Michael dell was quoted in the Huffington Post that he was surprised about the rapid rise of the tablet.  Anyone who has dealt with Dell lately surprised about that? Dell used to be the place to goto for service, quality and price. I am trying to think if they are leaders in any of those areas anymore. The rise of the tablet may increase the decent of Dell.

Asked to name the most surprising thing to happen to the tech industry in the past four years, Dell answered, “[the] rapid rise of the tablet.”

“I didn’t completely see that coming,” Dell admitted.

via Michael Dell: Tablets’ Rapid Rise A Big Surprise.

-AdamSafire

Phil Wainewright writing in his Software as a Service blog has put together seven lessons  to learn from about the recent Amazon Cloud service outage. The most critical of these is in lesson 1. How companies need to  fully understanding the terms of the cloud providers service level agreement. It is amazing that even with being down for almost 4 days  because of the contract language Amazon has not yet gone astray of its stated availability. This is truly an eye opener.

Amazingly, this almost four-day outage has not breached Amazon’s EC2 SLA, which as a FAQ explains, “guarantees 99.95% availability of the service within a Region over a trailing 365 period.”

via Seven lessons to learn from Amazon’s outage | ZDNet.

-AdamSafire

This might be a good feature the bad part  is that the Fly Away Remote Mobility Zone is between 15,000 and 45,000 according to AT&T. The system will only be able to handle up to 14 calls at the same time. While this is more of a solution for areas with no service at all, the AT&T micro-cell work great if you have an Internet connection for only $199.

For the first time, AT&T is selling small, portable cellular antennas that will allow corporate and government customers to provide their own wireless coverage in remote or disaster-struck areas.

via AT&T starts selling ‘cell tower in a suitcase’ – Yahoo! News.

-AdamSafire

The following is an email that was forwarded to MacRumors about the iOS tracking controversy. The whole mess started when an app was released last week that allowed users to see where and when there iPhone or iPad had been. The  information was collected in an unencrypted file and seemed to geo locate the wifi or cell towers within range of the iOS device.

Q: Steve,

Could you please explain the necessity of the passive location-tracking tool embedded in my iPhone? It’s kind of unnerving knowing that my exact location is being recorded at all times. Maybe you could shed some light on this for me before I switch to a Droid. They don’t track me.

A: Oh yes they do. We don’t track anyone. The info circulating around is false.

Sent from my iPhone

via Steve Jobs on iOS Location Issue: ‘We Don’t Track Anyone’ – Mac Rumors.

-AdamSafire

I am not sure which is worse doing business on Facebook or the fact that article detailing it is by American Express. It just shows how increasingly how social media is changing the way that we interact with others.

More and more, consumers are ready and willing to buy from within Facebook. F-commerce could even replace e-commerce completely for some companies.

via Are You Ready For Facebook Commerce? : Marketing :: American Express OPEN Forum.

-AdamSafire

I really like FireFox 4 I have updated my intel based machines with no problem. I tried to install on my PowerPC G5 and found out only after download that it is only intel compatible. That is fine but there is nothing on the download page or that says intel only.  You can still download FireFox 3.6 from here but as it says on the web site that it will only be supported for vague “short amount of time.” If you are moving your browser away from a platform at least have the balls to put it somewhere on your website telling you to download the new “latest and greatest.”

DownloadFIREFOX 3.6

Firefox 3.6.x will be maintained with security and stability updates for a short amount of time. All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 4.

This is a very helpful article about the steps required to create an iTunes account without a credit card. This is a great way to allow kids to download free apps without having them tied to a credit card.

Creating iTunes account without a credit card | Music and Audio | Mac 911 | Macworld.

-AdamSafire

It is about time. The thing that I see that makes Android hard to adopt is the number of flavors on different hardware platforms. It is hard to standardize on a platform that you have to train users differently. I am all in favor of options and openness but business’s have to have some level of standards to support their processes .

One of the major talking points long used by Google in support of its Android smartphone operating system over iOS is its “open” nature that has allowed handset manufacturers and others to tweak and customize the software for their needs. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has argued that the “open” nature would more accurately be described as “fragmented” in justifying why he believes that Apple’s “closed” or “integrated” iOS is a better platform for consumers.

via Google Tightening Control Over Android as Fragmentation Increases – Mac Rumors.

More from AppleInsider on this topic

-AdamSafire

Not sure how I feel about this with Google’s record for privacy.

Google plans to introduce a mobile application that would allow users to snap pictures of people’s faces in order to access their personal information, a director for the project said this week

via Google making app that would identify people’s faces – CNN.com.

-AdamSafire

Apple seems to finally to be getting close to unveiling a cloud based locker for storing music. Reuters expects the Apple offering to beat Google to the market.  Amazon launched a storage a “cloud drive” last month. The Amazon does not involve agreements with any music labels. Amazon contends that the music stored on their service is owned by the user and nothing else is needed. There is speculation that Amazon will try to get Label involvement as they enhance the service in the near future.

Apple Inc has completed work on an online music storage service and is set to launch it ahead of Google Inc, whose own music efforts have stalled, according to several people familiar with both companies’ plans.

The quote below is from All Things Digital.

The industry executives I’ve talked to haven’t seen Apple’s service themselves, but say they’re aware of the broad strokes. The idea is that Apple will let users store songs they’ve purchased from its iTunes store, as well as others songs stored on their hard drives, and listen to them on multiple devices.

via More Details on Apple’s Cloud-based Music Locker – Mac Rumors.

-AdamSafire