Archons G9 Tablets To Taste Ice Cram Sandwich Early Next Year (Video)
In our review we found them to be fun but ugly, with various ports and a somewhat untrustworthy build quality, though solid enough for casual use. I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that you had perhaps forgotten about the Archons G9 tablets. They haven’t seen much coverage of late, though we did get our hands on one back in October.
But the 8- and 10-inch G9 slates may be due for a refresh, which is exactly what they’ll get come the new year. Archons has confirmed that Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich will be available on the G9 series in Q1 2012. To prove it, they sent us over a video of ICS running on an OMAP 4-powered G9.
They still have to complete a few more tweaks including hardware acceleration for video support and Archons’ 3G dongle/port support. I must admit Ice Cream Sandwich definitely paints the slate in a more delicious light, though Archons has reminded us there’s more work to be done.
Tech firm wants to ban office e-mail
A workday without e-mail.To office workers everywhere struggling to stem the tide of messages filling their inbox, it probably sounds too good to be true.
IT services firm Atos plans to ban internal e-mail from company communications within two years.But a French tech company wants to make it a reality. Calling the volume of its e-mail "unsustainable.
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The issue gained new traction last week when Breton gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal in which he said he hadn't sent a work e-mail in three years. "If people want to talk to me, they can come and visit me, call or send me a text message," he told the newspaper. "Emails cannot replace the spoken word."
Instead, employees will communicate mostly through instant-messaging tools or wake-like documents that can be edited by multiple users online.
Breton estimates that only 10% of the 200 messages his employees receive on an average day are useful, and that 18% is spam. Managers spend between 5 and 20 hours a week reading and writing e-mails, he says. Altos has 74,000 employees in 42 countries.
An Altos spokeswomen told CNN that response to Breton's policy has been "positive" and that the company has reduced its volume of internal e-mails by 20 percent in six months.
If trends are any indication, Altos may be on to something. Recent surveys have found e-mail use declining rapidly among younger people who prefer faster, less formal means of communication such as testing or instant messaging on Face book or Twitter.
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It will be interesting to see how many other large scale organizations will follow in its footsteps over the next several years.""Altos' decision ... is perhaps the most ringing endorsement yet for the notion that email is being gradually phased out of [the workplace]," wrote BonitaSoft CEO Miguel Valdés Faura on the tech blog GigaOm. "
Interesting indeed. Many harried employees may welcome such an experiment -- unless it means more time spent in meetings.
Why Europe targeted Apple's e-book cartel
The antitrust probe dates back to a deal Steve Jobs cut with five publishers in Jan. 2010i bookstore on an iPad
If Amazon (AMZN) is the 500-lbs. gorilla in the e-book trade, why has Apple's much smaller i Bookstore been targeted?The language of the European Commission's pass release Tuesday announcing the start of a formal antitrust investigation of Apple (AAPL) and five major book publishers doesn't address the obvious question: Smartphone
News of the app's existence on millions of phones had bounced around on tech blogs for a while. But attention skyrocketed this week when Eckhart posted his video.First, a recap: On Monday, researcher and developer Trevor Elkhart posted a 17-minute YouTube video apparently showing how the software -- designed as a diagnostic tool to find and help fix mobile network problems -- runs on his smartphone and logs every keystroke, every text and the full URL of every website he visits.
"Given our dependence on smartphones, we rely on the assumption that our personal information is protected from third parties," attorney Steve W. Bergman said in a written statement. "Yet, it appears that Carrier IQ has violated this trust."
By Thursday, it had turned into a rapidly developing story in which new information seemed to surface hourly. Mobile carriers and smartphone makers rushed to dispute claims made by Earhart and others who said they confirmed his findings, explain their use of the app or announce that they once used it but plan to get rid of it.
And Friday morning, the controversy made its way into the courts. A lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Carrier IQ, and phone makers Samsung and HTC, claiming that the app violates customer privacy.
The potential ramifications obviously had other privacy-minded folks concerned as well.
Ber man's firm is representing several customers and is seeking to turn the complaint into a class-action lawsuit.
Many mobile customers seemed to focus their concerns on the fact that the software runs without their knowledge and appears difficult, if not impossible, to uninstall.
For example, on Sprint's community forums, several topics had been created to discuss the issue. And customers weren't happy.
"A couple of things seem pretty clear," Jay Stanley, a senior privacy and technology analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, said Friday. "We don't know what the company was storing or accessing or what their clients were storing or accessing, but they seem to at least have the capability to store and access a lot of very personal information."
"There's no excuse to knowingly and willingly want to have that kind of invasive software, that potentially puts customers sensitive information at risk, on the phone," one customer wrote. "This software may violate multiple privacy laws, and that alone ought to void our contracts."
Sprint said it uses the app to root out network problems but can't see user activity. Other wireless carriers and smartphone manufacturers also responded. Venison said it doesn't use the app, and Apple said it has stopped supporting it and plans to eliminate it altogether.
In a message posted to Paste bin, Dan Rosenberg, an analyst with Virtual Security Research, wrote that some of the fears about Carrier IQ have been overblown.
"After reverse engineering Carrier myself, I have seen no evidence that they are collecting anything more than what they've publicly claimed: antonym zed metrics data," he wrote. "There's a big difference between 'look, it does something when I press a key' and 'it's sending all my keystrokes to the carrier!'.'"
By Thursday morning, some on the Web were trying to put the brakes on the fears, though.
"Okay, folks, before we complete this public lynching, is there any evidence that Carrier IQ actually transmitted inappropriate data?" tweeted Declan McCullagh, a correspondent for tech site CNET.
"In my opinion, the media has made it more malicious than it really is and I am not concerned about my phone usage at all," wrote Matthew Miller, a columnist with tech site ZDNet. "It sounds to me like the software is designed to BENEFIT consumers and is not being used to track and target you."
But the ACLU's Stanley remains concerned. He cited promotional material on Carrier IQ's own website that notes its ability to track users' activities.
Carrier IQ says the core purpose of its tool is to uncover broad trends across a network. Its software can help carriers find out where calls are dropping and why, and zero in on device glitches.
"If you look at their website, we don't know what their clients were buying, but we do know what they were selling," he said. "What they're saying to the media doesn't seem to comport to what they tout on their own website."
For at least some of these who remain concerned (and there are no doubt many), there may be some hope of at least finding out if the app is running on their phones.
A new app in the Android Market, Voodoo Carrier IQ detector, is deigned to help you simply find the kit on your phone if it exists. It's only a day old and not perfect, developers say, but will continue to be awakes.
