Every day, the Fortune staff spends hours poring over tech stories, posts, and reviews from all over the Web to keep tabs on the companies that matter. We’ve assembled the day’s most newsworthy bits below.
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Photo: Aol - Playing catch up with Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft’s leading web-based email clients, Aol unveiled Project Phoenix yesterday. Features include email account aggregation, a “Quick Bar” (read: shortcut bar) up top, three kinds of inbox views (compact, expanded, and reading pane), web browser-like tabs and (awful) new domain names like @wow and @love.com. (Fortune)
- The European Union is ponying up roughly $21.4 million for the “Vision Cloud” research project, aimed at tackling current cloud storage issues including the ability to run apps via cloud and data mobility. IBM, Siemens and SAP will be involved. (PC World)
- Facebook will likely unveil a full-fledged web client today that will rival Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Windows Live Hotmail.
- Mark Papermaster, the former Apple chipmaker dismissed back in August from his duties heading the iPhone and iPod division, will now work for Cisco. (Fortune)
- Smartphones may not be eating away right now at G.P.S. sales, but they will soon enough. According to Berg Insight, the number of G.P.S. units sold will peak next year with 42 million, compared with 40 million this year, before slowly falling off. (GoMo News)
- Car makers like Toyota and Ford are leaning on people with big social media followings to stir up buzz around new vehicles. (Car Advice and The Wall Street Journal)
- Netflix finally got around to explaining why Android users still don’t have a Netflix Instant app to call their own. The company took to its blog post recently and blamed the delay on the lack of a generic and complete platform security and content protection mechanism available for Android. Expect select Android smart phones to get the app early next year. (The Netflix Blog)
- The HP Slate 500 ($799), geared towards enterprise users, is currently backordered with a six-week shipping delay due to what the company calls “extraordinary demand.” The company hasn’t officially discussed numbers, but reports indicated it only ever planned to produce 5,000 units and got around 9,000 orders instead. (Winrumors and Engadget)
- According to a new survey, 78% iPad owners use their tablets more now than ever, and 85% use it more than an hour a day. (Fortune)
