Palm rises with new smart phone debut
Shares Palm Inc. rose Friday after the company debuted its latest smart phone, the Palm Centro, which is cheaper, lighter and thinner than the company’s Treo products.
Palm shares rose 36 cents, or 2.2 percent, to $16.76 in morning trading. During the past year, the stock has traded between $13.41 and $19.50.
On Thursday, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Palm unveiled the Centro, which the company expects to become available in mid-October. The device will cost $99.99 with a two-year service plan from Sprint Nextel Corp., which makes the Centro cheaper than other Palm smart phones and puts it in the price range of cheaper offerings from competitors like Research In Motion Ltd. and Samsung Electronics Co.
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Apple iPod Touch software version 1.1.1 released
Earlier this week, Apple released the iPod touch software version 1.1.1 update for their recently launched digital media player.
The update is pretty big at 150 megs but it seems to have solved one of the bigger problems faced by some owners of the device.
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As per media reports, the update seems to have fixed a video-display problem which resulted in the device displaying dark images improperly.
iPod Touch owners can get this latest update from the Apple iTunes application. This release came along with the latest update for the iPhone device from the company.
Source :- TechWhack News
Week in Photos: Dawn Lifts Off, Pike Poisoned, More
Smoke plumes around a Delta II rocket carrying the Dawn spacecraft appear to swaddle the craft in cotton in this picture taken just after Thursday’s launch.
The rocket successfully lifted off at 7:34 a.m. eastern standard time, beginning a 3-billion-mile (4.8-billion-kilometer) journey to the heart of the asteroid belt. Dawn is scheduled to arrive at an asteroid known as Vesta in 2011 followed by a visit to the dwarf planet Ceres in 2015.
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Altered iPhones Freeze Up
Since the iPhone hit the market in June, tech-savvy owners of the phone have been busy messing with its insides, figuring out how to add unauthorized software and even “unlock” it for use on networks other than AT&T’s.
But the Web was filled Friday with complaints from people who had installed the latest iPhone software update, only to see all the fun little programs they had been adding to their iPhones disappear — or, still worse, see their phones freeze up entirely.
Should they have known better?
Since Monday, Apple officials have been warning iPhone owners that using unlocking software could cause the phone to become “permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed.” But in many cases those warnings went unheeded.
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Scientists push back origins of Earth’s oxygen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists examining rocks dating back 2.5 billion years said on Thursday they found evidence shedding light on one of the landmark events in Earth’s natural history — the appearance of life-nurturing oxygen as a major part of the atmosphere.
A chemical analysis of primordial sedimentary rock retrieved in western Australia indicated that a “whiff” of oxygen pulsed through the atmosphere perhaps 50 to 100 million years before the so-called Great Oxidation Event, foreshadowing the dramatic rise in worldwide oxygen levels.
Recovered from deep underground, this shale dating from about 2.5 billion years ago contained material untouched by the atmosphere for billions of years. Sedimentary rocks can harbor evidence of oxidation and other chemical reactions that occur as the rocks form.
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Google looking at privacy protections for users
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Google Inc, the world’s Web search leader, told U.S. Senate lawmakers on Thursday the company is pursuing new technologies to protect the privacy of Internet users as it seeks to acquire advertising company DoubleClick Inc.
Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, testified that the company was looking at the Internet display advertising business with a “fresh eye and evaluating whether changes can be made to innovate on user privacy in this space.”
Critics say Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, an advertising tools supplier, may give the company too much power over online advertising. Google stores mounds of data on Internet-surfing habits of users and uses the information to make money by selling advertisements.
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iPod Nano commercial the Apple of singer Feist’s eye
NEW YORK (Billboard) - The use of Canadian singer-songwriter Feist’s song “1, 2, 3, 4″ in an iPod Nano TV spot is generating major attention — online and on the Billboard charts.
Since the ad debuted in mid-September, sales of “1, 2, 3, 4″ and its parent Cherrytree/Interscope album, “The Reminder,” have skyrocketed.
Earlier this month, the track was selling about 2,000 downloads per week, while the album was shifting 6,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan. On the most recent charts, “1, 2, 3, 4″ clears 73,000 downloads and reaches new peaks of No. 7 on Hot Digital Songs and No. 28 on the Billboard Hot 100. “The Reminder” jumps from No. 36 to No. 28 on the Billboard 200, with sales of 19,000.
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Monasteries enter the Internet Age
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A monk’s life is still a simple one of prayer and austerity, yet many monasteries have moved online for business, communication and even headhunting purposes.
“All the Trappist houses in America are wired and we communicate like never before in terms of documents and business of the Order,” said Brother Luke Armour of the Abbey of Gethsemani in central Kentucky.
“Our contact with Order headquarters in Rome is so much simpler and smoother,” said the monk, who has lived in the Abbey for 34 years.
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U.S. defends Microsoft remedy at international meet
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department’s top antitrust official called the remedy in Microsoft Corp’s U.S. antitrust case “well-crafted” and “successful,” and urged U.S. and European Union officials on Friday to be cautious in fighting abusive monopoly behavior.
The remedy — most of which expires in November — has been challenged by California and some other states, which argue that Microsoft continues to abuse its dominant position in the market for computer operating systems.
Thomas Barnett, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for antitrust, defended the 2002 consent decree mandating 5-year oversight of Microsoft.
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Shock! Teenagers and parents are talking
LONDON (Reuters) - The family meal may be threatened with extinction but “High-Tech” parents are now communicating much better with their teenagers and giving them more freedom, says child psychologist Richard Woolfson.
Long gone are the days when parents were much more dictatorial and children were to be seen, not heard.
“The consultation, negotiation and mutual respect that goes on between parents and teenagers in families today would probably shock the mums and dads of 50 years ago,” Woolfson said in a study of how family communication has evolved.
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