Head

There was recently a little skirmish on the web regarding the question of whether or not Microsoft has stopped innovating — whether the internal corporate culture there has thwarted new ideas, and so on. Well, I think we can all agree that Microsoft hasn’t exactly been an innovation machine in recent years; although, with as little currency as the word “innovation” has these days, that’s not saying much — but the fact is that its products haven’t shown as much ingenuity as its competitors in nearly every arena.
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At long last, webOS has been granted a Facebook application worth its weight in kilobytes. A completely revamped version of the Facebook application has just gone live in the Palm App Catalog – and boy, is it an improvement. Palm has offered some level of Facebook support on webOS since the launch of the Pixi – but as we noted in our Pixi review, calling what it had “Facebook support” was probably exaggerating. You could sync your Facebook contacts, read your news feed, and.. well, that’s it.
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Good luck sorting this one out, short-sighted lawmakers. An upcoming piece of major legislation in the UK, called the Digital Economy Bill, would essentially force all public wi-fi points offline by requiring impossibly high levels of copyright protection. The bill, which bears some similarity to the controversial DMCA here in the US, is ostensibly aimed at providing copyright holders the means of controlling their content online.
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Good news, Palm fans! If you’ve taken a break from jamming on the “Update” button, it’s time to go tap it one last time: the rollout of webOS 1.4 has just begun. The catch: it seems that it’s only for Sprint handsets right now, with the Verizon Pre Plus and Pixi Plus still reporting that 1.3 is the latest release. We knew it was coming in February thanks to Palm’s announcement at CES — and thanks to the rumor mill, we were all lead to believe it was coming a few weeks ago.
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Editor’s note: This guest post is written by Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. In it, he explains why enterprise software should take its cues from Facebook and become more social. I quit my job at Oracle in 1999 because I couldn’t stop thinking about a simple question: “Why isn’t all enterprise software like Amazon.
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There’s nothing like finding and getting rid of junk on eBay, especially if you’re a gadget hound looking to offload last month’s toys for the latest and greatest. While it’s entirely possible to manage your eBay account on your phone’s browser, a dedicated application would make life so much easier. The new eBay app for Android could make shopping, paying and selling through the online auction site a breeze.
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This is a guest post by Tiffany Philippou who started the Secret London Facebook Group. Two weeks after launch the group had amassed over 180,000 members, propelling its 21 year old creator into her first startup – see our previous coverage. The website build weekend drew to a close two days ago and it is only beginning to dawn on me that we might just have achieved the impossible. Building a website for £3,000 and in only 48 hours.
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I don’t have an iPhone. And I’m happy with my other devices. But while I laugh at AT&T issues, mock iPhone users for lacking features I have on Android, and so on, there has always been one thing I’ve been desperately jealous of: the touchscreen. Now, I’ve had my share of touchscreens of all sizes and shapes. I’ve demoed phones and devices of varying quality for years. And somehow, Apple got themselves a better touchscreen in 2007 than any other company in the world has been able to buy or develop in the succeeding three years.
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Unlike most other smartphone platforms, Windows Mobile doesn’t come with a mapping application pre-installed by default. While this may very well change with the soon-to-be-announced Windows Mobile 7, it has thus far been up to the handset manufacturer to throw in a map app if they so choose. Later this week, messaging/location technology providers TCS will announce that Sony Ericsson has chosen their turn-by-turn application, Gokivo, to be pre-loaded onto future Sony Ericsson-made Windows Mobile handsets.
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If you can’t laugh at yourself… Robert Scoble insisted (insisted!) that we take these photos. Possibly to let the healing process begin after yesterday’s Google phone drama. And he isn’t the only one who wants to turn this into some kind of meme. I hope we call just let this go now, and move on with our lives. I promise to try to use a headset much more often while driving in those states that require it, and otherwise abide by the laws of the land.
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