On AT&T, Apple, BlackBerry and other gadget news

A couple recent posts of mine on Examiner.com:

AT&T reverses course on VoIP on iPhone; an analyst doubts its stated motives:

AT&T allows wider use of Skype; urges FCC light touch

Apple quits U.S. Chamber of Commerce over global warming skepticism

Apple takes a stand on climate change

Good news for BlackBerry users

BlackBerry to support Adobe Flash

Palm dilemma: how to price Pixi when Pre prices falling

Prices falling for Palm Pre

Ellison on pending acquisition of Sun

Tech journalists and others listened with interest when Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison spoke about the pending acquisition of Sun Microsystems during a presentation at the Churchill Club Monday Sept. 21 in San Jose.

Recent Examiner posts

I have been drawn to other assignments that have kept me from posting as often as I would have wanted to on Examiner.com, but here are a few of my latest reports:

Gadget ideas for the 'Hybrid Mom'
Sept. 17
Linux makes headway in netbooks, smartphones
Aug. 13

Plantronics Voyager 975 hits the market
Aug. 20

Symark acquires BeyondTrust in security access space
Sept. 12

Open Table and other mobile apps news
Sept. 14

Busy Tuesday

Tuesday Aug. 4 was a busy day for me as an Examiner. First, I covered a Churchill Club event in Mountain View featuring Aneesh Chopra, President Obama's chief technology officer:

Obama's CTO seeks ties with Silicon Valley

Then I drove up to San Francisco to cover a launch party for a gadgets Web site:

Gadget fans turn out for gadget site launch party

I also kept up on events related to the release of the Current TV journalists imprisoned in North Korea. I had written about a vigil held for them in San Francisco in June:

Current TV journalists released by North Korea

Good and Bad News About Apple

The good news: Anticipation is building that Apple will introduce a tablet computer to the market this fall. The story: "Apple Tapplet, Anyone?"
The bad news: Apple is telling developers they, not Apple, should pay back customers whose iPhone applications were banished from Apple's App Store. One of the developers relates an absurd and frustrating conversation with an Apple representative from whom he was trying to get answers as to why his app was banned. The story: "Apple, the unbenevolent dictator."

Apple and AT&T irk fans of iPhone and Google Voice

I'd been behind the curve on following this flap over the last week, busy with other assignments. But now the FCC is getting involved in the decision by Apple to ban the VoIP application Google Voice from its App Store. It seems using your iPhone to make calls over a VoIP provider conflicts with the financial interests of AT&T, which is the exclusive carrier in the U.S. for the iPhone. Some say this is anti-competitive and that people Hope FCC can rein in Apple, AT&T.

Line forms outside the Apple store in
Santa Clara, Calif., the day the
iPhone 3GS goes on sale

A little off the beaten path but not by much. This post, titled "Irish entrepreneurs search for Silicon Valley pot of gold," is about a trade mission to Silicon Valley by some Irish entrepreneurs and economic development advocates. One of them is a guy whose gadget allows people to buy songs to play on their cell or smart-phone via text message.

More on netbooks, Symbian

I've been following the netbook trend of smaller, cheaper laptop computers, including AT&T's adding netbook models to its offering. I snapped this photo of an AT&T employee demonstrating the netbooks at the store in Santa Clara.

Also this week I attended OSCON, the Open Source Convention, in San Jose. One interesting session was a tutorial on Symbian, the mobile OS that is little known in the US but the market share leader everywhere else in the world. I was fortunate to run into Laura Merling (see below) of the Symbian Foundation, whom I'd interviewed before when I worked for SD Times and IDG News Service.