2010/09/24

Blackberry Tablet expected soon

RIM's Blackberry Tablet or "blackpad" is due for imminent release. Surprisingly it's based on a version of QNX operating system not the Blackberry OS (RIM purchased QNX a while ago). QNX has produced embedded POSIX operating systems such as Neutrino for a while and now it's rumoured that that in the future RIM will utilise Neutrino (or another OS from QNX) as the basis for all the Blackberry products, bye bye Blackberry OS.

RIM's Blackberry OS though optimised for their handsets, is proprietary and must take a huge amount of resource to keep going. QNX on the other hand has been making real-time embedded operating systems for many years (well before RIM came on the scene), it's been ported to many CPU architectures and 'just works'. As a POSIX OS it's also relatively easy to port from other more common operating systems such as Linux.

As long as all the Blackberry functionality is maintained (i.e. Push Email, BIS/BES support) which are really just applications, they should also work on a QNX OS. This will also allow RIM to support modern processors and rapidly deploy new smartphones as the hardware becomes available.

It might just give them the edge again and RIM can put the Blackberry back into the enterprise market while still keeping the youth market by making their phones sexy too.

2010/09/22

It's that FOWA time of year again

Oct 6th sees the Carsonified put on the The Future of Web Apps or FOWA.

As with the FOWD it's taking place in London at The Brewery which is a great venue and if they pull off the same level of professionalism it will be a great conference. They even get the networking right with high speed wireless and wired connections (almost a LAN port to every chair and WiFi for the rest).

Jason Calacanis, Mike McDerment, Cal Henderson and Brad Neuberg are amongst the speakers with the complete line-up here.

The actual conference takes place on Oct 4th and 5th and workshops on the 6th.

There's a 15% discount for anyone using the code 15DISC at the check-out when buying tickets on-line.

2010/09/20

Ofcom passes-on responsibility for VOD editortial

Ofcom the Super regulator that deals with regulation of broadcasters, communications, radio spectrum etc. has today passed on all complaints handling relating to editorial content on UK based Video on demand services to it's co-regulatory partner the Association for Television on Demand ATVOD.

Ofcom designated ATVOD it's co-regulation partner back in March. This has implications for anyone doing VoD type broadcasts on the Internet (though it specifically does not include crowd sourced content) and puts them in the same regulatory bracket as traditional broadcasters - in order to level the playing field.

It does mean some Internet broadcasters will have to look carefully at what they're doing (if they're based in the UK at least) to ensure they re compliant.