Microsoft has added a PC versus Mac section to its Windows 7 website. The webpage is under the Compare tab, where users can match up the three main Windows 7 editions, read a Top 10 list of reasons to buy Windows 7, and read Microsoft’s thoughts on why it believes Windows 7 has the advantage over Mac OS X. According to the new page,

Microsoft says it has Apple beat in six categories: Having Fun (Macs might spoil your fun), Simplicity (Macs can take time to learn), Working Hard (Macs don’t work as well at work or at school), Sharing (Macs don’t like to share), Compatibility (Macs might not like your PC stuff), and Choice (Macs don’t let you choose).

Each area makes a couple valid points, though Redmond makes sure to avoid naming any potential strengths Cupertino may have: this is strictly a pro-PC show. Each page ends off with a note to visit the Windows PC Scout to help the user find the right PC for them.
Microsoft also points out that many PC games are not available for Mac OS X

It’s not surprising that Microsoft is playing up the PC vs. Mac comparisons given the “Get a Mac” campaign that ended a couple of months ago. Microsoft eventually responded directly to that campaign with the “I’m a PC” series of spots—an instant hit, at least in contrast to the Seinfeld and Gates ads. When Windows 7 came out the software giant changed course a bit with the I’m a PC and Windows 7 was my idea commercials.

It’s worth noting that the Windows 7 webpage does not mention “I’m a PC” at all, but the distinction between Mac and PC that Apple first trumpeted is heavily emphasized. Microsoft seems perfectly happy to continue using the PC label if it means easily distinguishing itself from Apple’s offerings.

Unsurprisingly, Apple opposed the latest revisions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), with the company claiming that hacked iPhones will be open to security holes and viruses.

The US Library of Congress, in a recent review of copyright rules, has now changed a 1998 position that banned phone owners from bypassing technical locks.

Jailbreakers go free

In a statement this week, Librarian of Congress James Billington said phone owners who jailbroke their phones would “not be subject to the statutory prohibition against circumvention.”

“The Copyright Office recognizes that the primary purpose of the locks on cell phones is to bind customers to their existing networks, rather than to protect copyrights,” noted Jennifer Granick of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

“We are thrilled to have helped free jailbreakers, unlockers and vidders from this law’s overbroad reach,” Granick added.

“By granting all of EFF’s applications, the Copyright Office and Librarian of Congress have taken three important steps today to mitigate some of the harms caused by the DMCA.”

Jailbreaking will let you add unauthorized apps to your iPhone. However, it should be made clear that should you jailbreak your phone, you will still void the warranty (and, potentially, and more importantly, cripple your iPhone’s battery life!).

Which all sounds highly convenient. So that’s buying a new TV, buying some glasses, throwing up everywhere, going blind and ruining the lives of your small children: 3D, here we come.

Here’s the new warning:

“Some people may experience discomfort (such as eye strain, eye fatigue or nausea) while watching 3D video images or playing stereoscopic 3D games on 3D televisions. If you experience such discomfort, you should immediately discontinue use of your television until the discomfort subsides.

“SCEA recommends that all viewers take regular breaks while watching 3D video or playing stereoscopic 3D games. The length and frequency of necessary breaks may vary from person to person. Please take breaks that are long enough to allow any feelings of discomfort to subside. If symptoms persist, consult a doctor.

“The vision of young children (especially those under six years old) is still under development. SCEA recommends that you consult your doctor (such as a pediatrician or eye doctor) before allowing young children to watch 3D video images or play stereoscopic 3D games. Adults should supervise young children to ensure they follow the recommendations listed above.”

While unveiling the $35 tablet computer, the HR Development minister of India, Mr. Kapil Sibal, said that the newest device is India’s answer to MIT’s $100 laptops. MIT’s $100 laptop computers were made by the institutes’ media lab in 2005 and were aimed at students of developing countries. However, the $100 laptop computers of MIT could never become popular. As a matter of fact, the MIT $100 laptops ended up costing around $200 to the buyers. Sibal says that MIT’s solution for cheap technology was after all not so cheap.

Sibal contacted private sector to develop a cheap tablet device for students but after receiving a not-so-enthusiastic response, he turned to the students of India’s elite engineering schools and came up with a protocol $35 tablet computer. He says that the cost will be brought down to $10 in next few years. The developers have used intelligent design to reduce the cost. The recent downfall in the hardware prices has also made a role in decreasing the price.

Reportedly, international computer manufacturers have shown interest in making the $35 computers but no deal is yet finalized. Indian government has also planned to subsidize the manufacturing of these low-cost tablet computers to further decrease the price.

June 2010 video game hardware sales, with growth compared to June 2009:

* 511,000 — Nintendo DS (-33 percent)
* 452,000 — Xbox 360 (+88 percent)
* 423,000 — Wii (+17 percent)
* 305,000 — PlayStation 3 (+85 percent)
* 121,000 — PSP (-26 percent)

Helped by new model sales, the Xbox 360 topped the Wii for the first time in months, pulling ahead of Nintendo’s console by roughly 30,000 units, and Sony’s PS3 by a comfortable 147,000-unit spread. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

But industry sales were down overall, dropping from $1.17 billion in June 2009 to $1.10 billion, year-on-year.

“Unfortunately, the industry realized a decline versus the same time period last year, driven by decreases in sales of portable hardware and console and portable software,” singling out the console hardware unit sales increase — 35 percent overall — as “a bright spot.”

Look for total U.S. annual revenue to slide in somewhere between $18 and $21 billion, predicts Frazier, highlighting Microsoft and Sony’s motion controllers (Kinect and Move, respectively) and “the strong slate of content still to come,” by which she probably means games like “Metroid: Other M,” “Mafia 2,” “L.A. Noire,” “Brink,” “Halo: Reach,” “Dead Rising 2,” EA’s football lineup (“NCAA,” “Madden”), “Sonic 4,” “Medal of Honor,” “Fallout: New Vegas,” “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II,” “Fable III,” “Final Fantasy XIV,” “Gran Turismo 5″ and “Call of Duty: Black Ops” (not to mention PC biggies like “StarCraft II,” “Elemental: War of Magic,” “DC Universe Online” and “Civilization V”).

In addition to across the board year-on-year console growth, hardware sales were up slightly from May 2010 in average sales per week. The Xbox 360 had it second largest non-holiday showing since Halo 3 launched back in September 2007, and the PS3 continued its unbroken upward sales streak — 11 months of consecutive year-on-year increases.

The recent reception problems with the new iPhone are just one of the reasons you should consider buying a mobile phone on the Andriod platform.

1. iPhones are Expensive and overprized – Andriod phones come at Lower prices and great design 2. iPhone – no Java or Flash allowed – Andriod Java or Flash allowed
3 Regulated & restricted Apple App Store – Unrestricted freely distribution off apps
4. iPhone SDK $99 per year – Several Free Andriod SDK available
5.Xcode is so shockingly bad – Java is easy
6. Restricted to few carriers like AT&T – Available with all mobile phone carriers
7. More expensive subscription required – Various and cheap subscriptions available
8. Just Apple – For sale at many mobile phone manufacturers -
9. iPhone has Limited and more closed development – Andriod has Easy and open development
10. Apple iTunes need i say more – Easy adding MP3 for free -

I made just a top 10 list of various reasons I found on the Internet.
If you found an other reason why Andriod is Hot an iPhone not just tell it in your reply on this post.

The company will offer a software tool, starting Monday, that is intended to make it easy for people to write applications for its Android smartphones.

The free software, called Google App Inventor for Android http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/, has been under development for a year. User testing has been done mainly in schools with groups that included sixth graders, high school girls, nursing students and university undergraduates who are not computer science majors.

The thinking behind the initiative, Google said, is that as cellphones increasingly become the computers that people rely on most, users should be able to make applications themselves.

“The goal is to enable people to become creators, not just consumers, in this mobile world,” said Harold Abelson, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is on sabbatical at Google and led the project.

The project is a further sign that Google is betting that its strategy of opening up its technology to all kinds of developers will eventually give it the upper hand in the smartphone software market. Its leading rival, Apple, takes a more tightly managed approach to application development for the iPhone, controlling the software and vetting the programs available.

“We could only have done this because Android’s architecture is so open,” Mr. Abelson said.

The Google project, is intended to give users, especially young people, a simple tool to let them tinker with smartphone software, much as people have done with computers. Over the years, he noted, simplified programming tools like Basic, Logo and Scratch have opened the door to innovations of all kinds. Microsoft’s first product, for example, was a version of Basic, pared down to run on personal computers.

The Google application tool for Android enables people to drag and drop blocks of code — shown as graphic images and representing different smartphone capabilities— and put them together, similar to snapping together Lego blocks. The result is an application on that person’s smartphone.

For example, one student made a program to inform a selected list of friends, with a short text message, where he was every 15 minutes. The program was created by putting three graphic code blocks together: one block showed the phone’s location sensor, another showed a clock (which he set for 15-minute intervals), and third linked to a simple database on a Web site, listing the selected friends.

An onscreen button would turn on the program, , for perhaps a few hours on a Saturday night when the person wanted his friends to know where he was.

A student at the University of San Francisco, made a program that automatically replied to text messages, when he was driving. “Please don’t send me text messages,” it read. “I’m driving.”

A program by a nursing student at Indiana University enabled a phone to send an emergency message or make a call, if someone fell. It used the phone’s accelerometer to sense a fall. If the person did not get up in a short period or press an onscreen button, the program automatically texted or called the person designated to receive the alert.

The Google tool, of course, works only for phones running Android software. A sign-up with a Google Gmail account is required. The tool is Web-based except for a small software download that automatically syncs the programs created on a personal computer, connected to the application inventor Web site, with an Android smartphone. When making programs, the phone must be connected to a computer with a U.S.B. link.

Google’s Android platform is continuing to make steady gains in market share, increasing by almost a half from February to May.

From just nine percent in the December-to-February quarter, it’s risen to 13 percent, says ComScore – and while this may still be relatively small, it’s a continuing trend.

RIM still dominates in the smartphone market with 41.7 percent of subscribers, while Microsoft just pips Android with 13.2 percent. Palm completes the top five, with 4.8 percent.

The’re all increasing sales, though, as the overall market is still growing strongly. ComScore says that 49.1 million Americans now own a smartphone, up 8.1 percent from the previous quarter.

Samsung is the leading handset manufacturer, with 22.4 percent market share.

Like Pew, ComScore sees a big rise in the use of mobile apps in recent months. Two thirds of US mobile subscribers used text messaging in May, up 1.4 percentage points on the previous quarter, while browser use rose by 2.3 percentage points to 31.9 percent.

Three out of ten subscribers used downloaded applications, an increase of 2.1 percentage points from the previous period. There was also a lot more use of social networking sites or blogs, with the number of people accessing these sites increasing 2.6 percentage points to 20.8 percent of mobile subscribers.

When you do a speed test download speeds may drop 90% just holding your iPhone the wrong way

My advice just don’t hold your iPhone at all that increases the chance for a good reception remarkable.
I wonder how all those millions of Iphone 4 fans that pre-ordered their iPhone 4 must feel at all.

There is already a name for handling the iPhone the wrong way the “Death Grip”

But don’t worry AppleCare gives away a free black rubber bumper to increase your reception signal, unfortunately when you use this you can’t dock the iPhone Bluetooth Travel Cable.

Or do like Wired reader Ryan says that by placing a bit of black electrical tape over the problem bits, the metal bands on the bottom, he was able to double his download speeds.

My suggestion is just send your iPhone back and demand a refund or cancel your outstanding order. Next time don’t buy into a hype and wait to buy when a technology has proven itself.So next time you don’t have to feel stupid.

Just more than a year ago, Finland said it would make a 100Mb broadband connection a legal right by the end of 2015. Wednesday’s announcement is considered an intermediate step.

France, one of a few countries that has made Internet access a human right, did so earlier this year. France’s Constitutional Council ruled that Internet access is a basic human right. That said, it stopped short of making “broadband access” a legal right. Finland says that it’s the first country to make broadband access a legal right.

But Finland’s definition of “access” to broadband is a little fuzzy. According to the Helsinki Times when it reported the 100Mb target last year, the Finnish government said that no household “would be farther than 2 kilometers from a connection capable of delivering broadband Internet with a capacity of at least 100 megabits of data a second.” It did say, though, that “about 2,000 (households) in far-flung corners of the country” wouldn’t be included. Ostensibly, Finland plans to keep that same distribution when its 1Mb broadband access is implemented.

Finland has long been a tech-industry leader that has done a fine job investing in technology, more than many of its European counterparts. It’s also home to Nokia, among other tech firms.

Long live Finland