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Sources are reporting that Apple may be planning to release an update date to its retail store iOS app that would give the client the ability to use self-checkout for purchases of accessories and other many shelf stocked items while at the company’s retail store. The source says self checkout purchase will be charged through the Apple Store app right to the customers iTunes Store account. The one thing that is still not clear is how will the checkout work so you can show some type of receipt to an Apple store employee for the purchase, this is still unclear. The big ticket items such as the Mac computers, iPods, and iPhones will still require a employees assistance but there will be the ability through the app to pre-purchase the said item through the app store and pick them up in store.

Thanks to Droid Life we have the first pictures of the Droid 4 and a nice breakdown of the specs which is below.
The DROID4 by Motorola is coming and according to our sources, has the best slideout they have “ever seen on a smartphone.” You asked for it and Moto appears to have made it.
Spec breakdown:
• 4″ screen (assuming Super AMOLED Advanced)
• Full 5-row “illuminated” keyboard
• RAZR styling
• 4G LTE
• Non-removable battery
• Android 2.3.5
• 1080p video recording (assuming 8MP)
• Front camera
• HDMI out
• MotoACTV syncing
No word yet on processor, but will bet that it has at least the 1.2GHz OMAP4430 that the RAZR has. Would not doubt it if it had something newer though. Haven’t heard of a release time line – all others in the DROID keyboard series seem to be getting the summer treatment. However, this phone looks like it might be done.

It looks as if Samsung has overtaken Apple in the last quarter to become the worlds largest smartphone vendor. Samsung was able to ship 27.8 million smartphones in last quarter which took 23.8% of the market states Milton Keynes, UK – based Strategy Analytics. Apple shipped 17.1 million which was around 14.6% of the market.

“Samsung has come out with products that appeal to all the different form factors and specifications out there,” said T.Z. Wong, a Beijing-based analyst at researcher IDC. “That is a strategy they have executed very well.”

Yesterday it was announced that HP was sticking with its PC Division. It had become apparent that the spinoff option was not going to happen primarily because it would hurt HP in ways it had perhaps not considered. Being the world’s leading maker of consumer and corporate PCs gives HP a great deal of leverage with component suppliers like Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, Seagate and others, and helps its strategically important server business. PCs carry slim margins; servers don’t. Losing that negotiating power would have hurt the more profitable server business, so naturally the PC business had to stay.

The decision marks the first significant reversal of course by HP’s new CEO Meg Whitman, who took over when the company’s board of directors ousted Léo Apotheker after a rocky, 11-month tenure.

The reports are in from the Q3 financials of Amazon and they reported lower than expected operation margins from Wall Street which saw their stock take a hit and there is even thoughts of a Q4 operating loss! But never fear Amazon says that this is due to expansion like building new distribution centers and of course the digital business with the new Kindle Fire on the way. Once again it was said that Amazon was happy to lose a bit on the Fire to make more money on the digital content. This is the standard for video game systems. They sell the product at a small loss or a breakeven and then they sell content for that device which makes up for the losses they see. Same will be put into play with the new Kindle Fire. The interesting thing is that Amazon is taking a different approach to this unlike Apple. Time Cook sells media so he can sell iPads and iPhones; Bezos sells Kindles so he can sell books, videos, and music and heck even advertising. With Apple already in the driver seat with their model, how will Amazon fair with theirs? Only time will tell.

From what I have read Twitter is expanding its timeline. They are testing out new design changes which will make the main Twiiter timeline expand so you can see media and related information right in the timeline instead of it being off to the side or off to another page. It is suppose to be a subtle change and it should simplify something that is already a simple service. You can “open” up a tweet to see how many people retweeted it, the threaded conversation related to that tweet, or related photos and videos. For instance, here is a screenshot of a reply tweet along with the original tweet. You will notice that the star, retweet, and reply buttons have also been moved to the top right. And you can close the tweet to go back to the main timeline view. Many Twitter clients have long included inline media, and it is encouraging to see Twitter trying to figure out how to make it part of the official experience.

Tablets are getting more and more competitive these days. It seems like when Apple puts their foot into something everyone wants to step on their feet with something better and most will say none have been able to do it. Well this tablet will not do it either but it will give people an affordable option. It looks as if View Sonic is rolling out a $200 ViewPad 7e Android tablet. This will only give you Android 2.3 and not Honeycomb but for the price specs are decent 1GHz ARM A8 processor, dual cameras, a “RiteTouch” 7-inch capacitive display, 4GB of storage with a microSD card slot for expansion, and HDMI output. As is often the case with low-end tablets, however, one key omission is official support for the Android Market, but you do at least get access to Amazon’s Appstore, as well as plenty of pre-loaded apps including Twitter, Kindle, and TuneIn Radio.

Apple is make some great upgrades to their Macbook Pro line. So if you are looking for a decent Mac looks like these upgrades are exceptional. The starter Macbook Pro will be a 13 inch with a 2.4Ghz processor and a 500GB hard drive although running at 5400rpm. The 15 inch model will have a core i7 processor running at 2.5Ghz has some graphic upgrades on its board. Finally the 17 inch model is changing up from a AMD Radeon HD 6750M to a nice HD 6770M and the base processor of an i7 2.2ghz to a 2.4Ghz and the prices are staying the same from the reports, there is also talk that these models will have Bluetooth 4.0 to keep in line with the new MacBook Air and the iPhone 4S.

Verizon has reported their 3rd quarter earnings and this showed that they are well on their way to hit the fourth quarter and the 2011 goals, thanks to the strength of their wireless business. The reported earnings was about $3.54 Billion or 49 cents a share on revenue of just about $27.9 billion dollars. Verizon did comment and said that they are very optimistic about the future of the company with the iPhone 4S and a bunch of new LTE devices making their mark. Also more than half of the Verizon’s 5.6 million smartphones that were sold in the third quarter were Android devices, it reported that 35% or just about 2 million iPhones.

Verizon CFO Fran Shammo made the following points on the company’s earnings conference call:
• A strike and storm outages shaved 5 cents a share from GAAP earnings. Both factors hampered FiOS installations and some enterprise provisioning.
• The company secured new agreements for cloud services with companies such as RWE of Germany, Smile Brands and the University of North Carolina.
• “Our 4G LTE deployment is going very well and we are now providing service in 165 markets covering more than 186 million POPs. With additional markets planned in November and December we are actually ahead of schedule and have already exceeded our year-end target of 185 million POPs.”

Going through the many articles I read I found one that was very interesting about throttling and using BitTorrents. Measurement Labs gives a special insight into this and reveals that Comcast was slowing down nearly half of all BitTorrent traffic in the US in the early months of 2008 although it has dropped to 3% last year. They even did other countries and found in Canada, Rogers is the worst as it throttles over three quarters of all the BitTorrent traffic. So here is the best and worst from the US, Canada and Great Britain.

US
The Bittorrent throttling businesses connected with Comcast, subjected to by simply Robb Topolski along with TorrentFreak inside ’07, ended up simply what resulted in the Dimension Research exploration. Immediately after the FCC exploration Comcast ended up being requested to prevent slowing lower Bittorrent on the large-scale, as well as the records exhibits that this company possesses stored its concept.

First 2008 Comcast restrained nearly one half (49%) off Bittorrent traffic yet this is minimized to be able to three p’cent from the first one fourth connected with not too long ago. Cox, a further hefty throttler, travelled through 51 p’cent to be able to three p’cent inside the same time interval. The slide images further more exhibits that will truly, Clearwire ended up being really the only U. S. Internet service provider that will restrained over eight p’cent off Bittorrent traffic, 17 p’cent to become correct.

Worst: Clearwire (17%)
Best: Comcast and others (3%)

Canada
Inside North america, many great ISPs include admitted to be able to slowing lower Bittorrent traffic, as well as some perform therefore to your excellent level. Because the start of sizing’s Rogers possesses frequently throttled over three-quarter off Bittorrent traffic, along with you can find zero indicators that this does away with.

Through first one fourth connected with the year of 2010 both the alternative great Canadian ISPs, Bell along with Shaw, ended up throttling sixteen along with 14 p’cent respectively. Videotron on the other hand possesses in no way slowed lower over 6 p’cent, along with simply three p’cent through previous dimension season.

Worst: Rogers (78%)
Best: Videotron (3%)

Great Britain
In great britain, TalkTalk familiar with control 1 / 3 off Bittorrent traffic, yet this is minimized drastically from the conclusion connected with the year just gone. They at this point simply decelerate Bittorrent in the course of summit a long time which often resulted in the twelve month period p’cent throttling price first the year of 2010. Tiscali along with BT Group are generally subjected to for the reason that most hefty throttlers although Virgin Mass media, O2 along with BSkyB have had relatively decreased percentages in the dimension interval.

Worst: Tiscali and BT Group (27%)
Best: BSkyB (5%)