After Apple made such bold claims about Safari 4 during their WWDC keynote last week, it was only a matter of time until another browser company came along and claimed to “reinvent the web”. Opera have done just that with Opera Unite, a cloud-based system integrated with the company’s browser, that synchronizes user data – including files, music, photos and notes – and makes it available to any internet-connected browser.
Video demo after the cut
With rival carrier Orange France rocking their Tabbee WiFi tablet, SFR are retaliating with a compact companion device of their own. The SFR Hubster is currently in trials across France, offering a compact touchscreen, streaming photos, music and video, together with internet access over WiFi or a wired ethernet connection.
It wasn’t all hardware at Apple’s WWDC 2009 event: Safari 4, the company’s browser, finally came out of beta, and Phil Schiller saved some fighting talk for all web rivals. According to Apple, Safari 4 is 7.8x faster than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8, and passes all 100 of the Acid 3 tests while IE8 languishes behind at 21/100.
New renders of what’s said to be the final design for Michael Arrington’s CrunchPad internet and media tablet have been released, and its taken a big step forward from the last devices we saw. Now crafted from aluminum, not plastic, so as to cut thickness down to 18mm, the CrunchPad still has a 12-inch touchscreen, WiFi internet access and a media player app.
Video CrunchPad demo after the cut
Presented, seemingly, as almost an aside to their full E3 keynote, Microsoft’s last revelation might in fact make the biggest difference to Xbox 360 gamers. “Games on Demand” is launching in August, initially offering a range of 30 titles that can be bought with a credit card and downloaded directly to the console.
Well this certainly is an interesting rumor. It seems that Comcast might be considering boosting their DOCSIS 3.0 cable Internet service up to 100Mbps. And with a current 50Mbps cap, this would be good news for anyone using the service.
Apparently, the rumor stated that Comcast would be adding on between 40 and 50Mbps of bandwidth to their current offerings. Only downstream upgrades are mentioned, not upstream. Plus, it’s not know if this update would cause a change in the plan pricing or if the 250GB cap would be adjusted.
Comcast has already said they would be upgrading to 100Mbps last year, but missed the mark. It seems that current network capacity has been the company’s biggest hurdle in completing the upgrade.
Spotify have demonstrated the mobile version of their custom internet radio app, set to launch later in the year and allow offline access to the company’s huge catalog of audio tracks. The demo – which is running on a T-Mobile G1 Android smartphone – shows how playlist tracks can be easily synchronized with the phone’s internal memory for offline playback.
Spotify Mobile video demo after the cut
Details of Nokia’s next-gen Internet Tablet have leaked, suggesting that the Finnish company have moved away from positioning the platform as a companion device and now perceive it more as a smartphone. According to leaked specifications, the Nokia N900 or “Nokia Rover” now has quadband GSM and 3G HSPA, in addition to the WiFi and Bluetooth of the previous-gen models. It also sheds some screen-size, scaling down to a 3.5-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen (from 4-inches) though as this leaked image suggests the overall design is very similar to that of the N810.
Google have released the latest version of their Chrome browser, v2, including stable builds of the new features added in March’s beta. Among the most obvious changes are a full-screen mode – triggered by hitting F11 - and a form autofill tool, which remembers common details such as name, address and phone number and automatically populates those fields in online shopping sites and registration forms.
Video overview of Google Chrome v2 after the cut
Apple’s rumored Media Pad touchscreen tablet is coming, but not as fast as many are expecting. That’s the latest opinion from perennial Apple commentator, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. Munster has published a note today stating his opinion that development a touchscreen tablet is underway, but that since it’ll require a third-generation of mobile OS X “more robust” than that on the iPhone, it won’t hit the market until 2010.
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