News Blogg

Blagojevich made headlines once more today, this time on Fred and Jeri Thompson's WLSradio show, when he described his successor Pat Quinn as well, not quite a man ...

"I mean no disrespect, but I've said that Pat Quinn is essentially the substance of a eunuch in the form of a man. He's been emasculated by the Democratic political power structure."

And he had this to say about Rahm Emanuel:

Of Emanuel's political future, Blago dismissed the notion that he might run for Chicago mayor, saying that "Mayor Daley, like his father, is going to be mayor until God calls him home."

Instead, he said it was "more realistic" that Alexi Giannoulias might be forced out of his spot as the Democratic candidate for Senate from Illinois over Broadway Bank troubles, and that Emanuel might take his place on the ticket.

There's more on the interview HERE.

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Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing said on Friday that he sees mobile internet devices making up the vast majority of the company’s profits, possibly as much as 70-80%, in as little as 5 years. Currently, most sales come from the Thinkpad and Ideapad line of notebooks.  Lenovo plans to accomplish this changeover by expanding into emerging markets. Devices likely to make up these sales are tablets, smartphones, and smartbooks.

Lenovo is currently the world’s number four PC maker, having purchased IBM’s PC division in 2005. The China based company just released their first touchscreen smartphone, the Ophone O1, in China. Lenovo also plans to release another phone called the LePhone sometime in mid 2010. Most of Lenovo’s energies are being focused on the China market as part of their “protect and attack” strategy. After they feel more secure in China, Lenovo may more into underserved markets like Latin America and Eastern Europe.

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YouTube - Lady Gaga - Telephone ft. Beyonce

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In January 2009 Vodafone made what seemed like a good investment buying mapping software maker Wayfinder for about $30 million. A year later it’s looking like a pretty awful deal in the wake of free navigation solutions from both Google and Nokia. Facing the inevitable, Vodafone is closing Wayfinder saying, “We could not charge for something that others gave away for free.”

Vodafone has also invested several million additional dollars in Wayfinder, so it can’t be easy to walk away. It’s unlikely they’d do so without being sure they could not compete with Nokia’s Ovi Maps. This really isn’t much of a surprise, especially considering Nokia’s huge presence in Europe. Google Navigation isn’t even available yet in Europe, but clearly Vodafone wasn’t going to sit around and wait for two free solutions to start eating their lunch.

This may be the eventual fate of all the carrier branded navigation apps. Considering the poor quality of many of them, that might not be a bad thing. Would access to a free navigation app from Google or Nokia sway you in your next phone purchase?

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Ever since its release, Google has tagged Chrome installs with a unique ID. The search giant is now reportedly abandoning that practice. Future versions of the browser will still install with a unique ID that will be used to check for the first automatic update. After that task is complete, the ID will be deleted.

It has always been Google’s position that the client ID was only used to determine when users update, and in the event of a crash (but only if crash reporting is turned on). Some privacy advocates have long held that the unique identifier could lessen browser privacy. However, no one has ever been able to show that to be the case.

As Chrome continues to gain market share, Google appears to be tweaking it to keep it palatable to users. There is a certain amount of Google fatigue out there, and if privacy concerns become too pervasive, Google could lose public trust.  Even though there was no confirmed privacy breach caused by this feature, does its removal make you feel more comfortable using Chrome?

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is getting plenty serious about the Internet. Besides striking a stance in favor of net neutrality, the FCC feels that the quasi-monopolies that dominate the industry should be more responsive to their customers. And to help you keep an eye on your ISP, the FCC has rolled out www.broadband.gov, which will let you check your broadband speeds.

Yeah, yeah, yeah--this is nothing new. Many of the major ISPs offer something like this, as do a number of independents, like SpeedTest.net But the FCC’s effort is a bit different. The FCC would like you to anonymously provide your address (How can that be anonymous?), which the FCC will use to compile a “Broadband Dead Zone” report. If you feel uncomfortable about ratting out your ISP to the government, just keep in mind your ISP doesn’t share your guilt when it comes to ratting you out.

What’s fun, though, is Marguerite Reardon’s testing of her broadband connection, and her resulting conversation with her ISP, Time Warner Cable. Using both a Dell laptop and an Apple MacBook, she never got close to the 10Mbps download speed Time Warner promises. When asked about this, a Time Warner service rep said 10Mbps wasn’t guaranteed, that speeds “can go up to 10Mbps.” And you know what, he’s right, that’s exactly what Time Warner says on its web site.

Which of course means that Time Warner can just as easily promise speeds up to 100Mbps, while still delivering the sub-7Mbps Reardon was registering. Perhaps it might be a good idea to rat out our ISPs.

Image Credit: Time Warner Cable

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FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) - Sen. Harry Reid's wife has undergone surgery at a Virginia hospital to stabilize injuries from a broken neck she suffered in a traffic accident.

A doctor at Inova Fairfax Hospital says the surgery Friday was successful in that Reid's wife, Landra, is not at risk of paralysis. Dr. Elizabeth Franco told a news conference the next steps for Reid will be to get her up and walking in the next few days and to make sure her pain is under control.

Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, spent much of Friday at the hospital while his wife underwent surgery.

Police say 69-year-old Landra Reid and her daughter, 49-year-old Lana Barringer, were struck from behind on Interstate 95 by a tractor-trailer Thursday. The daughter was released Thursday.

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It hasn’t been a good week for Microsoft’s updates to Office. Today, Microsoft came clean on some problems with a recently released seven-patch update for Excel. Apparently, users are seeing Chinese where they’d normally expect to see English. This comes on top of an early faux pas in an update for Office 2007 that caused it to crash under certain circumstances.

Says Microsoft about the most recent snafu: “We have received reports from some of our Excel 2003 and Excel 2002 customers that after installing update KB978471 or KB978474, they are seeing non-English text in the 'Add or Remove Programs' tool (Win[dows] XP) or the 'Programs and Features' --> 'Installed Updates' view (Vista, Win[dows] 7).” Continuing on, Microsoft says if you really need English text uninstall Tuesday’s Excel update, then download and install a corrected version of the patch.

The earlier problem, acknowledged by Microsoft yesterday, involved a non-security hotfix that added support for .Net 4.0 to Office 2007. This caused versions of Office 2007 running on Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2008 with Terminal Services to crash. Some users also claimed the update would cause Internet Explorer 8 to crash, when being used with SharePoint 2007. Microsoft has already replaced the offending update with a corrected version.

Image Credit: Microsoft

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