The Skyfire browser is set to finally bring PC-like browsing to your Windows Mobile device with crazy speeds and support for all manner of embedded content. Sure, there are ways to get Youtube and other mobile video content through proxy sites that convert on the go or with other 3rd-party applications, but this puppy does it all in one sweet and free package. Facebook and Myspace pages load up in no time, video plays in the browser, and all of this is accomplished with some server side magic on the part of the Skyfire server but is completely transparent to the user. All flavors of Windows Mobile — 5 and 6 for both touchscreen and not — are supported with the roadmap hinting at Symbian support in the near future. Sounds too good to be true? It is, and you don’t have to just take our word for it, follow the read link to get signed up for the beta, this is something that just cannot be missed.
Update: Check the video of it in action after the break.
We’ve wanted a long time to get our old pal Major Nelson on the Engadget podcast, and what better occasion than CES? Ok, maybe E3 — but there’s been no dearth of 360 news at and prior to the show, and no shortage of questions we’ve been dying to have answered on the air. If you’re not down with the Xbox, you’ll probably want to wait for a little bit until our next podcast, because in this one we’re talking about the recent Live outages, how the console’s been doing in the market, the persistence of the integrated HD DVD player rumor, the announcement of the 360’s first IPTV rollout, and even waxing nerd about our favorite titles of late.
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Hosts: Peter Rojas and Ryan Block
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Guest: Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson
Music: Solvent - Instructograph (Ghostly International)
LISTEN (MP3)
LISTEN (AAC)
LISTEN (OGG)
Contact the podcast: 1-888-ENGADGET, Engadget (Gizmo Project) or podcast at engadget dawt com
We’ve wanted a long time to get our old pal Major Nelson on the Engadget podcast, and what better occasion than CES? Ok, maybe E3 — but there’s been no dearth of 360 news at and prior to the show, and no shortage of questions we’ve been dying to have answered on the air. If you’re not down with the Xbox, you’ll probably want to wait for a little bit until our next podcast, because in this one we’re talking about the recent Live outages, how the console’s been doing in the market, the persistence of the integrated HD DVD player rumor, the announcement of the 360’s first IPTV rollout, and even waxing nerd about our favorite titles of late.
Get the podcast
[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (enhanced AAC).
[RSS MP3] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in MP3) to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically.
[RSS AAC] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in enhanced AAC) to your RSS aggregator.
[RSS OGG] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in OGG) to your RSS aggregator.
Hosts: Peter Rojas and Ryan Block
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Guest: Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson
Music: Solvent - Instructograph (Ghostly International)
LISTEN (MP3)
LISTEN (AAC)
LISTEN (OGG)
Contact the podcast: 1-888-ENGADGET, Engadget (Gizmo Project) or podcast at engadget dawt com
It really shouldn’t be a surprise that execs from AT&T, Microsoft, and NBC and several content filtering companies spent part of a CES panel about piracy talking about filtering at the network level — it’s definitely a tempting solution for Big Content, and one we’ve already seen Comcast kinda-sorta implement to general hue and cry — but it’s still somewhat disheartening. According to AT&T SVP James Cicconi, current anti-piracy efforts “haven’t been working,” and “a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this.” Of course, having your ISP monitor every bit that goes down the tubes is pretty damn creepy, but come on — you know that’s not stopping fools like NBC’s Rick Cotton from saying that the volume of P2P traffic itself is unacceptable because it’s “dominated by copyrighted materials.” That’s a little ridiculous, but AT&T’s Cicconi tried to spin it positively regardless: “Whatever we do has to pass muster with consumers and with policy standards. There is going to be a spotlight on it,” he said. Damn straight — it’s called “all of your customers switching to an unfiltered provider.”
Since Microsoft knew you were tired of having your holiday break marred by the annoyingly frequent news of Xbox Live outages, they’ve decided to redefine the verbage, newspeak style. Apparently the term “Status: Up and running” has now been expanded to include a laundry list of “intermittent issue” caveats some users might be experiencing, including but not limited to trouble with: “Tournaments, Storage Downloads, Gamer Tile, Statistics through Arbitration, Match Making, and Messaging.” If you’re hoping to play Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 online (you rebel, you) you’re most likely even more out of luck. There are also far-reaching problems that trace back to Windows Live IDs, so there’s a decent chance that your Zune account is on the fritz at the moment as well. But don’t worry, it’s all up and running.
Since Microsoft knew you were tired of having your holiday break marred by the annoyingly frequent news of Xbox Live outages, they’ve decided to redefine the verbage, newspeak style. Apparently the term “Status: Up and running” has now been expanded to include a laundry list of “intermittent issue” caveats some users might be experiencing, including but not limited to trouble with: “Tournaments, Storage Downloads, Gamer Tile, Statistics through Arbitration, Match Making, and Messaging.” If you’re hoping to play Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 online (you rebel, you) you’re most likely even more out of luck. There are also far-reaching problems that trace back to Windows Live IDs, so there’s a decent chance that your Zune account is on the fritz at the moment as well. But don’t worry, it’s all up and running.
The last we heard from Japan’s Mouse Computers, it was offering up a cheap’n'easy path to Merom — and true to form, it’s followed that up with a low-cost ticket to Penryn town, the J131. The 1280×800 13.3-inch unit is pretty basic, as things go — 120GB drive, 2GB of RAM, and a 1.3 megapixel webcam — but unlike some other machines on the market, its price is just as stripped-down as its featureset: just ¥119,700 ($1,125). Of course, there’s no word on whether we’ll ever see this hit our fair shores, but those of you headed to Japan soon should be able to pick this up straight away.
The last we heard from Japan’s Mouse Computers, it was offering up a cheap’n'easy path to Merom — and true to form, it’s followed that up with a low-cost ticket to Penryn town, the J131. The 1280×800 13.3-inch unit is pretty basic, as things go — 120GB drive, 2GB of RAM, and a 1.3 megapixel webcam — but unlike some other machines on the market, its price is just as stripped-down as its featureset: just ¥119,700 ($1,125). Of course, there’s no word on whether we’ll ever see this hit our fair shores, but those of you headed to Japan soon should be able to pick this up straight away.
Alright, it’s time to take the Queen CD out of my player and put Linkin Park in… this is a job for Linkin Park. Storyline: I took an opportunity for a company called Cost Captain from the P3 website to blog about CostCaptain in my personal blog here. Cost Captain was offering $9 for the post and only required 50 words, for a link that said www.costcaptain.com pretty easy right? I thought so! In fact it was too easy… CostCaptain sells Microsoft products, Cost Captain specialize in the order of selling Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows Vista packages at student discount prices. I wrote a 100 word article about such deals because the more my site relates to Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows Vista products the more they get the value for it to their website which in turn translates to more search engine queries for the terms Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Windows. The problem with my post was that I also included CostCaptain’s description on the P3 website IN ADDITION to the article that I wrote, because it gave them a much better link rating because of the keyworded specificness of Cost Captain description. I thought I was doing Cost Captain a favor, Cost Captain thought otherwise. This is the description:
CostCaptain.com is a Microsoft Authorized Education Reseller. We sell the brand new Office 2007 Suite and Vista to students and staff of schools, libraries and research labs. Home schools qualify too. We have served hundreds of schools, colleges and libraries and thousands of students and staff members.
We offer:
- 100% Authentic Microsoft products at academic discounts
- Microsoft Office 2007 from $129, Vista Upgrade from $89
- Friendly customer service.
- Buyers provide academic eligibility and after that the product is shipped
- Gift certificates that are a great way to give especially during holiday season
Very good keywording if you ask me… but hey, I’m no SEO expert or anything, just because I ranked number two and three on Google for the term “Cost Captain” simply by writing the Cost Captain article on my website… I mean I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about apparently… so therefore I won’t know what I’m talking about all over the net. Cost Captain said that they wouldn’t pay me and denied my post until it was rewritten because I “wrote the article using their description” Obviously the company didn’t want any sort of SEO relevancy so I rewrote the post, I put a 150 or so word description of why I rewrote the article the way I did on top and left what I had described before on the rest… just translated it. You see not only am I a blogger, webmaster of over 9 websites, internet marketing coach, but I also use Opera as my main browser of choice… I just like it. It’s not for everyone, I suggest FireFox for most people (as most of you already do since my stats say that 2/3 of my visitors are FireFox users). I used a widget on my Opera browser to translate the article into Ł337 5ρ34|< (or more commonly known as 1337 5p34k the translator is just hardcore). They didn’t like that either and banned me on P3 which is fine, ban me all you want… my site is more SEO friendly and optimized than your site will ever be, that’s your loss. Of all the bloggers who took your opportunity who ranks for your websites keywords? Oh that’s right, it’s me. I just want my money from the deal… that’s all. So therefore I’m taking my money that Cost Captain won’t pay me. If I can’t get it from the P3 website I will make damn sure I get it from ad revenue on my website.
We’re starting to think Xbox Live’s holiday strategy was modeled after Newtonian physics: what goes up must come down. Although the Live support site shows the service as being “up and running”, apparently users are still experiencing intermittent issues, sometimes more dramatic than those officially listed. We don’t know about you, but even though only some of us on we were able to get on, even they have been seeing a lot of stalling and freezing — and the unlucky ones are just completely shut out of Live. How are things going out there? Any XBL issues of which to speak?
P.S. -Microsoft, congrats on the great holiday season. You obviously sold a TON of Xbox 360s and Live service contracts. Now be a doll. Give everyone a week (or, say, a month) of free Live service for the ugliness over vacation, ok? These people paid for their service when the other guys offer it up for free.
Read - Live support site: still having problems
Read - Our post about problems from last weekend
Read - Our other post about outages on Christmas day
Update:
Our broham Major Nelson says the Live engineers have identified a fix for the issues and things are on their way to being back on the up and up. Hopefully this time for good!
To get ultimate laptop experience the best quality machines should be your priority. One of such high technology running machine is sony laptop whereas dell laptops are relative more experienced and accepted all around the world.
For those of you that don’t know it Microsoft and Google have been at each others throats for the last 3 years or so. Microsoft always has annoyed Google with MSN.com who’s search feature takes up a very low third place in the search engine race between Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Google who’s supposed number one rule is “do no evil” which was always a direct jab at Microsoft who so many feel is an evil corporation because they’re good at what they do (even though they’re one of the most generous companies ever when it comes to donations, school projects, and just generally helping people) started off a war with Microsoft however a few years back when Microsoft first started work on “Longhorn” which you guys now know as Windows Vista (yeah, I was around and monitoring very closely the progress of Longhorn and it will forever be just that to me, I know it’s a codename but you get attached when you were around these things from their beginnings) Google announced that they were making their own operating system to compete with Microsoft. They’ve been at war ever since throwing punches back and forth, buying companies, bidding wars, and lawsuits. Microsoft’s first punch back after the announcement of the Google Operating system was to kill off one of Google’s pet projects Google Reader, which was originally supposed to be a program much like library’s work where Google took every publication (books, magazines, you name it) was scanning them and offered them for free online. Microsoft being the only company with enough power and money to do anything about it took Google to court and destroyed the program in almost unpublicized lawsuits. The war had begun, Google with their cocky attitude pushed ahead full steam, and Microsoft let them. Recently the war has gone to the new playground of the internet social networking websites. Google and MSN fought a short lived battle over MySpace where Google won out rights to put advertisements on the site with a several hundred billion dollar deal. It appeared Google had been winning out with it’s deal with Double-Click going through it seemed they were gaining steam, their stocks soared to almost $800 a share and everyone predicted that they would break the $1,000 mark by the end of the year. Most companies would of taken this opportunity to split stocks and release some more to make sales of stocks jump, but Google with their big head and go get ‘em attitude wanted to be the next Berkshire-Hathaway (The company that Warren Buffet, good friend of Bill Gates, works for) who has never split stocks and currently to get a single share of Berkshire-Hathaway you’ve got to fork over $141,100. As the rest of the economy was dropping especially in the technology departments Google seemed to be on top, until that fateful day December 11, 2007 Everyone’s stocks dropped like a rock when Google was brought back to reality with $600 a share stock prices, but Microsoft continued to climb with the release of SP1 for Office 2007 and SP3 release candidate for Windows XP Microsoft was able to pull off the impossible and do what they do best, making gains in a bare marketplace. Before this Microsoft and Google had been at it over purchasing a minority stake in Facebook, Microsoft won out which started the decline of Google’s stock, then came the 11th, and now Microsoft is flaunting the fact that they may be very slow moving, but that doesn’t stop them from being THE slow moving behemoth of our time. Even though Google has all rights to text advertisements with MySpace all of your music on MS is now brought to you courtesy of the Zune, which is Microsoft’s MP3 player that inspired the Ipod, and once again Microsoft still won out that battle too. I’ll never own an Ipod being that they’re a direct rip-off of the Zune, which has STILL even with the Ipod’s popularity and publicity beat out the Ipod in both unit sales, and profits. Maybe that explains why Microsoft moves so slow at what they do, they fight on so many fronts, and they hate to lose. Take that Apple, and Google!!! I actually really like Microsoft fot those of you that don’t know… I can respect them as a corporation, a lot of companies I can’t even come close to respecting their business practices or company models, but M$ I can.
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