Stories by Brennon Slattery

AOL revamps AIM with Facebook, Google chat apps

AIM, AOL's seminal instant messenger app, just received a preview update to pull it out of obscurity and compete with other more popular chat apps like Facebook Chat, Google Talk, Skype and a slew of others that aggregate disparate clients and boast features like video and picture-sharing.

Written by Brennon Slattery18 Nov. 11 04:32

Amazon Kindle E-Book lending program: What it needs

Amazon's plans to create a subscription-based lending library of e-books on the Kindle is just, at this point, a rumor -- but, despite the novelty of the idea, it's already running into problems, namely from major book publishers.

Written by Brennon Slattery13 Sept. 11 03:47

Fox's 8-day content delay encourages piracy

Fox recently decided to stop releasing free online streams of its TV shows on Hulu the day after they air -- instead, Fox is delaying free streaming for eight days. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this choice by the network has resulted in an increase in over-100-percent increase in piracy.

Written by Brennon Slattery24 Aug. 11 06:45

Facebook lets expectant parents share the news

Facebook has added a feature that lets expectant parents add unborn children to the "Friends and Family" section of their profiles by selecting "Expected: Child" on the drop-down list. Typical of anything Facebook does, this feature -- implemented so that parents-to-be wouldn't break Facebook's rules by creating a profile for someone who is very underage -- has stirred controversy for the social network.

Written by Brennon Slattery04 Aug. 11 01:31

Mozilla's Boot to Gecko: A Mobile OS that could succeed

Mozilla, the makers of the Firefox browser, hopes to revolutionize the modern operating system with Boot to Gecko, a universal-platform OS primary aimed at mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets that could theoretically drive futuristic desktops as well.

Written by Brennon Slattery27 July 11 01:45

5 possible reasons U.S. users are ditching Facebook

Have we finally grown tired of Facebook? According to Inside Facebook, more than five per cent of U.S. users abandoned Facebook in May -- that's about six million people who have stopped "liking" the world's largest social network. Six million people jumping ship sounds like a lot, but when you consider that Facebook is on track to hit 700 million users any day now, it's not such a big deal.

Written by Brennon Slattery15 June 11 08:25

Google's Schmidt admits to screwing up on Facebook

When former Google CEO Eric Schmidt took the stage at the AllThingsD conference, it was almost guaranteed that he would blurt out something controversial. But Schmidt didn't go over the top -- he did, however, admit that Google "screwed up" on its social strategy, and that it's his fault.

Written by Brennon Slattery02 June 11 03:05

Samsung's e-reader screens boast 16.7 million colors

Much of the buzz coming out of the SID Display Week 2011 International Symposium conference in Los Angeles this week is about high-resolution screens for tablets capable of 2560-by-1600 resolution -- five times that of the iPad's 1024-by-768 display.

Written by Brennon Slattery21 May 11 03:34

Bing, Facebook deepen ties, threaten Google +1

Microsoft has unveiled a deeper conglomerate of Bing and Facebook that harvests the power of the social Web, one year after forming a partnership to take "social search" to the next level.

Written by Brennon Slattery18 May 11 03:14

Chromebooks to ship with offline versions of Google Apps

One of the problems with the marketability of the Chromebook -- that it only functions when connected to the Internet -- is also a misunderstanding. Google's Chrome OS doesn't have any locally installed apps like a word processor or spreadsheet manager, so many believe that Chromebooks are dependent on and useless without Wi-Fi or cellular data connectivity. But when Chromebooks ship on June 15, they'll come packaged with offline versions of Gmail, Docs, and Google Calendar.

Written by Brennon Slattery13 May 11 02:47

Google envisions automated home with Android@Home

Google used its I/O conference to introduce Android@Home, a software framework for Android that allows programmers to interact with various connected appliances such as light bulbs, thermostats, washing machines and more.

Written by Brennon Slattery12 May 11 02:30
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