That’s a sharp contrast to some of the brutish 4-inch+ Android phones we’ve seen in the past couple years, and its sleek profile will no doubt be an attractive feature to potential U.S. buyers. The Medias N-04C has enjoyed a good deal of success in Japan, where it’s sold more than half a million units.It’s expected that the Medias will receive a spec bump prior to its Stateside launch. The original Japanese version featured an 800MHz processor, a 480×854 FWVGA display covered with a sturdy slab of GorillaGlass, a 5.1MP rear-facing camera with LED flash, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Android 2.2.
At the very least, the processor would likely be updated to something at or above the 1GHz mark and Android 2.3 Gingerbread flashed before making its debut on Verizon — where the N-04C is expected to launch because of NEC-Casio’s previous dealings.The Japanese version also includes a TV tuner, e-wallet functionality, and an infrared port. Don’t count on those additional features making the trip — they might be staples in Asia, but they’re not commonly found on U.S. phones.
SkyDrive integration is already on its way to Windows Phone 7 devices, but there’s word now that Microsoft’s cloud file storage and sync service is going to be popping up on a number of other platforms as well. According to a job posting spotted by Liveside, Microsoft is developing SkyDrive mobile apps for iOS and Android as well as desktop apps for Windows and Mac.
With its increased importance to Microsoft’s cloud strategy, it’s certainly no surprise to hear that the company is working on apps for competitor’s platforms. Microsoft already offers several apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and there’s also a Bing app for Android. Native SkyDrive apps will provide a kind of “gateway” experience that encourages users to experiment with (and hopefully fully adopt) Microsoft’s other cloud-enabled apps once their files have been synced.
Microsoft has been busy shining up SkyDrive this year, too, revealing a full HTML5 makeover of the web app back in June. With 25GB of free storage available to users and totally free Office Web Apps on hand to enable collaborative document editing with no costly locally-installed software, it’s definitely a service worth checking out if you haven’t already.If you’re already making use of SkyDrive, stay tuned: it’s going to get even better once you’ve got cross-platform mobile access to all your files.
It's already popular with Android smartphone owners, and from today users of Apple's mobile devices can also try out MoboTap's Dolphin browser.Having been downloaded to Android smartphones some nine million times, it’s safe to say that the Dolphin Browser has been something of a success for developer MoboTap. And from today the free app is also available for Apple’s mobile devices.
The new iOS app brings with it many of the features enjoyed by Android users and will compete for attention with the likes of iPhone’s native Safari browser and the third-party Opera Mini option.A popular feature of MoboTap’s browser not found on others is its gestures capability. This enables you to navigate the web with a quick swipe of the finger. For example, make a “v” gesture on the screen and you’ll be swiftly taken to the bottom of the web page.
You’ll find a gesture list within the app showing you the swipes you need to make in order to perform functions such as refresh a web page, open a new tab and add a bookmark. You can even add new gestures for new functions – how about a “D” for the Digital Trends homepage?The browser also features what its developers call Webzine. This allows you to populate a page with thumbnails from a list of more than 100 popular websites. Click on a thumbnail and you’ll be taken to a simplified version of the webpage, drawn from the site’s RSS feed, allowing for a less cluttered reading experience.
Other features include:
Speed Dial: “Put favorite sites on Speed Dial. Stop looking around in your bookmarks. Forget about typing out long URL. Just put your favorite sites on Speed Dial.”
Tabbed browsing: “Real tabbed browsing. Feel like you are on a desktop. Add tabs within Dolphin just like you would on a desktop.”
Sidebar: “We implemented two side bars for you to access Bookmark and Tool Bar without going through complicated clicks.
”The new iOS app is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad devices and requires iOS 4.0 or later.
Evernote, LinkedIn, Mint….Walmart? The retail giant is now among Mountain View’s leading startup companies following its purchase of Kosmix, the company behind real-time Twitter filter site TweetBeat, medical search engine RightHealth, and topic-specific engine Kosmix. The company has now been transformed into Walmart’s @WalmartLabs division, which aims to create technologies and businesses around social and mobile commerce.Kosmix founders Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman, as well as the entire Kosmix team, are expected to stay on-board as part of the newly formed @WalmartLabs. Walmart hopes this division will better integrate the shopping experience between bricks and mortar stores and e-commerce.
“The world of social media is exploding and for millions of consumers their social connections matter hugely in their daily lives,” said Anand Rajaraman, co-founder of Kosmix. “Our work has focused on developing a social genome platform that captures the connections between people, places, topics, products and events as expressed through social media — be it a feed, a tweet or a post. We are thrilled to join one of the world’s largest companies and combine our work with
Samsung has hired HP's former president of PSG marketing Raymond Wah to run its PC business and is considering a purchase of WebOS, according to a DigiTimes report.Last week, Samsung denied rumors that it wanted to buy HP's PC business. This new report from DigiTimes speculates Samsung is going after WebOS instead.
The future of WebOS is in limbo. HP says it is still considering using the OS to power PCs. It's also possible HP will license WebOS to other manufacturers.But the most likely scenario is that HP will sell off WebOS altogether.WebOS could be a lot more attractive to Samsung now that Google owns Motorola. Since it's very likely Motorola will get first dibs on Google's Android updates and new features, Samsung could be looking for an alternative OS.
The still-unacknowledged iPhone 5, expected to make its debut in October, is now expected to sport a metal back instead of glass, and its screen size will not exceed 4 inches, contrary to earlier reports.Instead, the next iPhone will have a display size between 3.5 and 3.7 inches -- the current model has a 3.5-inch display -- and may also have a thinner bezel along the sides of the device to make the screen look larger than it actually is.
Other than those changes, the next iPhone is not expected to be remarkably different from the iPhone 4, sources inside Apple's supply chain have reportedly told Taiwan-based DigiTimes. Shrinking Screens Suggestions the next iPhone would have a 4-inch screen have been circulating for some time. In February, DigiTimes claimed the iPhone 5 would have a 4-inch screen, and a similar report followed a month later in the China Times. DigiTimes is apparently backing off its original report, and now says the next iPhone's display will not be much larger than the usual 3.5 inches.
