Cbs228 writes “During last week’s Google I/O conference, the company announced a replacement for its aging Talk instant messenger: Google Hangouts. Hangouts, which is only available for Android, iOS, and Chrome, offers closer integration with Google+. Unfortunately, the new product drops support for the XMPP instant messaging protocol, which has been an integral part of Talk for over ten years. XMPP delivers instant messages to desktop clients, like Pidgin, and enables communication between users on different instant messaging networks. Hangouts users attempting to communicate with contacts on non-Google servers, such as jabber.org, have found that all communications have been suddenly and inexplicably severed. A Google account is now required to communicate with Hangouts users. Google Hangouts joins the ranks of an already-crowded ecosystem of closed, incompatible chat products like Skype.” Interesting, because Google Wave was based on XMPP and Google was integral to the creation of the Jingle extension that enabled video chatting over XMPP. Note that no end date has been set for Talk yet, but the end must surely be nigh given Google’s recent history of axing products like Reader and CalDAV support from their calendar app without much notice.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The bookend to 
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is dropping the price of a Windows On-Demand EC2 instances up to 26%, another clear sign of the price wars in the cloud computing market. The news follows Google’s announcement earlier today that it is dropping instance prices by 4%. AWS says the drop in price continues its tradition of exploring ways to reduce its costs and drop its prices: This reduction applies to the Standard (m1), Second-Generation Standard (m3), High-Memory (m2), and High-CPU (c1) instance families. All prices are effective from April 1, 2013. The size of the reduction varies by instance family and region. You can visit the AWS Windows page for more information about Windows pricing on AWS. AWS has extended its support for AWS in the last month with support for SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups, a beta of the AWS Diagnostics for Microsoft Windows Server, and new drivers for our virtual instances that improve performance and increase the supported number of volumes. Earlier today, Google opened Compute Engine to developers who subscribe to Google’s $ 400 per month Gold Support package. The package includes 24/7 phone support. Users can access Compute Engine without the need to talk to sales or an invitation. Google and Microsoft have consistently been dropping prices over the past several months. In November, Google dropped storage prices by 20%. For AWS, the price drops are consistent with its strategy. AWS believes it can use its scale, purchasing power and deeper efficiencies in the management of its infrastructure to continue dropping prices. The market is diversifying and AWS sees a need to extend its dominance in the market. But with Google and new playeers in the mix, it’s unclear how the strategy will pan out as competitors offer a more high-touch type of service.
Mophie caused a bit of a double-take by introducing not one but two rechargeable external battery cases for the iPhone 5 within a few days of each other. The Juice Pack Helium offers a sleeker body, but the Juice Pack Air, announced later, offers more stamina. I’ve been testing the latter for nearly a week now, and it lives up to Mophie’s good reputation, with a single trade-off that may or may not influence your buying decision.
The War of the Korean Tech Giants: Battle Display is approaching a detente. LG Display has dropped its request for a domestic sales ban on rival Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10.1, 
Today, Apple shares fell 6.43 percent to 538.79, which represents a $ 34.8 billion market cap write-off. Analysts have been looking for reasons for the drop all day long without finding a single one that stands out. They forgot about the long-term perspective.
Google has 
The Droid Razr HD and Droid Razr Maxx HD have pranced their way
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