Solution provider and Apple reseller Tech Superpowers celebrates the grand opening of Apple's Boston flagship store.
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The Thunder is expected to boom sometime in the third quarter and it will be sold exclusively through Verizon Wireless in the U.S. and Vodafone PLC elsewhere, the Wall Street Journal has reported, quoting RIM insiders.
Despite the reports, a RIM spokesperson Friday said "it's RIM's policy to decline comment on rumors and speculation."
Initial rumors of the BlackBerry Thunder, which some experts are already billing as in iPhone killer, surfaced early this week, fueled mostly by gadget blog the Boy Genius Report (BGR) that posted a photo mockup of the device, which looks eerily similar to the iPhone, especially since BlackBerry's trademark QWERTY keyboard is nowhere to be seen. According to BGR, the Thunder is just a screen with four buttons: send, end, BlackBerry and a back key. BGR also said the Thunder supports 3G -- EV-DO Rev. C -- and GSM HSPA for international use.
The speculation started as BlackBerry held its Wireless Enterprise Symposium 2008 in Orlando, with BlackBerry addicts salivating at the prospect of the device giant unleashing its first ever touch screen. Instead, BlackBerry remained silent on the Thunder and rolled out the BlackBerry Bold, integration with Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail and Messenger and a partnership with IBM for mobile services and Lotus on the go.
The start of the touch-screen BlackBerry rumors started in earnest earlier this year when RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said RIM would consider releasing a touch-screen device if there was customer demand.
A touch-screen device would not only pit BlackBerry head-to-head against Apple's iPhone, which in less than a year has generated a cult-like following, but also a host of other "iPhone clones" that have jumped on the touch-screen bandwagon hoping to unseat the iPhone as the touch-screen gold standard. Recent entrants to the touch-screen craze include HTC's Touch Diamond and the Samsung Instinct released by Sprint at this year's CTIA Wireless conference.
Whether or not BlackBerry's touch-screen dream comes to fruition, as reports indicate, Balsillie has said in the past the RIM doesn't consider the iPhone a serious threat competitively, since most BlackBerry users are equally as loyal to the brand.
Still, a touch-screen BlackBerry device would help RIM continue on its path of blurring the lines between business and consumer devices. The recent additions of the Bold, Curve and Pearl to BlackBerry's roster have solidified that vision by including not only BlackBerry's mobile email and applications that made it widely popular for business users, but also a host of multimedia functions like a camera, video, music player and GPS that give the devices a consumer edge.
Wednesday at Microsoft's annual CEO Summit in Seattle, Gates showed off an even more ambitious technology called TouchWall, which employs a combination of hardware and software to create an easy to use, white board-like touch interface.
"I always like to show something that's new, because that's kind of risky and exciting," said Gates.
Microsoft believes surface computing will be pervasive, and won't be limited to tabletops and walls, Gates said. "Our view is that all surfaces -- horizontal, vertical -- will eventually have an inexpensive screen display capability, and software that sees what you're doing there, so it's completely interactive."
TouchWall is particularly well suited for group situations in which workers need to view flow charts, because it allows everyone to "interact with the information that's there," said Gates.
"You can see how you can train someone to use this pretty quickly and it's kind of a natural extension of Office," said Gates. "And this kind of whiteboard, with a little bit of hardware advancement over the next couple of years, will not be an expensive thing."
"We're taking this opportunity to test our new face-blurring technology on the busy streets of Manhattan," wrote Google software engineer Andrea Frome, in a company blog posting. "This effort has been a year in the making -- working at Street View-scale is a tough challenge that required us to advance state-of-the-art automatic face detection, and we continue working hard to improve it as we roll it out for our existing and future imagery."
Street View allows users to pan, rotate and zoom-in while taking street level photographs in 30 cities, including those in N.Y.C., San Francisco, Miami and Chicago. While the software was designed to take harmless pictures of landmarks, points of interest, shops and parks, some nefarious images have shown up, including photos of women's underwear, public urination and porn shop patrons.
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| Google's Blurring Software |
Under U.S. law, Google does not need permission from the people caught in its photos, although some may not be even aware of their captured image. If users do complain, Google said it will remove photographs. However, privacy laws abroad are, in most cases, much more restrictive.
While not yet launched in Europe, Google has hit the streets of major cities in Canada, Australia as well as cities such as Rome and Paris. Cars emblazoned with the Google logo and roof-mounted cameras have been spotted on streets snapping pictures. Google has said it expects to officially launch Street View overseas sometime next year.
"One of the reasons that Google has implemented this technology now is possibly that the privacy laws in Canada, Australia and much of Europe would not have allowed images like these to be published otherwise," wrote Google employee "James" in a blog.
On Thursday, Peter Hustinx, Europe's data protection supervisor, spoke about observing privacy rules overseas.
"Making pictures everywhere is certainly going to create some problems," European Union Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx told a news conference to present his annual report, according to Reuters.
Google admitted that it has some wrinkles to iron out in implementing the face- blurring technology.
"Due to the vast amount of data involved here, the system is fully automatic--and appears to be prone to making mistakes," wrote James. "It seems that the system really is very good though."
Raikes, who earlier this year announced plans to leave Microsoft in September, will take over for former Microsoft executive and current Gates Foundation CEO Patty Stonesifer, who will remain with the organization in an as-yet undefined role.
A Microsoft employee for more than 20 years, Raikes has been heavily involved in defining Microsoft's Information Worker business as well as the software giant's push into the productivity applications space. More recently, Raikes, along with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, has been talking up the benefits of unified communications.
Raikes and his wife have their own philanthropic organization, the Raikes Foundation, which focuses on youth development, education, and critical community projects, and also makes direct grants to nonprofit organizations.
Based in Seattle, the Gates Foundation has $37.3 billion endowment, including about $30 billion from Berkshire Hathaway chairman and Bill Gates friend and fellow billionaire Warren Buffett. The organization has more than 500 employees working on public health, agriculture, and financial services projects in the U.S. and abroad.
In January 2007, the Gates Foundation announced it would review its investments after a Los Angeles Times investigation found that some of the organization's holdings were in companies accused of unethical practices, including chemical, pharmaceutical, and oil firms.
The grand opening of the Boylston Street store, Apple's largest in the U.S., is set for 6 p.m. Thursday. The store encompasses three floors behind its glass facade, two dedicated to Macs, iPhones and iPods and a top-floor Genius Bar, where some of the store's 165 employees will dole out service with a smile.
Apple execs have said the vendor first selected the site in 2000 but had to wait for the lease on the previous tenant to run out. It also ran into some trouble with the building design when the city asked for changes.
But now it's here.
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| Boston's Apple Store |
Bostonians caught their first real glimpse of the structure on Tuesday when work crews peeled off the covering that had been hiding the building from view. Until then, the front had been made up to look like the famed "Green Monster" left field wall of Red Sox home Fenway Park. The score board image proclaimed "Opening Day. Coming Soon."
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino toured the facility today, ahead of the thousands expected to up for opening night on Thursday. Apple already has eight retail stores in Massachusetts, but this is the first to open in Boston proper.
Apple now has 210 retail stores across five countries and claims that nearly 350 million people have walked through their doors.
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