Category: General Tech

WSJ:

At the heart of the inquiry is the allegation that Google may be blocking calls to certain numbers with high access charges.

Google reserves the right to restrict outgoing calls to some phone numbers, including adult chat lines and conference-call centers, which charge higher access fees to carriers. Blocking such calls reduces Google’s expenses for the service.

AT&T Inc. has cried foul about the practice, saying Google is violating rules that were designed to ensure that phone companies will connect all calls. Earlier this week a group of lawmakers asked the FCC for an investigation into the matter, saying the practice could hurt rural customers.

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MacNN:

American iPhone owners will not be able to officially tether their devices for some time, AT&T has acknowledged. “Whenever we offer new features, we want to offer the best possible customer experience,” a carrier spokesman claims. “For tethering, we need to do some additional fine tuning to our systems and networks so that we do deliver a great experience.”

Same song, second verse.

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Memphis Rapper SIR VINCE has released “Swine Flu” — a song about H1N1 prevention. Even if rap isn’t your thing, you gotta listen to the whole thing.

The second verse is my new ringtone.

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NYTimes.com:

Mr. McAdam was asked if Verizon would allow the Google Voice application, a service that offers free long distance calling, text messages and voice mail. He said it would.

“Either you have an open device or not,” he said. “This will be open.”

Apple has not allowed the Google Voice application to run on the iPhone, which uses the AT&T network. With an Android phone set for the Sprint network shortly, AT&T is now the only major carrier in the United States not to support Android.

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While Verizon’s network is no doubt the best in the US, it’s array of handsets has always been disappointing — Blackberrys make the high-end, with random Motorola, Nokia and Samsung devices rounding out the low-end.

Today Verizon announced a new partnership with Google, promising new Android phones by the end of the year:

Verizon Wireless and Google plan to co-develop several Android-based devices that will be pre-loaded with innovative applications from both parties as well as third-party developers. The family of Android phones on the Verizon Wireless network will come from leading handset manufacturers.

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Engadget:

AT&T’s restrictive network policies might have been behind some of the more notable iPhone app rejections in the past, but at least one major class of applications just got the green light, as Ma Bell just eased the restriction on iPhone VoIP calls over 3G. We can only assume this is the result of the FCC’s renewed push for net neutrality and AT&T’s argument that it’s doesn’t need new regulations to remain open, but — what does this mean for you? Well, Skype on the road, for starters, but we’re guessing a flood of interesting new VoIP apps will hit just as soon as devs can get their apps updated and submitted.

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Ars Technica:

Bloggers will come under the watchful eyes of the Federal Trade Commission for the first time, as the agency has finalized new rules governing bloggers and the products they write about. “Consumer-generated media” outlets (e.g., bloggers) will now have to disclose if they are being compensated by a manufacturer, advertiser, or service provider when they review an item. So if a blogger gets a laptop from a manufacturer to review and gets to keep it, he or she will have to make that fact public.

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TUAW recently took a look at Stuffit Deluxe 2010, the newest version of the long-lasting archiving software for the Mac:

First, the installer crashed during the initial installation with no error message in sight, leaving me to try to figure out what had happened. The second attempt was successful, but required that I log out of my current Mac session and log back in. That took an unusually long amount of time, and when I was finally able to use my machine again, iStat Menu showed that my dual-core CPU was pegged at 100%. While DropBox appeared to be the culprit and a reboot resolved the problem, I can’t help but think that the new addition of StuffIt Deluxe contributed to the issue.

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CNET:

“MythBusters” has now completed production on 134 episodes, and to Hyneman, that much experience has allowed him and Savage to be much more advanced in their approach to busting myths than they were at the beginning.

“The kinds of insights that we’re seeing as far as the physics and the chemistry (and) all the dynamics of what’s going on there,” Hyneman said, “we’re starting out at a much higher level now, and so the results that we’re getting are not quite as basic as they were when we started.”

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The iPhone is hurting AT&T’s image so much that the stock photo from the AP used with CNN’s story is of a jailbroken device:

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The Macalope, on the “Apple tablet will save journalism” story:

Sources at The New York Times told Lam that Apple approached the paper about putting its content on what everyone assumes will be a tablet. Lam doesn’t say what the Gray Lady’s response was, but given the current state of the newspaper business, the Macalope’s advice would go something like this: “When you’re standing on the deck of the Titanic, ankle-deep in icy cold water, and someone asks if you’d like a ride to the future in their time machine, you go.”

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PreCentral:

As rumored, this morning’s webOS 1.2.1 update did indeed bring a fix to Media Sync, allowing the Pre to yet again sync more-or-less seemlessly with iTunes 9.0.1. The update brought another tongue-in-cheek changelog note from Palm: “Resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with latest version of iTunes (9.0.1).”

Resolves the issue of Apple now wanting you in, eh? Now it’s time to figure out what Palm did this time that took less than 40 hours of work, and how long it will take Apple to put out an iTunes update to break it again. Eventually we’re going to reach a point where either Apple will have to radically overhaul the iTunes sync structure to block the Pre, or one of the two parties relents and stops hacking/patching their software. Given the enormous number of iPods on the market right now, it’d be a daunting task for Apple to completely reprogram iTunes to block the Pre, and at this point they’re starting to run out of ways to tell if an iPod is really an iPod, short of asking for serial number authentication.

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