Paul Fang

Author Archive for Paul Fang

Apple’s founding contract signed by Jobs & Wozniak could fetch $150,000 in auction

Paul Fang, Nov 28th 2011 Discuss [1]

Reports from Bloomberg have come in that auction house Sotheby's is gearing up to auction off the original three-page contract among Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ron Wayne that established Apple Computer Co. on April 1st, 1976. The document, which will be one of Sotheby's highlights, is expected to hit the auction block in New York City next month for December 13th and predicted to fetch $100,000 up to $150,000 in auction. Now this is a three page document worth bidding for, in all its historical, societal and sentimental value. Read The Full Story

iPhone 4 combusts spontaneously aboard Australian flight

Paul Fang, Nov 28th 2011 Discuss [10]

Well, this is one of those unexpected, crazy stories about consumer electronics gone wild again. An iPhone 4 began spontaneously smoking and emitting a red glow while aboard an Australian airplane, specifically, the Regional Express flight ZL319, flying to its destination of Sydney. According to the airline Qantas, a passenger’s iPhone began “emitting a significant amount of dense smoke, accompanied by a red glow” shortly after the flight landed, but at some point afterwards the glow was "extinguished successfully", and no one onboard was hurt or inujured. Read The Full Story

Google Catalogs now available on Android Tablets

Paul Fang, Nov 28th 2011 Discuss [2]

Google has finally made its Google Catalogs service available today on its tablets running the Android operating system, months after arriving on, well, Apple's iPad back in August. There are store catalogs from more than 125 brands, including Nordstrom, Williams-Sonoma, Nike and Sephora. The app itself, which is entirely free, is downloadable from the Android Market, and also offers more than 400 digital catalog issues that can be browsed by various categories. Could have come a bit earlier to Android tablets from Google themselves, instead of to the iPad first, but, oh well, it's at least here. Read The Full Story

Droid 4 may launch on December 8th alongside Galaxy Nexus

Paul Fang, Nov 23rd 2011 Discuss [2]

Verizon, could it really be? According to a leaked screenshot from the carrier's inventory system, December 8th may not only be the rumored release date of Samsung's highly anticipated Galaxy Nexus, but also the potential launch date for Motorola's Droid 4. Well, the 8th may become the most popular launch party date of the month after all, for all of you potential owners out there. December is certainly gearing up to be an exciting month for smartphone releases on the Android platform. Read The Full Story

Carrier IQ retracts cease-and-desist, claims they don’t track Android users

Paul Fang, Nov 23rd 2011 Discuss [4]

An update from the whole XDA developer blowup yesterday, data-collection company Carrier IQ has apparently retracted their cease-and-desist letter as well publicized an apology to the security researcher and XDA developer Trevor Eckhart after he published his findings and details of a number of Android phones (the majority being Sprint’s) shipped with a nearly undetectable piece of software built by Carrier IQ that could evidently monitor every move from user keystrokes, to which mobile apps were downloaded and installed. Read The Full Story

Spotify closes 2.5 million paying subscribers

Paul Fang, Nov 23rd 2011 Discuss [1]

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Spotify has closed 2.5 million paying subscribers for its online music streaming service. While there weren't details released by the company about its subscribers' geographical locations, how long it took, or how many free users there were, it’s nonetheless an impressive feat, especially in this era where music can be easily attainable for little to no cost, well, pretty much, free. Spotify has done a good job persuading customers to actually pay for it. And they do so by providing a seriously killer music service. Read The Full Story

Google blacklisting file-sharing sites The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 4Shared and more

Paul Fang, Nov 23rd 2011 Discuss [27]

Google has started blacklisting many of the top file-sharing websites on the Internet, including torrent site The Pirate Bay, as well as isoHunt, and 4Shared. According to file-sharing blog TorrentFreak, "the changes were quietly processed and appear to be broader than previous additions". Google's blacklist also evidently blocks the names of these websites in their Google Instant, auto-complete search services, while the webpages themselves remain indexed. Why? Possibly because the search giant most likely wants to be on good terms with copyright holders, such as major movie and music studios. Read The Full Story

Apple takes down game subscription service, days after approval

Paul Fang, Nov 23rd 2011 Discuss [2]

On a surprisingly unanticipated whim, Apple has removed mobile game publisher Big Fish Games' subscription service application from its App Store, going back on a move that would have allowed iPad users to access dozens of games on the Apple tablet for a monthly fee of $6.99. It was only a couple days ago that Big Fish successfully been the first to garner approval from Apple, to “offer users access to dozens of titles for $6.99 a month. Until now, games have only been available one at a time, requiring users to download individual applications.” Read The Full Story

Samsung takes shots at iPhone in latest Galaxy S II ad

Paul Fang, Nov 22nd 2011 Discuss [61]

"I could never get a Samsung. I'm creative." says a long-haired, plaid-shirt wearing hipster-esque dude, seated on the sidewalk in line for yet another Apple product launch. "Dude, you're a barista," says the equally hipster-esque man standing next to him in line. Thus completes the greatest jab against all things Apple in the latest Samsung advertisement featuring the Galaxy S II Android handset. Yes, the Samsung who's currently at war with Apple in patent disputes all across the globe. Read The Full Story

YouTube finally gets 1080p support for HTML5, testing Flash features

Paul Fang, Nov 22nd 2011 Discuss [4]

Google is continuing its full-fledged push for native HTML5 by adding support today for 1080p full-HD video playback to its HTML5 player on YouTube's website. And even further HTML5 features released include native fullscreen playback, provided closed captioning, annotations, and a new menu that makes it more easy to embed videos and share videos links. Note that the YouTube HTML5 player is still in trial mode; to try it out, opt in on Youtube's HTML5 trial page right here. Read The Full Story

MIT grad student develops internet lie detector using natural language processing

Paul Fang, Nov 22nd 2011 Discuss [0]

According to the Nieman Journalism Lab, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is developing a way to check for lying in political writing on the internet as easily as you check for spelling errors, using novel natural language processing techniques. NLP, for those who aren't familiar with the computer science term, is concerned with the interactions between computers and natural languages, and is essentially a method of human–computer interaction (Apple's Siri on the iPhone 4S is an app utilizing natural language processing). Read The Full Story

Retina Display reference for iPad 3 uncovered in iOS 5 developer code

Paul Fang, Nov 22nd 2011 Discuss [6]

It has been recently reported by Digitimes that their electronics supplier-based contacts state that Apple is currently in the works of prototyping two versions of the third-generation iPad, or iPad 3. The site says the third-gen iPads have been codenamed J1 and J2, and based on code strings from 9 to 5 Mac, it's at least likely that the iPad codenamed J2 mentioned in the report may come with a Retina Display, as well as a dual LED-bar system to power the high-resolution display, which have already graced Apple's iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S models. Read The Full Story