HP promises webOS netbooks to go along with smartphones and slates

Todd Bradley did promise us there'd be more than just slates on HP's webOS menu and today we can add netbooks to the list of form factors for Palm's famed OS. This heretofore unknown slice of info comes from a carrier training website HP has set up to educate resellers on the strong points of its forthcoming products. The training video on the site speaks of the great synergies that can result from smartphones, slates and netbooks all running the same OS and "speaking" to one another, which echoes Bradley's "connected experience" mantra from a couple of days ago. Smartphones are said to be the beginning of a new family of webOS products, with their larger siblings set to come "soon enough." Is February 9th soon enough? We'd say so.

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HP promises webOS netbooks to go along with smartphones and slates originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Jan 2011 12:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Murdochs iPad newspaper The Daily gets a Twitter account

Its launch may be delayed, but Rupert Murdochs much-discussed forthcoming iPad-only newspaper is slowly becoming reality.

First we saw an image of what the newspaper will look like and now it appears to have got its own Twitter account. Just spotted by 9to5Mac, @daily is an officially verified Twitter account, meaning that Twitter has handed it to the holder of a trademark related to that name. Also, the account is only following one other user one Greg Clayman, who just happens to be heading up development of The Daily.

There are no tweets yet, no avatar and just over 100 followers at the time of writing, but it certainly looks like this will be the place to watch for official information about the title.

Why should we care much about The Daily? Rumour has it that the magazine will be the flagship launch title for a new Apple subscription model that will allow users to easily obtain regular new issues of iPad magazines and newspapers with an automatic recurring payment. The development of this system is rumoured to be the reason for The Daily being pushed back from a mid-January launch.9to5Mac

Facebook apps can now access your phone number and home address

In the past weve warned about the importance of keeping an eye on which Facebook apps have access to your account. In future, that will be all the more important as Facebook has announced that it now lets developers access your phone number and address, if they choose, when you use their apps.

Its worth noting that Facebook is only making this data available if you specifically approve it apps youve already approved wont have automatic access to the information. So, next time you install a Facebook app, look out for the Access my contact information: Current Address and Mobile Phone Number permission request.

There are perfectly legitimate reasons why a Facebook app might want your home address and phone number. If its an address book app or some kind of telephony app, for example, that data would be incredibly useful. While its easy to imagine particularly disreputable developers selling your contact information on to unwanted marketing mailing lists, Facebook itself requires developers to only request data they need to operate their apps, not to sell data on to third parties and to display a clear privacy policy.

So, now more than ever, its important to check the permissions and read the small print of any new Facebook apps you install.

Inside Facebook, Image source

Washington State to put quick chargers on scenic byway, allow tourists to top-up their EVs

A few weeks back we learned that the US would be getting 310 quick-charging CHAdeMO stations, 480V AC/DC converters that can get a Nissan Leaf to 80 percent charge in under 30 minutes. Most are destined for major metropolitan areas, but we were intrigued to find out that Washington State is going to put two or three of them out in the country, on a 120 mile scenic portion of Route 2 that runs over the Cascade Mountains. It's a popular tourist destination and, with EVs becoming more popular in the area, soon even tourists with cutting-edge transportation to enjoy the ride. After all, everybody likes a good view.

Continue reading Washington State to put quick chargers on scenic byway, allow tourists to top-up their EVs

Washington State to put quick chargers on scenic byway, allow tourists to top-up their EVs originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Jan 2011 05:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google defends H.264 removal from Chrome, says WebM plug-ins coming to Safari and IE9

Google renewed a heated discussion when it said it was dropping H.264 support from Chrome's HTML5 video tag last week, but it seems the company's ready and willing to push its WebM alternative video format hard -- not only is hardware decoder IP now available for the VP8 codec, but the project team is presently readying WebM plug-ins for Safari and Internet Explorer 9, neither of which include it themselves. As to the little matter of whether any of this is the right move for the web at large, we'll paraphrase what Google had to say for itself: H.264 licenses cost money; Firefox and Opera don't support H.264 either; and big companies like Google are helping the little guy by championing this open alternative. We have to say, the eternal optimist in us is cheering them on. Oh, and the linguist in us, too. Read Google's own words at our source link, and decide for yourself.

Google defends H.264 removal from Chrome, says WebM plug-ins coming to Safari and IE9 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Jan 2011 02:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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