Walt Mossberg sez, if you’re shopping for a computer now, consider that both Microsoft and Apple will upgrade their current Operating Systems with major new versions: Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard. And that affects what PC hardware you should choose.

Mossberg says upgrading Netbooks from XP to Windows 7 will be a cumbersome, multi-step process, requiring users to offload their files, wipe out the old operating system completely, and then reload the files and reinstall their programs. Current Vista and OSX computers, by contrast, are expected to be relatively easy to upgrade (at a cost).

Microsoft will release its anticipated Windows 7 to a broader audience Thursday when the “release candidate” version of the operating system goes public. Public availability will begin May 5, according to Microsoft. They will have an add-on to Windows 7 that lets users run applications designed for Windows XP in a virtual machine — the first time Microsoft has relied on virtualization to provide backward compatibility.

Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, announced this week that Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition, Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition, and Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (UNR) are now available for free downloads. For the first time, users can download the complete Ubuntu Netbook Remix to a USB flash drive directly from Ubuntu.com.

The World Newspapers app is directory of almost 4000 newspapers with online editions in well over 100 countries around the world.

You can browse by country and region, then view, zoom, and follow newspaper links.

Checking out Geneva papers, I clicked on “Europe”, “Switzerland” the “Geneva”, and it comes up with only two answers.

New York is obviously better served. Advertising Age, New York Daily News, New York Post, WSJ, Newsday, The Village Voice…

We’re a small town, New York is obviously better served. Advertising Age, New York Daily News, New York Post, WSJ, Newsday, The Village Voice…

How magazines and newspapers are cashing in with iPhone apps. Adage reports.

Condé Nast Digital’s Style.com app, which plays video of Fashion Week runway shows has been downloaded 230,000 times since its introduction last August And it represents the first way publishers are making money from apps: by selling ads or sponsorships on them. The Style app, free to consumers, served 2 million ad impressions for marketers such as H&M in the first quarter of the year.

About 90,000 people have downloaded the free Lucky at Your Service app which helps users find nearby stores with certain shoes or bags in stock since its debut just two months ago. It’s a brilliant brand extension, another way publishers want apps to further their business.

… But many publishers would also like to turn iTunes into a virtual newsstand and subscription hub.

The Wall Street Journal, for example, plans to start charging for some of the content people get from its free app, which it upgraded earlier this month. But that app pulls news content from the web. Selling digital editions of print issues, certainly magazines’ chief asset, has had limited prospects until now.

“The digital edition as it currently exists, as a replica, has great value for some percentage of the population — a small percentage,” said Cimarron Buser, senior VP-marketing and business development at Texterity.

Read full article.

Most medical apps offer information, study tools, ranking (how depressed are you), search capabilities for a specific issue (clinical trials), advice (how to reduce your bood pressure) but this is the first app I’ve come across that claims to actually alleviate symptoms.

In their own words: Tinnitus can help reduce symptoms of Tinnitus ringing in your ears from mild to extreme.

Tinnitus Reliever has been designed using scientific methods to actually relieve tinnitus rather than just mask it as is often the case with other audible treatments.

It has been proven to be an effective temporary relief for many tinnitus suffers. It also produced great results during our inhouse testing.

How does it work? A low-pitched sound, the researchers discovered, applied through headphones suppressed and provided temporary relief from the high-pitch ringing tone associated with the disorder.

We have presented this audible treatment in a variety of frequencies so you can find the one that best suits you.

Simply put your standard issue Apple headphones in your ears and choose the tone that works best for you. It only takes 90 seconds to show results but more use could be more effective depending on the nature of your symptoms.

Amateur Match remains one of my all time favorite fun sites for one reason – they have hands down more local chicks than any other site out there. I don’t think it is possible to connect with so many local people anywhere else on the internet. I don’t even think it would be possible to meet the variety of people that you will find on here in real life! Better than the bar scene b.s., better than lame chat rooms. All you get are targeted singles, who are truly interested in you. I’ve met up with several people on there and besides one chick that was a little too clingy, all the rest were really good experiences. I’ve recommended a few of my friends here as well and needless to say I believe that this site is going to work well for just about anyone, no matter who you are or what it is that you’re looking for out of a relationship or just a weekend hookup. Don’t have a boring weekend ever again, check out Amateur Match right now!

Ever have those business or personal emails or calls where your friends are asking to keep in touch with you and start rattling off the names of all these messengers, AIM, Yahoo, Gmail, MSN an so on. How about a great and easy to use platform that lets you chat with all those users and more right in the same place with all the same functionality and more? That’s PalTalk, and it saved my hiney yesterday in a business meeting. Check it out here._

YTL e-Solutions, one of Malaysia’s four 2.3GHz WiMax spectrum license holders, was perceived a laggard as it had missed an August 2008 deadline to deploy WiMax services commercially. Now YTL announced they will work with Samsung to implement its WiMax network across the country. It is expected to be rolled out nationwide in July 2010.

YTL is targeting 14 million new WiMAX subscribers in five years, says executive director Tan Sri Dr Francis Yeoh.

The slow progress among Malaysia WiMAX licensees prompted then – Energy, Water and Communications Minister Shaziman Abu Mansor to issue a warning last August, threatening to withdraw their licenses if they failed to deliver, reports ZDNet Asia.

Malaysia, like Taiwan, India and China saw the technology as an opportunity to provide broadband wireless to their citizens while providing a wedge into the global telcommunications markets.

The LTE market, dominated by Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola and Alcatel-Lucent would be a tough nut to crack. WiMAX provided an opening. But world-wide, the upstart broadband wireless technology is almost two years late, out of the gate and LTE is on deck for Verizon’s launch this fall. The window of opportunity is closing fast.

In June 2008, YTL e-Solutions signed an agreement with U.S.-based Clearwire for technical expertise and partnered Cisco Services Malaysia in November 2008 to establish its WiMax core network in peninsular Malaysia. Malaysia’s YTL Group, the parent of YTL e-Solutions, had reported that they plan to invest 2.5 billion ringgit ($688.7M USD) over five years to roll out the network.

In August last year, Packet One Networks (P1) became the first licensee to launch WiMax services in Malaysia. Asiaspace commercially launched its WiMax service on Aug. 30 last year, while Redtone International was the first to launch WiMax in East Malaysia.

WiMAX Market Penetration

Related DailyWireless stories include; Taiwan: WiMAX On the Move with Clear & Moto, Verizon LTE: 30 US Markets by 2010, AT&T: HSPA+ Not LTE for Now, India Delays Broadband Wireless Auctions, Latin America: Massive Broadband Growth Predicted, Cheapest Broadband? Would You Believe Pakistan?, FCC’s Broadband Plan: Underway, Australia Plans Nationwide 100Mbps Fiber Net, Singapore: Fiber Everywhere, CTIA 2009: All About LTE, Huawei: Clear Sailing on WiMAX?, Maravedis: Top 22 WiMAX Operators, Cisco Beamforms Russia & Kazakhstan , Enforta’s Russian WiMAX Expands, WiMAX Global War in Japan, Hong Kong 2.5 GHz Auction Winners, KDDI & Willcom to WiMAX Japan, European Commission: 3G/WiMAX Together on 2.6 GHz, European 2.5 GHz Auctions & the Global Market, Battle for Britain, VSNL WiMaxes Bangalore, Tranzeo: Go for Indonesia WiMAX, WiMax: East Meets West, India’s 3g/4G Auctions: Late January, Motorola Testing LTE in UK, WiBro Evolution: Would You Believe 149Mbps?, Indian WiMAX Expands, M-Taiwan: To Max or Not? , Intel: $500M for M-Taiwan, Motorola Mobile WiMAX in Thailand, WiMAX Roundup, Australia Unwired, Alcatel-Lucent Wins a Couple, Tata WiMAXing 15 Cities in India, WiMAX Global War in Japan, KDDI Tight with Airspan Mobile WiMAX, Alvarion: Wave 2, WiMAX World 2007, Urban WiMAX in the UK, Europe Auctions 3.5 GHz, Italy Auctions WiMAX Spectrum, WiMAX Uncloaks FDD,WiMAX Deployment Maps, Urban WiMAX in the UK, BT’s European WiMAX Plan.

Today, T-Mobile said that it had sold 1 million of the devices in the U.S. since the G1’s launch in October 2008. Reaching 1 million units in six months isn’t terrible, says PC World, but the iPhone has sold roughly four times that amount in the same time.

Apple doesn’t explicitly break out US sales. But AT&T says they activated 3.5 million iPhones in the last two quarters. That’s probably a little beneath the number of total phones sold in the U.S.–4 million probably isn’t an unreasonable figure, estimates PC World.

AdMob says Apple has sold a total of 30 million combined iPhones and iPod touches. Their data suggests that about 75 percent of those are sold in the US with two-thirds of the combined iPhones and iPod touches using the mobile Web or applications. That results in a total of 15 million mobile Web users for Apple in the US. Give or take.

Apple announced its millionth $400 Edge-based iPhone sold on September 10, 2007, just 74 days after the device’s launch, while 1 million $199 3G iPhones were sold in its first weekend. In the first two quarters of the original iPhone’s availability, Apple sold about 3.7 million iPhones, perhaps 3 million in the U.S.

The Android Market has only been accepting priced applications since mid February, 2009 while the iPhone store opened in July, 2008. The iPhone store hit one billion downloads today, April 23rd, some 9 months and 12 days since it opened.

Apple, with roughly 36% of the global mobile web browsing market and almost 50% in the U.S. alone, is winning the smartphone market share. Rim has 22% of the market, Microsoft 11% and Android comes in 4th at 6% share.

AdMob say Android now owns about 6 percent of the U.S. smartphone market as measured by operating systems. Android has gained one percentage point of market share in the U.S. each month this year so far, creeping from 4 percent in January to 5 percent in February and 6 percent in March. More Android platforms and carriers may be anticipated in the future, but the iPhone seems lovely secure as the smartphone to beat.

How did Nokia’s Symbian OS and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platforms perform globally? In March, Symbian earned 38 percent and Windows Mobile 6 percent of the smartphone web requests; that’s down from 44 percent and 8 percent in January. Apple and RIM smartphone web requests accounted for 37 percent and 11 percent of traffic respectively in March.

The number of smartphone users, currently about 25 million (mostly Apple iPhones), is expected to increase four-fold by 2013, according to market researcher, In-Stat. Apple’s iPhone applications store keeps growing, too. It now tops 25,000 applications.

With the Android smartphone and Palm’s Pre smartphone (set to debut this summer), In-Stat expects the number of users accessing mobile applications stores with their smartphones to reach nearly one-third, or 100 million, of all smartphone users.

In-Stat says 30% of subscriptions will be with third or fourth generation technology within the next five years. This is compared to 11% of subscriptions on 3G at the end of 2008.

Smartphone sales in North America grew 69 per cent in 2008, says Gartner. While sales will grow at a slower pace, the market will be driven by support from operators in the region aggressively pushing data plans. Smartphones will also see increased competition from full-featured enhanced phones that may offer a full qwerty keyboard. These devices offer much of the functionality of a smartphone, but at a lower price.

But ABI Research estimates that worldwide handset shipments will fall by at least 8% in 2009, and that flat growth in 2010 is the best the market will deliver.

Gizmodo compares the iPhone App Store, Android Market, Blackberry App World, Windows Mobile Marketplace, Palm App Catalog and Nokia Ovi Store.

Portland-based mobile developers include Avatron Software, Subatomic Studios, Small Society, Spotlight Mobile, Pheedyou, Critical Path Software, Cloud Four, Jive Software and Platial among others.

Related Dailywireless articles include; Android Market: Open for Business, Mobile World Congress: Handsets, iPhone: Money Machine, Palm Pre: Looking Good, iPhone Apps May Cost $30K to Develop, iPhone: 10 Million Sold, Apps Store: Red Hot, Mobile World Congress: HSPA, WiMAX & LTE Faceoff, Nvidia: Turbo Boost for Android and WinMobile, Netbooks Embed Broadband, The 8 Megapixel Phone, Handsets: Open, Open, Open, Cisco Beamforms Russia & Kazakhstan, TeleNav Does Turn-By-Turn on Android and 2009 Mobile World Congress.

AT&T today reported dramatic growth in the number of Wi-Fi users among their nearly 20,000 domestic hotspots, such as Starbucks. AT&T Wi-Fi connections totaled 10.5 million in the first quarter of 2009 – more than triple the 3.4 million connections in the first quarter of 2008. Some 40 Percent of AT&T WiFi connections came from mobiles.

AT&T’s saw a huge spike in WiFi use during the first quarter of 2009, driven by its growing base of customers as well as its acquistion of WiFi operations for Starbucks coffee shops. AT&T reported authenticating 10.5 million WiFi connections across its 20,000 US hotspot network in the first quarter of 2009. That’s more than triple the 3.5 million connections in the first quarter of 2008 and more than half of the total for all of 2008.

More than 4 million connections at AT&T’s U.S. Hot Spots in the first quarter were made with smartphones, including the iPhone 3G. AT&T is a leading provider of Wi-Fi enabled smartphones, including the BlackBerry Bold.

AT&T broadband connections – using both wireline and 3G wireless cards – grew by 471,000 in the first quarter to reach 16.7 million. AT&T provides Wi-Fi access at no extra charge with qualifying AT&T high speed Internet plans, 3G LaptopConnect plans and select smartphone plans.

The number and type of Wi-Fi enabled devices is expected to grow even more. In January, Sony introduced the world’s first Wi-Fi enabled digital camera with a built-in web browser and free access to AT&T’s Wi-Fi network. The Eye-Fi Explore card ($99) includes 1 year of Wayport Hotspot Access. AT&T is also offering wirelessly embedded mini laptops – the Acer Aspire One, Dell Inspiron Mini 9 and Mini 12, and LG Xenia — in select AT&T store trial promotions in Atlanta and Philadelphia.

In the first quarter, Wayport – which AT&T acquired in December 2008 – began operating as AT&T Wi-Fi Services. Wayport’s footprint included hotspot locations in retail, hospitality and healthcare venues in nearly 20,000 hotspots in the U.S. – and access to more than 80,000 global hotspots through roaming agreements.

Verizon Wireless and Samsung USA has joined forces in bringing the powerful music phone Samsung Trance to all Verizon customers. Equipped with a touchpad navigation, as well as a nice sounding audio courtesy of Bang & Olufsen’s ICEpower amplifier, the Samsung Trance is a slim slider phone which will be available in Piano Black and Electric Red.

The Samsung Trance will be available through Verizon Wireless for $49.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate and comes with a two-year customer agreement.

As a music phone, the Samsung Trance features V CAST Music with Rhapsody, a microSD card slot that supports up to 16GB of storage, music player support for mp3, wma, unprotected aac and unprotected aac+ formats. It also has a 1GB internal memory and allows you to create and manage playlists and to multitask while listening to music.

For its camera features, the Samsung Trance boasts of a 1.3 megapixel camera with nightshot capability, brightness adjustment, self-timer, various color effects, preview mode, digital zoom and multishot.

Other features of the Samsung Trance include Bluetooth, embedded ring tones, voice commands, speakerphone, bilingual English/Spanish interface, personal organizer, and speed dialing.

The Samsung Trance gives out up to 270 minutes of usage time and 300 hours with standard battery.