Common Paradox Tech Blog

MBCook writes “Despite claims earlier in the year that the iPhone was hated by Japanese consumers (later disproved), the iPhone has been doing well in the land of the rising sun and the evidence is in. Apple has taken 46% of the Japanese smartphone market, cutting in half the once 27% market share of the previous lead, Advance Sharp W-Zero3 (Japanese site). The article includes a large chart of the market share of Japanese smartphones over the last 3 years.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia is looking to assuage fears that it is falling behind rival AMD in the GPU race. Nvidia’s Michael Hara said the lead AMD currently has in DirectX 11 is “insignificant”. “To us, being out of sync with the API for a couple of months isn’t as important as what we’re trying to do in the big scheme of things for the next four or five years,” said Hera.

Nvidia’s next generation Fermi is supposed to appear in the first quarter of 2010. However, few details are available beyond the apparent low production yields. Hera also stressed the importance of Direct X 11 as it will offer tessellation and support for multi-core processes.  The new standard will also fully support DirectCompute allowing parallel GPU processing in various applications.

So Nvidia must feel like they have a winner on their hands to be talking up DX11 so much. We can only hope.

According to Mary Meeker and analysts from Morgan Stanley, Apple has a two to three year lead over its competitors in the mobile Internet space. Even though Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch represent just a small piece of of the global smartphone pie with 17 percent, the two devices are responsible for a astounding 65 [...]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple Has “2 or 3 Year Lead” in Mobile Internet Computing with iPhone and iPod touch

Sometimes Jesus asks you people “What Is This?” about a cool image, and then cleverly reveals the answer after the lead. It’s a tease, really. However, in this case, I really don’t know what the hell is going on here.

This Subaru was spotted on the 405N freeway in California by Gizmodo reader “the duck,” sporting all manner of dishes, antennae and gear strapped to its roof. He wants to know what’s going on with this contraption, and so do I.

Radio? Weather station? Google StreetView for the hobbyist sect? Female repellent? You tell me.

Editor’s Note: I’m loving all the ham radio email I’m receiving today. You guys are great, and I’m basically learning something cool and new with each one. Thanks! – j.l.

A woman is potentially facing three years in jail for recording three minutes of New Moon, the sequel to Twilight. Three years. In Jail. Over Twilight.

Samantha Tumpach claims that she should not face the harsh punishment intended for bootleggers, because all she was doing is recording family members signing “Happy Birthday” to her sister in the theater. Any footage of the movie screen was completely accidental, according to Tumpach.

I honestly don’t care about whether she was trying to bootleg the movie or not, I just plain think she should be jailed for considering a surprise birthday party at a showing of New Moon a wise idea. [Sun Times via Digg]

Photo by Squidoo

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has just written an open letter to Facebook users regarding a privacy overhaul that is due to hit the site in the next few weeks. Soon, users will be able to selectively choose, on a per-post basis, who can see the content they post to the site. Facebook is also going to remove regional networks entirely, largely because some of those networks (like China) consist of millions of users, which makes them useless from a privacy standpoint. If these changes sound familiar, it’s because Facebook actually announced them way back in July. Zuckerberg also notes that Facebook now has 350 million users — it has added a whopping 50 million of them in the last two and a half months.

Alongside the regional network change, privacy controls will be simplified. As Facebook rolls out the new privacy settings, users will be presented with a page designed to walk them through the new options. Depending on your current privacy level, Facebook will make recommendations, though you’ll be able to change them as usual.

Last week, the greatest dancers of the biped robot world assembled to battle on the dance floor.

As part of the 6th ROBO-ONE GATE competition, biped robots learned and performed routines in front of a live audience. That lead robot from the Doka Project? She didn’t win. Instead, second place went to this guy from Black Tiger Neo, performing Thriller:

(Disregard the fact that Thriller is not a 1:1 choreographic interpretation.)

And the winner was Ryuki Ⅱ, performing Joyful, Ikimonogakari.
Personally, I think those big feet are cheating, but picking on any of these robots feels like jeering a preschool dance recital. See more entrants at: [Biped Robot News via HackaDay]

No. 24601 writes “A Quebec woman on long-term sick leave, due to a diagnosis of depression, lost her health benefits after her insurance provider found photos of her on Facebook smiling and looking cheerful at parties and out on the beach. Besides all the obvious questions, how did the insurance company access her locked Facebook profile?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Qualcomm has developed a 5.7-inch (1,024×768) display for ebook readers that not only renders color and video; it does so with enough power efficiency to challenge a black and white, still-frame Kindle.

The “mirasol” technology mimics iridescent butterfly wings by deploying charged, color-inducing membranes over a layer of mirror. It’s a technology that, if integrated into Kindles today as-is, would increase battery life by an estimated 20%.

Instead, Qualcomm uses that extra power efficiency to drive color and higher refresh rates for smooth video. They contend that a Kindle with their more media-capable display could run about a day with its current battery.

The catch? The lead photo is a non-functional prototype (housing a functional, frozen-image display). Qualcomm is offering the tech to third party partners, and they expect you to see mirasol tech on the market by late 2010. [SlashGear]

Reader adeelarshad82 writes to lets us know that Spain has now codified a “Right to Broadband,” thus following the lead of Finland. Spain’s industry minister announced that citizens will have a legal right from 2011 to be able to buy broadband Internet access of at least 1 Mb/sec at a regulated price wherever they live. The telecoms operator holding the so-called “universal service” contract would have to guarantee it could offer “reasonably” priced broadband throughout Spain.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.