Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Yesterday, Comcast increased its rates by 4.6 percent across the board, covering at the very least it’s digital cable and internet services:

The price hikes include $5.70 per month for the Digital Classic package, and $3.70 for standard cable service.

The increases are necessary because Comcast is hurt by the economy, too, spokesman Jeff Alexander said.

He cited gas prices, health care costs, increased programming costs, and improvements in the company’s technology and service.

As reader Carl noted when passing the news along, Comcast may have set a bad precedent for other service providers to follow. Can we expect companies to start charging higher monthly fees, and point the finger at the poorly performing economy?

Tags: Comcast, digital cable, Internet, rate hikes, service providers

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Original post by Rico

Filed under: Cellphones

As expected, Verizon has announced today that its customers (and would-be customers) are welcome to sign up for month-to-month plans with no contract — and thus, no early-termination fee — involved, mimicking a move by AT&T earlier in the year. Of course, anyone taking advantage of the new plans won’t be able to get in on carrier subsidies, but the trade-off is that if you decide to bolt for greener pastures, you won’t be slapped with one of those nasty prorated charges. Oh, and before you give customer service a ring, take note: you′ll need to fulfill the terms of your existing contract before jumping, natch.

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Home Entertainment

With all this talk of interactive TV from the likes of Sony, Yahoo! and Intel these days, it’s starting to seem like the early 90s all over again — only this time it looks like things are actually panning out. Now Verizon seems to be upping its interactive game as well, with it boasting about a whole host of improvements that FiOS TV customers can look forward to this fall. The new features were apparently demoed during an “informal party” held by Verizon Communications CIO Shaygan Kheradpir, and include various applications that are tied to live programming, some Facebook and YouTube integration, and the ability to control the DVR from your cellphone, to name a few things. FiOS customers can apparently expect some improvements to the program guide as well, including the ability to browse by what’s popular in their area, or by what was most popular in the same time slot last week. Unfortunately, it doesn′t look like any pictures made their way out of the party, but Yahoo! and company have certainly raised the bar pretty high with their own widgets, and we can only hope that Verizon at least meets it.

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Cellphones

Let’s be honest here — there’s precisely two three things you still need to know about the BlackBerry Storm. Launch date, price and whether it′ll play Doom. Sadly, we’re no closer to helping you on those last two, but the datasheet you see above does give us a general idea of when we’ll see this puppy in stores. Obviously looking to get this out before the holiday rush, it looks as if the carrier will be making things official sometime between September 22nd and October 1st, and that little “eligible for Annual Upgrade (by 11/1/08)” bit gives us hope for a November 1st release. In case you were wishing for the impossible, Verizon gets all red-text up in here with a note that this thing will not, come hell or high water, be sold sans an e-mail / data package. Interestingly, the Boy Genius has asserted that VZW is playing the fiddle by loosing all these “leaks” on the unsuspecting public. We′re not very confident of that being true, but it’s decent fodder for discussion if nothing else.

Read - BlackBerry Storm pre-launch information
Read - Verizon slipping Storm details?

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones

It was redirected for most the of the day, but Verizon’s BlackBerry Storm page just went live, hopefully meaning we’ll be see RIM’s first touchscreen phone make its debut sometime soon. All you can do at the moment is sign up for an email alert, but we’ve got you covered with the internal promo video, box art, talking points, and even a ninja-themed hands-on — yeah, let’s get this released, guys.

[Thanks, Nick]

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Cellphones

Hey, bet you’d like to know that Verizon Wireless’ Mike (you know, from Minute with Mike) thinks the BlackBerry Storm is going to “crush the competition.” He also expects his sales team to “take the world by storm.” He also states that this handset’s screen is “built to be the most responsive of its time.” Oh, but he totally neglects to mention a price and / or release date. Thanks Mike. Thanks a lot. Full mind-numbing episode is after the jump.

Continue reading Mildly frightening Verizon promo video gets employees hype for BlackBerry Storm

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones

Yep, that’s the BlackBerry Storm, with Verizon branding and everything — too bad there isn’t a shot of the pricetag or release date. Soon, please? Check two more at the read link.

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Cellphones

We’re still waiting on Verizon’s official launch of the Blackberry Storm, but the anticipation is running high, especially since we just received a list of specs and talking points distributed to store reps about RIM’s first touchscreen phone. As expected, the 9530 Storm will feature that controversial “click″ touchscreen with built-in tactile feedback, quad-band GSM connectivity for global use in addition to EV-DO, visual voicemail, a 3.2 megapixel camera with video, and a full HTML browser. Sadly, there’s no pricing information or specific release date, but we’ve got a feeling we’ll get those soon — stay tuned.

[Thanks, HTCKid]

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Dark clouds, a fingerprint, a shady character named “Mike” — wait a second, don’t tell us: Verizon’s engaged in some sort of CSI-esque hunt for a rogue network technician (named Mike, we figure) who’s casting evil spells on towers and degrading EV-DO speeds. Oh, no? We’re way off, you say? Well, our next guess is that this might have something to do with the announcement of the Storm, RIM’s very first touchscreen device that’s been rumored for a Verizon debut since the wee months of the year. Whatever it is, it seems it’ll be revealed tomorrow from the graphic being sent out to Verizon employees — so let’s all cram in as much rampant, unfounded speculation as we can this evening, shall we?

[Via Boy Genius Report, thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds

Be still our hearts! After months upon months (upon months) of waiting, the tight-knit team behind the ultra-potent Pandora gaming handheld has finally divulged the information we’ve been clamoring for: the ARM Cortex A8-powered device will begin shipping before Christmas 2008 for £199.99 in the UK. The first batch will consist of 3,000 units, and the team is hoping that all of those will be sold out before the first one leaves the dock. There’s no word on how costly it′ll be for Americans, though we’re crossing our fingers that it′ll sell for a few bucks less than the $360 we find when simply converting pounds to dollars.

[Thanks, Andri]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Displays

NOR_/D’s TouchKit is a modular multitouch development kit that aims to “make multitouch readily available in an open source fashion.” If that sounds awfully familiar, you’re probably thinking of its sister project Cubit, both of which are hoping to get multitouch into the mainstream as quickly as humanly possible. The kit itself is composed of hardware and software aspects, and of course, source files are provided for poking, prodding and researching. Interested? It’ll be $1,580 shipped with a “fully assembled, frameless 70- x 50-centimeter multitouch screen, a calibrated infra-red camera, and the full base software pack.”

[Via Gizmag]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Good news, open source fans — copyleft licenses just got a big boost from the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which ruled last week that the open source Artistic License is valid and enforceable, and that violating the terms of the license constitutes copyright infringement. (You might be familiar with the Artistic License — it’s what governs Perl.) That’s a big deal, as it’s the first open source license to get put to the test — while traditional EULAs have been upheld for years, open licenses hadn’t been directly litigated like this yet, and it means that similar licenses like the GPL and Creative Commons now stand on firmer ground. As you’d expect, OSS advocates like Lawrence Lessig and the Open Source Initiative are all pretty pumped about the ruling, with Lessig calling it “huge and important news.” We’d agree wholeheartedly, but here’s some food for thought while you celebrate in the comments: if you’re okay with FOSS software developers enforcing open-source license agreements, are you also okay with commercial software developers enforcing their own EULA restrictions? We can think of one in particular that seems to have people pretty ticked off.

Read - InformationWeek article
Read - Lessig blog post

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio

It has been a solid tick since we’ve seen a good FairPlay hack, so it’s with great pleasure that we pass along El Tunes for Ubuntu 8.04 users everywhere. Tested to work on Hardy Heron using RhythmBox (but assumed to work on any modern Linux Distro with GStreamer and a media player that utilizes GStreamer), said plug-in enables open-source aficionados to play songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store. As for limitations, the current version has no Pause / Seek support and cannot de-authorize a machine for playback, but a future version should hopefully cure those two quirks and add support for purchased video content and audio streaming to an AirTunes device. Give it a shot and let us know how it treats ya.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones

According to the oracle-like superbrains at J. Gold Associates, Google’s Android OS and Nokia’s Symbian will “combine to provide a single open source OS,” sometime in the very near future… say, three to six months. Sure, Android is just about to launch on devices in late 2008, and Nokia just announced in June that it will be moving Symbian towards open source — and of course the two companies have no formal relationship that would come close to permitting such a collaboration. Still, J. Gold assures us this is happening, stating, “A combination of the Android and Symbian efforts would be good for the industry, good for Google and good for Symbian.” In related news, we understand a handful of similar mergers are in the offing: Linksys and Belkin, Red Hat and Ubuntu, Engadget and Gizmodo, and the inevitable one-two punch of Coke and Pepsi.

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Original post by Joshua Topolsky

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Handhelds, Laptops

Intel’s got big plans for Moblin, that Linux-based “core stack” that’s being optimized for all sort of mobile devices, from MIDs to carputers, and a big part of those plans is letting the community play a part in its development — the company is just about to release the source for the first version of Moblin, with an alpha-level release of Moblin 2 to follow. Intel says its focus right now is decidedly on Atom, but that it’s looking forward to seeing the community drive Moblin in other directions. There’s no word on what Moblin 2 will offer, but it sounds like Intel is hoping that by getting Moblin out in the open, it’ll become a de facto standard. Not a bad idea, but we’ll see how it goes.

Read - Intel getting ready to release Moblin source
Read - Intel working on Moblin 2

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Original post by Nilay Patel