New iPhone 3GS heats up smartphone wars

When Apple starts selling what it bills as the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet on Friday, the company’s latest entry will only heat up the already sizzling smartphone landscape. Fans, techies and ordinary consumers eager to purchase the new iPhone 3GS may be preparing to stand in line at Apple stores around the United States and seven other countries. But they have more choices than ever when it comes to phones that act like mini-computers.

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Will a new iPhone be announced Monday?

As Apple kicks off a much-anticipated developers’ conference Monday in San Francisco, California, much of the buzz is about the possibility of a new iPhone release. The tech company says it will discuss a new version of software for the revolutionary smartphone, which will let users copy and paste messages, search their iPhones, and write e-mails and text messages from a wide-screen view.

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Palm’s Pre vs. Apple’s iPhone

A few weeks ago, Jon Rubinstein was booking up the side of Mount Tamalpais in Northern California while I wheezed like a steam engine in his wake. This was irritating on two levels: 1> I do this hike all the time, and 2> he had already gone for a long run earlier in the day. The executive chairman of Palm Inc., Rubinstein, a wiry 52, is a marathoner.

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Google: Web and browsers will lead app development

Google spent Wednesday morning trying to get developers excited about the next generation of Web technologies by showing off how future Web applications will mimic desktop apps. “It’s time for us to take advantage of the amazing opportunity that is before us,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt, kicking off Google I/O 2009 in San Francisco.

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Twitter Goes to a Washington Dinner (a.k.a. #nerdprom)

TIME.com is following several members of the Twitterati as they attend the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in the enormous subterranean ballroom of the Washington Hilton on Saturday night. The conviviality actually began in the early afternoon, with the pre-party to be at the home of former Hardball Producer Tammy Haddad

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Can a Palm Pre multitask better than an iPhone?

Palm’s comeback attempt rests squarely on the notion that it has found a better way to manage your complicated digital life. Ever since its January coming-out party at the Consumer Electronics Show, Palm has generated buzz for the Pre unlike any other phone released since Apple’s iPhone arrived in June 2007 (that includes impressive phones such as Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Bold and HTC’s G1 Android phone.) The two phones will be forever compared — not just because of their consumer-oriented styles and emphasis on gesture-based user interfaces, but because of the very real enmity between the proud team that worked on Apple’s historic iPhone breakthrough and the ex-Apple executives and engineers attempting to rebuild Palm. While the iPhone has set the standard for future smartphones, Palm’s WebOS delivers two important improvements that the iPhone can’t yet match: true multitasking between applications, and a subtle notifications system that doesn’t interrupt your train of thought.

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