Time Magazine for iPad: A real treat for subscribers

In case you missed the news, Time Inc. recently struck a deal with Apple to give the iPad edition of the magazine to print subscribers–no extra charge. As a longtime subscriber myself, I was delighted. I’d never so much as installed the Time app, because there was no way I was going to pay twice …

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A cell phone tower in your backyard?

Kent German/CNET Last week, I received a notice from the San Francisco Planning Department that AT&T Mobility is proposing to install a “wireless communications facility” (read, cell phone tower) within 500 feet of my house. The notice says it will consist of 12 panel antennas and won’t be visible from the street. I’m also invited to attend an “informational community …

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Applying the Android Device Kit

Not only is the Android OS customizable, but now you can customize the hardware that Android runs on thanks to Google’s new Android Device Kit. Check out this slideshow showcasing several examples from Google I/O 2011 of what the ADK can do. ADK robots at Google I/O 2011 (photos) +6 more See all photos

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Google puts its chips on developers

SAN FRANCISCO – Search and advertising still pay the bills at Google, but as the company moves into new markets such as mobile and Web apps, increasingly its fortunes will be tied to developers outside the Googleplex. At this week’s Google I/O developer conference here the company will be reaching out to thousands of these third-party developers in an effort …

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Motorola Gleam retro flip phone flogged for £50 at Carphone Warehouse

The Motorola Gleam has landed. First spotted at Mobile World Congress in February, Carphone Warehouse is now flogging the retro flip phone on a pay as you go deal for £49.95.  That could be music to your lugholes if you yearn for the simple life and just can’t be doing with all that smart-phone malarkey — the Gleam is just a straightforward handset with a ludicrously shiny cover. It’s …

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How to use Google’s Music Beta (hands

Now playing: Watch this: Music Beta by Google 1:50 Google’s long-awaited cloud music service has arrived. It’s called Music Beta; it’s free (for now, and currently invite-only); and after giving it a test-drive, I’m happy to report that the whole system is fairly smooth. From the perspective of the end-user, the payoff of Music Beta is to have your entire …

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Google amps up the media experience (live blog)

Google’s annual developer conference, Google I/O, kicks off Tuesday at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center. CNET/James Martin Editor’s note: We used Cover It Live for this event, so if you missed the live blog, you can still replay it in the embedded component below. Replaying the event will give you all the live updates along with commentary from our readers …

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Microsoft stops tracking specific Windows Phones

Microsoft has stopped identifying specific Windows Phone handsets when it collects location data from them, and will soon stop any unique device identifiers at all being sent to its location services, the company said yesterday. In a blog post, Windows Phone chief Andy Lees said the data Microsoft collected from the smartphones was for identifying local “landmarks”–nearby Wi-Fi access points …

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Windows Phone 7.5 Mango update expected on 24 May

A significant update to Windows Phone 7 will be released within a fortnight. It’s widely expected to be version 7.5, code-named ‘Mango’. Microsoft will hold a special event on 24 May in New York City to announce the upgrade. Microsoft developers have revealed a number of consumer-friendly features that will be included in the next release, Windows Phone Secrets reports. Bing on …

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Google unveils movies, music and more for Android

Google kicked off its annual Google I/O conference for developers with a collection of announcements to enhance the Android platform, including updates to the OS firmware and new multimedia services. The new Android Honeycomb platform will receive an incremental update with the introduction of version 3.1. Improvements available in this update include an extended multitasking panel, adding more recent tasks …

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Crave app back up and running, CNET UK issues sincere app

Crave’s dinky little iPhone app is working perfectly once more, delivering timely and amusing tech nonsense to your mobile, after a short period of, er, brokenness. Here’s what happened: there was a small problem with the podcast and that broke the feed to our app over Easter. The bad data (bad data! No cookie for you) was cached and took …

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Google I/O day one: Android on top

SAN FRANCISCO–Android, Google’s top developer priority, hogged the spotlight at Google I/O today–in part as the foundation for new Google music and video services. Among the Google I/O announcements today: • Google announced Android 3.1, an update to Honeycomb that adds new interface options, lets people plug in USB devices, and sports a movie rental service that works directly from …

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Music Beta vs. Amazon Cloud

Google has finally launched Music Beta, a cloud service that stores your music and lets you stream it to any browser or Android-based device. It’s invite-only for now, but the beta version is free. It’s not without its limitations, but we think it will certainly become a viable competitor against Amazon’s recently released Cloud Player. Here, we present a chart …

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Google: Our music service is legal

SAN FRANCISCO–Google defended its music storage service at a press conference today shortly after it unveiled the service at its developer conference here. The new Google Music service, which CNET first reported last night, allows people to store up to 20,000 songs in the Internet “cloud.” The benefit of doing this is that they will then be able to access …

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HTC Salsa and ChaCha shimmy onto Amazon with SIM

Two of HTC’s forthcoming Android phones, the Salsa and ChaCha, are now available to pre-order on Amazon UK. We’ve known for a while that this pair of Facebook-friendly mobiles will arrive in the UK in June. Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange will sell the handsets. What we didn’t know was the price. Amazon has kindly divulged that the ChaCha will cost £250 …

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