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China to receive iPhone minus Wi-Fi
China Unicom has reached a 3-year deal with Apple to offer the iPhone in China, it said Friday, confirming rumors that have swirled for months. The company expects to launch the phone in the fourth quarter this year, it said in a statement. It was not immediately clear what model of the iPhone China Unicom will offer, but an unnamed Apple device that has received one of the regulatory licenses needed to be sold in the country supported the 3G standard promoted by China Unicom, WCDMA. The regulatory approval for the unnamed device also did not list Wi-Fi as a feature: China has not allowed Wi-Fi on mobile phones until this year, when it began allowing handsets that support a domestically developed security protocol for wireless LANs.
Intel more optimistic about third-quarter revenue
Fueling hopes that the hardware sector will bounce back from the recession in the second half of the year, Intel Friday said its expectations for third-quarter revenue are higher than its prior forecast due to stronger-than-expected demand for processors and chipsets. Intel said it expects third-quarter revenue to be US$9 billion, “plus or minus $200 million,” compared to its previous guidance of $8.5 billion, plus or minus $400 million. Intel also said that it expects its gross margin for the current quarter to be in the “upper half” of the previously forecast range of 53 percent, plus or minus two percentage points.
Google Books provokes privacy questions
If Google digitizes the world’s books, how will it keep track of what you read? That’s one of the unanswered questions that librarians and privacy experts are grappling with as Google attempts to settle a long-running lawsuit by publishers and copyright holders and move ahead with its effort to digitize millions of books, known as the Google Books Library Project. For librarians, many of whom are working with Google to digitize their collections of books, it’s a thorny question. That’s because librarians and the online world have different standards for dealing with user information. But now, as more and more titles become available in Google Book Search, it’s not clear whether digital readers will enjoy the same privacy protections they have at the library, said Michael Zimmer, a professor from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, asking, “Is this service going to be an extension of the library, or an extension of Web searching?”
iPhone app allows remote PC access
iPhone and iPod touch devotees can now access their PCs or virtual desktops remotely using PocketCloud from Wyse, released Thursday. Because of the iPhone’s small screen size, compared to a standard PC display, intuitive navigation is key. The PocketCloud user interface supports standard iPhone gestures, which, for example, make it possible to zoom in closer at a part of the screen or move around on the display. PocketCloud is based on VMware View Open Client, which was first released by VMware in February to let business partners integrate their products with the VMware View platform
