By Wailin Wong | Walgreens has launched a new text-messaging service that lets customers know when their prescriptions are ready, the drugstore chain said Tuesday. The prescription text alerts, which are available in English or Spanish, also notify consumers of changes in status to their orders. Mobile phone users can sign up for the service at any Walgreens pharmacy or by visiting www.walgreens.com/gomobile, a website that also allows consumers to sign up for a separate service to receive deals and coupons via text. In addition, Walgreens has launched mobile applications for the BlackBerry and Google’s Android platform. These new applications follow the previous release of the company’s iPhone application in the fall. That program has been updated with new features, including the ability to view a prescription history and search for the nearest store using the phone’s GPS function.
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Walgreens to text you when your drugs are ready
Customers see delays while ordering new iPhone
Despite controversy, iPhone users love vuvuzelas
Twitter troubles continue into week 2
Microsoft Office 2010 goes on sale Tuesday
Xbox to one-up Wii and lose the controller wand
Associated Press | To appeal to families ready to graduate from
the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Corp. wants to build on the success of the
Wii’s motion-capture wand — by getting rid of the wand.
On Monday, Microsoft detailed its new Kinect game technology, coming
this fall for the Xbox 360 game console. Once known as Project Natal,
the Kinect system recognizes users’ gestures and voices, so players can
control on-screen avatars in racing, action and sports games by moving
their body. Microsoft showed off a “Star Wars” game, coming in 2011,
that will use Kinect to let players swing virtual lightsabers from their
living rooms.
Starbucks to make Wi-Fi free starting next month
Starting next month, Wi-Fi will be free at all Starbucks stores in the U.S. (Tribune file photo)
Associated Press | Starbucks Corp. will begin offering unlimited free wireless Internet
access at all company-operated U.S. locations starting July 1, part of
an ongoing effort to bring more customers in the door.
The Wi-Fi access, which will eventually include a new network of news
and entertainment content exclusively for customers, comes as Starbucks
works to take business back from rivals such as McDonald’s Corp. and
independent cafes that have long offered free Internet.
AT&T apologizes to iPad 3G users for breach
A customer uses an Apple iPad at an Apple store in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)
From Bloomberg | AT&T Inc. apologized to Apple Inc. iPad 3G tablet computer users whose e-mail addresses were exposed during a security breach disclosed last week.
“No other information was exposed,” Dorothy Attwood, AT&T’s chief privacy officer, said in an e-mail sent Sunday to iPad accounts that may have been affected. “We apologize for the incident and any inconvenience it may have caused.”
Get the full story: businessweek.com.
BP pressure leads Twitter to label satirical account
From Geekosystem.com | The parody Twitter account @BPGlobalPR has changed its biography on its page, after BP requested that Twitter enforce its policy on parody/impersonation. The satirical account’s bio now reads, “We are not associated with Beyond Petroleum, the company that has been destroying the Gulf of Mexico for 51 days.” Get the full story: geekosystem.com.
Microsoft rolls out free Web version of Office
McClatchy-Tribune News | In a leap toward cloud computing Tuesday,
Microsoft started rolling out Office Web Apps, a free online version of
Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.
Users can create, review and collaborate on Word documents,
spreadsheets, slide shows and notes without purchasing the software. The
applications run through a Web browser, which makes it accessible from
any computer, be it a Mac or a PC, with or without installed Office
software.
Launching a free version of Office is a major step for Microsoft.
Google jolts Internet search with rollout of Caffeine
McClatchy-Tribune News | Internet giant Google is putting some buzz into its search results, announcing on its official blog late Tuesday that it has completed its new Caffeine search index.
“Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for Web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of Web content we’ve offered,” Carrie Grimes, a Google software engineer, said in the post.
Twitter tests out t.co, a new shortened URL service
By Jessica Guynn
| First Twitter shortened how we communicate, muzzling
the long-winded on its popular Web service. Now it’s cutting down on all
those extra characters in our URLs, too.
As Twitter put it: “Length shouldn’t matter.” At least when it comes to
Web links.
Twitter is testing internally a new service called t.co that will be
available to all users this summer. It will automatically shorten links,
the San Francisco company announced on its blog Tuesday.
Tweet all about it: DirecTV DVR down
By Kristin Samuelson | A technology upgrade has caused DirecTV’s HDDVR service to go down. The satellite TV provider is hearing all about it on Twitter, and offers a solution on the social media site too.
Read the full story: problemsolver
New details leak on Motorola’s Droid Xtreme
From PC Mag | Goodbye Shadow, hello Xtreme. New images and details have surfaced of Motorola’s Droid Shadow phone — now branded the Droid Xtreme — which was previously alleged to have been lost in a Verizon gym last week.
Get the full story: pcmag.com.
