Claims renew iTunes 8 expectations, slate iPhone 2.1 for event

Claims renew iTunes 8 expectations, slate iPhone 2.1 for event

By Aidan Malley
Published: 02:35 PM EST

Despite some expectations to the contrary, iTunes 8 is now allegedly a lock for Apple's "Let's Rock" special event and may come with new iPhone firmware that packs surprises of its own.

Ars Technica recants its previous doubts and now says its beliefs that iTunes 8 would miss the September 9th Apple gathering were "unwarranted."

Moreover, it also says that much of Kevin Rose's predicted feature set is also true. The earlier leak pointed to a Genius auto-playlist feature as well as support for a second-generation iPod classic and the expected iPod nano and touch upgrades.

The revised outlook also has the surprise news that Apple may not only announce its known iPhone 2.1 firmware update but release it at the event itself. At a minimum, the software is known to sport the background push notification feature for third-party apps as well as directional GPS that could lead to more advanced navigation.

As a further surprise, Apple could additionally include more features than what it has revealed ahead of time, Ars says. Similar to Apple's frequent practice of keeping larger feature updates out of Mac OS X beta builds to avoid spoiling major introductions, the alleged sources say the company has deliberately stripped out important features from iPhone 2.1 betas seeded to developers to save them for a higher-profile debut.

What these new features may be is still very much unknown, although Apple in an unusual move had removed push notification in one of its last developer betas. The company is said to sometimes remove features or to halt build seeds outright to focus on internal development.

Ars has been historically reliable regarding iTunes-related leaks.

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Spore: Create a Universe to Play In

The long-awaited, all-in-one action, strategy, and role-playing game from Sims designer Will Wright delivers on its promise of a "universe in a box"
An asteroid hurtles toward a distant planet. Smacking the surface, the rock sends a blush of glowing red ash into the air. In the steaming gloop left behind, a soup of new life, countless amoebas begin vying for evolutionary supremacy. It's the beginning of the world as they know it—and I feel fine.
The game I am playing is the long-awaited Spore, to be released Sept. 7 by Electronic Arts (ERTS). Spore, of course, is the brain child of Will Wright, the creator of the best-selling Sims series and the closest thing the gaming industry has to its own Einstein—a super-genius with the chutzpah to attempt to devise a unifying theory of everything. Or, in this case, a game that simulates everything from life's first steps to the clash of advanced, space-faring civilizations. Spore is billed as a "universe in a box," and after three years of delays and mounting anticipation, that's exactly what the game makers have delivered.

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Week in review: Google's Chrome shines

Google made its long-rumored foray into Web browsers with the introduction of its open-source Chrome, but in the process, it ruffled some privacy feathers.

Word of the browser first accidentally leaked on the Web in the form of a detailed 38-page comic book that appeared on Google Blogoscoped, an unofficial Google blog.

The browser was written with WebKit, the open-source engine at the core of Apple's Safari and Google's Android. The browser is also getting a new JavaScript virtual machine, V8. It's said to be a better solution for complex and rich Web applications, yielding better performance and "smoother drag and drops" in interactive applications.

The project should dispel any lingering thoughts that the browser wars are over. To be sure, it's less cutthroat now than in the 1990s, but one of technology's most powerful companies just entered the battlefield.

Even before Google's browser became available for download, its repercussions were traversing the industry. There are plenty of implications from a company as large as Google that builds a browser tuned to advance the company's agenda of Web-based applications.

Chrome, Google said during its launch event, is much faster at showing Web pages than the most widely used browser, Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Google's hope is that performance will open up the bottleneck that chokes the speed and abilities of today's Web-based applications.
In short, Chrome is more of a long-term competitive threat to Microsoft Office and Windows than it is to Internet Explorer. That may sound a little grand, but the evidence is on display in Google's own lobby, where the search company's computer kiosks present a browser only--no start menu, no desktop shortcuts, no operating system.

So how does Chrome actually stack up? Google was eager to toot its horn about Chrome's performance running JavaScript, a programming language used to power many sophisticated Web applications such as Google Docs, Yahoo's Zimbra e-mail site, and Zoho's online application suite. On each one of these tests, Chrome clearly trounced the competition.
However, Mozilla fought back with some performance results to show a forthcoming version of Firefox outpacing Chrome in a different test called SunSpider.

Firefox 3.1, which Mozilla hopes to release by the end of the year, comes with JavaScript acceleration technology called TraceMonkey. In Mozilla's test that pitted TraceMonkey-enhanced Firefox against the Chrome beta, Google's browser was 28 percent slower on Windows XP and 16 percent slower on Windows Vista.

Privacy advocates objected to Chrome's End User License agreement, which appeared to give Google a perpetual right to use anything one entered into the browser. Section 11 stated that although users retain copyright to their works, "by submitting, posting, or displaying the content, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and nonexclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display, and distribute any content which you submit, post, or display on or through the services."
However, Google backtracked, saying it plans to alter those contract terms. Google said the change, once made, will apply retroactively to anyone who has downloaded the browser.

Privacy concerns were also raised over the issues of what information Google plans to store on its servers. Provided that users leave on the auto-suggest feature in Chrome and have Google as their default search provider, Google has the right to store any information typed into Chrome's Ominibox, which serves as both search bar and address bar. Google told CNET News that it plans to store about 2 percent of all such data, along with the IP address of the computer that entered the information.

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Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Available Now: Windows XP $399, Ubuntu $349

The way Dell introduced the Inspiron Mini 9 was pretty inspired, so it's almost been depressing watching the steady stream of leaks deflate it into a now familiar device, even though it's only being released today. As leaked, inside is an Intel Atom Diamondville processor and it has a 1024x600 LED-backlit screen with 4, 8 and 16GB SSD options (plus you get 2GB free online storage at Box.Net) and about three hours of battery life. Only the Windows XP version is available now for $399, in black or white—the $349 Ubuntu flavor, along with the rest of the six-color rainbow are a few weeks away.

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MEET YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND: DELL’S INSPIRON MINI 9

Ideal Internet Buddy For Surfing, Shopping and Chatting

·Light, Highly Mobile Device Built For Easy Online Browsing And Entertainment

·Box.net Web Storage Keeps Your Personal Files Safe And Enables Anytime Access and SharingROUND ROCK, Texas, Sept. 4, 2008 –Dell today officially unveiled the Inspiron Mini 9. This small, easy-to-carry device stands ready to connect teens, tweens, travelers and “Tweeters” to their online world be it surfing the Web, chatting with friends, blogging, streaming content, uploading photos or enjoying favorite online videos, music and games.

The Inspiron Mini is an affordable Internet companion that can be fine-tuned to fit users’ specific needs and deeds. It is available now on www.dell.com/mini in the U.S., Japan and select countries in Europe. Availability elsewhere will be handled on a country -by-country basis.

Solid Construction & Connections

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What Google's browser suggests about the way the search giant views the Web

Chrome is the original bling. Chrome caps, wheels and accessories have been essential elements of the pimped-out ride for decades. Now chrome, or rather Chrome, is preparing to pimp out your desktop. Google's new Web browser puts a high polish of user-friendly style onto the evolving trend toward cloud computing. (And you thought the lining was silver.)
Tuesday, Google launched the beta version of Chrome, formally entering the long-simmering war for browser supremacy. Odds are fairly high that you're reading this story using some iteration of Microsoft Internet Explorer, which dominates the landscape with a 72 percent share, according to Net Applications. (Despite years of taking aim at Microsoft, Mozilla's free, open-source Firefox is a distant second at 19.7 percent; Apple's Safari browser accounts for a mere 6.37 percent.)

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Google browser challenges Microsoft

Google browser challenges Microsoft
By Steve Lohr
Tuesday, September 2, 2008

The browser war is back on.
This time, Microsoft's opponent is Google, a familiar foe.
On Tuesday, Google will release a free Web browser called Chrome that the company said would challenge Microsoft's Internet Explorer, as well as the Firefox browser.
In a curious twist, Google made its online announcement after its plans appeared as a digital "comic book" that was posted by Google Blogoscoped.com, a Web site that tracks the Internet search giant. Google said it had accidentally sent the comic book to the blog.
The browser is a universal doorway to the Internet, and the use of Internet software and services is rapidly growing. Increasingly, the browser is the gateway to the Web on cellphones and other mobile devices, widening the utility of the Web and Web advertising. Google, analysts say, cannot let Microsoft's dominant share of the browser market go without a direct challenge.
Google already competes with Microsoft in online search and Internet advertising. They both make operating software for cellphones. Google is increasingly competing with Microsoft head-on in software that handles basic productivity like word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and e-mail programs. Google has Web-based software in these markets that are low-cost or free alternatives to Microsoft's lucrative desktop software.
Despite the frequent clashes with Microsoft — including the role Google played in thwarting an attempted acquisition of Yahoo — Google has only come out on top in search and search advertising. But Google does not have to win the browser war. Strategically, opening yet another front against Microsoft forces it to divert resources to defend franchises.
Now, Chrome heightens the rivalry and marks a shift of course for Google, which has strongly backed Firefox, the open-source browser that has gained about a fifth of the market against the dominant Internet Explorer.
Google's browser project has been under way for more than a year, a person close to the company said.
In a brief statement, Microsoft welcomed the new entry and expressed confidence that people would prefer Explorer, which is on every Windows PC sold.
"The browser landscape is highly competitive," said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of the Internet Explorer group. "But people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips, respects their personal choices about how they want to browse and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data online."
Google has clashed with Microsoft before, saying it had designed IE to gain ground in search, a market where Google is the runaway leader.
After Microsoft introduced IE 7 in 2006, Google complained that the browser's search box favored Microsoft's search service. Microsoft responded and made modifications, and a U.S. judge overseeing the antitrust consent decree against Microsoft determined the browser design was not anticompetitive.
The first round of the browser wars in the 1990s led to a sweeping U.S. antitrust suit against Microsoft for the tactics it used to stifle competition from the commercial pioneer in browsing software, Netscape Communications. A U.S. appeals court ruled in 2001 that Microsoft had repeatedly violated the nation's antitrust laws. Microsoft later reached a settlement with the Bush administration, which included some sanctions but left the company free to bundle browsing software with Windows, which runs more than 90 percent of all personal computers.
Microsoft recently stepped up its own browser development efforts, given the increasing importance of the browser and signs that Firefox is nibbling at its lead. Microsoft released a new version, IE8, last week to generally favorable reviews.
Microsoft still holds 73 percent of the browser market, according to Net Applications, a research firm. The market share for Firefox has climbed to 19 percent, while Apple's Safari has 6 percent.
Chrome also puts Google in competition with an ally, Mozilla Corp., which manages the Firefox project. Just last week, Google renewed its deal with Mozilla. Under the arrangement, Google Search is the home page for Firefox and Google is its default search bar, and Google makes substantial payments to Mozilla. The agreement runs through November 2011.
Google's cooperation with Mozilla, however friendly, meant that it was ceding control of the Internet's vital gateway technology — and the dominant supplier of that technology is its rival, Microsoft.
Given the increasing importance of the browser and its widening competition with Microsoft, Google's entry into the market is not surprising, said John Lilly, chief executive of Mozilla.
"It would be more surprising to me if Google didn't do something in the browser space," Lilly said. "After all, Google is 100 percent on the Web."
Google's move, he said, would put "more competitive pressure on us to keep coming up with great browser technology. But having more smart people competing to improve browser technology and the user experience is a good thing."
Lilly also noted that Mozilla, while a private company, is entirely owned by the Mozilla Foundation. The browser project was begun to provide an alternative to Microsoft's browser. "The mission of Mozilla is to keep the Web open, a pure public benefit," he said. "Others have other motivations and Google's move also serves to highlight our position in the marketplace."
Chrome will be available to download in a test, or beta, version on Tuesday, Google announced on its Web site Monday. The browser will run on Windows. Google is also working on Chrome versions for Apple's Macintosh, as well as Linux, an open source operating system.
According to Google's Web site post, by Sundar Pichai, an engineering director and vice president for product management, Chrome is designed for speed and ease of use.
But the other design goal, it seems, was to make sure Google could control how well the growing range of Web-based software it is developing will perform, instead of having to run on a Microsoft browser.
"Under the hood," Pichai wrote, "we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today's complex Web applications much better."
Later, he wrote, "We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of Web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers."
Chrome is based on an open-source rendering engine, WebKit, and an open-source version of Google's Gears technology. Chrome will also be able to run in a privacy mode, InCognito, so that no information about a person's browsing is collected. With IE8 last week, Microsoft added a privacy mode of browsing, called InPrivate.
The privacy features, analysts note, could undercut the Internet advertising business of Google, but also Microsoft, Yahoo and others that depend on ads aimed at users based on their browsing behavior. But it is unclear, analysts say, how large a share of users will opt for the privacy browsing mode and give up the convenience of having a browser store sites recently visited in tabbed settings for easy navigation.

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China Sets Sights On Rail Record

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday September 01, @02:48PM
from the amazing-they-aren't-broke-after-the-olympics dept.

An anonymous reader writes "China is aiming to produce the world's fastest operating conventional train for its new high speed rail link between Shanghai and Beijing, achieving speeds up to 380 km/h and cutting the travel time between the two cities from the current ten hours to under five. The new rail link is scheduled to be completed within four years. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Railways' Deputy Chief Engineer has announced that China will be able to manufacture the new trains within two years."

Source: Slashdot