It was big news when the iPad was announced with no plans to have flash implemented on it. Once again Steve Jobs was quite specific — he doesn’t believe Flash is appropriate for mobile devices and for an assortment of reasons won’t use it. Instead, he’s backing HTML 5, a new standard which will allow for embedded video without the need for plug-ins … or the crashes, or the system slowdowns so common when using flash.

Things became more complicated when the iPad promos appeared and seemed to show the New York Times front page running video with ease. The only problem is, the New York Times front page runs video in — you guessed it — flash. Apple was quick to change the ads so that they no longer showed a video running on the front page.

Not so fast. Parts of the Times are already using HTML 5, and it’s quite possible that prior to the launch of the iPad the front page will also.

It’s already known that the Times Skimmer, an innovative way of accessing the New York Times’s content on the web, uses HTML 5 extensively. No wonder it works as smoothly as it does! (and BTW, if you have not tried it you should… it is awesome.)

But that may be just the tip of the iceberg… in a very good way.

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News broke on Thursday that Palm’s WebOS phones are not selling terribly well. The Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on Verizon haven’t been enough to save Palm from issuing a warning that their upcoming earnings may not be sunshine and rainbows. Worse, there are indications that orders of their phones are slowing, indicating demand simply isn’t there. The big question now is, did Palm know this when they claimed production was shut down for Chinese New Year? If they did, and Chinese New Year was just a convenient excuse, there are quite a few people angry at Palm for that bit of obfuscation. And it may end up being more than just a white lie…

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One of the biggest desires for Mac gamers for the last 5 years or so was that Valve’s Digital Download service Steam would come to the Mac, especially after the switch to Intel processors and ‘Cider’ ports made bringing Windows games to the Mac easier than ever. Steam is a service that debuted with Half-Life 2 in 2004, and provides a store with full account management, game launcher with integrated patch management, and an integrated gaming community.

Crossover Games has helped – it is more or less a commercial version of Wine (Linux service) that provides a ‘Windows micro-environment’ for running games. Some folks have had success running certain Steam games that way, but for most it was a pale imitation of the real thing.

The images above were discovered by someone on the Steam forums, and point to OS X elements newly present after the most recent UI (user interface) update. Of course, like anything else, the presence of a few annotated icons doesn’t indicate the existence of an actual product. But as someone who loves Steam, depends on it for a ton of gaming, and also loves my Mac, the thought of getting any amount of my Mac gaming through a Steam service … well, it has me positively giddy!

So what about you? DO you use Steam on the PC? How about digital downloads on the Mac or in general? Give us your thoughts in the comments!

Source: Steam forums

Because my iPhone is largely a work device these days, e-mail is an important element of what I do on it. And because e-mail is an important part of what I do on my iPhone, the iPhone application reMail has become key for me. The concept behind the application is quite simple. It downloads your entire Gmail account to your handheld device, compresses it so that it doesn’t take up an overwhelming amount of space, and then lets that e-mail reside on the device itself so that you can search it whenever and where ever you need. If you’ve ever tried to search for an e-mail from more than a few weeks ago on your iPhone you’ll understand how convenient the speed and off-line access to e-mail is.

And how well does it work? Well, thanks to reMail I have 81,066 different emails on my iPhone and they only take 304 MG of space. That’s impressive and makes it a must have app for serious iPhone users. Sadly, unless you have already purchased the application you’re out of luck.

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Techcrunch is reporting that Amazon is thinking of offering up a free Kindle 2 to subscribers of their Prime service. Apparently spending $80/year can be a bigger savings than just shipping!

As Techcrunch points out, this does make sense. Amazon is targeting their best customers, and what better way to insure loyalty ahead of the iPad than by tying them closer to the Kindle store? The big snag is how to not lose money on this promotion.

A few ideas Amazon could consider:
-Require a certain number of books be purchased within the first year. Nothing crazy, but say 10 books. That would cut the bill for Amazon considerably, and spreads the “cost” for Prime subscribers across several months.
-Offer a partial discount to Prime users. A $99.00 Kindle for Prime members would blow out sales of both Prime and Kindles like crazy.
-Instead of a discount on the Kindle, what about a book discount? This could be a super sneaky way to drive prices back to $9.99; the list price could be reduced by a few dollars for Prime members, to emulate the “shipping savings” Prime offers on physical goods. Since there’s no delivery charge for an ebook, offer a small price reduction!

I think any of these are viable options; the important part is to get Kindles into the hands of people who already spend like crazy at Amazon. What would give you incentive to use Prime and the Kindle? Share below!

Via Techcrunch

I know, I know…you don’t ever want to hear the phrase “Apple Tablet” again. And hopefully by tomorrow we’ll have some confirmation and the flurry of rumors will finally quiet down for a few days. But until then, here’s more fuel to fire the speculation…

Apparently the McGraw Hill CEO needs to use one of his dictionaries to look up the definition of “non-disclosure agreement”…because I’m pretty sure confirming the Apple Tablet to CNBC was not part of it. Check out the above video, about 3 minutes in, for confirmation that you aren’t getting your hopes up for another iPod Hifi.

Via TechCrunch

Image from Phandroid.com

I was reading a story on Phandroid about the supposed HTC Supersonic which may be a future HTC made Android device, or may not.   They had a image that was from the suspect device’s about screen e-mailed to them trying to catch them into posting about it.  However, Phandroid was on the ball and they had someone create a image reporting a device as the HTC Phandroid running Android 3.1.  It was created by editing a file in the /system directory on a rooted device, rebooting it and creating a regular screenshot.  The point is, this screen isn’t valid as proof of a new Android device.  Even if it was just photoshopped, it’s SO EASY to make this kind of  screen on ANY device be it Windows Mobile, Android or yes, the iPhone — even with limited Photoshop skills.

The same goes about the bazillion images zooming across the web claiming they are images of the Apple product that we will all find out about tomorrow.  Even those that are very well done are suspect.   Continue Reading

We’re only a few days away from Apple’s big event, and the rumors about WHAT is being released are swirling. According to Macrumors, some of the book publishers have started to share what little they do know…

Apparently they know very little about the physical tablet itself, except that it weighs roughly the same as a DX with smaller dimensions. Not all of the deals are complete, and Apple may not have everything worked out until mid-2010, but we’ll get the basic overview on Wednesday. And here’s the serious, damning, worst case scenario that I called last week:

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(all photos courtesy MobileRead)

Post-CES, everyone has been patiently waiting for the flood of e-ink screens due to be released. Well, Mobileread caught pictures of the Asus DR-950 on Flickr, and from looks alone these might be enough to make you rethink your gadget budget this year!

There’s no word on pricing yet, but here is what is known, courtesy of Register Hardware:

The DR-950 measures 222 x 161 x 9mm and weighs in at 370g. A full battery charge – which Asus said takes 3.5 hours – will let owners read for up to four days. Recharges over USB 2.0 will be possible.

The machine will support PDF and ePub file formats, Asus said.

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photo credit: Team Dalog

Yes, it is the most wonderful time of year. It’s cold and gray. The trees have no leaves. It feels like spring will never be here. And Apple continues to amaze us with their ability to control the entire technology rumor mill without even opening up their mouths. Yes, all will be revealed on Wednesday (okay maybe not all), but then we will have to wait months to actually get our hands on whatever it is that Steve Jobs & Co. will be announcing. Cold, gray, and requiring delayed gratification — I hate this time of year. 

I’m not going to venture any guesses as to what the tablet will or will not be except for this –

Everyone is wrong.

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[image via Engadget]

Hey DROID users, tired of waiting for Android’s 2.1 firmware to finally hit your handset?  Don’t want to risk bricking your phone by using a leaked or hacked ROM dump of 2.1?   Well, good news.  The waiting is over!   Looks like tomorrow you lucky DROID users will start to see 2.1 roll out from Verizon.  So, what goodies should you be expecting to super-size your smartphone?

• Live Wallpapers
• Three new home screens
• Google News & Weather widget
• Speech-to-Text (voice recognition for every text entry field)
• Speed (expect faster transitions and performance as 2.1 more efficiently makes use of that Arm® Cortex™ A8 550 mHz processor)

Alas, there’s no update rolling out with this 2.1  DROID upgrade that would include flash 10 support.   We’re keeping our eyes peeled as one thing we don’t want to see is 2.1 removing the DROID’s corporate calendar feature (which is very sorely missing from the Nexus One’s implementation of 2.1). We suspect more than a few users would be frustrated if that feature bombs.

So, happy DROID owners, let us know how your 2.1 upgrade goes.

[DROID Life]

Still not convinced after yesterday’s revenue sharing announcement that Amazon is gearing up for war with the Apple Tablet? Overnight, they’ve announced a Kindle Developer’s Kit, where you can design apps to be sold on the Kindle. Yes, the ebook reading, e-ink screen Kindle.

If you’re interested, here are the terms of the deal:

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The Boy Genius brings you word on what the next installment of the iPhone OS might bring.  Word is the site got some inside information on what the next software update to the iPhone OS will include.

That’s right, y’all. We’re back at it, and this time we’ve received some exclusive iPhone OS 4.0 details from one of our trusty Apple connects.

Here are some iPhone OS 4.0 features, according to our guy:

There will be multi-touch gestures OS-wide. (Would make sense for that as the rumored OS for the iTablet is close if not the same as the iPhone)

“A few new ways” to run applications in the background — multitasking.

Many graphical and UI changes to make navigating through the OS easier and more efficient. We haven’t had this broken down, but we can only hope for improved notifications, a refreshed homescreen, etc.

The update will supposedly be available for only the iPhone 3G and 3GS, but will “put them ahead in the smartphone market because it will make them more like full-fledged computers” more than any other phone to date. Everyone is “really excited.”

The last piece of information is the most vague, but apparently there will be some brand new syncing ability for the contacts and calendar applications.

Of course we have no way of verifying this information so we’ll have to wait until next week’s big announcement along with every else.

Via the Boy Genius

Courtesy of fonearena

With CES out of the way and an army of new mobile technology invading your wallet, Microsoft might be trying to pull some of the spotlight back in their direction. We posted last week about the overwhelming amount of companies claiming that WinMo will be delayed until next year. Apparently Microsoft didn’t appreciate that kind of press, so they’ve fired up the old rumor mill to give the WinMo fans a glimmer of hope. This week LG and HTC both leaked out the news of their upcoming devices running 7 mobile, and both have a release date before the first of next year.

According to WMExperts, the new OS is to be named “Seven.” No mobile, or Windows Mobile anywhere in the title. They are said to be working on two editions of the new OS, one will be a business edition and one a media edition which could be split releases on different dates. A lot of talk to the tune of a Zune Phone Experience is being tossed around, too. The integration into the Xbox, Zune like Audio, apps, Silverlight and music experience would bring MS mobile up to speed with a full media experience on your phone. Balmer’s keynote at CES focused some pretty good attention on media, streaming TV, Tablets, and some E-book integration into the Windows world. It seems that media on the go is the next big leap for MS to take, and I would imagine the new mobile OS is how they are going to start the ball rolling.

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You might want to sit down for this one!

An eagle eyed poster at the Brighthand Forums noticed a news item at Tam’s Blog that was fairly unusual. Aceeca, a company that makes barcode scanners, announced a few new devices for 2010…including two Palm OS based ones. Most shocking of all, they’re promising one will be a plain Palm OS Garnet PDA! For reference, the last non-smartphones released with Palm OS 5.0 were the Palm TX and Z22 in October 2005. And if the terminology is confusing you, remember that upon acquiring Palm OS, Access renamed it Garnet OS.

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