Last week, Apple passed Microsoft in market capitalization. Microsoft is still the most profitable company in the segment, and as Jobs himself would point out, it is all about profit. However the one saying I’ve made famous is that “perception is 100 percent of reality,” and the perception is that Apple did and continues to beat Microsoft. The executive Microsoft had positioned against Apple was Robbie Bach, who ran Microsoft’s entertainment and hardware division, and this got me thinking that Apple’s greatest strength may be its secret fifth column.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Contrition is not something you normally see from Facebook. What are they going to do, say sorry for trying to squeeze a profit out of all that data everyone’s willfully throwing at them? Sure, they have their fun over at Facebook HQ. Everyone gets naptime, there’s a kegerator next to every computer, and most clothing is optional — that’s to promote openness. But running the site does take a fair amount of work and work costs money, and is it really all that painful or shocking to see an ad for Skippy pop up 30 seconds after you finish uploading a dozen photos of yourself that involve peanut butter in non-sandwich-related contexts? You call it creepy; they call it relevant — and they call it revenue, which is the only thing keeping this little playground that everyone wants to screw around in from becoming this decade’s Geocities.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The One Laptop Per Child project announced Friday that it has teamed up with semiconductor manufacturer Marvell to offer kids in developing nations a computer for under $100. This time, the project will offer Marvell’s Moby tablet computer. Previous attempts by the OLPC to provide children in developing nations sub-$100 computers hit various snags and holdups — will the OLPC be able to succeed this time? OLPC said its next-generation tablets will be based on Marvell’s Moby reference design.

Popularity: 1% [?]

To the average user, Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platforms are two variations of the same thing — they’re just software that runs smartphones. Both offer touchscreen capabilities, and both offer third-party applications that enhance the experience. The differences, however, are significant, and they go far beyond hardware, which Apple typically claims as its chief advantage. Looking under the hood, the trained eye can see a philosophical chasm between the two systems, and this difference is where the two platforms are staking their claims to market share.

Popularity: 1% [?]

One of the early predictions of a Verizon iPhone goes back to 2007, when ZDNet’s Russell Shaw predicted the iPhone would be on Verizon within a year. Since then, there have been countless other stories offering predictions or circulating rumors that inside sources had disclosed a Verizon iPhone would “definitely” be coming in the next week/month/year. All obviously have been proven to be false. When Steve Jobs delivers his WWDC keynote on June 7, one of the big questions people hope he will answer is what carriers in the U.S. will be getting the next-generation iPhone.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Thanks to advances in computer-generated technology, the images simply jump out at you from the TV screen, as all good commercials should: massive sheets of orange fabric covering up the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles and unfolding down the sides of buildings on the Las Vegas Strip, dropping from the top of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, being unfurled by shiny happy people all along an East Coast beach. The late British singer-songwriter Nick Drake’s “From the Morning” lulls you into accepting all this as just another day in the U.S.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The new privacy controls Facebook announced Wednesday were met with criticism the following day from privacy groups that called the new policies inadequate. In a conference call on Thursday, representatives of the groups insisted on a Federal Trade Commission investigation of the social networking giant and regulatory oversight. They also questioned Facebook’s commitment to privacy and its honesty. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday that the social networking site is making its privacy controls simpler.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Symantec is planning to introduce two mobile apps and a Software as a Service security application under an initiative dubbed “Norton Everywhere.” The two apps are Norton Smartphone Security for Android Beta and Norton Connect Beta. The third product, Norton DNS Beta, is a cloud-based service through which users are able to configure their routers or PCs for basic security. The point, explained Dan Nadir, director of product management, consumer business for Symantec, is to offer the company’s security functionality to devices other than the personal computer.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Amid all the controversy over online privacy, one thing has been treated as an almost universal given: Young people don’t care about privacy the way their cautious, conservative elders do. As it turns out, the meme is kind of wrong. Younger Internet users are just as likely as many adults to worry about the amount of information about themselves that’s posted online, are less trusting of social networking services than their elders, and are the only age group to limit availability of online information about themselves as much as they did three years ago, according to a Pew survey.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The idea behind Moe’s Notes is simple enough that I doubt it’s the first application of its kind. It’s a note-taking app that can bundle all sorts of information into a single package. Text, photos, audio notes, location data, tags, timer alerts and video all get saved into the same file and can be sent as a neatly wrapped multimedia package to anyone via email. All these things are possible to do on an iPhone without a third-party app involved; Moe’s just provides all the features in a single app and can tie them together for a single email.

Popularity: 1% [?]

It seems fair to say that the relationship between programmer and platform is in many ways like a romantic one, characterized by mutual respect and a balanced exchange of give and take on both sides. Just as so many of us love and respect Linux, for instance, so it surely loves us back with all its many virtues — no strings or price tags attached! So happy are many in the Linux community with their favorite OS, in fact, that it was difficult not to feel mortally wounded by a recent accusation that Linux does less for programmers than Microsoft does.

Popularity: 1% [?]

You might think that someone at Microsoft is a big fan of Dr. Seuss; naming the new Windows Phones the “Kin One” and “Kin Two” certainly conjures up images of critters that would assist the Cat in the Hat in wreaking havoc on Sally and her brother’s house. But it’s really Kin as in kinship; people joined by common ancestry, or in a more tech-savvy sense, younger users joined by the common desire to share every bit of information they come in contact with via their smartphones. Certainly the two Kin phones bear no kinship to previous Windows Mobile handsets.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Newer Posts »