Hasta La Gadget!

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has mail. It’s only a page and a paragraph long, but the letter he’s received this week has much gravitas attached to it, coming as it does from a select group of the tech industry’s biggest companies, all of whom are lending their support to AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile. Of the eight new proponents of the deal, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo form a sub-group of software / web content distributors, whereas Qualcomm, RIM, Avaya, Brocade, and Oracle will have been motivated to speak up because they see the takeover as expanding opportunities to sell their mobile and networking hardware. The entire octet agrees that the melding of AT&T and T-Mobile’s networks into one is a requisite move for broadening mobile broadband availability in the US and for keeping the country competitive with the rest of the world. In their words, “an increasingly robust and efficient wireless network is part of a virtuous innovation cycle.” Virtuous for them, perhaps, but what about consumers faced with an increasingly binary choice of mobile carrier? Who shall protect their virtue?

Microsoft, Facebook, RIM, and others write to the FCC in support of AT&T-Mobile merger originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Jun 2011 00:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on May 12, 2007 by CyberNet.

Just in time for summer vacations, Yahoo Travel has introduced a re-design of their site, as well as some new personalization features and mapping tools. People are just starting to plan their vacations, and the new design and features should really help, especially the Flight Planner, but we’ll get into that below.

New features/ changes:

• Personalized recommendations – not sure where to go? These recommendations come from user activity, and search history, and they’re displayed prominently on the page.
• Yahoo Map Integration

The personalized recommendations are a great tool because there are multiple display options. You’ll notice a drop-down list with options like My Recommendations, Best Deals, Near Me, Beach, Family, Romantic, Art and Architecture, Hiking and Camping, and Nightlife. If you were trying to plan a hiking and camping trip and you wanted recommendations, this would give you ideas that you could look into. On Yahoo Travel, this section is labeled as “Today’s Picks for You.”

They’ve also done a great job integrating Yahoo Maps with the travel service. On the home page there’s a map of the World where you can select where you’d like to go. I selected Chicago, and from there it takes me to a page specifically for travel in Chicago.  They include a map with recommended places to visit like hotels, restaurants, and attractions.

Another integration of maps are the detailed “re-maps” that layer maps on top of other maps. They take the typical map for an area, and then place another, more informative destination map on top so that you can plan your trip better (pictured below). It’s something that they’re testing out for now, and they say that new functionality with this feature will be coming soon. An example of a re-map is found when you search for Grand Canyon National Park. You’re in control of the layer opacity, and you can also view it in satellite mode.

Yahoo has always been good about integrating their services together, so you’ll notice that Flickr has been integrated into Yahoo Travel, as well as their “Answers” service where people ask questions and other people answer.  The questions they show are related to the destination you’re viewing.

Flight Planner

This feature will be especially useful if you’re planning a vacation with friends or other family members. It’s an optional plug-in which means you need to take the time to get it.  You must be using the desktop client for Yahoo Messenger to use this plug-in, but once you have it, you’ll be able to review and book flights with your family and friends in real time using messenger. I can’t think of an easier way to arrange flights than to do it in real-time over messenger while everybody is able to view and review flights.

So, if you’re planning a vacation for the summer, go check-out Yahoo Travel. It may seem over-whelming at first because there’s so many tools at your finger-tips, but in the end it will help you plan your perfect vacation.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Yahoo is the latest in a line of would-be champions to try to topple king Gmail from its perch atop the email mountain. The company’s newest Mail Beta (no relation to Gmail Beta) was introduced last October, but now its overhauled UI and fresh features are available to all. With the change comes quicker load times, stronger spam filtration, and it lets you send and receive Facebook updates and tweets. It also automatically turns picture and video links into thumbnail previews and handles up to 100MB attachments. These fancy new features are certainly a step in the right direction (even if the purple paintjob isn’t), but time will tell if it’ll rule the webmail world.

Yahoo upgrades its email for everyone, puts Facebook updates and tweets in your inbox originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 May 2011 06:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on March 28, 2011 by CyberNet.

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

NASA Demonstrates Photoshop Process for Hubble Images
Those jaw-dropping photos that come out of the Hubble Space Telescope takes hours for someone to assemble before they are posted for you to enjoy. The process involves combining images from Hubble (taken in grayscale), assigning colors to them, and repairing any artifacts that would detract from the overall beauty of the image. This video will give you some idea of what’s involved.

BlackBerry Playbook Will Be Compatible with Android Apps
There were murmurs a few months ago of RIM introducing Android app compatibility on their Playbook tablet prior to its release in April, and it looks like those rumblings came to fruition with this official announcement.

Firefox 4 Delivers 7.1M Downloads in First 24-hours
The big Firefox 4 release happened early last week, and it was met with success as 7.1 million people rushed to try out the new browser in the first 24-hours of availability. There were also another 3 million users that were running the release candidate, and were upgraded to the final version during the same time period.

Yahoo! Search Direct Provides a Better Search Experience
Yahoo! is working on a new way (currently in beta) to present users with results before they actually execute a search. In some of my brief tests I have to admit they did a nice job with the way you can get things like weather, sports scores, and many other tidbits of information as you are typing your query.

Windows Phone 7 “NoDo” Update Released
Microsoft started rolling out the “NoDo” update for Windows Phone 7 that brings copy and paste, faster resume times, improved Marketplace search, and more to the Windows Phone platform.

Amazon Launches Appstore for Android
Amazon’s new Android Appstore has a leg up on the competition because they will be offering a paid app every day for free, and will pay the chosen developers 20% of the normal retail price out of their own pocket.

Sprint Integrating with Google Voice
I was really happy to see that Google is now working directly with carriers to bring Google Voice to the masses, and they are starting with Sprint. Their direct integration, which will be rolling out soon, will let Sprint customers use their existing phone number with Google Voice without having to port the number over. Alternatively you can also replace your Sprint number with your Google Voice number.

AT&T to Acquire T-Mobile for $39 Billion
AT&T has officially confirmed that they will be acquiring T-Mobile USA for $39 billion. The deal is expected to close within the next year if all necessary approvals go through.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Increase Windows 7 Taskbar Previews
Are the Windows 7 Taskbar thumbnails a little too small for you? This free (and portable) tool will let you increase the size to something a little more useful. Unfortunately the size is not customizable.

Google Spreadsheets Adds Filtering
It has taken a little while, but Google Spreadsheets will finally let you filter columns of data. This is a feature that I use in large Excel spreadsheets all the time, and was frequently something I found Google Spreadsheets lacking. This could very well be the stepping stone that gets me entirely moved over to online document management.

Use Bing Maps to View 148 Mall Maps
Have you ever gone to a mall and wondered where you should park to optimize your path from the car to that one store you are heading to? Bing has integrated 148 US mall maps directly into Bing Maps so that you can zoom into mall and see the actual store layout. You can then use that information to figure out where the best place is to park. It even works if you switch to a non-angled satellite view making it even easier to see exactly where the parking spots are.

How to Make Ubuntu Look Like Windows 7
This guide walks you through installing a Windows 7 theme on Ubuntu, and the end result looks pretty good.

Lifehacker Launches Free Video Podcast
Lifehacker rolled out a video podcast last week that serves as a nice way to see some of the tips they cover on the site demonstrated by their own staff.

–Downloads–

• Adobe Air 2.6.0.19120 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• BurnAware Free 3.1.6 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• CCleaner 3.05.1408 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Dropbox 1.1.5 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
• FileZilla 3.4.0 ^RC1 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Firefox 4.0 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Flash Player 10.2.153.1 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Foobar2000 1.1.6 ^{Beta 1} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Foxit Reader 4.3.1.0323 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Google Chrome 12.0.712.0 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Miranda 0.9.18 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Opera 11.10.2064 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
• SeaMonkey 2.0.13 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• uTorrent 2.2.1.25130 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• VLC Media Player 1.1.8 [Homepage] [Mirror]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

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Earlier this year IntoNow launched its iPhone app that could identify what TV show you were watching by the audio Shazam-style and then share it with others over Facebook or Twitter, pull in additional information, or add the DVD to your Netflix queue. Now, Yahoo has purchased the company and according to the press release (after the break) wants to integrate its SoundPrint tech with its existing services including the Connected TV platform. As NewTeeVee suggests, this could tie-in nicely with its existing plans to use audio watermarks to identify advertisements and display additional info on screen or work with a companion app, both of which it demonstrated at CES. That database of sounds reportedly stretches back over five years and is continually being updated, which could give a major lift to Yahoo over other smart TV platforms that goes far beyond just check-ins and badges.

Continue reading Yahoo buys TV companion app developer IntoNow and its database of sounds

Yahoo buys TV companion app developer IntoNow and its database of sounds originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Apr 2011 17:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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