Last Week’s News - Week of Nov. 14 / 2010
It is with frozen fingers that I type this update of last week’s news.
Leading the news, again, is Apple for last week was Apple’s announcement that they have finally settled their dispute with Apple Records and the Beatles are now available on iTunes. After that, there is some news regarding Facebook’s new messaging system, and more info on RIM’s Blackberry Playbook.
Apple
After years of fighting Apple Records over the “Apple” name, both Apple Computer and Apple Records (the publisher of the Beatles) have come to an agreement that means that the Beatles and all their music is available on iTunes.
In other good news, Mobee has released the Magic Charger which will wirelessly charge your wireless mouse. You just put it on the pad and the mouse will charge.
Social
Facebook unleashed their new messaging system last week. The more-than-just-e-mail system is meant to consolidate all of a user’s interactions with other people—whether it’s via SMS, Facebook messages, or e-mail—into one spot. There is definitely an advantage to having all your communication tied to one account…of course, there are also disadvantages (ie..if the site goes down).
It was almost predictable that Facebook was going to unleash something new to grow their business. In the social networking business, if you aren’t expanding your function you are in danger of becoming obsolete. There are always the usual predictions that Facebook only has 5 years to live.
As it is, Facebook is starting to gain zombie accounts…accounts that have been abandoned. It’s predicted that they’ll reach 5 million of these types of accounts by 2015. Unfortunately, the first attempt by Facebook to combat these accounts has led to some disabling of valid accounts.
Across the seas, a Chinese woman has been jailed for what would be considered an harmless tweet over here. By re-tweeting a Twitter update from her boyfriend, she has found herself sentenced to some hard time in a prison camp.
Tech
Lots of news regarding RIM’s Blackberry Playbook. There was a nice display of the Playbook in action (see above video), but it really became interesting when RIM’s Jim Balsillie started laying into Apple regarding their “App-ification” of the desktop experience. He basically came out and said that you don’t need an app to view the web, which may be targeted at the recent success of the SkyFire app for the iPhone that brings Flash playback to the device.
Another nice piece of news this week was the announcement that Amazon would allow the gifting of virtual books for Kindle owners.
Mobile
Finally, the news that I was happiest to hear last week was that Google Docs are now editable with your iPhone (and Android). One of my biggest pet peeves was not being able to edit my Google Docs while on my iPhone.
Windows Phone 7 got in the news last week for some unfortunate news concerning their microSD slots. For many of the phones, the slot is not accessible, but on the Samsung phone, the slot is easily accessible. To many users’ dismay, it appears that putting in a larger microSD card can actually slow your phone down due to the way that some microSD cards access the memory on themselves.
