This week, Google kills another industry, Microsoft discriminates against small towns and Verizon cripples itself in the hand.
We're getting word from several top industry sources claiming that our beloved WinPho 7 operating system should be reaching the market on October 11th, using New York City as its launching stage. It appears that the OS will launch that day, with handsets coming out later in the month.
Let me clarify by saying the actual model is probably not called DSi but I mean look at it... two identical touch screens, one on top and the other on the bottom. Enough said. There isn't much technical data at the moment but we do know the dual touch screen laptop is sporting a 15" display and the Intel Core i5 CPU which clocks in at 2.67GHz. The screens are swappable should you feel the need to shake things up but our first glimpse at this possibly awesome laptop leaves up with more questions than answers. According to the source it is still slow and buggy but will make it to market in fall 2011 if development continues smoothly.
Stephen Elop, the former Microsoft exec who headed up the 18.6 billion dollar business division is now the current CEO for Nokia. This is a strategic move for Nokia to try and reverse some of the market erosion they are experiencing in the smartphone market. Blackberry, iPhone, and Android phones have been giving Nokia a hard time these past couple years and former CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo has been on the chopping block for 4 years now.
A 31 year old pirate has been arrested for selling pirated video games at a local mall in Canada. The trusty Mounties seized several pirated video titles and equipment from Penguin Village Hobbies and Entertainment in Richmond, British Columbia's Parker Place Mall and arrested the pirate.
This is exactly why you don't start pushing your competitors: eventually, they will push back! Acer founder Stan Shih called Apple's products a "mutant virus" this week and all the Mac users are up in arms about it. They seemed to have forgotten that when Jobs went to defend the iPhone 4's antenna problems, he did the same thing. Gasp!
Last week, I briefly mentioned that Mark Hurd may be going to Oracle after the HP debauchery. Well, it looks as though this speculation has actually turned out to be true. In an announcement that boosted their stock up by over seven percent, Oracle said they will look to pay Hurd, their new co-president, an annual salary of $950,000, and that he could receive a bonus of up to $10 million.
It would appear that Verizon's love affair with Microsoft is not as dead as it appeared. Despite not currently offering any active WinMo handsets (only old-stock), Verizon is still very willing to work with their partner. In this example, we see a collection of Verizon Wireless Android handsets coming with Bing as the default search engine instead of Google. The story doesn't end there, however, as on some handsets it is impossible to change it back.
Josh Moore, a 26-year-old Xbox Live fanatic recently received notice from Microsoft that his account had been suspended for offensive language on his profile. When he went to look at what was so offensive, he found out he had been suspended for having the word "gay" on his account. The only problem with that is he lives in Fort Gay, West Virginia.
iOS 4.1 is scheduled to release as soon as today which could be good news for some iPhone and iPod Touch users who are eagerly anticipating the Apple Game Center. The iPad will also have access to AGC but not until the release of patch 4.2 for iOS 4. In the mean time, it looks to be a social gaming platform that Apple has put a lot of emphasis on since the initial demo of iOS 4.
This week, Google launched their newest, most ambitious search enhancement yet - Google Instant. If you have made it to the Google homepage in the last 36 hours or so, you will notice that all of the searching is different. As soon as you start typing, it starts searching.
The big-budget movie adaptation of The Hobbit is a long way from coming out. For a while, it has seemed like it was a long way from starting production. Not surprising, however, when you consider the director has changed, the owner of the rights (MGM) is in bankruptcy and there is still no Bilbo Baggins. There may be some good news leading to production gearing up in the next few months.