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T-Mobile Sidekick Slide

Horn said Microsoft has already spoken with Motorola and Sharp, the two companies that make phones for Danger. Both, he noted, already also make Windows Mobile phones.

Danger’s two other co-founders, Matt Hershenson and Joe Britt, have remained at the company, heading its technical teams. Britt has prior experience of being gobbled by Microsoft, having been at WebTV when Microsoft bought that company. Danger has 294 workers in total, according to the company.

Horn said Microsoft will look at ways of bringing the two businesses–and the two operating systems–more closely together.

The challenge for Microsoft, though, is that Danger has its own operating system, distinct from Windows Mobile, as well as completely different way of doing business than Microsoft.

Danger was started by Andy Rubin, who later left the company to launch another mobile start-up, which was acquired by Google. Since then, Rubin has been leading the development of Google’s Android open-source mobile platform, which is gaining attention at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, this week.

The software giant said Monday that it’s acquiring Danger, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based maker of the T-Mobile Sidekick for an undisclosed amount.

Updated at 11 a.m. PST with Microsoft comments and more background on Danger.

Update: In a telephone interview, Microsoft General Manager Scott Horn said the company isn’t ready to announce its specific plans for Danger, but said the company plans to continue operating its existing Sidekick business.

Although Danger’s business model is different from Windows Mobile, Horn said that Microsoft already licenses some of its mobile Windows Live software for a monthly fee.

Microsoft apparently is serious about the consumer cell phone business.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

Although both companies use others to manufacture their devices, Danger gets its money primarily by getting a cut of the monthly service for its phones, while Microsoft gets its money licensing the operating system to phone makers.

On the plus side, Danger actually is agreeing to be bought by Microsoft, unlike Yahoo, which formally rebuffed Microsoft’s bid Monday.

Microsoft’s acquisition brings a halt to Danger’s plans to go public. In December, the privately held company had filed its preliminary paperwork for an initial public offering.

Danger’s Sidekick brings many of the same abilities as business-oriented smartphones–Web browsing, e-mail, and instant messaging–but it does so in a way that has been more popular with executives’ kids than with businesspeople themselves.

“The addition of Danger serves as a perfect complement to our existing software and services, and also strengthens our dedication to improving mobile experiences centered around individuals and what they like,” Microsoft entertainment unit President Robbie Bach said in a statement.

It’s also not the machine for travel: Although it weighs a manageable 7.4 pounds, the sucker’s downright huge. I haven’t reviewed the 7720 myself, but I did cover (and like) a kissing cousin, the 7520.

The paltry 90-day warranty is reason for pause, but otherwise you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better-equipped desktop replacement for the price. If you have any hands-on experience with the Aspire 7720, hit the Comments and speak your mind.

(Credit:
Buy.com)

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

Indeed, the Aspire 7720 features a 1.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and a 17-inch widescreen LCD. It also includes a dual-layer DVD burner, a Webcam, a 5-in-1 media card reader, and, well, just about everything else you’d find in a full-bore desktop. The only real letdown: an integrated graphics processor (Intel’s GMA X3100). Thus, this is not the machine for gaming.

Most desktop replacements (so named for having giant screens, full-size keyboards, and other desktop amenities) start at around $800-900, but Buy.com has the Acer Aspire 7720-6155 on sale for just $599.99 shipped. It’s a factory-refurbished model, but it’s also very nicely loaded.

Worries over the coupon program and a general feeling that too many people were unprepared for the switch to digital TV prompted Congress to push back the deadline to switch all the nation’s high powered TV broadcasters from analog to digital from February to June.

Most recently Baker led the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, or NTIA. This is the agency within the Commerce Department that was responsible for distributing the $40 coupons to consumers to convert their older analog TVs to receive digital TV signals. Baker came under fire earlier this year when the Commerce Department ran out of money for the coupons and millions of people were put on a waiting list.

Meredith Attwell Baker has been nominated by President Obama to fill one of two Republican seats on the five-member FCC.

Genachowski and McDowell have already been approved by the Senate Commerce Committee and are awaiting full Senate confirmation. It’s expected that Baker and Clyburn will go through the Senate approval process together.

President Barack Obama announced Thursday that he plans to nominate Meredith Attwell Baker, a former Commerce Department official, to fill the open Republican slot on the Federal Communications Commission.

With Baker’s nomination to the FCC, President Obama has named his final nominee for the five member commission. Obama has already nominated Julius Genachowski to be FCC chairman. And he has also nominated Mignon Clyburn to fill a Democratic slot at the FCC. Clyburn is a member of South Carolina’s public service commission. Commissioner Robert McDowell, who is a Republican, has been nominated for a second term on the commission.

For much of this year, the FCC has been operating with just three commissioners. Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat, is serving as acting chairman. After Genachowski is sworn in as chairman, Copps will step down from that position, but remain on the commission for at least another year. His term ends June 30, 2010. Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, a Democrat, plans to leave the commission after the new chairman takes his position. Adelstein has been nominated to head the Internet grant program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Wait, wait.

Here’s what is strange about NBC’s online coverage: I have no idea what I am watching. Yes, I have clicked on the commentary, which takes the form of a live blog stream–except that the writer is endearingly honest about his predicament.

No, I don’t think they are four feet, eleven inches down. I think those are minutes and seconds. But all I can hear is the silence of a few rubber tires passing through a tunnel.

I continue to ponder these words, watch the struggling bottom of the Iranian cyclist, and listen to the echoing nothingness that accompanies these besottingly shiver-making live images.
It is as if NBC has hired John Carpenter to direct their online Olympic coverage.

No voice is there to lead me through my bewilderment. No words of wisdom help to create excitement. Just the vague whistle of a spoke in the wildnerness. This is the live NBC Olympics.com experience.

Well, here I am live on a Friday night, freely watching NBCOlympics.com, and witnessing the quite glorious sight of a Chinese cyclist trying to mend his bike.

If this commentary had appeared on NBC TV, the commentator in question would have been removed from his post quicker than persons of color and Mongolians have been asked to be removed from the bars of Beijing by the authorities. This commentator would have been sent to televisual Siberia.

So this commentator is telling me he has no idea who is winning, no idea who is second, no idea who is third, and no idea of the time differences between the riders.

I am sure that you were fearing censorship at these Beijing Olympics.

Ah, NBC has heard my pleas and an overlay has appeared to tell me that we are watching a men’s road race. The overlay, however, only stays on for a few seconds. Then it disappears again. So now I must rely on the official NBC Olympic online commentary.
Here is the latest:

Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.

The scrolling commentary has political news: “Iran, USA detente at the head of the main peloton as Iran’s climber Hussein Askari takes a flyer and is joined by (we think) USA’s Jason McCartney.”

They cannot get a handle on the data. They are out of control. We have a situation here, people.

Free from the tyranny of NBC TV and happy in the otherworldly bosom of NBCOlympics.com.

“The leading pursuit has shed some riders as they press towards the finish line 4’11″ down on Patricio Almonacid.”

There is a wonderfully eerie quality to the live online footage of this Olympic Some Sort of Cycle Race Along Roads.

No, not censorship by the Chinese.

Meanwhile, the NBC livestream commentary is now telling me this: “Apologies for the data stream in the play-by-play window. We are trying to remedy the situation.”

Censorship by those folks at NBC who would prefer you to watch what they want you to watch and, most specifically, when they want you to watch it.

(Credit: CC Tama Leaver)

Looking beneath the screen, I see that his name is Zhang and he is in 135th place. Who knew there would be that many riders in this, um, race over some sort of distance along misty roads that resemble London at six o’clock in the morning (except that there are no drunks visible)?

I am tired, however. This has been live, uncensored (by NBCTV) online footage from the Olympics. I am comforted to know that I will slide beneath my comforter still a free man.

The riders, however, ride on. To the muted shouts of spectators who bang thunder sticks against the roadside barriers, as if they were praying for Kobe Bryant to miss another free throw.

We think? We think? This might be a U.S. assault on Iran. And all they can say is “We think”?

The Beijing Olympic mascots. One from the right, The Tibetan antelope. Really.

This is how he has just spoken to me in writing: “The first time up the major climb of the finish circuit has substantially damaged the peloton, but we are still waiting on names and time gaps.”

It looks to me as if his back wheel has suffered a case of the bends.

And I can barely wait to see what he will do with the Romania versus Kazakhstan women’s handball game.

The picture quality is quite spectacular. The mist is so real it could not possibly have been photoshopped in there by the Chinese authorities to provide some extra menacing ambience. This makes YouTube seem like student video. (Which I know some would contend it is.)

As Forrester reports, however, there is an increasing number of applications that are adding Firefox support, and rightly so. Enterprises should never box themselves into any one provider, no matter how benevolent. Costs fall when choice rises.

This number will seem low to those who have seen higher numbers elsewhere (for example, as high as 30 percent in Europe). This simply reflects the bias of the report toward formal enterprise adoption, a route that Mozilla has explicitly not taken. Basically, Firefox is not an alternate universe into which you will be banished.

Mozilla’s share of the browser market rose steadily throughout 2007, only slowing for the quarter directly following the release of Internet Explorer 7 (IE 7) in late 2006. Adoption in the enterprise nearly doubled to 18 percent by the end of 2007, but large-scale, companywide deployments are not yet typical. Mozilla continues to expend little energy on wooing IT managers to formally adopt Firefox….

Firefox continues continued to outpace IE in terms of innovation and in terms of performance. I was playing around on IE7 last night on my new Windows partition on my
Mac. It looks better than it used to, but it still reflects the design decisions (both good and bad) of one particular Redmond-based monopoly. Mozilla’s Firefox? It was built by the planet in that planet’s disparate image(s).

Mozilla
Firefox’s share of the enterprise desktop market has reached 18 percent, according to a new Forrester report noted by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley.

commentary

Once inside Firefox, life gets better. It is massively expandable and customizable. When I first switched to Firefox (from
Safari–I’ve long disliked IE), I hated its chubby icons. No problem: Someone had already created a theme that looked just like Safari.

From my big-company days, I know there are still a range of enterprise applications written specifically for IE. Shame on the slothful developers who can’t be bothered to design their applications properly for a heterogenous computing world.

Forrester’s report states:

Foley cites Internet Explorer’s shortcomings as a primary driver for Firefox’s growth, and there’s certainly something to this. But in my experience, Firefox grows because it is simply a better browser. Period. People hear about it via word of mouth. Or people like me install it for our grandmothers and parents to save them from the bother imposed by IE.

If you haven’t tried out Firefox lately, I’d encourage you to do so. It really is a markedly better browser.

Why?

And yet it’s getting them, all the same.