Nicholas Kolakowski

When Hewlett-Packard announced the resignation of its chairman, chief executive officer and president, Mark Hurd, on Aug. 6, it sent a shockwave throughout the tech industry. Although the scandal behind the resignation drew its share of rubberneckers, a good deal of attention was soon focused on HP’s future: that is, how would the departure of […]

With April’s release of the Apple iPad, along with the recent software and hardware upgrades for both Amazon.com’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the battle for the e-reader market is well and truly joined. Each of those three companies seems equally determined to match the others on a number of competitive fronts, from bookstore […]

Microsoft will launch its public beta of Internet Explorer 9 on Sept. 15, with a high-profile event in San Francisco. During the Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting on July 29, Microsoft COO Kevin Turner had suggested the IE9 beta would arrive in September but offered no further details. Microsoft released IE9’s fourth and final Platform Preview […]

The Indian government has imposed a deadline of Aug. 31 on Research In Motion to open its BlackBerry encryption to security officials or risk being shut down. “[The Department of Telecommunications] has been asked to convey to service providers that two BlackBerry services[,] namely Business Enterprise Services and Messenger Services[,] be made accessible to law […]

Apple TV will soon be renamed iTV, according to the latest rumors circulating online, and leverage a new iTunes streaming service for content. Those rumors come courtesy of Engadget, which claims a trusted but unnamed source in the matter. That source also suggested that, thanks to an unspecified issue with Apple’s proprietary A4 processor, the […]

The BlackBerry Torch 9800, Research In Motion’s attempt at capturing both the consumer and business smartphone markets, officially launched on Aug. 12. In addition to a capacitive touch-screen and sliding QWERTY keyboard, the device includes the company’s new BlackBerry 6 operating system. The release comes at a time when RIM finds itself facing considerable competition […]

Bill Koefoed, Microsoft’s general manager of Investor Relations, discussed Windows Phone 7 and tablet PCs during an Aug. 10 talk at the Oppenheimer Annual Technology, Media & Telecommunications Conference in Boston. Smartphones and tablets are two areas where Microsoft has, with increasing volume, announced its intentions of seizing market share in the short to medium […]

Plastic Logic has canceled of its Que e-reader, a potential high-end challenger to Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. In its place, the company will apparently focus on “a second-generation ProReader plastic electronics-based product.” The Que had already experienced rounds of delays, with customer preorders canceled in June. The Que originally made its debut […]

The BlackBerry Torch 9800 represents Research In Motion’s attempt to be all things to all customers. For business users, many of the tools that made BlackBerry a corporate name have been preserved in all their utilitarian glory. However, the company also hopes the Torch’s multimedia features will appeal to consumers in the hunt for a […]

BlackBerry Torch 9800 Delivers Goods, But Needs Tweaks by Nicholas Kolakowski BlackBerry Torch 9800 The BlackBerry Torch 9800, RIM’s first smartphone with a sliding QWERTY keyboard and capacitive touch screen, is the company’s hope for a viable challenger to the Apple iPhone and Google Android. Sliding Screen The Torch 9800’s slider mechanism feels well-built, and […]

Dell will begin pre-sales of its Streak tablet PC on Aug. 12, the day before general availability. As the tablet PC market begins to heat up, in the wake of the Apple iPad’s enormous success, Dell is likely hoping that the Streak’s ability to Web-surf, display multimedia and make voice calls will distinguish it from […]

Apple will launch an upgraded iPad in early 2011, alongside a smaller version of the popular tablet, according to a report from Digitimes Research. Digitimes Research predicts that the upgraded iPad will feature an ARM Cortex-A9-based processor and 512MB RAM, and will launch in the first quarter of 2011. That same processor will also power […]