Technology News and IT Business Intelligence

The danger with waging a populist political war is in potentially boiling down one’s message to such a degree that it ends up insulting and patronizing the very people the message is targeting. The case in point could not be made clearer this afternoon in Washington, DC, as The Hill’s Kim Hart first discovered: A handful of otherwise unnoticeable protestors outside the headquarters of the National Association of Broadcasters erected an 18-foot inflatable pig, bearing the message, “Fair Pay for Musicians.”
The pig has become the mascot of the MusicFirst Coalition, the performers’ rights agency that collects and distributes royalties. For the last few years, MusicFirst has campaigned extensively against the decades-old exemption of terrestrial radio broadcasters (as opposed to Internet radio) from paying performers’ royalties. Stations continue to pay royalties to rights holders, which in the end, include many of the recording industry institutions also represented by MusicFirst.
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FileMaker Pro 11 left beta testing for general release last Tuesday, adding a host of new capabilities for better productivity in database use, faster database creation, and easy production of eye-catching charts.
Now updated for Microsoft’s Windows 7 and Apple’s Macintosh native Mac OS X “Cocoa” platform, FileMaker Pro is the only software in its category that runs on both Windows and Mac, noted Ryan Rosenberg, vice president, marketing and services for FileMaker, Inc., in a briefing for Betanews.

“We’re number one on Mac, and number two after Microsoft Access on Windows,” according to Rosenberg.
With so few rivals for FileMaker Pro on either platform, why is the Apple division adding so many new features this time around? “We want everyone to become a database user,” the VP responded.
In contrast to FileMaker’s Bento personal database program, a Mac-only product targeted at consumers and very small businesses, the division’s flagship FileMaker product is designed mainly for “knowledge workers” at mid- to large-sized businesses.
Rosenberg said that FileMaker, Inc. now eyes expanding the adoption of FileMaker Pro among both advanced database users and novices, who might have been performing tasks such as invoicing using spreadsheets instead.
Like Bento, FileMaker Pro requires no familiarity with programming languages. In recent releases, the product has gained external links to Oracle, MySQL, and Microsoft SQL Server databases.
Rosenberg also contended, though, that FileMaker Pro has long contained a number of features — such as Web publishing, for example — still unavailable in the Windows-only Microsoft Access. He then argued that, on the whole, FileMaker’s interface is smoother and easier to use.
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Yesterday, Samsung launched its 2010 line of 3D TVs, which includes LED, LCD, and plasma screens between 46″ and 65″, with prices that start at $1,999 and go up to $6,999. Today, Panasonic added its products into the mix at a launch event in New York City with partners Best Buy, 20th Century Fox, and DirecTV.
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Windows Mobile phones continue to bleed US subscribers, with Android devices picking up most of the lost subscriber share. Can you say free falling? Today, ComScore released standard handset and smartphone data for the three-month period of November 2009 to January 2010. ComScore designates the platforms by vendor. Microsoft smartphone subscriber share fell to 15.7 percent from 19.7 percent three months earlier. Meanwhile, Google rose to 7.1 percent from 2.8 percent during the same time period.
What about iPhone, for which American bloggers and journalists are seemingly obsessed? If Apple is gaining smartphone subscribers, it’s not substantially showing in the data. Subscriber share rose from 24.8 percent to 25.1 percent, which is statistically negligible. Meanwhile, Research in Motion slightly climbed — to 43 percent from 41.3 percent.
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The European Parliament today overwhelmingly voted in favor of a resolution compelling participants in multi-national negotiations over the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) to report on the status and substance of those negotiations, first to Parliament and eventually to the general public. This after a groundswell of public concern arose in the wake of documents purporting to be official ACTA material, the latest leaked by Wired last November (PDF available here from Wired), spoke of US negotiators’ requests to include terms in the final Agreement that would force Internet service providers to police the content trafficked over their pipelines, or else face penalties.
A statement issued from Parliament this afternoon records the final vote as 633-13-16 in favor of the resolution, the motion for which (DOC available here) was drafted just yesterday on behalf of six of the continent’s political parties and alliances, including Greens/EFA. That motion referred to the leaked documents by name, effectively confirming their legitimacy.
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Tuesday evening, during an event televised over YouTube called Google Campfire One, Google executives lifted the curtain on its cloud-based Apps Marketplace for PC-based applications, with the promise of opening its online store with 50 charter vendors later in the evening. The Marketplace is designed to feature applications that integrate with the company’s existing Google Apps, Gmail, and other cloud-based services.
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After showing a prototype of its first electronic reader at CES in January, Samsung on Tuesday officially rolled out the new device, spilling all the details about the final feature set while also unveiling a new partnership with Barnes & Noble.
Unlike other gadgets in the increasingly crowded field, the Samsung eReader lets people make notes in the margins of e-book pages, pointed out Vickie Cullen, a Samsung spokesperson, at a press event in New York City where the company launched a number of CE products including this device, 3D TVs, and a 3D Blu-ray player.
Users of Samsung’s eReader can modify the electronic pages by underlining words, for example, and they can use built-in voice recording functionality to produce audio memos and annotations. It’s also able to read text aloud, but only with electronic books that support text-to-speech (TTS) technology.
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At a press conference in New York City on Tuesday, Samsung unveiled new 3D products that include six HDTV series, a Shrek 3D movie, and a DVD player designed to handle 3D along with regular Blu-ray and standard DVD disks.
Samsung’s initial 3D TV line-up — which requires 3D glasses for viewing – ranges from the LED 7000/8000/9000 Series to the LCD 750 Series and the Plasma 7000/8000 Series.
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One month ago, Google put the word out that it was looking to build and test its own fiber-to-the-home networks in a couple of cities. The speeds would be up to 1 Gbps and the reach would initially be about 50,000 homes.
Immediately, hundreds of cities began making pitches to attract Google’s attention, some earnest, some outlandish.
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With the economic sinkhole of 2008-09 now a figment of many technology companies’ past, most PC manufacturers are back on their regularly scheduled growth curve. Last month, Dell had indicated to investors that it was returning to that curve as well, reporting “product shipments…up at double-digit rates year-over-year” during its end-of-fiscal year 2010 earnings report.
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