News and comment on what's happening in the technology industry, and the direction it's heading.
Jack Schofield spent the 1970s editing photography magazines before becoming editor of an early UK computer magazine, Practical Computing. In 1983, he started writing a weekly computer column for the Guardian, and joined the staff to launch the newspaper's weekly computer supplement in 1985. This section launched the Guardian’s first website and, in 2001, its first real blog. When the printed section was dropped after 25 years and a couple of reincarnations, he felt it was a time for a change....
It's never fun writing obituaries, for obvious reasons, but it's also rewarding in that you can do your best to make sure someone gets the credit they deserve. Not that that was really a problem with Sir Maurice Wilkes, who died on Monday at the age of 97.
When I did a round-up of Dell's new consumer products, the Vostro V130 laptop was missing because it was a business laptop and I was under a non-disclosure agreement, which lifted today. I'm not sure why secrecy was a factor since the V130 is basically an upgraded version of the V13 launched a year ago.
Gartner has reduced its estimate for this year's PC sales to 352.4 million units, which represents 14.
It's no secret that most electronics products are now Made in China, but new figures from China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) still have a mind-boggling scale. A table compiled by Taiwan's DigiTimes reveals that in January-October 2010, China made 792 million handsets, 153 million notebook PCs, almost 45 million desktop PCs, 112 million monitors, 95 million colour TV sets, and 75.
Acer held a press conference in New York today to show its dual-screen Iconia laptop PC and three Android tablets.Iconia is unusual in having two touch screens: one acts as a display and the other provides a keyboard or other type of controller, though it can also be used as a display screen.
Dell showed off a raft of new products in London yesterday, including the Inspiron Duo netbook/tablet, an all-in-one touch screen PC, an M101z netbook, and the latest Dell Streak mobile phone. One of Dell's staff also had a Venue Pro running Windows Phone 7.
Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest computer company, has just turned in a decent set of financial results, with fourth quarter turnover up by 8% to $33.3 billion, and net profits by 5% to $2.
This weekend, Microsoft Windows celebrated its 25th birthday, though without much dancing in the streets. It was released on November 20, 1985, but not many people stumped up the $99 price.
Dozens of Apple fan sites have been speculating about what Apple was going to announce tomorrow, and the Wall Street Journal is claiming a scoop: Apple iTunes, at Long Last, Gets Rights to Beatles.Referring to anonymous sources, the story says: "The deal resulted from talks that were taking place as recently as last week among executives of Apple, representatives of the Beatles and their record label, EMI Group Ltd.
Today (Monday), Facebook is expected to use the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco to announce something new in the apps area.