Archive for Ars Technica

Google Voice rejection came from the top at Apple (updated)

Sep 20, 2009 No Comments

Apple’s rejection of the Google Voice app for the iPhone went all the way to the top—the bad news was personally delivered to Google by none other than Apple’s Senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing, Phil Schiller… Tweet This Post

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McKinsey: businesses reaping benefits from Web 2.0

Sep 17, 2009 No Comments

Whether you call it Web 2.0, social media, or a complete waste of time, businesses seem to like where it’s all going. A new survey of nearly 1,700 businesses by McKinsey & Company finds that using Web 2.0 technologies can lead to increased communication and productivity, more successful marketing strategies, and—surprise—even better products… Tweet This [...]

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PC sales still sagging as market waits for Santa Claus

Sep 17, 2009 No Comments

IDC’s has released its market report for the second quarter of 2009, and it contains little in the way of good news for beleaguered PC vendors. Worldwide PC shipments are down 2.4 percent year-over-year, as businesses and consumers continued to hold off on upgrades and new purchases. Adding to the misery was serious margin compression—aggressive discounting [...]

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Last.fm Scrobbles coming to a radio near you on October 5

Sep 13, 2009 No Comments

CBS is taking Last.fm to the HD radio airwaves on October 5, crowdsourced music trends and all. The company revealed in a press conference Thursday that Last.fm will take over CBS’ HD broadcast stations in four major cities across the US—Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—though listeners in other markets will also be [...]

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AMD’s new VISION for PCs doesn’t go by the numbers

Sep 12, 2009 No Comments

A new GPU architecture wasn’t the only thing that AMD launched Thursday at its event on the USS Hornet; the company also unveiled its latest rebranding, along with two new notebook platforms. Let’s take a look at both, in turn… Tweet This Post

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New Microsoft-backed open source foundation faces questions

Sep 11, 2009 No Comments

Microsoft has launched a nonprofit organization with the aim of encouraging commercial software vendors to participate in open source software development. Microsoft has provided the organization, which is called the CodePlex Foundation, with $1 million in funding to get it started… Tweet This Post

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Copyright Office slams Google Book deal, Google opens up

Sep 10, 2009 No Comments

When the US Copyright Office first heard about the proposed Google Books settlement, it found the idea a “positive development.” Then, after reading the fine print, it changed its collective mind, deciding instead that Google was really out to rewrite US copyright law through the courts. Marybeth Peters, the Register of Copyrights, today explained to [...]

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AMD’s next-gen GPU powers Crysis on an iPhone

Sep 10, 2009 No Comments

AMD unveiled its next-gen GPU, and secretive networked gaming company OTOY used it to power a demo of Crysis running on an iPhone. Believe it or not, it really worked.AMD unveiled its next-generation GPU architecture at an event today aboard the USS Hornet—2.5 teraFLOPS of floating-point power, or well over twice the company’s current high-end [...]

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Ruby on Rails vulnerability affects Twitter; IE8 immune

Sep 06, 2009 No Comments

The Ruby on Rails developers have patched a new cross-site scripting vulnerability that was recently detected by a security researcher. The bug affected popular sites like Twitter and Basecamp, but Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 was immune thanks to built-in XSS filtering… Tweet This Post

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Amazon: Google book deal possibly illegal, definitely bad

Sep 06, 2009 No Comments

As time runs short for comments on the proposed Google book settlement to be filed, Amazon has filed its objections: it’s Congress’ job to sort out copyright issues, the deal will create an illegal entity, and (worst of all) it’s bad for Amazon’s business model… Tweet This Post

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AMD aims to stay in the race with Magny-Cours 12-core CPU

Sep 01, 2009 No Comments

At the recent Hot Chips conference in Palo Alto, AMD outlined its upcoming 12-core server processor, codenamed “Magny-Cours.” The new CPU will arrive in 2010, and will fit into the same power envelope as the existing six-core Istanbul processor. But to make that happen, AMD had to make some compromises. Tweet This Post

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Intel tips Moorestown details, talks up x86 smartphones

Sep 01, 2009 No Comments

At Hot Chips this past week, Intel’s Rajesh Patel revealed more details of the chipmaker’s upcoming Moorestown platform. Patel, who is the lead architect of the platform’s system-on-a-chip (SoC) part, also made it clear that he really does believe that Moorestown is a bona fide “smartphone” platform that will give us the world’s first x86-based [...]

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