Acer replaces Dell as the 2nd biggest PC manufacturer

According to iSuppli's report for PC sales, Acer surpassed Dell as the second biggest PC manufacturer in the world for Q3 2009. Taiwan-based Acer grew by 17% year-over-year, while Dell's sales slipped almost 6%. HP continues to maintain it's lead for the 13th straight quarter. Acer's gain is attributed to increased Notebook and Netbook sales. Dell's loss is due to the downturn in corporate IT spending.

This year, there were 79.9 million PCs sold, up 1.1% from the 79.1 million sold last year.

Firefox browser's market share crosses 25%

Firefox and other browsers have been gaining market share at the expense of Microsoft's IE. For the first time, Firefox's browser market share crossed 25% in the week of Nov 10.

According to statistics from Net Applications for November, Internet Explorer's market share is 63.62%, while Firefox is at number two with 24.72%.  As you can see from the chart below, Firefox gained 10% market share within a span of two years, while Internet Explorer lost more than 15% during the same period.  Safari and Chrome browsers continue to increase their market share as iPhone and Android based phones become more popular.

Warner Home Video to offer Blu-ray combo packs

Warner Home Video announced that they will be offering Blu-ray combo packs for all theatrical new release movies starting first quarter of 2010. Combo pack includes Blu-ray disc, DVD and a digital copy. This combo pack offering trend was started by Disney sometime back. It is evident that these offerings will help accelerate Blu-ray adoption and at the sametime give more viewing choices for customers with no additional cost.

Warner Home Video is also launching Blu-ray double features pack starting at $24.98 that will include a pair of well-matched catalog hits from Warner studios.

BART expands wireless access

BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) has started providing      wireless connections to all passengers on it's trains  underground. This is a good news for thousands of bay area commuters who take underground tube daily to work. Wireless service underground especially comes handy in situations like technical glitches or natural disasters.  Five of the Bay Area's six wireless providers have agreed to use the system. But, from initial reports, cellular signal seems to be spotty. Hopefully the coverage would improve in coming days. Service availability schedule below:

San Francisco Stations (Service Available now)
Embarcadero
Montgomery
Powell Street
Civic Center

East Bay Stations (Service Available 1st Quarter 2010)
Oakland 12th Street
Oakland 19th Street
Lake Merritt

East Bay Stations (Service Available 2nd Quarter 2010)
Ashby
Berkeley
North Berkeley

East Bay Stations (Service Available 3rd Quarter 2010)
Berkeley hills tunnel

San Francisco Stations (Service Available in 2011)
16th Street Mission
24th Street Mission
Glen Park
Balboa Park

Ustream broadcast application for iPhone

Ustream is a web streaming service that lets people broadcast and watch live events online. Although it is not the most popular web streaming service, educational and entertainment community heavily uses the website to broadcast course work and concerts. Educational community seem to especially embrace Ustream for distant learning as it gives faculty free, easy-to-use options to conduct coursework that allow student interact through chat.

Ustream iPhone application lets users record videos to the smart phone or go-live on Ustream's website. Local and live recording can be set to 320x240 or 176x144 resolution. You can play the uploaded videos on your computer, iPhone or share the video on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

                          

Sample video broadcast using Ustream:

Google to acquire Yelp?

TechCrunch is reporting that Google is in advanced negotiations to acquire Yelp. Few months ago, Google started it's own service called Place Pages which provides information about restaurants, neighborhoods, points of interests etc. Place Pages is intended to provide same functionality as Yelp. If the deal goes through, we can expect Yelp to compliment Google's Place pages service or even replace it.

With the recent missed opportunity on lala, Google appears to be acting fast on yelp deal. Below is the list of acquisitions made by Google so far.

Date	Company	Resulting Service
2009-12-04	AppJet	Google Wave
2009-12-23	Teracent	Google AdSense
2009-09-09	Gizmo5	Google Voice
2009-09-09	AdMob	Mobile Advertisement
2009-09-16	reCAPTCHA	Security
2009-08-05	On2	YouTube

Date	Company	Resulting Service
2008-09-12	TNC	Textcube
2008-07-30	Omnisio	YouTube

Date	Company	Resulting Service
2007-10-09	Jaiku	Google Mobile
2007-09-27	Zingku	Google Mobile
2007-07-20	Image America	Google Maps (Aerial photography)
2007-07-09	Postini	Gmail
2007-07-02	GrandCentral	Google Voice
2007-06-19	Zenter	Google Documents
2007-06-05	PeakStream Inc	Server Computing
2007-06-01	FeedBurner	FeedBurner
2007-05-30	Panoramio	Panoramio
2007-05-11	Green Border	Google Chrome
2007-04-19	Marratech	Google talk
2007-04-17	Tonic Systems	Google Documents
2007-04-13	DoubleClick	Google AdSense
2007-03-16	Trendalyzer	Google Analytics
2007-03-16	Adscape Media	Google AdSense
2007-01-04	Xunlei	Google Sites

Date	Company	Resulting Service
2006-12-18	Endoxon	Google Maps
2006-11-13	YouTube	YouTube
2006-10-31	Jotspot Inc	Google Sites
2006-08-15	Neven Vision	Picasa
2006-04-09	Orion	Google Search
2006-03-14	@Last Software	Google Sketchup
2006-03-09	Upstartle (Writely)	Google Documents
2006-02-14	Measure Map	Google Analytics
2006-01-17	dMarc Broadcasting	Google AdSense

Date	Company	Resulting Service
2005-12-20	AOL (5% stake)	Search
2005-11	Skia	Android platform, Chrome browser
2005-11-17	Akwan Information Technologies	Internet Backbone (Latin America)
2005-09-15	Transformic Inc	Search
2005-08-17	Android	Android platform
2005-07	Reqwireless	Google Mobile
2005-07-07	Current Communications Group	Internet backbone
2005-05-12	Dodgeball	Google Latitude
2005-03-28	Urchin Software	Google Analytics
2005-01	2Web Technologies	Google Spreadsheets

Date	Company	Resulting Service
2004-10	Where2	Google Maps
2004-10-27	Keyhole	Google Maps, Google Earth
2004-09	ZipDash	Google Maps for Mobile
2004-07-13	Picasa	Picasa, Blogger
2004-06-23	Baidu	Baidu Search Engine
2004-05-10	Ignite Logic	Blogger

Date	Company	Resulting Service
2003-10	Sprinks	Google AdSense, AdWords
2003-10-07	Genius Labs	Blogger
2003-09-30	Kaltix Corp	iGoogle
2003-04	Applied Semantics	Google AdSense, AdWords
2003-04	Neotonic Software	Google Groups, Gmail
2003-02	Pyra Labs	Blogger

Date	Company	Resulting Service
2001-09-20	Outride	iGoogle
2001-02-12	Deja.com	Google Groups

Most watched YouTube videos of 2009

On an average, 25 hours worth of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. As people spend more time consuming the content from YouTube, they are creating new internet sensations and making products popular overnight. YouTube today announced most popular videos and music videos for 2009.

Below are the five most watched YouTube videos of 2009.

1. Susan Boyle - Singer - Britains Got Talent 2009   [Embedding is disabled. So, watch it directly on YouTube]

2. David After Dentist

3. JK Wedding Entrance Dance

4. New Moon Movie Trailer

5. Evian Roller Babies

Google phone 'Nexus One' rumored to be available in Jan 2010

Ever since Google employees are presented with the phone, new details about the Nexus One phone are surfacing daily. The phone is manufactured by HTC and resembles HTC passion. Nexus One features include Android 2.1, GSM/EDGE support, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi support, microSD card, high resolution OLED touch screen, Voice-to-text feature, Two Mics and scroll ball. Google's Nexus One is rumored to be available through T-Mobile for $199 with contract starting January 2010.

It would be interesting to see how Nexus One is is going to fare against iPhone and other Android based phones from Motorola, Samsung, HTC etc.

Disney Blu-ray upgrade program

Similar to Warner Bros. DVD2BLU program, Disney Studios Home Entertainment has introduced Upgrade2Blu. As part of the program, Disney is offering $8 coupon towards the purchase of Blu-ray disc if you already own DVD of the movie. After selecting the DVD titles you own, you would need to send the printed rebate form along with the proof-of-purchase tab for DVDs. $8 savings coupon will be emailed to you. Unlike Warner Bros. DVD2BLU program, you can keep your Disney DVDs with you. Below is the list of titles available for this program:

Movie	Movie
A Bug's Life	Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Bedtime Stories	Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Beverly Hills Chihuahua	Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl
Bolt	Pixar Short Films Collection Vol. 1
Bridge To Terabithia	Race To Witch Mountain
Camp Rock	Ratatouille
Cars	Remember The Titans
Chicken Little	Roving Mars
College Road Trip	Santa Buddies
Dinosaur	Sky High
Disneynature Earth	Sleeping Beauty
Eight Below	Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Enchanted	Space Buddies
G-Force	The Cheetah Girls: One World
Glory Road	The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus Best Of Both Worlds Concert	The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
Hannah Montana The Movie	The Game Plan
High School Musical	The Greatest Game Ever Played
High School Musical 2	The Haunted Mansion
High School Musical 3: Senior Year	The Rookie
Invincible	The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause
Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience	The Wild
Meet The Robinsons	Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas
Miracle	Tinker Bell
Monsters, Inc.	Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure
Morning Light	Underdog
National Treasure	Up
National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets	Wall-E
Pinocchio

Blu-ray Managed copy

Technology makes life easy. It also makes the consumer in you feel bad with it's advancements. Case in point - Blu-ray Managed copy. In an effort to discourage people from obtaining illegal copies of movies, AACS LA's managed copy for Blu-ray discs lets the Blu-ray disc owners make a copy of the movie. Once this feature is fully implemented by Studios, Hardware manufacturers and Technology companies, you would be able to make a full resolution backup copy of Blu-ray movie to various storage devices. This requires Blu-ray players to be connected to the internet so that your Blu-ray disc can be authenticated by servers managed by Studios or AACS before making a copy.

Even though all Blu-ray discs sold after Dec 4, 2009 are required to have Managed copy feature, none of the current generation blu-ray players and other BD devices do not support this feature. This means the expensive Blu-ray player you bought this holiday season would become obsolete when Hardware manufacturers start selling Managed copy compatible players early 2010. Additionally, Studios can charge you for this managed copy, which makes this feature not so popular with consumers.

A demonstration of managed copy feature:

Sony movies on Internet connected TVs & Blu-ray players

Declining DVD sales and lackluster box-office performances are driving Hollywood studios and Consumer Electronics manufacturers to come up with new ways to increase their revenue streams. As this BusinessWeek's article and NY Times article report, Sony is experimenting with making some movies available through it's Internet ready Bravia TVs and Blu-ray players just before their DVD release. This new window, called as Home theatrical window is spaced between movie's theatrical release and it's DVD release so that,  interests of theatre owners and DVD retailers are equally served . Sony, with it's unique position as Hardware manufacturer and Movie studio owner, is trying to convince other Hollywood studios and content providers to join this experiment.

Even though HDTV and Blu-ray technology adoption is slow, there seems to be a section of viewers who are willing to pay a premium for watching movies on their big TV screens well before it's DVD release schedule. The quality of a typical internet streaming movie may be comparable to DVD quality but it doesn't match with Blu-ray quality. As Blu-ray technology becomes more mainstream, the popularity of this offering from Sony  is going to depend on the quality of the online stream and how it is priced compared to DVDs.