Items tagged with bill
Every hardware maker has constraints -- be it battery life, heat, size, or available materials. On the design front, one challenge that has thus far been impossible to overcome is the FCC stamp that has to be imprinted on the exterior of any device certified for use amongst the United States' airwaves. Now, that's history. President Obama signed the E-Label Act into law, enabling gadget makers to place that tiny logo in software within a product rather than on the outside.It seems fairly small in the grand scheme of politics, but it was a bi-partisan bill that had little issue sweeping support in the House and Senate. Beyond the FCC logo, gadget builders can also stamp ID numbers and other labeling...
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No one likes to be surprised by insanely high mobile bills. Or any bills, really. But with those mobile bills, at least there's a governmental agency watching out for Americans, right? Sheers and jeers aside, the CTIA and FCC has announced today new commitments by providers that represent more than 97 percent of wireless consumers in the U.S. to send free alerts to help consumers avoid unexpected overage charges. The joint announcement was made by CTIA President & CEO Steve Largent, Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski, and Consumers Union's Communications Policy Counsel Parul Desai. The plan – called the "Wireless Consumer Usage Notification Guidelines" – will provide...
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Did you know that you can purchase a cell phone in the United States without actually handing over any personal information at all? It's true. For years, consumers have been able to purchase pre-paid cell phones from stores such as Wal-Mart, and since they can be purchased with cash, there's little to no trace left behind. For many, they don't actually stop to think about this, but for drug lords and other criminals who wish to maintain a low cover while communicating on the go, having a pre-paid cell phone is the ultimate luxury. In Australia, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland and Thailand, users who purchase pre-paid mobiles must register so that...
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MySpace Music was expected to be successful, but this successful? It was launched at 12 AM EDT on Sept. 25th, and despite that short period of time, it has already streamed over a billion songs (and yes, we have contributed to that streaming). In comparison, (though obviously not fair as iTunes is a pay service, while MySpace Music streams for free) it took Apple nearly 3 years, from April 28, 2003 to February 23, 2006, for its one billionth music download. MySpace hasn't provided info such as username, song played or the like, but it did say the following: We’re extremely pleased with the launch of MySpace Music—clearly our users around the world are engaged and excited about the new music experience...
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Do you remember that half a billion dollar Microsoft ad campaign we told you about a couple of months ago, architected to improve the image of Microsoft and Windows Vista? Well, the first two ads in the campaign have hit, and if nothing else, they've got people talking.The first ad featured Jerry Seinfeld stumbling upon Bill Gates shopping in a Shoe Circus store for discount shoes. There's some wacky banter between the two, a few funny moments, and an Easter egg or two (am I the only one that noticed Bill's mugshot on the platinum card?), but basically nothing Microsoft or technology related comes up, except for an off the wall question from Jerry at the very end.The brand new second ad...
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It's an obvious statement that mobile messaging is growing, but some recently released numbers from VeriSign indicate just how fast mobile messaging is growing and how it is generating staggering revenue for mobile service providers. You might be familiar with VeriSign as the company behind secure networking solutions for SSL, identity authentication, and domain name services. Perhaps less known is that VeriSign also manages mobile messaging networks that serve "more than 600 carriers and reach over 2.4 billion wireless subscribers... It powers inter-carrier mobile messaging for seven of the top ten wireless carriers in North America and other major operators throughout the world." Credit:...
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It's hard to show tech-savvy consumers advertising. Your grandma might still be looking at every pop-up ad a rapacious Internet businessman can come up with, but between fast-forwarding past TV ad spots with your Digital Video Recorder, pop-up blockers in your browser, and the Do Not Call list, a lot of people are avoiding the vast majority of advertising that's being hurled at them. Advertisers never give up, though. They just try a different approach. High-tech ad avoidance is leading to a boom in one of the oldest forms of advertising: billboards everywhere. They just call it "Out of Home Media" now. The new places for ads — as well as the addition of digital and video capabilities to signs,...
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What do providing secret service protection for former vice presidents and going after cyber criminals have in common? (And no, Al Gore did not have his identity stolen--at least not as far as we know). They are both part of the same bill that was just passed by the Senate. Current legislation lacks the necessary breadth to go after and punish how cyber criminals do their dirty work these days. A cyber-crime bill, the Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act, was introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) last October and it was unanimously passed by the Senate in November. However, it "has been stalled in the House [of Representatives ]" ever since. So as politicians...
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For the month of May, comScore reports that U.S. users watched over 12 billion videos over the Internet--a 45 percent increase in the number of videos viewed online a year ago. Not surprisingly, YouTube garnered the lion's share with almost 35 percent of May's videos viewed online--that's roughly 4.1 billion YouTube videos watched just in the month of May."Nearly 142 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 85 videos per viewer in May. Google Sites [mostly from YouTube] also attracted the most viewers (83.8 million), who watched an average of 50 videos per person. Fox Interactive attracted the second most viewers (60.8 million), followed by Yahoo! Sites (40.2 million) and Microsoft Sites...
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Analysts at Gartner have estimated that there are already one billion computers in use worldwide right now. That's a big number, but it's the estimated rate of growth in PC ownership that jumps off the page in their report -- 12 percent a year. That means by 2014, they estimate two billion people worldwide will be able to leave bizarre comments on YouTube videos or press the autosum button on a spreadsheet. “Whereas mature markets accounted for just under-60 percent of the first billion installed PCs, we expect emerging markets to account for approximately 70 percent of the next billion installed PCs,” says Gartner research vice president Luis Anavitarte. The firm cites the explosive expansion...
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There should be no doubt as to whether the engineers at HP dream in black-and-white or in color. The question should be: How many colors do they dream in? The answer: over one billion. That's how many colors HP's new DreamColor LP2480ZX LCD is capable of displaying: "The HP DreamColor Display features a new liquid crystal display (LCD) that provides a range of more than 1 billion colors in a 30-bit, LED-backlit display. The display is now shipping worldwide for a U.S. list price of $3,499."Three and a half grand might seem pretty steep for a display, but for a number of professional-level, color-accurate-critical applications, the level of accuracy that the price buys is truly mission critical:...
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The ISP network throttling debate continues on Capital Hill: News.com reports that two Democratic Congressmen, John Conyers from Michigan and Zoe Lofgren from California, have introduced new legislation designed to prevent network providers from prioritizing Internet traffic and content.Just like last time, the bill would rewrite U.S. antitrust law to prohibit network operators like AT&T and Comcast from blocking, impairing, or discriminating against "lawful" Internet content, applications, and services or charging extra fees for "prioritization or enhanced quality of service.""The Internet was designed without centralized control, without gatekeepers for content and services," Conyers said...
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Grand Theft Auto IV sold six million copies in its first week alone, netting $500 million for its publisher, Take-Two Interactive. That's even better than the wildest estimates by industry pundits, and probably will make Electronic Arts' bid to purchase Take Two a whole lot more expensive. The significance of the sales extends beyond buoying Take-Two, a company that has had its share of legal, financial and management struggles in the last few years. The company is the subject of a $2 billion hostile takeover effort by Electronic Arts, which is offering Take Two shareholders $25.74 a share for control of the company. If Take-Two can exceed sales expectations on Grand Theft Auto IV, it has the...
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There once was this little company, formed by these two geeks named Paul Allen and Bill Gates ...Bill Gates and Paul Allen create a partnership called Micro-soft. It will grow into one of the largest U.S. corporations and place them among the world's richest people.Gates and Allen had been buddies and fellow Basic programmers at Lakeside School in Seattle. Allen graduated before Gates and enrolled at Washington State University. They built a computer based on an Intel 8008 chip and used it to analyze traffic data for the Washington state highway department, doing business as Traf-O-Data.You have to assume Gary Kildall looks back on the mistake with not getting CP/M-86 onto the IBM PC and wonders...
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$986 million to be more precise. Why so much? It's the last one. That's the projection for the cost to Toshiba to close up shop and retool its production line to make something else. It's the final chapter for Toshiba's ill-fated attempt to offer its HD DVD alternative to Sony's Blu-ray high-definition disk player. Toshiba still turned a profit for their full fiscal year, although it was much smaller than anticipated, and that helped drive its stock price substantially lower after the report of the price tag for HD DVD funerary expenses hit the wires. The report came from the Nikkei Business Daily, not directly from Toshiba. What's Toshiba have to say about it?"We did not announce this, and therefore...
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Bill Gates no longer sits atop the list of richest individuals in the world. While he might not be applying for welfare anytime soon, the irony is that he probably would have retained his slot for a 14th year in a row had Microsoft not bid on Yahoo.“Microsoft shares fell 15% between Jan. 31, the day before the company announced its bid for the search engine giant, and Feb. 11, the day [Forbes] locked in stock prices for the 2008 World's Billionaires list. More than half of Gates' fortune is held outside of Microsoft shares.”Investment mogul Warren Buffett nows tops the list followed by the telecom king of Mexico, Carlos Slim....
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The answer of course is Intel's upcoming Itanium brand CPU codenamed Tukwila.While we tend to focus a lot of our attention on the desktop market, we cannot help but be impressed by server CPUs when we hear figures like 2 billion transistors or 30 MB of on-die cache that make up a good portion of those transistors. “The new Itanium processor will be built on the company’s 65-nanometer manufacturing process and will also be one of the first Intel chips to use the company’s QuickPath interconnect technology—an integrated memory controller. (Advanced Micro Devices already uses an integrated memory controller with its x86 Opteron processors.)”Perhaps the most overlooked benefit of using Intel's...
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It was announced so long ago, in 2006, that many have forgotten. 2008 is the year that Bill Gates steps down from his day-to-day role at Microsoft.The Microsoft co-founder is scheduled to end his day-to-day executive duties at the end of June, but he will remain chairman and he's expected to continue working on selected projects.Microsoft has been preparing for Gates' shift to philanthropy since 2006, when the plan was announced, and it has already installed executives Craig Mundie and Ray Ozzie to fill his roles in the business, working with Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer."I don't think the departure will be too disruptive - it's not like it's a complete severing of the relationship,"...
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Got 113,000 Japanese yen burning a hole in your pocket? That's 495 British Pounds. The money pound, not the weight pound. At any rate, if you've got about $1000 American, you can now afford 100 GB of flash storage, courtesy of Buffalo Japan. Awesome.The company's new SHD-UHRS series of SSDs goes on sale at the end of this month, starting with a 32GB model and culminating in that 100GB whopper. Anyone expecting an internal SATA interface for sticking the thing in a PC will, however, be disappointed as it's an external USB 2.0 only device.Still, that amount of fast, solid-state storage isn't to be sniffed at, which is why the largest model runs a cool ¥113,106 (£495). If the price doesn't...
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The huge quarter marks the first time that a GPU company crossed the $1 billion USD threshold in a quarter.The Santa Clara, Calif., company rang up $1.12 billion in sales in the three months ended October 28, a 19% sequential increae that crushed the company's own guidance of 5% to 7% growth as well as Wall Street's expectation of $1.01 billion. The booming demand for graphics processors appears to have surprised Nvidia, which had cautioned that business might begin to cool in the third quarter. Not only that, NVIDIA raised its outlook for the current quarter, with the stock rising 8.1%, or $2.76, to $36.60 in extended trading Thursday. This occurred despite the huge sell-off in tech stocks...
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Will Poole is tasked with leading Microsoft's push into emerging markets like China, South America, and Africa. His job is simple, really: Find Microsoft another billion computer users. He outlined his approach in a question and answer meeting, touching on interesting approaches to get technology to very poor and isolated places, including making a workable computer out of readily available electronic devices.(Q.) How close is that to being a product? You take the phone that people are already getting, hook it up to the TV they already have and you've got a computer. The phones that we use today in the U.S. certainly are capable of that from a technology perspective. How close is that? Poole:...
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After a flurry of stories, and even a YouTube video showing the huge iPhone bills some users were getting - not in terms of money, but in terms of pages - AT&T has put an end to them. This is likely to be a great relief to mail carriers, some of whom were totiing bills so big that they numbered in the hundreds of pages, and were too large to put into an envelope. Many users began to complain about it to AT&T, saying the bills were far too detailed. The company responded Wednesday by sending all iPhone owners a text message saying that it will be simplifying the bill for those using Apple’s phone. "We are simplifying your paper bill, removing itemized detail. To view...
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