From DailyTech: Former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein said that selling Palm to Hewlett-Packard (HP) was a "waste," considering Palm's technologies are now seen in today's most popular devices.

Rubinstein told FierceWireless in an interview that Palm's innovative technologies were lost in the sale to HP, and he would reconsider the Palm/HP sale if he could go back in time.

"I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure," said Rubinstein. "Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company?"

Rubinstein added that Palm's technologies, like multitasking and Synergy, are now seen in mobile operating systems like iOS, Android and Windows Phone. He said it's even said in desktop operating systems like Mac OS X. Palm may have been ahead of its time.

"It's not just mobile platforms," said Rubinstein. "If you look at the notifications on Mac OS X, it looks just like webOS, too. We did a lot of things that were very, very innovative. Obviously, multitasking, notifications, Synergy, how we handled the multiple cards… Our over-the-air updates and mechanism has been updated by everybody. Our whole Synergy concept is now becoming much more common. I don't think anyone has implemented it as well as we did yet, but clearly they're all heading down that direction."

For those who need a refresher, Palm was an American smartphone manufacturer founded in 1992. During its time, the California-based company developed smartphones like the Pre, Pixi, Treo and Centro. It later released its one and only tablet, the TouchPad. Older devices ran the Palm OS Garnet operating system, but webOS was introduced as a replacement in 2009.

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From X-bit Labs: The Symbian operating system powered the very first mass smartphones from Nokia Corp. more than a decade ago and made the company the dominant player on the market until Apple iOS and Google Android started to take off in 2010. It looks like it is time to say goodbye to Symbian as Nokia plans to completely stop shipping smartphones based on the platform this summer.

The former world’s largest maker of mobile phones will stop shipments of Symbian-based smartphones this summer and will fully rely on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone 8 platform, reports Financial Times. It is not expected that Nokia will actually make a formal announcement regarding end of shipments since there are Symbian-based smartphones on stocks around the world and Nokia’s partners will need to sell them somehow.

Nokia Lumia Q1 volumes increased 27% quarter-on-quarter to 5.6 million units, reflecting increasing momentum. At the same time, sales of Symbian-based smartphones collapsed to 500 thousand a quarter, which indicates that the platform is nearly dead.

However, when pure smartphone shipments are considered, it becomes obvious that Lumia product line has been growing slower than Symbian was falling, an indicator that Nokia’s loyal customers are defecting to other platforms and not transiting to Windows Phone. Starting from Q2 2013 virtually all Nokia smartphones are powered by Windows Phone operating system and it remains to be seen how fast their sales will grow to the levels of Symbian back in Q1 2011.

Given very high pace of smartphone market development as well as keeping in mind that Nokia will continue to heavily promote Lumia, it is highly likely that in Q2 – Q3 sales of Symbian-based devices in retail will stall and the company will not only have to stop shipments, but to write down all the remaining inventory and report a massive loss.

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From X-bit Labs: Although Advanced Micro Devices these days is shifting focus from pure central processing units (CPUs) to accelerated processing units (APUs) with integrated graphics cores that can speed up select applications, the company continues to sell CPUs not only to performance enthusiasts, but to mainstream users as well. This week the first AMD Athlon processor based on Richland design, but without graphics, emerged for sale.

Amazon.co.uk is currently selling quad-core AMD Athlon X4 760K Black Edition processor (AD760KWOHLBOX) with 3.80GHz default clock-rate (and 4.10GHz Turbo Core frequency), 4MB L2 cache (512KB L2 per core), 100W thermal design power, Turbo Core 3.0 dynamic acceleration technology as well as unlocked multiplier. The chip should be drop-in compatible with mainboards featuring FM2 sockets.

The recommended retail price of the Athlon X4 760K microprocessor is claimed to be £86.25 ($135.2), but Amazon.co.uk sells it for £64.86 ($101.7) with the promise to dispatch it within two to three weeks. Given that the store offers AMD A8-6600K “Richland” APU with 3.90GHz default frequency and Radeon HD graphics engine for £97.71 ($153.54), the cost of the Athlon X4 760K seems normal. In addition, at least one seller is offering the same central processing units at Ebay UK, reports CPU World web-site.

Since AMD formally unveiled fully-fledged desktop Richland APUs earlier this month, the emergence of the cut-down version clearly indicates that the chips have been in production for several months now and AMD can fulfill demand for both APUs and CPUs based on the new design.

The new AMD Athlon X4 760K processor should deliver even better overclockability than the units with integrated graphics and can therefore power inexpensive PCs used mostly for games. Given the fact that the chips do not feature integrated graphics adapter, such computers will need a discrete graphics card, which cost will clearly be higher than that of an integrated graphics engine. Still, those, who already have a decent graphics adapter and want an inexpensive CPU, the new Athlon X4 may be an interesting option.

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From CNET News.com: Microsoft's Bing carved out a 17.4 percent slice of the U.S. search engine market in May, according to the latest ComScore data provided by investment firm Macquarie Capital.

An investors note released today by Macquarie analyst Ben Schachter revealed that Bing's share in May rose only 0.10 percentage points from April. But that slow but steady rise showed an ongoing gain that's held relatively firm for the past three years.

Still, Google remains the search engine champ, well ahead of the other contestants. Its May market share showed an increase of 0.20 points from April, rising to 66.7 percent. Google's all-time high as recorded by ComScore was 67.5 percent in February of this year.

After rising in share for the prior two months, Yahoo slumped in May, losing 0.10 points to earn an 11.9 percent slice of the market. Still, the total number of Yahoo's search queries rose for the second straight quarter, compared with a year ago, its first annual increase since December 2011. And Schachter sees new efforts by management starting to pay off.

"While we remain cautious on the long-term structural challenges facing Yahoo, it would appear that the efforts of the new executive team are helping to stabilize [Yahoo's] near-term search volume and search share trends," the analyst said. "We expect additional product improvements/releases through [2013's second half] to help further this trend and maximize the value that Yahoo is able to extract from core search users, at least in the near term."

On a yearly basis, Bing's percentage of search queries in May jumped by 29 percent, Google's rose by 14 percent, and Yahoo's inched up 1 percent.

ComScore's data includes "explicit" searches, which are search terms that people manually enter on a Web page.

There is one major caveat to ComScore's monthly results. The stats don't include searches from mobile devices, which even ComScore says account for as much as 25 to 30 percent of all Internet search traffic. Without or without mobile devices included, though, Google still holds the dominant share.

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From DailyTech: In an interview with Polygon, Electronic Arts, Inc.'s (EA) chief operating officer Peter Moore the executive opened up somewhat about his company's controversial DRM efforts, while dodging other questions on the issue.

From 2010 to 2013 EA had embraced a controversial form of digital rights management (DRM) dubbed "Online Pass". Consumers received a code that allowed them to access online content, while used game purchasers were locked out of add-on content. The feature was killed off this month amid EA's financial struggles; rumor had it that the program was losing money.

Mr. Moore, claims the decision was not financially motivated but rather was made out of EA's deep compassion for customers. He comments, "Online Pass was more trouble to the consumer than it was worth. It was a mistake. The consumer's feedback was that this thing gets in the way of a good experience so let's get rid of it."

He hints at more DRM may be on the horizon though, via Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) "always-on" Xbox One. He remarks, "[O]ur official position is, 'I'll get back to you'. Sony have announced what they are going to do which is, y'know, business as usual, and then Microsoft are looking at allowing a publisher to opt-in, should they choose to do so. But if we opt in, do [Microsoft] charge a fee, and if so, how much?"

But he denies allegations that Microsoft's new anti-consumer policy was the result of EA lobbying. He states, "I can tell you that EA did not aggressively lobby for the platform holders to put some gating function in there to allow or disallow used games. I am on record as being a proponent of used games. I like the ecosystem. I like the fact that it's kept pricing at a good level for eight years. I like the fact that someone can buy a physical game and see some equity in that game. That keeps GameStop vibrant and they are a great launch and marketing partner for us."

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From DailyTech: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is dropping the Gigahertz hammer on rival Intel Corp. (INTC) announcing a new Vishera (the Piledriver-core based line of "FX"-branded processors) octa-core chip that has a turbo clock of 5.0 GHz.

While some may consider the fact that the stock (non-turbo) clock speed of the FX-9590 is something lower than the 5.0 GHz (AMD didn't announce the exact speed, but expect ~4.5 GHz), this marks the first time that a commercially available (x86 consumer) CPU has broken this speed barrier.

There's no word on how much power the chip is sucking down to attain that impressive clock speed.

AMD also announced that it would offer a 4.7 GHz turbo-clocked octa-core chip (FX-9370). Together the chips will release in pre-built PCs this summer, with packaged availability trailing somewhat. AMD also mentions that both chips are unlocked, allowing for even greater overclocks, cooling permitting.

Bernd Lienhard brags, "This is another proud innovation for AMD in delivering the world's first commercially available 5 GHz processor."

Computer history buffs will recall that AMD was the first chipmaker to break the 1.0 GHz barrier with a stock x86 commercial CPU. By Mar. 2006 Intel had released the 3.73 GHz Pentium "Extreme Edition" 965 dual-core chip, built on the 65 nm node. So far the fastest Haswell chip announced has been the Core i7-4930MX, a quad-core design turbo-clocked to 3.9 GHz.

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From X-bit Labs: Despite of heavy competition from mobile platforms, relatively high price and numerous restrictions when it comes to used games, Microsoft Xbox One is facing tremendous demand from the end-users in the U.S., according to Amazon. It is most likely that the consoles are currently pre-ordered by hardcore gamers and Microsoft fans.

“We were thrilled by the unprecedented demand we saw for Xbox One today. In the first four hours of preorder availability, we sold through most of our Xbox One Day One Edition inventory. Customers eager to get an Xbox One should visit our store at Amazon.com/xboxone to ensure they keep up-to-date on the latest information. We are excited to be working with Microsoft to deliver the next generation of games and entertainment,” said John Love, director of U.S. video games & software at Amazon.com.

Microsoft has managed to sell over 76 million Xbox 360 video game consoles in eight years. Thanks to a number of all-new exclusive game franchises announced for the Xbox One, the console promises to become popular among core gamers as well. Therefore, it is not surprising that experienced gamers have already started to pre-order the new systems.

Microsoft Xbox One is based on AMD Fusion custom-designed system-on-chip with eight x86 low-power/low-cost Jaguar cores, AMD Radeon HD graphics with GCN architecture (with 32MB ESRAM/EDRAM buffer) as well as 8GB of DDR3 system memory. The console features 500GB hard disk drive, Blu-ray disc drive, 802.11n Wi-Fi connectivity, Gigabit Ethernet, output of video with up to 4K resolution (3840*2160) using HDMI 1.4 as well as 7.1-channel audio. The new Xbox One comes with completely redesigned Kinect sensor that will feature 1920*1080 RGB camera, improved infrared sensor and enhanced voice controls. The console sports a number of functions, e.g. TV-cable pass-through that will seamlessly integrate it into the living room.

The Xbox One launch bundle will be available for $499.99 in the U.S., £429 in the U.K. and €499 in European markets. The console will be released in 21 markets around the world in November 2013.

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From X-bit Labs: Intel Corp. on Tuesday announced its new solid-state drive DC S3500 series, the latest solid-state drive (SSD) for data centers and cloud computing. The new SSDs are designed for read-intensive applications such as web hosting, cloud computing and data center virtualization.

Intel SSD DC S3500 series is based on latest multi-level cell NAND flash memory as well as custom controller and firmware. The drives use Serial ATA-6Gb/s interface and deliver sequential read speeds of up to 500MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 450MB/s and a tight distribution of input/outputs per second with low maximum latencies. Random read performance can go up to 75000 input-output operations per second.

The Intel SSD DC S3500 family naturally includes data protection features to address IT and data center professional's concerns of data loss. Built-in capacitors provide a short period of backup power to the drive allowing it to finish operations in the event of power loss. The drives also use 256-bit AES encryption for data protection.

The new SSDs will be offered in capacities ranging from 80GB to 800GB and both 2.5” and 1.8” form-factors. Available through Intel distributors and resellers, the Intel DC S3500 series is offered at the suggested channel price of $115 for a 1.8” 80GB drive and $979 for a 2.5” 800GB drive. It is also accompanied by a 5-year warranty.

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