Even though pre-orders opened to existing Verizon subscribers at 3AM, the Verizon website is reported to have generated problems for over five hours afterward, including error messages or slow orders taking about an hour.
Can’t wait to see the number of pre-orders when this is all said and done.
However, unlike the iPad home screen, which served as a larger version of the iPhone’s, Google has designated the home screen of Honeycomb tablets to serve as a dense array of widgets spanning multiple pages, more like a PC desktop, with a lower “System Bar” containing app switcher controls and a taskbar (called “notifications and system status”), an upper “Action Bar” with search and app launching controls, and a series of virtual desktops, each containing a configurable Dock-like strip of app icons below a series of floating panels that can present media playback controls, live inbox and calendar items, stacks of ebooks and youtube videos, and other user configurable mini-applets.
R.I.P. Chrome OS
The Windows Media Player HTML5 Extension for Chrome is an extension that enables Chrome users to play H.264-encoded videos (aka MP4) on HTML5 pages by using the built-in capabilities found in Windows 7.
Microsoft: 1, Google 0
A NearField Communications World survey conducted by Visa Europe in the UK, Italy, Poland and Turkey suggests 87 percent of iPhone users would consider making mobile payments from the iPhone via an attached accessory.
How about if it was built-in? :-)
Push subscriptions should also allow people to receive issues in the background rather than make a conscious in-app download.
Is this a new type of background process? If so, can’t wait to get both The Daily and maybe other content that updates content (not the whole magazine, i.e., wired)
ITG Investment Research tracked point-of-sale data from nearly 6,000 wireless stores in the U.S. from the Galaxy Tab’s November debut through Jan. 15 and found the device to have an unusually high return rate. According to its estimates, cumulative return rates for the Galaxy Tab through December of 2010 were about 13 percent. Worse, that percentage is growing as holiday purchases are returned. ITG figures cumulative Galaxy Tab return rates through January 15 were 16 percent. Ugly, considering the return rate for the iPad at Verizon since its debut on the carrier is just 2 percent.
Want to bet that the Verizon iPhone return rate is much lower compared to the AT&T return rate?
But during the company’s quarterly earnings call on Friday, a Samsung executive revealed those figures don’t represent actual sales to consumers. Instead, they are the number of Galaxy Tab devices that Samsung has shipped to wireless companies and retailers around the world since product’s formal introduction in late September.
Woops.
Rovio and 20th Century Fox join forces to create a new game, Angry Birds Rio! The game will launch with 45 dedicated levels based on the highly-anticipated motion picture, with regular updates lined up for the future. The game will be available for download on smart phones and tablets worldwide.
Samsung Electronics is seemingly poised to quadruple the shipment of its advanced mobile processor chips to its most outstanding partner and rival in the United States ― Apple.
Not double, quadruple.
Ahead of the Screen Actors Guild awards on Sunday, Fox Searchlight this month became the first studio to have nearly 100,000 SAG voters view new movies such as “Black Swan” through a free download from Apple Inc.’s iTunes store. Paramount Pictures, Focus Features and other studios did the same later with movies such as “The Fighter” and “The Kids Are All Right.”
Awesome.
