Sunday, December 18, 2011

Controversial Saudi billionaire invests $300 million in Twitter


The Saudi royal family member who suggested that US policy in the Middle East contributed to 911 and who donated $10 million for New York City disaster relief (rejected by Mayor Rudy Giuliani) now owns part of Twitter.

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal's Kingdom Holding Co. invested $300 million in Twitter.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-19/prince-alwaleed-kingdom-invest-300-million-in-twitter.html

Thursday, October 27, 2011

THE DEATH OF THE PC

The  days of paying for costly software upgrades are numbered.   The PC will soon be obsolete, and BusinessWeek  reports 70% of Americans are already using the technology that will replace it.   Merrill Luynch calls it "  a $160 billion opportunity."  Computing giants including IBM, YAHOO and Amazon are racing to be the first to cash in on the PC-killing revolution.

Yet a small group of little-known companies have a huge head start.   Get the full details on the companies, and the technology that is about to destroy the PC BBINTmagazine.com this November.

BBINT Magazine
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Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Sad Day in Tech: Steve Jobs Dies at the age of 56

By Eric Hargrove  aka. Mr. Beige




Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone 4 last year.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)





Today ends on a truly sad note.  Apple Co-Founder and Chairman Steve Jobs has died. 
He was 56.


Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20116336-37/apple-co-founder-chairman-steve-jobs-dies/#ixzz1ZxHfPgVq





A New Flavor of iPhone in a Brand New Dish

By Eric Hargrove  aka. Mr. Beige



Image provided by Apple Inc.




Hello, BBINT Tech Gadget readers! In the event that you have been disconnected from the Internet or any available news or media sources over the last couple of days, Apple has announced it's newest gadget offering. Yes, you guessed it, it's the iPhone 4S. Many of you may have heard rumors brewing over the past year or so about specs, model numbers, and yes, possible carriers. Well, yesterday, we all received confirmation of what we have all been expecting for quite some time. Introducing a newer faster stronger iPhone, (insert the bionic man intro theme music) the iPhone 4S.

Many of us were wondering if Apple would jump up a generation and make this the iPhone 5 or if they would repeat the release strategy that they had with the 3G and the 3GS, but don't let the fact that there is still a 4 in the model number fool you.  Apple has crammed a ton of stuff into this new iPhone release and to top it off they have now opened up the doors to Sprint customers (the noise that you may hear right now is my EVO 4G getting a little bit anxious)

The iPhone 4S has comes with a bit of an octane boost.  It features a dual core A5 chip which will significantly improve performance and graphics rendering.  The A5 chip, for those that don't know, is the same processor that is used in the iPad 2. It is said to be 2X as fast as the previous chips used in the iPhone 4.  "What does all of this mean?", you ask.  Apps will run faster, graphics will render 7X faster and page loads on mobile Safari  will be twice as fast, so all of you who wanted more speed...Apple has been listening.

Apple has also brought out the new iOS 5 which adds over 200 new features including Notification Center, iMessage and a new digital assistant program called Siri, which at first glance looks like a major game changer. Apple has also implemented a collection of free cloud based services called iCloud. one of the great things about iCloud is that automatically and wirelessly allows you to store your content in iCloud and push it to all your devices.  Once again, Apple is bringing the same type of innovation which has kept it ahead of the pack and made it the envy of other mobile manufacturers.

I'm sure that the little fiasco with the antenna issue that affected  the previous release has been on the minds of a few of you.  Apple is now introducing a dual-antenna design with the iPhone 4sthat makes it the first phone to intelligently switch between two antennas to send and receive. iPhone 4S now supports twice the download speed with HSDPA of up to 14.4 Mbps and iPhone 4S is a world phone, so both CDMA and GSM customers can now roam internationally on GSM networks.  Those of us previously anchored to state-side use because of CDMA technology can now start to rejoice.

Last but not least, comes the iPhone's new camera. the iPhone 4S includes an all new camera with the most advanced optics of any phone currently on the market. The 8 megapixel sensor has 60 percent more pixels so you can take amazing high quality photos with more detail than ever. iPhone 4S includes a new custom lens, a larger f/2.4 aperture and an advanced hybrid IR filter that produce sharper, brighter and more accurate images. The Apple-designed image signal processor in the A5 dual-core chip is built for performance, and coupled with the features built into iOS 5, makes the camera one of the fastest on any phone. With iPhone 4S, the Camera app launches much faster and the shot to shot capability is twice as fast, so you'll never miss another shot.

New features in the Camera and Photos apps give you instant access to the camera right from the lock screen, and you can also use the volume-up button to quickly snap a photo. Optional grid lines help line up your shot and a simple tap locks focus and exposure on one subject; and the new Photos app lets you crop, rotate, enhance and remove red-eye, and organize your photos into albums right on your device to share them on the go. 

Oh wait... and there's more.  The new iPhone 4S can also now record video in full 1080p HD resolution and with the new video image stabilization feature, you can take videos that don't make you sea sick or have your footage unintentionally looking like a sequel to the Blair Witch Project.  Other iPhone 4S video camera improvements include increased sensitivity, sharpness and low light performance. 

 All in all, I'm excited to get my hands on this new piece of tech, partially because of the amazing new feature set and partially because I'm a die hard Sprint customer who is happy that I am finally able to attend the iPhone party!  


Check out the iPhone 4S promo video here!!!

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Meet Amazon's Tablet Contender - The Kindle Fire


By Eric Hargrove  aka. Mr. Beige

Photo courtesy of Amazon.com

Amazon has just introduced the new Kindle Fire, its highly-anticipated tablet device offering. The Kindle Fire brings a 7-inch form-factor that not to0 dissimilar from that of the Blackberry PlayBook and runs an Amazon flavored custom Android user interface that seems to be pretty spectacular.
As mentioned before, Amazon's Kindle Fire is very similar in appearance to the BlackBerry PlayBook, but I challenge you to find a tablet that doesn't look similar in some way. It weighs 414g (14.6oz) which is fantastic for one-handed use. It also packs a 1024 x 600 pixel, 7-inch IPS display. The Kindle Fire has a dual-core, 1GHz, TI OMAP4 processor under the hood, and it offers 8GB of internal storage. Unfortunately Amazon's offering does not have any cameras, nor does it offer a microphone. It also is Wi-Fi-only. Bummer for those of us who were hoping for 3g or 4g connectivity. Amazon does, however, promise 7 hours of continuous video streaming with its built-in battery.
The Kindle Fire UI is Android at heart, but by looking at it, you would never know it. In a stroke of genius, Amazon has designed the interface to look like a bookshelf, and has created the ability to give quick access to all of your media and digital content. The Kindle Fire also incorporates all of Amazon's digital media services, so you can literally go direct to your content without the need to sync to a secondary computer or device
Another great attribute of  the Kindle Fire is that it is capable of multitasking, something that HP was hoping they would be able to really wow people with when they released  the lackluster TouchPad WebOS device.  (HP, take a note.) The Kindle Fire allows you to do just about everything that today's demanding techno-sumer could want.  Listen to music while browsing the web, or reading your favorite novel.  Apparently you can also share video to TV on the same network. 
Lastly, make way for Amazon's new browser called Silk. Amazon is leveraging its server network and hosting services to bring a snappier user browsing experience.  Amazon decided to try out splitting the work of processing information between the Kindle Fire and it's servers back home.  This is a much more efficient way to handle data than what we have seen in the past.  It is said that the Silk Browser also incorporates data gathered from large user groups to anticipate and preload the pages that the end user will probably go to next
Once the Kindle Fire hits stores on November 15th, it will retail for $199. As part of the deal, customers will get a 30-day trial subscription to Amazon Prime, as well as the included streaming video service for free.  If you are one of the tech junkies that must have only the newest and the best, you can pre-order the Kindle Fire here.
Take a look at this video segment on CNN.com