The Kin Is Dead…. Shock, Not….

Frequent readers might remember the Microsoft Kin which was to be an iPhone fighter of sorts. Frequent readers may also recall that I wasn’t overly impressed with it. Well, PC Magazine is reporting that the Kin is dead:

Microsoft on Wednesday released a statement suggesting that it’s cutting bait on the Windows Phone 7 spinoff and folding the project’s staff and technologies into the main body of Windows Phone 7.

Lovely. Verizon who was stupid enough to had exclusive rights to carry the phone will continue to sell them for now, but the product is dead. At least as a stand alone device. One has to wonder if the reason to kill the Kin was due to crappy sales, the need to make Windows Mobile 7 more feature rich, or both?

So I guess this was basically the Zune of phones? In other words another dismal failure for Microsoft. How the mighty have fallen.

Jobs And Porn On The Same Side When It Comes To Flash… WTF?

If Apple God CEO Steve Jobs was looking for allies in his fight against Adobe Flash, he’s got a powerful one now. Digital Playground who produces porn movies wants Flash dead as Michael Jackson. Ali Joone, the founder and director of Digital Playground stated in an interview with Conceivably Tech:

Mobile browsers run HTML 5 very well. Flash brings everything to a crawl and has an impact on battery life. With HTML 5, there is no reason to show our content in Flash.

And:

“We are waiting for browsers to catch up. As soon as they are ready, we will move everything to HTML 5,” Joone said. He noted that he was grateful for what Flash has delivered, but said that it was “just a matter of time” until Flash disappears. “It’s the next passing of the torch.”

This is ironic as “The Steve” is on record as wanting to not have porn on any of his shiny iDevices. Now, Digital Playground is not a small porn company. They’re one of the top five porn companies according to Wikipedia having hits like “Pirates” and being one of the first companies to produce HD porn. The reason why this might matter is that there is an urban myth that porn drives technology citing the VHS vs. Beta fight back in the 1980s and how porn’s choice of VHS killed Beta. People are arguing that if porn gets behind HTML5, Flash is doomed. I’m not entirely sure that’s the case. But it will be interesting to not only see how this plays out in the Apple vs. Flash debate, but how “The Steve” reacts to having a porn company being on his side.

Is Rogers Going To Launch Another Discount Brand? [UPDATED]

There’s some rumors floating around that Rogers is going to launch something called Chatr which is a new brand designed to go after new Canadian cell companies like Public Mobile and Wind Mobile. The Boy Genius broke the story last week, but it picked up steam when The Globe And Mail reported on it yesterday. To top it off, Rogers didn’t go out of their way to dispel these rumors:

In a statement, Rogers did not deny the new brand name. “We’re always working to innovate and better serve Canadians but have nothing to announce at this time.”

The only reason that I think that Rogers might be doing this is that either the new cell companies are hurting Rogers more than they let on, or the news that Public Mobile is planning to expand its network using $350 million of foreign sourced cash is scaring the crap out of Rogers (and in either case, Fido which I thought was Rogers discount brand isn’t helping them to keep these companies at bay). Now I could reach out to Rogers and ask them what the deal is, but it’s a very safe bet that they won’t be commenting on anything right now (although my “best friends at Rogers” are free to prove me wrong).

So what do you think of this situation? Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

UPDATE: The answer is yes. Boy Genius nailed it. Rogers posted a press release about this new brand. In case you were wondering how this new brand fits in, here’s their explanation:

The introduction of chatr rounds out Rogers’ existing multi brand approach to targeting distinct market segments. The Rogers brand will continue to deliver leading edge devices; a proven, reliable and fast network; handset servicing; and world class tech support. Fido will remain a value brand with superior service that cares about the customer and the environment. chatr will offer Canadians unlimited talk and text plans backed by Canada’s reliable network.

Charming. Expect to see a launch later this summer.

Google Folds Up Like A Cheap Suit And Starts Redirecting Traffic Through China

Not that I’m shocked by this by any means, but it looks like Google has backed down from its stance of redirecting Chinese traffic through Hong Kong in the interest of providing uncensored search results.  The Google Blog is now reporting the following:

We currently automatically redirect everyone using Google.cn to Google.com.hk, our Hong Kong search engine. This redirect, which offers unfiltered search in simplified Chinese, has been working well for our users and for Google. However, it’s clear from conversations we have had with Chinese government officials that they find the redirect unacceptable—and that if we continue redirecting users our Internet Content Provider license will not be renewed (it’s up for renewal on June 30). Without an ICP license, we can’t operate a commercial website like Google.cn—so Google would effectively go dark in China.

And:

Over the next few days we’ll end the redirect entirely, taking all our Chinese users to our new landing page—and today we re-submitted our ICP license renewal application based on this approach.

Clearly the almighty dollar outweighs making a stand for what is right and just in the universe. It’s sad to see Google back down like this, but like I said, I’m not surprised.

iPhone 4 Sales Through The Roof… But Not All Is Good In The iPhone Universe

Apple punted out a press release a couple of days ago announcing to the world that they has sold 1.7 million iPhones since June 24th:

“This is the most successful product launch in Apple’s history,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Even so, we apologize to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply.”

Great going Steve. There is a dark cloud on your horizon though. Word on the street is that the iPhone has an issue that affects the antenna depending on how you hold it. A member of Macrumors.com e-mailed “The Steve” himself and here’s what the most holy one said:

“Non issue. Just avoid holding it in that way.”

He actually then e-mailed a much more detailed response:

Gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.

This has since been confirmed by The Boy Genius Report in the form of a troubleshooting guide that was allegedly leaked to them.

Now to be fair, everything he said in his e-mail is true. But Apple isn’t helping their own cause by taking this course of action with something that could be perceived by users as a design flaw. Methinks Apple may have to change tactics soon to keep their rabid base of fanbois happy.

Dell Sued Over Knowingly Selling Faulty PCs… Oh My

The New York Times is reporting that Dell, who isn’t exactly a small company, was knowingly selling PC’s that in some cases had a 97% failure rate. Not only that, its employees were told to play dumb. For example, one memo was sent to customer service reps telling them to “avoid all language indicating the boards were bad or had issues.” Meanwhile their sales teams continued to sell these PCs. This is now coming to light due to a lawsuit that was filed three years ago. This is the latest lawsuit to hit the computer company as they have been hit with lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit.

So is this the beginning of the end for Dell? Post your thoughts in the comments section.

Adobe FINALLY Patches Acrobat Vulnerabilities

Adobe yesterday shipped a critical Acrobat patch to cover a total of 17 documented vulnerabilities that expose Windows, Mac, and Unix users to malicious hacker attacks. You can look at the Adobe documentation about it here. I would strongly suggest that all users of Adobe Acrobat to update now as there are exploits floating around the Interwebs that leverage these vulnerabilities.

So, I’m going to ask this question next. What took Adobe so long to patch these vulnerabilities seeing as this was reported back in March? I’d really like to know. I suspect that many others would like to know as well.

So IT Nerd, What Phone Do You Like?

Since I’ve bashed the iPhone and Android phones because of their lack of privacy and security, some readers have asked me what phone would I actually like. The answer is that it’s the same phone that I’ve been using for the last 4 years. The Blackberry. Why? Here’s a short list:

• It has business class e-mail that is as close to bulletproof as you can get.
• Unlike the iPhone, the development platform is open.
• It’s secure.
• It’s easy to use.
• It’s Canadian.

Okay. The last point has nothing to do with technology. But these are all points that should matter to smartphone users. It really doesn’t matter what model Blackberry you get, but you should just get one. Granted the eye candy isn’t there compared to the iPhone and Android phone. But do you buy a phone for eye candy or do you buy a phone because it works? I buy my phone based on the latter. You should too.

Why I Won’t Be Getting An iPhone

Frequent readers will remember that I’ve decided to avoid Android phones because of the privacy issues that some of their apps have. Well, you can add the iPhone to that list. The reason is that when Apple came out with iOS 4, they also gave themselves the right to gather and use the location data of your iDevice. Here’s the exact text:

To provide location-based services on Apple products, Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services.

The part that freaks me out is the line about “real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device.” Now they do say that they can’t tie that to the user of the iDevice in question, but it doesn’t make me feel any better about it. Oh, there’s no way to opt out either. So “The Steve” has you by the shorthairs if you own a location aware iDevice.

It’s apparently freaked the US Congress out too. They’ve asked for more info on this and given “The Steve” until July 12th to answer their questions. I’ll be very interested to see what Apple says. Until then, I’ll be taking a pass on buying an iPhone. Sorry fanbois.

Firefox 3.6.4 Includes Crash Protection…. For Everyone But Mac Users

Are you sick of plug-ins like Flash crashing your browser? If so, you should update to Firefox 3.6.4 ASAP as that includes a new feature called “Crash Protection” which prevents Flash, Silverlight, and Quicktime crashes from bringing down your entire browser (although the only browser crashes that I ever experience are Flash related). But, Mac users who according to “The Steve” need this sort of protection because Flash sucks need not apply. Here’s what the Mozilla Blog had to say about that:

At this time Firefox offers crash protection for Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime and Microsoft Silverlight on Windows and Linux computers. Support for other plugins and operating systems will become available in a future Firefox release.

Charming. That means that all that Mac users get are bug fixes and security fixes. That’s not a bad thing. But if you want crash protection, I guess you’ll have to use Google Chrome.