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All the entries posted in September.
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Home > Plugged In > Archives > 2007 > September
September 2007
From virtual space to the real deal
Austin, Texas video game developer Richard Garriott, best-known for his massively multi-player virtual world games like “Ultima” and the forthcoming “Tabula Rasa” is headed off to space again - this time for real.
Garriott has signed on - and is shelling out $30 million - to hitch a ride on a Russian rocket next October, becoming the latest commercial space traveler. 
Garriott, 46 has long been as passionate about space as he is about video games. His dad was a Skylab and shuttle astronaut, and Garriott is a major investor in several space-related companies, including Space Adventures, the outfit that’s organizing his trip.
Read more here
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New robots clean gutters, read bedtime stories
Who needs Jetsons-style robotic housekeepers? iRobot, the company that brought you the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, now has a gadget that will clean your gutters.
At the Digital Life show in New York on Thursday, iRobot CEO Colin Angle unveiled the $99 Looj, a cross between a radio controlled toy tank and a blender. It’s meant to do the grunt work of gutter cleaning while keeping homeowners from toppling off ladders. Check out the video below.
Angle also previewed an upcoming robot called the ConnectR, essentially a one-way webcam with Wi-Fi on a rolling platform that can be controlled over the Internet. Its full price will be about $500, but a pilot test program will offer a limited number for $200
Angle said he’s used ConnectR to see his 4-year-old daughter and keep in touch when he travels. He’s read her stories and played games via robot.
“She thinks it’s really cool,” he said.
(Photo: iRobot CEO Colin Angle shows off the upcoming ConnectR./David Ho)
(Video: Angle puts a Looj through its paces on a mock-up house./David Ho)
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Amazon goes up against Apple
Amazon.com is challenging Apple in the sale of music downloads, and with 70 percent of the market, I have no sympathy for iPod lovers who stick with Apple’s iTune service.
Apple has more songs — 5 million to 2.3 million. But the popular retail site, Amazon, is selling at a competitive price to Apple — 89 cents to 99 cents. And it’s also offering songs without copying restrictions so users could listen to their music on more than one computer.
Apple has been the dominator in music and video downloads since the online store opened for business four years ago. For instance, NBC drifted to Amazon this month after failing to come to terms over the sale of new TV episodes.
My guess is that people will only slowly shift away from iTunes. It’s easy to use. The cost isn’t too high. And they already know the drill, right?
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Microsoft buying Facebook?
In case you missed it, Microsoft wants to buy a 5 percent stake in Facebook, the hugely popular social-networking site. Here’s more: (link).
The deal values Facebook at $10 billion, which seems reasonable given that 19 million people visited the site in August, Nielsen Netratings says.
Doesn’t anybody else worry about Bill Gates’ bunch taking over Facebook? Would we be bombarded with more ads or, worse, Facebook messages asking us to buy the latest Office Suite.
Just look at how the company screwed up Halo 3. The game packaging is scratching the video-game disks: (link).
Wouldn’t Facebook be better off with Google?
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Jesus tops the charts
Even for religiously challenged people like me, it’s not a surprise that a faith-based Web site is the fastest growing Internet destination.
Religious groups have influenced the political scene for decades. Why wouldn’t they do the same on the Web?
The research firm, comScore, ranked GodTube.com the fastest growing Web property in August, attracting 1.7 million visitors.
Check it out at http://www.godtube.com/index.php. Search for Baby Got Book. It’s a Christian rap song with lines like: Oh baby, I want to read wicha cause your Bible’s got pichas.
Not exactly Busta Rhymes.
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Got a hobby? Use the Net
People don’t just shop, look at porn or jump from one social networking site to another on the Web, a study released today by the Pew Internet Project says.
Fully 83 percent of online Americans search the Internet for information on their hobbies; 29 percent on a typical day. Geneology, baseball cards, quilting, stamp collecting, taxidermy, you name it.
Yahoo took notice of this long before the Pew Project. If you’re interested, here’s a link to get started: http://dir.yahoo.com/Recreation/Hobbies/.
If you’re already doing it, tell us about some sites that were helpful to you.
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IBM launches Microsoft Office challenger
Big Blue has unveiled a free software suite meant to take on Microsoft Office.
IBM’s Lotus Symphony package includes software for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. It works with Windows and Linux operating systems and supports Microsoft Office formats.
Analysts say the package is a big opportunity for IBM, although Microsoft likely has nothing to fear anytime soon.
Symphony is based on software from OpenOffice.org, the project that provides the foundation for Google’s desktop suite and Sun Microsystems’ Star Office. IBM said last week it would formally join OpenOffice.org.
(Lotus Symphony icon: IBM)
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Live from Intel’s developer forum
Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, the integrated circuit icon whose vaunted “Moore’s Law” has long outlined the expected pace of technology innovations, just left the stage here at Intel’s developer forum.
Moore lives up to his reputation as mild-mannered and grandfatherly. But the elder statesman of the technology industry also showed everyone here that he hasn’t missed a lick.
In a casual Q-and-A with Moira Gunn, host of NPR’s “TechNation” program, Moore talked as fluently about bipolar transistors and hafnium-based gate technology as he did about fishing.
He also gave some interesting insights into Intel that most people might not know. The company had to buy rights to the name, for instance, from a Midwestern motel owner, Moore explained. And Intel pioneered the less-than-scientific design of office cubicles, he said, only because putting offices into one of its early, windowless buildings in Silicon Valley would have made the place “look like a prison block,” he said. Moore still has the biggest cubicle at Intel’s headquarters, he added - at least in part because he refused to get rid of a big round table that wouldn’t fit in a typical-sized cubicle.
Asked what he might do today if he didn’t help invent the semiconductor industry, Moore said he’d probably get into bioscience industry. But he also said he has no regrets about getting into the integrated circuits business when he did.
“Obviously it’s affected me financially,” he said as the crowd laughed. But it hasn’t affected him in other ways, he added, saying “I’ve still got the same wife.”
Intel Corp. CEO Paul Oellini is still on the stage here in San Francisco at the Intel Developer Forum, but already he has showed off what he says is the world’s first 32-nanometer semiconductors and promised to reduce the size of a microprocessor chip set by 60 percent in the next few years, paving the way for yet even smaller and more powerful electronics.
Otellini also reaffirmed Intel’s planned rollout of future chips, something that’s key for computer and mobile device builders. He said production is going smoothly and the company is well on its way to delivering its next major chip line, called Penryn, on Nov. 12 for severs and high-end desktops and in the first quarter of 2008 for mobile devices and other applications. In the second half of 2008, Intel will start shipping Nehalem, its next chip line, he said.
Otellini also just announced that Intel is making a major investment in Japan to make the next generation of Wi-Fi, called Wi-Max, more mainstream. He just announced that several major computer makers — including Lenovo, Toshiba, Acer and Panasonic — have committed to intengrating Wi-Max chips into their laptops.
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EU courts rule against Microsoft again
LONDON — In a major blow to Microsoft Corp., a European appeals court on Monday upheld a lower court’s earlier findings that the company is abusing its monopoly position.
The EU Court of First Instance ruled in Luxembourg that Microsoft should be required to share interoperability information with rivals and also sell a version of its Windows operating system without its Media Player software.
The court also ruled the company should be required to pay a $613 million fine — the largest ever levied by business regulators in Europe.
The outcome, three years in the making, is likely to impact the software industry for years to come and to act as a reference point for future antitrust cases.
The ruling is the latest blow to Microsoft since European regulators — echoing findings in the United States — first ruled in 2004 that Microsoft was abusing its dominant position as the world’s biggest software company.
Microsoft appealed the original 2004 ruling, arguing that the fine should be rescinded. The company could now appeal again but the case would have to argue that the appellate court made an error in procedure when reaching its decision, and not that the facts in the case are wrong.
Read the press release announcing the ruling here and read details of the case here.
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Xiamen: tech malls and cows
XIAMEN, China — My trip to Asia to check out Dell’s operations there took me to Xiamen, where Dell has two factories.
I went to a tech mall called “Computer Town” or “Technology Town.” Outside there are a bunch of vendors selling all kinds of accessories, electronics and software. It looks like a sidewalk sale here. One guy was selling clearly bootlegged copies of Windows XP and other software titles.
This mall is noticeably smaller than those in Singapore and Shanghai, which is to say it’s only three floors. There are fewer vendors, and the ones with the best space of shops that open up directly onto the covered walkway outside. Most also have a back door that appears to go pretty much unused.
There is an inside to this mall as well, with more of the white box and smaller vendors having space in there. China Unicom and other types of electronics stores are here as well.
Heading out one exit, a vendor had a whole wall of bins filled with computer parts. It looked like the bins to buy nuts or grains at Whole Foods, only you probably don’t buy I/O cables and transistors by the pound.
Compared to Shanghai, Xiamen almost feels quaint. Not far from Dell’s two factories, there’s a pair of four-lane roads that intersect. There’s no traffic light, and no Mr. Nice Guy when trying to drive through.
It is considered a mid-size town, but population is a relative phenomenon in China. Xiamen’s population is approaching 2 million people, and the signs of its growth are remarkable. Older, run down apartment buildings are getting replaced by new high-rises with all manner of architectural twists and frills to catch the eye.
The best illustration I’ve seen of Xiamen’s competing future and past could be found along the Island Circle highway, which rings the isle on which Xiamen sits. Every couple miles along one stretch of the road, crews of workers in orange jumpsuits and wide, reed hats were grooming the landscape to perfection.
I started looking out for the next one, thinking I’d get a quick count of how many people were working on each crew. Only the next work crew consisted on a couple cows lazily chewing cud of the overgrown grass.
Still, in Xiamen and cities like it in coastal China, sights like a few cows grazing along the road are becoming relics. Just on the other side of the road, a long wall divided the road from yet another construction site, this one for a new yacht club.
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The Austin-Shanghai connection; a $10 shoe shine
SHANGHAI — I’m in Asia to get a look at Dell’s expanding operations here and the fast-growing PC market.
I took a taxi east of downtown Shanghai to the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, a sprawling campus of technology companies. National Instruments Corp. has two buildings here, housing a sales and marketing team, as well as a growing research and development group. (The NI buildings are just east of a row of Advanced Micro Devices facilities.)
NI’s operations are a testament to Dapang Chen, a 21-year veteran of the company. Chen worked for years at the Austin headquarters, joining the company when it had about 100 employees. Now, his Chinese operations alone employ more than 300.
The company long has had sales teams in Shanghai. When Chen got the itch to move back to China, he asked the company if he could move and start up more R&D and engineering operations there. That was 10 years ago, he said, and now the Shanghai site is growing like NI did back in the ’70s.
NI, known for high employee loyalty and satisfaction, has a few perks for its employees who work at Zhangjiang, including a rooftop patio where workers can relax and enjoy company barbecues.
The easiest way to peddle something is to leave your customers with no options. Thus, the lesson learned today outside 3 on the Bund, an upscale restaurant and retail building.
The Bund borders on the Huangpu River in Shanghai and is lit up brilliantly at night — as is most of the city. The architecture is remarkable both on the downtown/west side of the river (Pushi), as well as along the east side (Pudong).
It has become some very high-priced real estate. On the west side, a stretch of older, historical buildings. The east side is much newer, and just off the river rises the futuristic Oriental Pearl Tower and what will be one of the tallest buildings in the world.
It attracts a load of sightseers, and with that more than its fair share of street vendors. One guy had Mont Blanc pens and Rolex watches.
But the real sale came from the woman with the shoeshine box. The trick, you see, is to squirt a tube of shoe polish onto someone’s shoes before they know what you’re doing. It takes a fair bit of dexterity, something this woman had in spades. Once you’re left with few other options, you put your shoe up and just wait for the price: 80 yuan, about $10.
Now I don’t pay $10 for a shoeshine that I want, let alone one that’s forced on me. I got away with 5 yuan, a little over 60 cents. Frankly, my shoes don’t look especially polished, so I think she and I came out about even.
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Intel matches AMD’s new chip with new profit projections
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is pulling out all the stops in introducing its new quad-core Opteron microprocessor (formerly code-named “Barcelona”), including hosting a lavish party in San Francisco tonight that it calls “the Most Anticipated Premiere of 2007.”
But archrival Intel Corp. just put a turd in AMD’s punch bowl that has to have AMD executives seething.
Just as AMD is struggling to get back on solid finanical footing, pinning much of its hopes on Barcelona, Intel said Monday it is increasing its third-quarter revenue projections to between $9.4 billion and $9.8 billion. Previously, Intel had said it expected to rake in between $9.0 billion and $9.6 billion in the quarter that ends this month.
A year or so ago, Intel said it would quit giving mid-quarter guidance about its financials … and of course the timing of Monday’s announcement has absolutely, positively nothing to do with the biggest splash out of AMD in some time.
Who says these chip guys don’t just absolutely hate each other?
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Shangahi: smog, skyscrapers and street markets
SHANGHAI — Arrived in Shanghai after a red-eye from Singapore, as I continued my visit to Dell operations in Asia. I used to get a surge of something akin to adrenaline every time I’d take the train into Manhattan from my hometown in Pennsylvania. I got it this time coming across a bridge into Shanghai.
The first thing that jumps out at me on the drive from Pudong Airport was the haze from all the dust and smog in the air. No doubt China must come to grips with its environment problems. When the smell of exhaust is more prevalent than a whiff of Tex-Mex in Austin, it’s time to clean up the air.
The haze did burn off after a bit this morning, though, and it turned into pleasant day.
Everywhere you look in Shanghai, there are clothes hanging out to dry. Here’s one new skyscraper, gleaming pristine and futuristic in the sun that’s starting to peak through, and right beside it a clutter of clothes hanging in the breeze.
It gives the city, despite all the new buildings and the rapid changes, a pleasant sense of being lived in. That’s hard to do for a city the size of Shanghai, and it’s in stark contrast to Singapore.
Singapore has worked hard to modernize as much as it can, and the progress it has made over the past 30 years is nothing short of remarkable. As beautiful as it was (and it really is gorgeous) Singapore felt less lived in and more like people were just visiting - sort of like a room in a friend’s house where as a kid you weren’t allowed to touch anything.
Shanghai wants you to pick something up and play with it. The city is changing and modernizing, of course, but between all the high-rise condos and corporate towers there are still the smaller, older buildings, narrow alleys and clutter. And it has retained a richer mix of new and old.
Went to a couple technology malls this evening. The malls here are a bit more organized, but not unlike the tech mall in Singapore. It was fairly busy on a Saturday evening. My interpreter, Emilie Fang, says the busiest times are during daylight hours on weekends.
There’s a wide range of brands, some familiar and some newer. Lenovo and H-P are featured at most of the stalls in the mall. Acer, Benq, Toshiba, Fujitsu also are there. In fact, there was an Acer stand in the subway station, just a short distance from where the stations dumps passengers directly into the tech mall.
The first thing I noticed when entering the mall itself was a Gateway stand. Gateway just made its debut into the Chinese market in the past couple months, and it managed to get some prime real estate at this outlet. What Acer will do with the Gateway brand now that it has bought the company remains to be seen.
The salesmen here are just that: men. For PCs, I only ran into a handful of women. But no matter the gender, virtually every one of them was young. It seems like it’s a pretty good job to have among the younger crew.
When they’re not helping customers, they’re hanging out or trying to get people into their stands. When the American guy walks by, it gives them a chance to try out their English version of the brands they sell. Alas, I’m here to look and not buy; prices are pretty good, and negotiable.
Having hit my head on a door jam in one of the computer stalls, the awning over one of the stalls, a handrail on the subway and the shower nozzle in my hotel room, I’ve learned one bit of Chinese history: Shanghai was not developed with 6’6” Americans in mind.
Walked through what some folks call the “Soho area” of Shanghai. My guide for the day was an Ariane Sainsbury, an Australian expat and a friend of a friend. We moseyed through the narrow alleys crammed with shops, and it gave me a much better picture of the new and old merging in Shanghai.
In one alley, a merchant was selling produce off the ground and in makeshift shelves. A woman had a sewing machine out and was mending some clothes. A group of men, including one in pajamas, stood in the alley and passed the time.
Ariane explained the pajamas: At one point, people would wear pajamas as a sign of status, showing that they could afford another set of clothing. While that practice has largely faded, it’s still not uncommon to see people out on the street and in their pajamas.
Ariane also explained the distinctive mix of building heights in Shanghai. There are tall buildings and short buildings, but not a whole lot in between. She said a law provides that any building over five stories tall must have an elevator in it. So you have five-story buildings and 25-story buildings, but not much in the midrange.
In any case, as we turned a corner into another alley, we entered what is become a more gentrified version of the old alley markets. This area is rebuilt with clothing stores, galleries and cafes. It’s a great little area to stroll through, popular it seemed with tourists and expats. And it provided a pretty clear example of what parts of Shanghai want to become. East meets West, and they sit down together at a new café in the Soho Area.
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Apple sells 1 million iPhones
Apple said Monday morning that 74 days after the iPhone went on sale, it has sold 1 million of the handsets.
“It took almost two years to achieve this milestone with iPod,” CEO Steve Jobs said. Jobs repeated his desire to make a big push selling iPhones this holiday season.
Jobs has said he wants to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008.
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A look at global Dell from Asia
SINGAPORE - I came to Asia to get a sense of what it meant for Dell Inc. to be a global company. I got a pretty good illustration this morning.
At 10:30 a.m., we kicked off a conference call with Tim Peters. I sat no more than 20 feet from his desk, where he head’s Dell’s Singapore design center. He called in from Central Texas, where he’d returned for time at the mothership.
It’s always good to interview someone in their own environment. This was the next best thing.
During a lunch break, Dell spokesman and de facto Singapore tour guide T.R. Reid took me by the ice rink where his sons play hockey. Where do you get your hands on a Zamboni this close to the equator?
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Update on Dell’s notebook backlog
PENANG, Malaysia — A quick clarification regarding my previous post on the backlogs for several of Dell’s new notebook PCs:
When Simon Wong noted that Dell would see a breakthrough in the next couple of weeks, he wasn’t suggesting that production was humming along at full volume and that new notebooks would be landing on customers’ doorsteps immediately.
Saying the problem is largely behind Dell, as I did, is misleading, especially for customers waiting on their new PCs; order backlogs and delays persist. But as Wong noted, the supply issues that have dogged Dell with these notebook launches will begin to break over the next week or two, and the company will begin working through the backlog and reducing wait times for new orders.
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Early iPhone buyers get apology and $100 credit
Facing hordes of unhappy iPhone customers who paid $599 for their must-have gadget only to see its price suddenly drop by $200 yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs engaged in a rare backpedal today, apologizing and offering a $100 store credit to the early buyers.
“I have received hundreds of e-mails from iPhone customers who are upset about Apple dropping the price of iPhone by $200 two months after it went on sale,” Jobs writes in a letter to iPhone customers issued Thursday afternoon.
“Even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price,” Jobs writes. “Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.”
Jobs said every iPhone customer who purchased a phone from Apple or AT&T, who is not receiving a rebate, will be offered a $100 credit good at Apple’s retail or online stores. More details will be provided next week.
“We apologize for disappointing some of you,” Jobs writes. “We are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Apple.”
(Photo: AP)
Dell says colored laptop problems are being fixed
PENANG, Malaysia — Dell has taken a lot of angry barbs from customers who ordered its new 13-inch XPS notebook, the M1330, and several of its new Inspiron laptops in a variety of colors. Whe it was time to go into full production mode, the company discovered problems with the PC paint job that didn’t show up in lower-volume runs preceding full-scale production. It also had trouble getting enough of a certain type of screen.
Those problems are largely behind them now, said Simon Wong, vice president of operations for Dell APJ (Asia-Pacific and Japan). While there still will be long wait times for customers ordering some of the new models, Wong said, the company has worked through the backlog of orders that stacked up when the problems arose.
“We’re getting out of this hole now,” he said.
“Four weeks ago we had huge customer issues,” he added. “Now that platform (the M1330) is becoming the first platform that all orders are now current to customers.”
Wong said Dell should work through the last of the backlog this week and will then be working on current orders. The wait time will still be long for new M1330 buyers, he said, but Dell is making that clear to customers up front.
The job now, he said, is reducing the wait time on all the new notebooks. As it turns out, some of the most popular colors - flamingo pink, for example - are the ones that are taking more time to paint, build and ship.
But for anyone who ordered an Inspiron notebook in green, I saw a couple of them on their way through Dell’s assembly line in Penang. Maybe one of them is yours.
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Michael Dell says he had no role in accounting scandal
In his first public comments addressing his knowledge of the Dell Inc. accounting scandal, CEO Michael Dell said Wednesday that he was in the dark while others were cooking books to reach performance targets.
“I was not involved in or aware of any of the accounting irregularities,” Dell told investors at the Citigroup global technology conference in New York. “Certainly I’m not proud of what occurred at our company, but I am proud of the company overall and I take responsibility for making sure those issues are addressed.”
The company plans to restate four years of earnings, a move that could cost $150 million in net income.
“Our company has undertaken a set of extraordinary processes to discover and root this out,” Dell said. “What you have now at Dell is really a new team that is addressing all of the issues that were raised in the investigation.”
(File Photo of Michael Dell by David Ho)
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Live from Apple’s iPod event in San Francisco
Apple is refreshing its entire line of iPods beginning today including a new Wi-Fi capable, touch-screen version modeled after its iPhone, Steve Jobs just announced. Apple is also slashing the price of its 8GB iPhone from $599 to $399 to try and boost holiday sales.
The newest member of the iPod family - called iPod “Touch” - will have the same size screen of the iPhone - 3.5 inches - but is much thinner. The device looks exactly like an iPhone - but minus the cell phone features. It will have Wi-Fi capabilities, however, and will come with Apple’s Safari Web browser, a direct link to online video site YouTube and also a link to a new “iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store” so you can buy songs anywhere, anytime with the device. Through an interesting deal with coffee retailer Starbucks, the device will also let users of the new iPod Touch and iPhone to automatically download songs as they’re playing at most Starbucks locations.
The 8GB model will cost $299; the 16GB model will cost $399. Battery life is 22 hours of audio playback and 5 hours of video playback. Both models will be available later this month.
The new and improved iPod “Nano,” meanwhile, is about half the size of the current version and significantly thinner. It comes with a 2-inch screen for video and photos (compared to 2.5 inches on the bigger versions) an updated user interface. The new nanos will cost $199 for an 8 GB version and $149 for a 4 GB version. The battery will last 24 hours for audio playback and 5 hours for video, according to Jobs. Also included with the new nano are three video games; others will be avaialble for download from iTunes.
The iPod “Classic” - as Jobs just renamed it- will be thinner and come with more space and better battery life. The new 80 GB version will cost $249. A new 160 GB version - which Jobs says will hold 40,000 songs - will cost $349.
Apple is also refreshing its screen-less “Shuffle” with new colors, including green, blue, gray, red. They’ll still cost $79.
Earlier, Steve Jobs took the stage at San Francisco’s Moscone West convention center to talk about Apple Inc.’s much-anticipated new iPods and updates to its iTunes music and video online store.
Beginning tonight, Jobs says, Apple will release a new downloadable version of iTunes that among other things will let user download ringtones from songs and sync them to their iPhones. Ringtones will cost $1.98 or 99 cents if users already own the song. They’ll be available next week through the new iTunes.
Jobs also showed off some pretty impressive growth numbers for iTunes. Customers have downloaded 600 million copies of iTunes and downloaded 3 billion songs and 100 million TV shows, he said.
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At the technology bazaar in Singapore
SINGAPORE — Imagine Fry’s Electronics, only four stories high and with dozens of vendors competing to snag your business. Welcome to Sim Lim Square, one of the technology malls in Singapore.
This is not your neighborhood U.S. mall. Rather than a one-stop shopping center — a place to get your jeans, an iPhone and a slice of California pizza (whatever that is) — malls in Singapore tend to focus on one set of products. A furniture mall here, a technology mall there.
Sim Lim is a geek’s paradise; for example, it has everything you could possibly need to build a computer. While many of the vendors sell finished, brand-name computers, they also sell all the parts to put together a so-called “white box” PC. Buy a chassis in one stall, get your memory in the next, pick out your hard drive a floor below.
With a little haggling, one can visit a dozen different stores and put together a souped-up machine for a scaled-back price. Up to you to fix it if it breaks down, though.
As for brand names, there’s Hewlett-Packard, Acer, Lenovo, Packard Bell, and NEC. There’s even an Apple authorized reseller (displaying a Macbook that was running Windows XP, by the way).
But no sign of Dell at Sim Lim. My guide, IDC analyst Reuben Tan, said the company is in talks with Singapore electronics store chains to get their PCs on store shelves. One of those chains, Harvey Norman, looks a lot more like Best Buy than a market. Somehow, it seems to fit Dell better.
Meanwhile, I sampled some Singaporean cuisine — fish-head curry.
Passed on the eyeball. Like pretty much all the food around Singapore, it was outstanding.
I decided not to risk the quality experience — I’m not sure I had a rule against eating any food that comes out of a “socket,” — but I adopted one when Reuben Tan, a tech analyst with IDC, offered it up.
Reuben says it’s a delicacy, and people will joust for the eyeball. Of course, he didn’t eat it, either.
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A Zune phone? Microsoft says a definite ‘maybe.’
Speculation over whether Microsoft will combine its Zune digital media player with a cell phone to take on the Apple iPhone sparked again on Tuesday as a company executive hinted at the possibility.
“It’s not an unreasonable thing at some point in the future,” Mindy Mount, chief financial officer for Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division, told investors at Citigroup’s global technology conference in New York.
“When you have an integrated software and hardware product … it does allow often for a much better, much cleaner experience,” she said. “You can make sure that you have everything working together in a way that is much harder to do when you just have an open-based platform.”
Asked whether Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system will evolve to offer a more iPhone-like multimedia experience, Mount said consumers want devices that merge business functions and personal features involving photos and music.
“It’s a natural thing for us to have in our product road map,” she said.
(Photo: Microsoft)
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