Future Technology
Best Buy, Netflix back Blu-ray, downplay HD DVDIt's been
a bad beginning of the year for HD DVD, to say the very least. Things only got worse this week as big box retailer Best Buy and mail order rental chain giant Netflix both lined up to dump HD DVD and exclusively support Sony-backed Blu-Ray.
Netflix joins fellow rental chain Blockbuster on the Blu-Ray bandwagon, and plans to completely eliminate all HD DVD stock in the second half of 2008. Customers with HD DVD dics in their queues received an email from Netflix on Monday stating the company would no longer support HD DVD.
"As you may have heard, most of the major movie studios have recently decided to release their high-definition movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format. In order to provide the best selection of high-definition titles for our members, we have decided to go exclusively with Blu-ray as well," the email read.
a bad beginning of the year for HD DVD, to say the very least. Things only got worse this week as big box retailer Best Buy and mail order rental chain giant Netflix both lined up to dump HD DVD and exclusively support Sony-backed Blu-Ray.Netflix joins fellow rental chain Blockbuster on the Blu-Ray bandwagon, and plans to completely eliminate all HD DVD stock in the second half of 2008. Customers with HD DVD dics in their queues received an email from Netflix on Monday stating the company would no longer support HD DVD.
"As you may have heard, most of the major movie studios have recently decided to release their high-definition movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format. In order to provide the best selection of high-definition titles for our members, we have decided to go exclusively with Blu-ray as well," the email read.
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LG to roll out Android phone by early 2009
BARCELONA (Reuters) - LG Electronics plans to start selling a phone model running on Android, the highly anticipated mobile phone operating system, at the start of next year at the latest, a senior official said."We will bring it out late in 2008 or early 2009," Chang Ma, LG's vice president for marketing strategy told Reuters in an interview at the Mobile World Congress trade show.
LG is part of a group of about 30 companies that said they would support Google's operating system, which is based on Linux, an open-source software platform.
Service provider Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile and Taiwanese phone maker High Tech Computer have both said they plan to sell phones based on Android this year.
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T-Mobile dumps Google for Yahoo in Europe
Yahoo Inc ousted archrival Google Inc as T-Mobile's top Internet partner in Europe as it unveiled a service to squeeze social Web connections on to cell phone screens, a day after rebuffing a $41.6 billion takeover bid from Microsoft Corp.
The deal, announced at the Mobile World Congress wireless fair on Tuesday, puts Yahoo on a strong footing with carriers in Europe, building on deals it has closed with operators in the Americas and Asia, as it seeks to make up in mobile the ground it has lost to Google in computer-based Web search.Yahoo now has access to 600 million potential users through its carrier partners worldwide, and Marco Boerries -- the executive leading Yahoo's mobile push -- told Reuters he aimed to reach 1 billion by the end of 2009.
"Europe is now wide open," he said in an interview at the trade fair. "For the rest of Europe, let the games begin."
Yahoo's new service, called oneConnect, creates a single contacts list for users that draws on all their Web connections -- regardless of whether those connections were made through instant messaging services, email or online social networks.
Users can then see -- to the extent that their contacts allow them to -- their friends' availability, activities and messages, without the bother of trying to navigate between Web sites and inboxes on a mobile phone.
"Today, most people have too many forms of communications," said Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo's Connected Life division. "To keep in touch with all of them you have to go to all of these different Web sites."
Once the free service becomes established, Yahoo plans to introduce discreet advertising on parts of oneConnect, sharing the revenues with phone operator partners.
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