According to allthingsd Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman just gave an interview to Le Figaro, a French newspaper, saying that a decision on what to do with HP’s webOS software will come within the next two weeks.
What will you do with your operating system webOS?
We should announce our decision in the next two weeks. This is not an easy decision, because we have a team of 600 people which is in limbo. We need to have another operating system.
We have read several comments by Meg Whitman since she is HP CEO about webOS.
Microsoft already has numerous popular — and some not so popular — apps available for the iPad. They include Bing, MSN Onit and MSN OnPoint. There are even more available for iPhone, including Microsoft Tag, Windows Live Messenger and Wonderwall.
Now according to the daily Microsoft is planning a version of its Office business app for the iPad.
If Microsoft ends up earning significant money from Office on the iPad, it would present yet another case in which the company profits from a competitor walloping it in other areas.
The publication cites unnamed sources for the information, and adds that a new edition of Office for Mac OS X Lion is also in development for a release date in 2012. Despite competing in a number of areas, including mobile-device software, Microsoft and Apple have maintained a longstanding and largely positive relationship when it comes to Office on the Mac. An extension to iOS seems natural and—considering the sheer size of the iPad user base—potentially very profitable for Microsoft.
The full versions of Office for Mac and Windows 8 are expected to launch near the end of 2012, though the iPad version could come well ahead of that date.
It’s clear the uncertainty is not a way to retain talent.
The latest sign is the departure of Michael Rizkalla, the former senior director of webOS application development at HP, who just started at Xobni, where he will be its senior director of mobile applications, according to his LinkedIn profile. Xobni tries to make inboxes and addresses books smarter on Outlook and BlackBerry through its software and recently introduced apps for Gmail and Android. Rizkalla exit follows the retirement of Chief Strategy and Technology Officer Shane Robinson and the departure of Richard Kerris, vice president, Worldwide Developer Relations for webOS.
At Palm and HP, Rizkalla was responsible for shipping some of the core apps on webOS and previously led the development of webOS 2.0. Now, it looks like he’ll be heading up engineering for Xobni’s mobile products.
How many other talented people leave the webOS team before any decision to keep it or discard it becomes moot?
Samsung’s gearing up to launch a white Galaxy S II teaming up with T-Mobile for a carrier exclusive. No word on when it will be available. According to both Samsung and T-Mobile it will be arriving “in the coming weeks”, apparently in time for the holidays.
This marks another point of expansion for Samsung’s Galaxy devices, which seem to take on every variation possible for the manufacturer’s flagship smartphone.
Apart from that the phone will remain the same, meaning we can expect a 4.52” Super AMOLED Plus 480×800 display, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, microSD card support, a 8MP/2MP rear/front-facing camera on board with Android’s Gingerbread 2.3 , a dual-core processor and is among the slimmest smartphones on the market, coming in at 8.49mm at its thinnest point.
HP’s managing director in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) has toldCloud Pro there will be more tablet devices coming from the company, with the first just a few months away.
Yves De Talhouet, who used to run HP’s French division, was coy about whether WebOS would be involved, but did reveal a Microsoft tablet running Windows 8 would be launched at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to be held in Las Vegas in January.
Although he was reluctant to give any more details, De Talhouet said HP’s tablet strategy was “being worked on and would be announced briefly.”
Sony and Hitachi are shipping 4 inch LCD displays for the next gen iOS Apple device. Despite the news that comes from the macotakara blog from Japan and referes to an 4 inch iPad3, is not likely a 4 inch iPad3 Apple will provide, but an iPhone (5).
The blog site also refers to a 3 inch display, which is confusing , unless Apple is still thinking in a smaller iPhone product?.
It did not take too long to see the reaction to the ASUS Eee Pad Tramsformer Prime worlds first quad-core tablet, by Acer and Lenovo, who are going to launch Android 4.0 Tegra3 quad-core tablets, in the 1Q2012 as well. HTC have been reported to focus in quad.core tablets and smartphones in 2012.
We will see a wide range of quad-core tablets and smartphones brands in 2012.
Here the report from Digitimes:
Acer and Lenovo are set to launch quad-core tablet PCs featuring Google's Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and Nvidia's Tegra 3 in the first quarter to compete against Asustek Computer, which has already launched its latest Eee Pad Transformer Prime with Tegra 3 and Samsung Electronics, according to sources from notebook players.
The sources pointed out that the competition over the quad-core tablet PCs will be difficult as these quad-core devices will only see improvements over their performance and design, but will still feature the same concept as their dual-core predecessors.
Therefore, these players may need to battle it out before being able to enter competition against players such as Amazon or Apple.
The sources noted that although these players' performance in the dual-core tablet PC competition were not as good as expected, they will continue to advance and launch new quad-core devices to defend their brands.
The new quad-core tablet PCs from Acer and Lenovo are expected to be priced between US$459-599.
Since non-Apple players' machines have no advantage to compete against Amazon or Apple's tablet PC devices, the sources believe non-Apple players will together account for only 10-15% of the total tablet PC market.
TOKYO (AP) — Toyota's president unveiled a futuristic concept car resembling a giant smartphone to demonstrate how Japan's top automaker is trying to take the lead in technology at the upcoming Tokyo auto show.
Toyota Motor Corp. will also be showing an electric vehicle, set for launch next year, and a tiny version of the hit Prius gas-electric hybrid at the Tokyo Motor Show, which opens to the public this weekend.
But the automaker's president, Akio Toyoda, chose to focus on the experimental Fun-Vii, which he called "a smartphone on four wheels" at Monday's preview of what Toyota is displaying at the show.
The car works like a personal computer and allows drivers to connect with dealers and others with a tap of a touch-panel door.
"A car must appeal to our emotions," Toyoda said, using the Japanese term "waku waku doki doki," referring to a heart aflutter with anticipation.
Toyota's booth will be a major attraction at the biannual Tokyo exhibition for the auto industry. Toyota said the Fun Vii was an example of what might be in the works in "20XX," giving no dates.
The Tokyo show has been scaled back in recent years as U.S. and European automakers increasingly look to China and other places where growth potential is greater. U.S. automaker Ford Motor Co. isn't even taking part in the show.
Toyota's electric vehicle FT-EV III, still a concept or test model, doesn't have a price yet, but is designed for short trips such as grocery shopping and work commutes, running 105 kilometers (65 miles) on one full charge.
The new small hybrid will be named Aqua in Japan, where it goes on sale next month. Overseas dates are undecided. Outside Japan it will be sold as a Prius.
Japan's automakers, already battered by years of sales stagnation at home, took another hit from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which damaged part suppliers in northeastern Japan, and forced the car makers to cut back production.
The forecast of demand for new passenger cars in Japan this year has been cut to 3.58 million vehicles from an earlier 3.78 million by the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.
Toru Hatano, auto analyst for IHS Automotive in Tokyo, believes fuel efficient hybrid models will be popular with Japanese consumers, and Toyota has an edge.
"The biggest obstacle has to do with costs, and you need to boost vehicle numbers if you hope to bring down costs" he said. "Toyota has more hybrids on the market than do rivals, and that gives Toyota an advantage."
Toyota has sold more than 3.4 million hybrids worldwide so far. Honda Motor Co., which has also been aggressive with hybrid technology, has sold 770,000 hybrids worldwide.
Toyota is also premiering a fuel-cell concept vehicle, FCV-R, at the show.
Zero-emission fuel cell vehicles, which run on hydrogen, have been viewed as impractical because of costs. Toyota said the FCV-R is a "practical" fuel-cell, planned for 2015, but didn't give its price.
"I felt as though my heart was going to break," Toyoda said of the turmoil after the March disaster. "It is precisely because we are in such times we must move forward with our dreams."
NASA began a historic voyage to Mars with the Nov. 26 launch of the Mars Science Laboratory, which carries a car-sized rover named Curiosity. Liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard an Atlas V rocket occurred at 10:02 a.m. EST (7:02 a.m. PST).
The Curiosity rover has 10 science instruments to search for evidence about whether Mars had environments favorable for microbial life, including the chemical ingredients for life. The rover will use a laser to look inside rocks and release their gasses so its spectrometer can analyze and send the data back to Earth. The latest online information on the Mars Science Laboratory mission is at: http://www.nasa.gov/msl . JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA.
"We are very excited about sending the world's most advanced scientific laboratory to Mars," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "MSL will tell us critical things we need to know about Mars, and while it advances science, we'll be working on the capabilities for a human mission to the Red Planet and to other destinations where we've never been."
The mission will pioneer precision landing technology and a sky-crane touchdown to place Curiosity near the foot of a mountain inside Gale Crater on Aug. 6, 2012. During a nearly two-year prime mission after landing, the rover will investigate whether the region has ever offered conditions favorable for microbial life, including the chemical ingredients for life.
"The launch vehicle has given us a great injection into our trajectory, and we're on our way to Mars," said Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager Peter Theisinger of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The spacecraft is in communication, thermally stable and power positive."
The Atlas V initially lofted the spacecraft into Earth orbit and then, with a second burst from the vehicle's upper stage, pushed it out of Earth orbit into a 352-million-mile (567-million-kilometer) journey to Mars.
"Our first trajectory correction maneuver will be in about two weeks," Theisinger said. "We'll do instrument checkouts in the next several weeks and continue with thorough preparations for the landing on Mars and operations on the surface."
Curiosity's ambitious science goals are among the mission's many differences from earlier Mars rovers. It will use a drill and scoop at the end of its robotic arm to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into analytical laboratory instruments inside the rover. Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science-instrument payloads on the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools are the first of their kind on Mars, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking the elemental composition of rocks from a distance, and an X-ray diffraction instrument for definitive identification of minerals in powdered samples.
To haul and wield its science payload, Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity. Because of its one-ton mass, Curiosity is too heavy to employ airbags to cushion its landing as previous Mars rovers could. Part of the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft is a rocket-powered descent stage that will lower the rover on tethers as the rocket engines control the speed of descent.
The mission's landing site offers Curiosity access for driving to layers of the mountain inside Gale Crater. Observations from orbit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history.
Precision landing maneuvers as the spacecraft flies through the Martian atmosphere before opening its parachute make Gale a safe target for the first time. This innovation shrinks the target area to less than one-fourth the size of earlier Mars landing targets. Without it, rough terrain at the edges of Curiosity's target would make the site unacceptably hazardous.
The innovations for landing a heavier spacecraft with greater precision are steps in technology development for human Mars missions. In addition, Curiosity carries an instrument for monitoring the natural radiation environment on Mars, important information for designing human Mars missions that protect astronauts' health.
The mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida managed the launch. NASA's Space Network provided space communication services for the launch vehicle. NASA's Deep Space Network will provide spacecraft acquisition and mission communication.
Photos taken on Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011, during a super car show in Macau. China's superrich want supercars. That's what the makers of world's most exotic and expensive sports cars are hoping as they gather in Macau this week for the first Asian edition of Monaco's annual Top Marques show that began eight years ago.
Ayoung Chinese student builds a"home made" iPad like,for his girlfriend. Cost $ 125
Asecond-handlaptopcost 500yuan (about$ 80, or 60euros) and the manualabilitywere enough toXinlongWei, a college studentin northernChina,who built ahomeiPad like as a gift forhis girlfriend, tellstodayAsiancountry's press.
According to theofficial newspaper"ChinaDaily", which showsimages of theiPadcrafts man with the happy couple, Weispent 800 yuan and ten days inbuildingthis replica, which candisplay text, movies, ordownload filesthroughcommands enteredfromthe touch screen, like all"tablet computer"as of now.
The boyand his girlfriend, SunShasha, study atNortheasternUniversityin Changchun City, near theborder withNorth Korea,and bothbelong tohumblefarm families.
Weiacknowledgedthat he hadenough money to buyhis girlfriend acomputer, so he documented from the internet withvideos thatshowedhow to getone,and decided toimplement them.
"It'sthe best giftI ever had,I will keepforever,"saidhis girlfriend Sun, who has alsocontributed with hispersonal touch to thehome made iPad, decorating itwith fakegemstonesjewelry
A week of expectation for webOS future. Decision between bidders interested or a new 2.0 tablet.
According to the several sources who have brought speculation about what might be HP decision about the future of webOS, we have summarized all the possibilities of them, on this post.
TouchPad 2.0 tablet.Meg Whitman:
"The question now before us is what do we do with webOS software and do we come back to market with webOS devices," Whitman said. "It obviously will not be the same device but it will beversion 2.0."
Meg Whitman indicated, for instance, that webOS, which H.P. was incorporating into servers as well as tablets, will continue to play a role. “We’re still working through webOS, still haven’t gotten to ground,” Ms. Whitman said. “It is part of our cloud strategy. Stay tuned.”
Todd Bradley, the head of the PC unit, did not say whether H.P. would re-enter the tablet market with webOS. The company currently sells a tablet that uses Microsoft software. He said the “effective price” for the tablet is $300, adding that “the challenge is building that out.”
Meanwhile, a source within HP has noted to AppleInsider that the company is rumored to finally make a definitive comment on the future of webOS either on November 28 or December 1, although, the source notes, "I don't think anyone expects anything good."
