Nick: Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer tours Asia, an iPhone app for swine flu and table top computing goes 3D, all that news and more on this week’s World Tech Update. Thanks for joining us here in World Tech Update, I’m Nick Barber. We’ll start our news in Asia this week where Steve Ballmer visited Japan and Taiwan. At a press conference in Tokyo, the Microsoft CEO said that the initial sales of Windows 7 were fantastic in Japan, and that the first ten days of Windows 7 out pays both XP and Vista, he also touched on the future of television.
Steve: In the next few years, I know I’ll be watching my favorite golfer, Tiger Woods, play in a tournament, and I’ll see him hit a particularly brilliant shot. I’ll shout at my television set, hey Bill, did you see Tiger make that putt? And Microsoft software will wake up in the TV, it will recognize my voice, it’ll know when I say Bill, I mean Bill Gates, it’ll find him wherever he is, it’ll see whether he’s willing to be interrupted through the Cloud, and then he’ll say of course, for Steve, I’m always able to be interrupted. And then he’ll hear me, he’ll see what Tiger was doing, hey, Bill, did you see Tiger make that putt? Maybe Bill will say, yes Steve, but what golf ball was he using? I’ll literally take my finger and I’ll point, I’ll point at the golf ball, a search will go on across the internet to figure out what ball it is. And I’ll say, hey Bill, that’s the new Nike goal.
Nick: In Taipei, Ballmer was on hand to celebrate the company’s 20th year in Taiwan, by agreeing to open a joint Cloud computing center with the islands economics ministry. No details of the facility were available as of yet. He was also on hand for a launch of a new smart phone that uses Windows Mobile 6.5. Called the HD2 from HTC, the handset is only 11 millimeters thick and has a big 4.3 touch screen that also supports multi touch. It’s already shipping to Europe and Asia and will be available to consumers around the middle of November. The smart phone will come to the US in early 2010. Inside the HD2 rest a 1 gigahertz QUALCOMM Snap Dragon chip set, 448 megabytes of RAM, a 5 megapixel camera, GPS, and battery rated for up to 8 hours of video playback or 390 hours of WCDM A stand by. In Taiwan, this smart phone will cost around 800 US dollars, but HTC said that prices will vary by region. Intel is in trouble again, this time with the New York general’s office. Andrew Cuomo has filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against the company alleging that it engage in a systematic campaign of a illegal conduct to protect a monopoly. Intel responded by saying that the lawsuit is a duplication of a 2005 lawsuit filed by Intel competitor AMD. Intel’s spokesman Chuck Malloy said neither consumers who have consistently seen lower prices and innovation nor justice is being served by bringing this case now, we will defend ourselves. Motorola’s droid goes on sale in the US on Friday through Verizon wireless, it’s the first phone to use Android 2.0 and our own Nancy Goering in Seattle got a chance to try it out. Nancy joins me now, Nancy, what’s the difference between this phone and others that run Android?
Nancy: Well the first thing that strikes you about this phone is that the screen is really, really light, it’s got better resolution than the other Adroid phone out there and it’s really striking, I mean you really notice it right away when you look at it. The other is that for me it’s pretty heavy, you know, you feel it right away when you pick it up, it feels heavier than the other phones, and I think some people will have mix reactions about that, some people I think will think that it’s sort of a quality have to make the phone feel like a quality piece. Other people might just think it’s too heavy and felt heavy and that, in their purse or whatever. And it has slide up keyboard, which some other, the G1 has obviously, but you can also type on the screen, so it got the onscreen keyboard as well, so, that’s pretty much that maybe, although the other thing is that, software, I mean it’s Android software it’s the first one to run Android 2.0, but it feels like very similar, it feels pretty much the same as all the other Android phones that I’ve tried out.
Nick: As I mentioned earlier, this is the first phone to run Android 2.0, so what’s that mean for older models, are they upgradable or people gonna be stuck with an outdated OS?
Nancy: We don’t know yet, and I’ve been asking people that question over the past week or so, and I’m getting a generally pretty vague answer from people like Motorola, Google, or T-mobile, they all say, the program designed to be upgraded, but they’re not commenting yet on whether or not they will be upgraded to Android 2.0. So the issue there if whether or not applications in the market and the market serves all of the phone, whether or not those applications will work on the different versions of the phones.
Nick: Alright, Nancy Goering in Seattle, thanks for coming on.
Nancy: Thank you.
Nick: Staying with Mobile, wanna know if you have swine flu? There’s an app for that. Doctors Harvard Medical school have condensed their tens of thousands of pages of research into an easy to use iPhone app called HMS mobile swine flu center. It includes maps, videos, and information on virus prevention, detection and treatment. The app can also ask you a series of questions to determine if you might have the swine flu. There are tips on how to create a survival kit and even a map to show areas of outbreaks.
Dr. Anthony: So here’s a map, and my GPS shows that I’m localize here in the north east United States, and it will tell me by the red flag, that this is in epidemic area right now, and that the virus is definitely present and the people with symptoms could very well be have the virus.
Nick: He wouldn’t say how much the development of the swine flu app cost or how many people have downloaded it. It’s available through the iTunes app store now for a dollar 99. Research from Germany’s Hassaplatnerr institute has added 3D capabilities to Microsoft surface computer. Here in this video, you see a game of checkers and when two checkers are place on top of each other, the computer recognizes that. Called Luminos, the pieces are made from glass fiber bundles, so that the table can see block stack on top of each other. A Lumino can also be used as a dial and the computer can tell in which direction it’s pointing. The technology is the result of research from professor Patrick Bowdish and students Thorston Becker and Friedrich Rudick, the Hassaplatnerr institute plans to show the Luminos at Microsoft’s professional developers conference later this month. At this year’s computer human interface conference this past April, the institute showed off nano touch technology, which allows a user to use a touchscreen from the back side of the device. There’s no word on when either type of technology will be commercialized. Well that’s our show for this week, thanks for joining us here in World Tech Update, follow us on Twitter and check out our Facebook fan page to find out what’s coming up on every week’s show. As we head out this week, we’ll leave you with shots of the cyber port digi playground, Hong Kong’s first digital playground. I’m Nick Barber and from all of us here at the IDG news service, thanks for watching and we hope to see you next week.
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