Smartphones

The European Union has updated volume standards for portable devices that play music, such as MP3 players and mobile phones. Going forward, new products will be required to maintain their default setting at 80 decibels. The new rules upgrade EU directives CEN, CENELEC and ETSI, which require that wa...

THIS WEEK IN TECH

A Last Call for Snarkers Anonymous?

The old saying used to be, "If you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all." Then the Internet came along, and the saying changed to, "If you can't say anything nice, then invent a fake user name and go to town." The Web has allowed us to get away with saying some pretty awful things...

OPINION

Apple and Google on Brain Vacation

Summer is a time to relax, a time to take a vacation, a time to do things you can't do during the work year. However, I'm not sure any time is a good time to send your brain on vacation, and I'm starting to wonder if the leaders at Google and Apple have done just that. Granted, Steve Jobs has a goo...

Could something as simple as an SMS text message turn your own smartphone against you, allowing a hacker to listen in on your private conversations or direct you to a malicious Web site? It can be done, according to security experts presenting their findings Thursday at the Black Hat security confer...

OPINION

Is the Chrome OS an Apple Killer?

You betcha. OK, I'm just kidding -- but in most markets that are divided like the PC market, where one vendor has 90 percent and the other 10 percent, a well-funded competitor would likely take out the 10 percent vendor on the way to taking on the 90 percent vendor. However, as I look at this, I thi...

If you're working your thumbs into a carpal-tunnel frenzy on your Sony PlayStation Portable, navigating the blood and gore of the company's successful gaming franchise "God of War," do you really want to interrupt the mayhem to take a phone call from Mom? Sony may soon get an answer to that question...

With the news that its omnipresent-on-the-desktop Flash player will be available in more mobile forms before the end of the year, Adobe is finally following through on its goal of joining the smartphone party -- but the two biggest names in that market are still missing from the invitation list. App...

Apple is making an impressively strong statement that it can survive Steve Jobs' departure. While I still don't think it has the magic that Steve Jobs brings to the table in terms of execution, it is actually doing better at the moment than when he was there and active. Palm just took a major shot a...

OPINION

Microsoft Goes Bing, Palm's Pwned

Last week, Microsoft announced its new search push at Google -- and unlike Live Search, which was a joke, Bing looks to have the right stuff. The question is, can Microsoft get people to move? Palm initially looked as though it was going to get iPhone users to move, but that hope started to sputter ...

Twitter messages hinting at the possible emergence of a Zune phone -- posted by a user who appeared to be a Microsoft insider -- drew a considerable amount of attention recently, especially considering their timing. They came to light at around the same time Microsoft launched a new ad touting the b...

One of the things that fascinates me is how large companies, when given an "in your face" example from a competitor, more often than not ignore it. For instance, Apple is one of the few companies that designs marketing into their products, out-executes the industry in marketing, and enjoys the highe...

Google has announced a new beta version of Google Sync that lets iPhone and Windows Mobile users synchronize their Gmail Contacts and Google Calendar events with the Web, PCs, Macs and, of course, their mobile phones. The key innovation with the new Google Sync is that it will let users transfer dat...

I was tempted to pick FUD as a topic and talk about how McCain's use of it killed his campaign. However, last week we had two major launches, one of which was Apple releasing its latest notebooks and embracing graphics as a defining feature but avoiding Blu-ray and HDMI. Apple works to drive the ma...

Nokia introduced its first big touchscreen phone in London Thursday: the 5800 XpressMusic, formerly known as the "Tube." While Nokia isn't positioning the phone outright as an iPhone killer, it certainly shares some similarities of the popular Apple device -- and one that really jabs at Apple's stre...

OPINION

Your Next Computer May Be a Smartphone

Last week was so ugly the economic conditions had me up on YouTube looking for things to put a smile on my face, and I found two -- one that has the "Pimp My Ride" folks pimping an IT shop with an Xbox -- not some marketing group's best moment -- and an HP ad spoof that has Steve Jobs selling HP com...

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