamlessly, but it’s also encouraged others to think similarly.  For example, RSS readers that sync with Google Reader (Feeds Free), finance apps that link with an online version (ClearCheckBook), info organisation (Evernote),  task tracking (Outline Tracker) and so on.  I love being able to do stuff when I’m out and about on my phone and then have access to exactly the same information when I sit down at my desk.

Finally, multitasking.  WebOS has always had this but the ability to have more than one app open at a time is the only way to go.  Right now, I have Tasks, Feeds Free (an RSS reader), Tweed (a Twitter client),  DrPodder (a podcatcher), Email, Videos and Outline Tracker, all open at once.

For awhile there, I was really kind of “take-it-or-leave-it” about Palm and WebOS.  I’d felt a little let down that the features and programs I’d been used to on my Treo 680 just weren’t there.  With the release of 1.4, I’m feeling better about the Pre and what it can do for me.  We’re getting there.

I blew the barn doors off on this one folks!. Hopefully iTunes cooperates tonight not sure what happened last podcast. Be sure to always check in at the website for the show. I cover a far amount of ground tonight and I reach out to our Italian listeners hopefully you all can talk to me about the Insanity in Italy at the moment.

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Listener Links:
Can the US defend a Cyber Attack?
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Show Links:
Italy has lost their minds!
Microsoft brings down Botnet!
OGG Versus H.264 Head to Head!
Intuit updates Quickbooks for Mac!
Facebook gets Wires crossed!
TV Stations asked to give up 500mhz!
Virgin Media to roll 100 mbps Service out!
Latvian Hacker spills beans on Banks!
Esa’s Smos European Space Agency Mission Report.
PALM in Trouble!
Boxee back on Apple TV!
Thunderbird Security Fix!
FTC Investigating Companies for P2P document leaks!
Skype on your TV!
End of Support Life for Many Microsoft Products!
NASA Chief under Fire!
Johnny Cash Song 10 Billionth Downloaded!
Citibank monumental screw up!
Has your Blackberry Radiated you Today?
Whoops Did not mean to knock your site offline!
Is it time for ET Ethics?
Patent Label Chasers?
40 Billion and wanting to Spend Money!
Sen Al Franken wants User Bandwidth Caps!
Klipsch’s Ear Buds.
Telava 3g Pay as you Go!
Detect Wi-Fi Hot Spots at 20 Miles!
Augmented Reality and Social Media?
Second Life to get Second Life?
Politicans and there Keepers!

Send in your stories to geeknews@gmail.com and be sure to provide a link to your websites!

The analysts over at IDC reckon that 2010 is going to be a year of “recovery and transformation”.  On the recovery side, they’re expecting global IT spending to increase by 3.2%, returning to 2008 levels but a large chunk of this spending is going to occur in the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

But more interestingly, the transformation part is going to be increased adoption of  cloud services and the arrival of “enterprise-grade cloud services” and complementary application platforms.  IDC thinks this will be the most important development for the next 20 years particularly when linked in with the growth in mobile devices.

Regarding mobile, IDC sees these competing with PCs as user’s main devices, with over 1 billion mobile devices, fuelled by increasing adoption of smartphones and Apple’s iPad tablet.  They predict over 300,000 iPhone apps and 5x growth in Android apps.  Interestingly, they also predict “apps stores” for netbooks, which I think has already been evidenced by moves from Intel.

Other predictions include “socialytic” apps which mashup business apps with social networks, further reductions in CO2 through IT solutions and more mergers, acquisitions and partnerships.

Personally, I think the cloud services linked to mobile devices is right on the money.  I’ve recently started using a Palm Pre and it links to several on-line services including Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Evernote.  Looking at just Google, there are connections to Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Reader and I’m expecting Tasks, Documents and Notebook to be available before long.  So I’m already living in the cloud and I love it.

The whole press release is over at IDC.

Very weird one folks first 40 minutes I had a buzz I could not track down. At the 40 minute mark it simply went away. Very annoying.. I share with you the launch of the Travel Cast Network and my battle with a car dealer on Saturday and of course a super large helping of Tech News!

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Listener Links:
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Show Links:
Red Beacon Interview
Apple gets Political in app Store?
Apple 0 – Psystar 1
Spy on Bit.ly short url clicks.
Live in NYC? Mark has a Business Op for you.
Cyanogen and Google Fiasco calms down.
Make your own Word Clock!
Scoble’s Twitter SUL List.
rssCloud Update!
Cloud Enabled Podcast Feeds?
Video Encoding Sites!
Someones going to Jail!
Google Docs add’s Student Features. (Bravo)
Newegg IPO Announced.
Yawn 2 Billion App Downloads.
Google Places is it Evil?
Why is Apple forcing software again?
Value and Valuation by Doc Searls.
Hey why can’t we talk on our cells Airborne?
European Union say 85db is high enough!
Palm App Store = Apple App Store!
Chrome OS!
UK Orange to get iPhone.
10 Blog Editors.
Love Windows / Hates Ad Campaigns!
Is your phone Radiating you?
79.99 Palm Pre at Walmart.
Repair or Upgrade your iPod.
Wireless carriers crying!
Google, Bank, Gmail, Judge = Idiots!
Security Essentials available now!
Messenger super close Mercury fly by!
First Entertainer to go to ISS!
Our Sky in 800 Million Pixels!
DHS Data Search Percentages!
Warner back on YouTube — So What!
Gravity boost to get to Mars Faster!
SpaceX ready to test heavy lift rocket!

Your geek here at Geek News Central is looking for some info from the Ohana and I am sure you will come through for me. Looking for a lot of feedback on a couple of issues. Lots of great tech tonight as always that you are going to find very stimulating.

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Listener Links:
Podcast Madness Continues
Private Company Launches Satellites
Facebook and Canadian Privacy Laws conflict
A US Government Agency Speed Test Results SHOCKING!
iPhone 3GS Video
Action starts at 26:03 in this Video!
15 Year old Commenter
No more shock therapy for Internet Addicts!
Monkey Moves Robot with Mind Control?

Show Topic Notes:
Google Health gets you Prepared for Death!
Apollo 11 Videos Restored
New Space shots of Sea Ice.
Journalist know the end is near.
RIAA to have to open books during trial on finances!
Unknown Substance in Alaska Waters.
Crew Inspects Endeavor after Launch!
Fonera 2.0 Wireless routers available in the United States!
1.5 Billion Apps downloaded from Apple App Store!
12% of us are real dumb as we respond to spam by buying something?
Would be Sat hackers arrested on DMCA charges!
Did you get a 23 Quadrillion Visa Over charge and $15.00 over limit charge as well?
Yes your being watched on Twitter by Advertisers.
Microsoft Fights Fire with Fire opening stores Near Apple Stores!
Apple drops to 5th in computer sales!
Palm in trouble after Apple locks them out of iTunes!
Will you pay for that News Site?
Twitter corporate docs spread for world to see quite shameful!
Twitter who left the door unlocked?
Rebooting RSS?
Google Reader tries to go Social.
Personal Damage Control Suggestions!
Boston.com Remembers Apollo 11 in Pics.
Firefox tools for Web Workers.
Stumbleupon’s Awesome URL shortner!
Do you need advanced e-mail search?
Google wants you to fight for National Broadband!
Google Launches Best Mobile Location Information Feature yet!
Free or Paid what do you think is more popular? Easy Deduction ehhh!
Chrome OS all about Advertising in your Face
EVGA Interview 1770 has possibilities!
Bill Gates Yawns on Google OS says just another Linux Systems.
Did Apple really ask Microsoft to stop Laptop-Hunter Ads?