Microsoft just announced they’re launching their own branded Surface for Windows 8 RT and Surface for Windows 8 Pro tablets. I guess it’s safe to assume that the old Microsoft Surface is dead, since they reused the name and url
for the new tablet PC. It measures 9.3mm, has a 10.6", 16:9 widescreen HD Display, and comes with an integrated Kickstand and a revolutionary, 3mm thin, pressure sensitive cover that doubles as a fully functioning keyboard and trackpad. The Standard Version has a 1080p resolution, while the Pro Version comes with an amazing 4096p.
I personally still don’t see the point of the netbooks, ultrabooks, or new marketing slang of the day … Is anyone using them? isn’t a Macbook Pro / AIR and an iPad enough?
If you had traded FB Stock the IPO Opening day based on Twitter sentiment signals, how would you have done? Think Twitter could be a valid indicator of Facebook Stock Price?
Probably pretty well! Claims
data collection and analysis company Datasift.
They monitored Twitter’s social data and its relation to the Facebook stock price. What they found was pretty interesting: the positive and negative posts on Twitter mirrored the fluctuations in Facebook stock price.
Of course, while Wallet is Google’s first big push into mobile payments, it is far from the first. Mobile payments have been “the future” of payments for decades now, long before the days of smartphones equipped with NFC (or Near Field Communication
). Early attempts in the 1990s from companies like DigiCash
focused not on phones, but on standalone “smart cards,” which promised better security, no transaction fees and more convenience than traditional credit cards – one day we would use them not to just pay for items at a store, but from our home computers as well. E-cash for an e-economy.
With the rapid rise of cellphones, though, came a push for mobile commerce, or “m-commerce,” an effort that really began to pick up steam in the early 2000s
when mobile payments were not just the realm of upstarts, but big players like Nokia (which would continue to push its own efforts throughout the decade). Our phones would be the one device we used for everything: they’d open doors, get us on a bus or subway, and let us pay for anything, anywhere. In many ways, that’s still the goal we’re working towards, and one that’s slowly starting to become a reality.
Awesome infographic on the world of tech IP. Lawsuits, patents, and tons of activity. Note that Apple doesn’t sell patents to anyone, and no one is allows to touch Apple’s IP. Apple is the most active player in the court room as well. Google very quiet, but plays well in the patent marketplace. Motorola Mobility remarkably told a monstrous number of patents to Google, which might have been cheaper to just buy them than keep paying it. And Nortel apparently has it made, where every large player pays them a nice recurring revenue.
Short note on a few changes I’ve made lately … For those who syndicate my blog, I changed the look .. got bored of that Apple-ish look and installed a much cleaner one.
I also wanted to improve the reading experience and made tons of improvements on performance and loading time:
I installed Varnish in front of Apache. I originally installed Varnish 2.1.5 a few weeks ago and the different was amazing.
