5 O’Clock Roundup: Sprint’s disappearing promo, stem cell breakthrough (sort of), search engine optimization
Sprint announces Palm Pre promo, then cancels it – Sprint’s website sprouted a great promo offer earlier overnight: Bring your phone number from another wireless carrier over to Sprint, and they’ll give you a $100 service credit on a new Palm Pre. The offer disappeared earlier today, and the company sent this official statement to reporters: “After further internal review today, the offer of a port-in service credit of $100 to new customers who buy the… Continue Reading
Opera Mini is most downloaded app ever, but for how long?
Opera’s browser for mobile handsets gets little recognition in America, but it’s been downloaded from GetJar’s application catalog 25 million times. The current version of the app has been grabbed over 7 million times. (The top countries for Opera Mini usage are, in order, Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, and South Africa.)
That makes Opera far and away the most downloaded app at GetJar, which most Americans also probably wouldn’t recognize as the world’s largest mobile… Continue Reading
Opera CEO still seeks U.S. success
updated
Jon von Tetzchner (pronounced “Yon,” not “John”) co-founded Opera in 1995 after developing a small, fast browser for Norway’s national phone company. The original version needed to fit on a 1.2 megabyte floppy disk and run fast on old PCs too slow for the two browser giants of the time, Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape Communicator.
Fourteen years later, von Tetzchner has carved out a small but solid niche for Opera. The company’s browsers ship pre-installed… Continue Reading
Opera Unite turns your computer into a server — is that a good thing?
Browser-maker Opera announced a new service today that it says will “reinvent the web” — Opera Unite, which basically turns your computer into a server, meaning that you can directly share content and communicate with your friends on the web, rather than going through a third-party service. It’s a cool idea, but also one that sounds like a very mixed blessing.
The early version of Opera Unite released today includes six services — file sharing, a… Continue Reading
Roundup: Google’s layoffs, Pick Your Five’s popularity, and more
Here’s the latest (layoff heavy) action:
Google lays off 200 employees — Most of the cuts are happening in the sales and marketing departments, where Google has over-invested.
Pick Your Five application surges on Facebook — The app from LivingSocial, which asks you to list your five favorite movies, books, and so on, has grown to more than 6 million users since launching a week ago.
IBM laying off 5,000 people — Many of those jobs will be transferred to India.
Opera… Continue Reading
Chrome who? Safari 4 makes the browser hunt more interesting
I’ve had a bit of a dilemma in recent months. You see, my browser of choice, Google Chrome, is not available on my operating system of choice, Apple’s OS X. So I’ve been waiting patiently as Google makes slow progress on the Mac version. But after today, I may not be waiting anymore.
No, Chrome for Mac still isn’t available, but something which may be on par, if not better is — Safari 4. Apple has… Continue Reading
Opera Mini browser available for Google Android
The latest version of the popular mobile browser Opera Mini is now available for the T-Mobile G1, the first phone built on Google’s Android operating system. The Android availability is part of the improvements in Opera Mini 4.2, which leaves testing mode tomorrow.
Opera Mini is the first alternative G1 users have to the phone’s built-in browser, which is based on WebKit. Matthew Miller of ZDNet spotted Mini in the Android Market this morning, and reports… Continue Reading
Another competing app Apple won’t approve: Opera Mini
Several weeks ago, a big stink was made when Apple rejected a podcast application from being included in the App Store. The basis for the rejection was that it duplicated the functionality of the podcast section of iTunes (which users should be able to access with the upcoming 2.2 iPhone software update). Now there appears to be another application getting rejected on similar grounds: Opera Mini.
The Opera web browser is a fairly popular one —… Continue Reading
Roundup: More cuts at Yahoo, food cuts at Google and more
Here’s the latest action:
More job cuts coming at Yahoo? — Chief executive Jerry Yang has hired consultants from Bain to get the organization “fit.” It’s not likely that means more exercise. SAI has more.
More food benefits slashed at Google – While Yahoos may be losing their jobs, Googlers are just losing select food privileges. Valleywag has more.
Broadcom wins another battle against Qualcomm — The chipmaker scores another victory after a judge rules that Qualcomm is infringing on… Continue Reading
Skyfire opens up its browser for a vastly improved web experience on Windows Mobile and Symbian devices
I’ve been spoiled by the iPhone. When I was using a Windows Mobile device today browsing the web with the mobile version of Internet Explorer, I was just about ready to throw the phone out the window. The experience was horrible. Then I opened the new version of Skyfire, version 0.8, which is being released today. Boy, what a difference a browser makes.
Skyfire is a third-party web browser made for Windows Mobile and more recently,… Continue Reading
Opera: Mobile web usage continues to rise worldwide, and especially in Latin America
Latin America is one of the more promising areas for mobile phone usage. Three of its largest economies — Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela — are also the fastest to adopt the mobile web, according to a new report by browser-maker Opera.
Google is the most visited site in Latin America, followed by regionally popular social networks like Google’s Orkut (big in Brazil), hi5 and a regional one called metroFLOG, with Facebook creeping up, the company also… Continue Reading
Opera Mobile 9.5: Another step toward a faster, prettier mobile Web
The latest version of the Opera Mobile Web browser has just been released in testing mode. And hard as it was to tear myself away from my shiny new iPhone 3G, I have to admit Opera’s looking pretty good.
Version 9.5’s biggest improvement lies in how Opera Mobile shows a Web page — it now defaults to showing the full page, then allows you to move around and zoom in as desired. This was already included… Continue Reading
Skyfire nabs Mike Rowehl to handle scalability
Skyfire is a hot new mobile web browser that touts itself as “The PC web. On your phone.” It also touts itself as “real fast,” something which new team addition Mike Rowehl will have a hand in maintaining as the company’s scalability architect.
We last wrote about Rowehl two months ago when the mobile web browser Mowser, a company Rowehl co-founded and was chief executive of, was purchased by the Ireland-based consortium dotMobi. He stayed on… Continue Reading
Opera discloses stats on mobile browsing: Social networks are hot
If you know the habits of people surfing the web on their mobile phones, you can make quite a bit of money.
Few are in a better position to know than Opera, maker of the web browser used on tens of millions of mobile phones.
The company says in its “State of the Mobile Web” quarterly report being released today that visits to social networks comprise almost 41 percent of all mobile web traffic. In the U.S.,… Continue Reading
Opera and Safari beat IE and Firefox to Acid3 milestone
The latest versions of the web browsers Opera and Safari are claiming to have reached the big 100/100 score milestone in the Acid3 web standards compatibility test, making them the first browsers to do so. The two sides are thought to have completed the task within minutes of each other, both beating the much more popular Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers to the milestone.
The Acid browser test is developed by The Web Standards Project in… Continue Reading
Opera’s mobile web browser making another step towards a fully mobile web
Opera, the web browser company, has announced the latest upgrade to its mobile web browser, which it hopes will spur even more users to start using the internet through their phones.
Opera has millions of mobile users, and along with many other mobile browsing efforts, is helping to open up the mobile market to traditionally web-focused companies.
The upgraded browser, not yet unreleased, includes a new way to pan across pages or zoom in on a part… Continue Reading
Roundup: Yahoo’s China troubles, Google’s game ads, and more
1) Yahoo’s Yang lambasted by Congress for China actions
2) Social networks eclipse email in the UK
3) Yet another “semantic” search engine launches
4) Coming to a gas station pump near you: Google maps
5) Coming to online games this year: Google ads
6) Mobile web browser Opera Mini 4 out now
7) Forbes aquires majority stake in political blog site RealClearPolitics.com
Google-led Android mobile phone software has a long way to go, says rival
Yahoo’s Yang lambasted by Congress for China… Continue Reading
Mobile landgrab: Microsoft releases Deepfish, follows Minimo Project
Jockeying for control of the so-called third screen is intensifying, now that most people are carrying around a phone with them, and will consume more and more information from them.
The move to the cellphone may be one of the biggest trends of the decade.
Microsoft has just released Deepfish, a browser that aims to preserve the layout of documents on mobile devices and making Web navigation more easy — enabling you to zoom in and… Continue Reading