No leaks or release date rumors this time, a mere 39mb download is all that separates your Pre from video recording, Flash, enhanced message notifications and much-desired performance and battery life improvements. Check out Palm’s trailer for the new features and the full webOS 1.4 changelog after the break, after queueing up the download of course.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Palm’s webOS 1.4 update now available for Sprint, O2 and Movistar phones

Palm’s webOS 1.4 update now available for Sprint, O2 and Movistar phones originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Good news, Palm fans! If you’ve taken a break from jamming on the “Update” button, it’s time to go tap it one last time: the rollout of webOS 1.4 has just begun. The catch: it seems that it’s only for Sprint handsets right now, with the Verizon Pre Plus and Pixi Plus still reporting that 1.3 is the latest release.

We knew it was coming in February thanks to Palm’s announcement at CES — and thanks to the rumor mill, we were all lead to believe it was coming a few weeks ago. All false starts and false hopes aside, it’s available now. We’re seeing reports (thanks Twitter!) that it just has gone live on Sprint handsets.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Earlier this month we noticed PRManna climbing up the Hacker News front page and reached out to the creator for an interview. Ryan Waggoner started PRManna in his spare time and was open in saying that the project was inspired by Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out. The difference between PRManna and HARO is that Waggoner’s product was specifically meant for startup companies to answer blogger and journalist tech queries. Whereas, HARO is a general news service. The question is, are the sites far enough apart to be considered different products?

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In the Hacker News thread Waggoner acknowledges that in the time that he’d developed his site, Shankman’s HARO had transitioned from a listserv to a more comprehensive tool saying, “Unfortunately, I took a look at HARO today and they’ve apparently launched something very similar, rather than just the old mailing list that I was competing against. So what do you think of this? Should I just drop it or should I add features to make it more valuable? Alternatively, is there something else I could use it for?”

As of today Waggoner may not have the opportunity to change tactics. The developer wrote a blog post detailing a cease and desist letter sent by Shankman’s lawyer. As a community with your finger on the pulse of tech launches and entrepreneurial resources, we want to know whether or not you believe Shankman’s takedown notice is warranted. Let us know in the comments below.

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As everyone knows, Garmin and TomTom have their backs against the ropes in a fight to remain relevant in an age of free GPS turn-by-turn navigation on smartphones (thanks Google and Nokia). While dedicated personal navigators are almost always superior to their converged competition, the gap has certainly narrowed such that it’s become difficult to justify another device when an increasing number of people already carry a fine navigation device in their pockets. But that’s just gut instinct talking, where’s the hard evidence? Certainly not speculative stock prices. A good place to start is in forward-looking financial statements like the one Garmin, the leading navigation device maker in the US, just issued. Gamin says that it expects competition to cause prices to decline by about 10% in the personal navigation device (PND) industry putting pressure on margins, and thus profits, in 2010. It also see flat or slightly declining revenue over the same period. Fortunately for Garmin, it has a diversified product offering that includes the Nuvifone. However, so far Garmin admits to being disappointed by sales of the handset that “won” our Editor’s Choice award for Worst Gadget of the Year.

Things aren’t all doom and gloom, though. Garmin has a pair of Nuvifones in the chute including the Android-powered A50. And its Q4 results of $1.43 per share easily beat analyst expectations of 95 cents a share. Even TomTom surprised many last week with a 1% increase in Q4 revenue and net profit of €75 million compared to a €989 million loss a year ago. So there’s some hope left for the dedicated PND market… but not much.

Filed under: Cellphones, GPS

Garmin and TomTom cling to profits, hope originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Conde Nast has been working to fuse its fashion content with technology and social media. Lucky Magazine incorporated e-commerce into its online site and also partnered with Four Square. Today, Vogue Magazine is launching an innovative iPhone app that takes a page from social fashion startups like Polyvore and the Like.com’s Couturious.

The free app, called the Vogue Stylist, is meant to be used by women to do exactly what its name indicates: help style women’s wardrobes. Users can choose one of the trends highlighted by Vogue within the app and upload clothing they already own. Vogue Stylist will then produce stylish outfits from the pieces that reflect the current trend. The catch: Vogue will style outfits only with products from their advertisers.

March trends include The Trench, Floaty Dress, Tribal, Natural Shades, and Bright Lip. User can also their looks via a click to buy feature,and can locate the item in a nearby store. The app has a social element to allow users to save styled looks and publish to Facebook. The App will launch with 91 brands and over 600 articles of clothing and beauty products. Pilot brands include Gucci, Hudson Jeans, Kate Spade, Longchamp Paris, Nine West, Valentino, and Via Spiga. Within the app, Vogue will also offer special event invitations, and shopping discounts.

Conde Nast also has fashion-focused iPhone apps for Style.com, Lucky Magazine and Teen Vogue.

A study by Burson-Marsteller finds that 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using social media tools.

At first glance, this may seem significant. But a closer look shows that Fortune 100 companies are showing interest but nothing to prove that social media tools are gaining significant corporate acceptance. Here’s a copy of the full report and an accompanying power point presentation.

But it is early in the game and these are results show that social media tools are making credible gains.

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The services of choice? No surprise: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blog platforms.
Twitter is number one, followed by Facebook, YouTube and corporate blogs.

The study found that 65 percent of the largest 100 international companies have active accounts on Twitter, 54 percent have a Facebook fan page, 50 percent have a YouTube channel, and one-third (33 percent) have corporate blogs. Only 20 percent of the major international companies are utilizing all four platforms to engage with stakeholders.

The fact that the Fortune 100 do not leverage multiple tools is a sign of how consumer-based social media tools are not fully understood or leveraged for maximum benefit. It’s also evident of just how much of an opportunity big companies have in using the social Web if they use it to its full extent. Companies that extend to multiple media networks still have a chance to get ahead of competitors.

The frequency of posts illustrates that companies are posting but not nearly as often as they could.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the findings for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and corporate blogs:

Twitter

The report says that Deutsche Telekom uses Twitter for announcements while Volkswagen uses it to RT and Home Depot for customer service. Conclusion? Fortune 100 companies are still searching for the best way to use Twitter. But just posting announcements seems pretty sterile.

From the white paper:

“Leaders of the pack on the Fortune Global 100 are Sony’s SonyPlayStation with well over 115,000 followers and SonyPictures who is followed by almost 50,000 people and following over 6,000 Twitterers themselves.”

Burson-Marsteller also states that Fortune 100 companies are supporting multiple accounts. This is perhaps most encouraging: customer engagement is beginning to be more widespread across product groups.

Facebook

Facebook shows some of the most promise. Most of the Fortune 100 companies have tens of thousands of users.

Perhaps the strongest sing of acceptance is in the number of corporate product groups that use Facebook. Companies like Sony have multiple fan pages.

YouTube

YouTube is used mostly by U.S. companies. Entertainment, electronics and auto companies are the most likely to have YouTube channels. Viewership shows promise. Consumers want to see product videos. Connecting YouTube with Twitter, Facebook and a blog can make for a potent combination if all are updated on a regular basis.

Blogs

Fifty-percent of the Fortune 100 companies from the Asia Pacific have blogs. Burson-Marsteller says Asian companies prefer blogging due to the control they can have over the conversation.

“Only 11% of active U.S. company blogs had posts in the past three months as compared to 83% of European blogs and 77% of Asia-Pacific blogs. The U.S. blogs also had fewer blog posts.”

The results show the increasing popularity of the real-time web and its use across the enterprise. But is it smart not to update a blog? We wonder what company fares better. The one that is active on its Twitter account and its blogs or the one that has an active Twitter account but infrequently updates its blog?

Conclusion

Corporate America is using the social Web. It’s apparent that companies have waded a bit deeper into the water but the opportunities are clear. The companies that embrace multiple mediums and keep up with a consistent volume of updates will be the big winners, no matter if they are a Fortune 100 or a Fortune 1,000 company.

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Continue reading Multi-Tab concept elevates power strips to an art form

Multi-Tab concept elevates power strips to an art form originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 02:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re big fans of Mobile Roadie, a startup that helps develop iPhone apps. But the one gripe we had was that Mobile Roadie was limited to the iPhone platform. Today, our wish came true as Mobile Roadie is launching functionality for Android phones.

The beauty of Mobile Roadie’s platform is that it offers a dead simple mostly-automated system to build apps and have them posted to Apple’s App Store in as little as a week. Launched earlier this year, the startup develops mobile apps for other conferences, events, and venues, as well as musicians, athletes, politicians, and other celebrities. The apps can provide users with access to news, music, live and recorded video, photos, event listings, and more. The apps also feature integration with YouTube, Brightcove, Flickr, Twitpic, Ustream, Topspin, Google News, RSS, Twitter, and Facebook.

Another bonus of Mobile Roadie’s platform is that its CMS allows users to simultaneously make updates to both their iPhone and Android Apps. And using push notifications, customers can send alerts that appear on users’ screens, geo targeting messages down to a one-mile radius. With the launch of Google Android support, Mobile Roadie will be powering both iPhone and Android apps for Ashton Kutcher, Dolly Parton, and Madonna. We hear Taylor Swift will be launching apps soon as well.

Mobile Roadie also developed the official iPhone app for LeWeb, the foremost European technology conference organized by French entrepreneur and Seesmic founder, Loic Le Meur and his wife, Geraldine. The app was a huge hit at the conference. Mobile Roadie also recently struck a deal with Random House to power iPhone apps for authors.

There’s no doubt that Mobile Roadie’s functionality for Android platforms will make its platform more attractive to users. And the ability to simultaneously manage your iPhone and Android apps through one interface is a compelling feature. With Mobile Roadie’s track record of success over the past year, we’ll continue to expect more innovations to be produced from the bootstrapped startup in the near future.

If there is any doubt about the social Web moving into the enterprise, then the news today from Jive Software has to make even the hardest skeptics start to wonder.

The Portland, Oregon company that has built its success on providing a social layer to the enterprise is pursuing a path that may lead it to a public offering.

Fueled by venture capital, the company said today that it is looking for a new CEO.

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Current CEO Dave Hersh is stepping aside from his role to become chairman of the Jive board. The interim CEO will be Tony Zingale, a Jive board member.

Hersh has lead the company since 2001. He will lead the search effort for a new CEO. Zingale is an experienced CEO. He most recently lead Mercury Interactive, a company acquired for $5 billion. He was also CEO of Clarify, a CRM company.

In a phone interview today, company executives said an IPO is a possibility. It’s a move that makes sense. Jive is now competing with the largest technology companies in the market. For instance, Jive has a Sharepoint integration with Microsoft. But the reality is the two companies are vying for the same accounts.

The issue is size. Companies like Microsoft have huge sales channels. Jive does not have that kind of reach. An IPO would give Jive the resources to compete more effectively with the giants of the tech world.

It’s also a clear sign that the market is there for social software in the enterprise. Hersh said to us in an interview recently that there is a mad chase for all applications to be social.

That’s quite true. And Jive’s dreams of an IPO are representative of that reality.

Discuss

About a week after we ran an update on the Alienware M17x stuttering audio problem, Dell’s community manager John B. has written in to let us know that the company has posted a fix. It entails using a particular BIOS revision, dropping to the Windows native mass storage driver, and installing the latest Alienware wireless card driver, all of which are available for download at the source link below. In Dell’s testing this has removed the latency spikes that have caused the rather undesirable audio st-st-stuttering issues, but many commenters over at Direct2Dell aren’t so sure, indicating that this targeted fix is actually a miss and that things are no better. If you’re affected, give this fix a shot and let us know whether you have success. If not, perhaps the registry tweak we posted before will do the trick.

Dell issues Alienware M17x stuttering audio fix, will it stick? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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