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    New Apple iPods slim down

    In addition to introducing a new smaller Apple TV on Wednesday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced a refreshed line of iPods.

    Sep 03, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

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    Hot Or Not’s App Answers The Next Question: Close By Or Not?

    It was only a matter of time before this app came out. The folks over at Hot or Not have launched a location-based free iPhone app that will show you the hottest ladies and gents that are close to you. If you aren’t familiar with Hot or Not, the site allows you to rate pictures of girls or a guys (depending on your taste) on a scale of 1 to 10. It’s a mindless site and game which has managed to gather a fairly massive user base. The app is fairly simple in what it does: it uses the iPhone’s built-in GPS technology to map out the hottest guys or girls registered on HotOrNot.com that are close to your location. Currently the site draws from a database of 4.8 million members. Hot or Not says that the app received more than 2,000 sign-ups its first day in the App Store. Last year, the startup also launched Hot Or Not War, which we covered here . Hot Or Not was bought by Avid Life Media in 2008.

    Sep 03, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

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    Done Deal: HP Gets 3PAR For $2.35 Billion In Cash

    It’s officially over. After Dell pulled out of the running this morning, HP has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire data storage company 3PAR, for $33 per share in cash, or a value of $2.35 billion. The transaction has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies. This morning, HP upped the ante with an offer worth $33 per share or $2.4 billion. 3PAR accepted HP’s bid and Dell withdrew.

    Sep 03, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

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    In The Coming HTML5 Browser Wars, The Markup Should Remain The Same

    On Monday, Google made a big splash with a customized Arcade Fire video page that showed off all the cool things HTML5 can do, from video, animations and 3D rendering to gorgeous fonts and choreographed windows. It’s all cutting edge stuff as far as what is possible with a Web browser goes, but there is one very big problem. It doesn’t work so great in all browsers, even browsers that supposedly support HTML5. If you go to the landing page that launches the video in Firefox or even the forthcoming IE9 (which isn’t out yet, but is very HTML5-friendly), it detects your browser and suggests you use Chrome instead. I received the following message on Firefox: This site was designed with Google Chrome in mind and is unable to render properly in your browser. For the best viewing experience, we recommend downloading Google Chrome and trying this site again. But wait, isn’t Firefox one of those “modern browsers” that supports HTML5 ? This isn’t the first time there have been issues with HTML5 compatibility. The problem is that HTML5 is so young that the standards have not been hammered out yet across all browsers. The markup language required to produce the same effect is different for different browsers. “The Arcade Fire thing . . . they are writing to the browser,” points out Dean Hachamovitch, the Microsoft general manager in charge of Internet Explorer. “They use proprietary Javascript.” HTML5 “done right,” he contends, would be using the same markup language across browsers. Seems reasonable. That is what the open Web is all about. It is why we have standards. But HTML5 is so new that we are getting flashbacks to the late 1990s with sites refusing to accept certain browsers. To illustrate this point, Microsoft has an browser test page to show the difference between different browsers. Under one set of tests titled HTML5 Demos, there is a “ Border Radius” test that changes the border around a block of text. Inside the block of text, it shows the markup code required to create different effects such as animating it or creating dots instead of a solid line. ( Update : As pointed out in comments, this is technically CSS3, which is not exactly the same as HTML5, but both go hand in hand). Here is what the code looks like in Chrome: And here is what it looks like in Firefox What’s wrong with these pictures? One takes 16 lines of code, the other takes four, and they are completely different.  Even the dots that are created don’t match (Chrome’s dots are square).  A different set of code is required for IE9.  ”We want to make the same markup work everywhere,” says Hachamovitch.  ”If you have to write that differently for every browser it is kind of missing the point.” Microsoft is working with the standards bodies, as are all the other browser makers, but what is really needed is better definitions and a thorough set of reference examples for every possible HTML5 feature.  It’s a lot of work.  Eventually, we will get there. But until then, expect to see grandstanding about which browser does HTML5 better.  When you hear that, just ask yourself, which version of HTML5 are they talking about. CrunchBase Information Google Chrome Windows Internet Explorer Firefox Information provided by CrunchBase

    Sep 03, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post