Technology News

Unlimited Internet Access 'Has to Change'

Source: Michael Ricci
March 11, 2010

The two largest U.S. wireless carriers agree that the days of unlimited Internet cellphone access are numbered.

A week after AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said the telecom industry would transition to “variable pricing," Verizon Wireless Chief Technology Officer Anthony Melone chimed in to support the idea. Plans offering “as much data as you can consume is the big issue that has to change," Melone told the Wall Street Journal. He added that the companies need to offer a transparent ...

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Amazon's Daily Deal Skirmish Offers Reminder of Apple's Power over the Major Labels

Source: HypeBot
March 11, 2010

According to recent reports, Apple has been aggressively discouraging labels from participating in Amazon MP3's Daily Deal. Feature a new release there, the labels have been told, and your release will get no promotion at all on iTunes.

Being an aggressive competitor is nothing new for Apple. It's also common for labels for show a preference for their largest retailer. But this particular skirmish reveals both Apple's hypocrisy as well as just how much the major labels fear Steve Jobs. ...

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MySpace Redesign May Be Its Last Gasp

Source: PC Magazine
March 11, 2010

How will MySpace regain its footing in the social networking space? A month after ditching Owen Van Natta as chief executive in favor of two co-presidents, the News Corp.-owned site announced Wednesday that its new focus will be on gaming. “Just as music was our springboard for revitalizing our platform, we're taking a similar approach to gaming which you'll see in new features throughout site," co-president Mike Jones wrote in a blog post. MySpace launched a revamped games homepage at ...

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Meet UK's Number One Data Sluth #001

Source: All About Jazz
March 11, 2010

Did you know that 62 percent of all cited statistics are bogus? OK, we made that up.

But after a 2007 poll found that barely a third of all British citizens trust published stats, Parliament formed a math-police squad to investigate. The top cop in the UK Statistics Authority is Richard Alldritt, an expert in how governments fudge the numbers. Alldritt began his career analyzing crime data at the Home Office in London. “I got hooked on what you might ...

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Conan's Lone Tweeter Followee: It's Just Nuts!

Source: All About Jazz
March 11, 2010

CONWAY TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- Last week, Sarah Killen had three Twitter followers. This week, she has 20,000 -- as well as a new iMac computer and offers to help pay for a dress and drinks for her wedding.

The unsuspecting rural Michigan woman has one out-of-work late-night talk show host to thank for her newfound online popularity -- Conan O'Brien. O'Brien decided last week to pick Killen as the only person he would follow on Twitter, turning the 19-year-old's life ...

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Educating Elite Hackers

Source: All About Jazz
March 10, 2010

Rush is on to train,recruit elite hackers. By one estimate the United States currently has about 1,000 elite cyber-security experts. It needs 20,000 to recruit, train, and deploy a new generation of cyber-security experts to protect and defend our digital borders.

It started with Michael Coppola taking things apart at the age of five: the remote control, his mother's house lamps, the family's VCR. He was curious about how things worked. By the time he was in fourth grade, he ...

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Five Must-Have iPhone Photo Editing Apps

Source: Michael Ricci
March 10, 2010

Taking photos is easy. Taking unique photos, however, requires a good eye, a decent camera, and often some editing skills and patience.

Luckily, for many of us who possess none of the above, there exists the iPhone. There were many photo editing applications I was able to find, but here are a few that have now become sine qua non to my camera-clicks.

Hipstamatic - $1.99 There is something really charming about the color gloss that this application ...

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New Rules Sought on TV Retransmission

Source: Michael Ricci
March 10, 2010

Trying to prevent the kind of brinkmanship that had ABC removing its affiliate station from millions of New York area homes hours before the Oscar broadcast, a group of television providers asked the government Tuesday to revamp the rules governing the retransmission of stations.

In a petition to the Federal Communications Commission and in a letter to Congressional leaders, the providers including heavyweights like DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and Verizon, as well as smaller providers and nonprofit groups said the ...

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