In fact, many people had expected Wednesday to be something of a bloodletting for AT&T.

When Apple made AT&T the exclusive U.S. carrier of the iPhone three years ago, it was a huge boon for the phone company.

Its wireless division has seen its sales soar over that time, hitting $13.7 billion in third-quarter 2009, up from $10.9 billion in the third quarter of 2007. AT&T releases fourth-quarter 2009 results today.

But as the iPhone became more popular, customers complained that AT&T’s network was creaking under the strain of so many new users downloading a flood of music, video and other data.

AT&T has acknowledged network problems in New York and San Francisco but said that overall its network has held up well as it has invested billions of dollars to upgrade its coverage.

Still, the volume of complaints led many to speculate that Apple would bestow the iPad on Verizon Wireless, and perhaps also announce a version of the iPhone for Verizon’s network. But neither happened Wednesday.

Earlier this week, during a conference call to discuss Apple’s strong first-quarter financial results, Apple chief operating officer Timothy Cook defended AT&T’s performance with the iPhone.

“AT&T is a great partner,” he said. “I think it is important to remember that they have more mobile broadband usage than any other carrier in the world. In the vast majority of locations, we think that iPhone customers are having a great experience, from the research that we have done.

“As you know, AT&T has acknowledged that they are having some issues in a few cities, and they have very detailed plans to address these. We have personally reviewed these plans, and we have very high confidence that they will make significant progress toward fixing them.”

Independent telecom industry analyst Jeff Kagan said the iPad-AT&T linkup indicates that Apple still has faith in AT&T.

“I think Apple is saying they understand the problems AT&T is having are due to Apple and not AT&T,” Kagan wrote in an e-mail. “Other networks don’t have the kind of record-breaking demand on their networks that Apple’s iPhone puts on AT&T.”

A Verizon version of the iPhone could still be in the works.

Wednesday, though, was nothing but good news for AT&T. But the company was surprisingly reluctant to talk about its good fortune.

When contacted Wednesday by The Dallas Morning News, the company said it had a short official statement but could only deliver it over the phone and not by e-mail.

“We have a great relationship with Apple, and we’re delighted they have announced AT&T as the 3G U.S. network provider for iPad,” AT&T said.

The company declined to discuss how it negotiated the iPad deal with Apple or whether the iPad will run Internet voice programs like Skype, and it would not answer any other questions related to the device.

It’s possible that AT&T will answer some of those questions today during its conference call to discuss its quarterly earnings.

source: dallasnews.com

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The company defines its stable channel as one that offers features and fixes that have been thoroughly tested in the beta channel, even if they may not be the latest features.

Among the APIs included is Web SQL Database API, enabling storage of data in a structured manner on a user’s computer, said Ian Fette, Google Chrome product manager.

The Web Storage API offers a local storage component for simpler client-side storage of small amounts of data. Another API, WebSockets, has been implemented for sending data over a persistent bi-directional communication channel. A notification API enables use of a panel in the user’s status bar area to present information like event reminders or status updates.

“We’re already working on making these new APIs more useful, and you should see a couple of improvements on the developer channel soon,” Fette said in the Google Chromium Blog. For example, Google also is working on an Application Cache capability, to serve HTML and JavaScript that references content in the Web SQL Database.

The extensions in Chrome offer content and functionality from a Web site into the browser regardless of what sites the user has open; they can provide alerts and notifications or perhaps let a user access favorite Web services from icons next to a user’s address bar.

“Google Chrome extensions use the same multi-process technology that makes the browser fast and more secure, so that extensions won’t crash or slow down your browser,” Fette said in the Google Code Blog. Google offers an online extensions gallery.

One comment in the Google Chromium blog, however, was a bit dismissive of Chrome.

“As long as Chrome puts Linux on the back burner, Chrome is on my back burner. It is not important to me and will remain so until developer attitude improves,” the commenter said.

Chrome is downloadable at Google’s Web site.

This story, “Google offers HTML APIs and browser extenstions in Chrome,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in software development at InfoWorld.com.

source: pcworld

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AOL paid $36.5 million in cash and stock for the Nashville-based company, in an acquisition completed Friday. The cash will be paid out over multiple years, AOL said.

source: WP

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