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Opera Mini 4.2 enables standard features absent in the beta.

Bringing the Mini browser up to snuff does improve the surfing experience for owners and future owners of Android phones. But for Opera, getting its browser first to Google’s mobile platform, and maintaining a dominant presence on all the mobile platforms, is the company’s big win.

Available starting Wednesday in the Android Market, Opera Mini 4.2 for Google Android now lets you upload and download files, save pages, and zoom in and out in response to a double tap.

The final release of Opera Mini 4.2 for
Google Android adds regular features of the Java browser that were disabled in its November beta version. Think more of a mechanic tightening up loose nuts and bolts, rather than operating on engine guts, and you’ve got the premise.

Opera has also dispatched some bugs in this final version, including one that displayed the characters of your password when you typed it in, and another that caused upheaval when you closed the app via the Back button. Opera Mini 4.2 also boasts a speedier response to the trackball and a slightly larger font size on most pages to improve readability.

(Credit:
Opera Software)

You’ll also be able to enter URLs directly into the address bar–instead of having to go through the phone’s native input system–and, as with Opera Mini on other mobile platforms, launching a video from a Web page links up to your media player. Video playback had not been supported in Opera Mini 4.2 beta.

Previously: Valve announces best PC gaming idea of the year (so far)

Valve is now selling downloadable content on its Steam, Web-powered games distribution software.

Micropayments are becoming an increasingly important part of modern games, not only as a way for publishers to continue to make money from a title after it’s released, but also to help bring in extra sales from people who purchase games used.

Valve says the new system will allow users to purchase and add additional content, even on titles that were not purchased through Steam’s game store, just like it does with physical software titles that were purchased from other retailers.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Valve’s Steam software has a new feature for game publishers that lets them sell additional downloadable content, or DLC, from within their games.

To do this, it uses a new in-game purchasing system built off of the in-software Web browser. The first title to feature this is The Maw, which now includes two additional levels that can be purchased for $1.25 each, then played immediately. Previously, all add-on content was sold as a separate purchase from Steam’s game store.

The new feature is available to all developers as part of Valve’s Steamworks publishing platform. For games with existing add-on content, this means that the companies will be able go back and update their titles to allow in-game purchases.

But O’Grady and others point out that these numbers may be misleading.

The groups gathering the data explicitly point out that these are production estimates, not sales estimates. This means the figures also include Apple Retail Store inventory, store displays, and replacement units, which do not count as sales.

According to the spreadsheet, AFB is reporting that 9,190,680 iPhone units have been created, which my colleague Jason D. O’Grady at ZDNet estimates could mean that about 7.6 million iPhone 3G have already been sold and more than 10 million iPhones in total.

A joint project of AFB and Investor Village’s AAPL Sanity has been collecting data about
iPhone inventory. Using a Google spreadsheet, the group has been unofficially tracking iPhone production estimates using International Mobile Equipment Identity, or IMEI, numbers that are used to uniquely identify every GSM, UMTS, or iDEN mobile phone.

(Credit:
Apple)

This might explain why Apple has been mum on the whole thing. But this is not to say that the iPhone hasn’t been selling well. In fact, market research firm NPD Group said Monday that 30 percent of smartphone buyers this summer left their existing carrier to get an iPhone 3G.

Has Apple really sold its 10 millionth iPhone? That’s what several bloggers are saying. But a closer look suggests that it might be a bit too early to pop open the champagne.

In an initial experiment, Christopher Hsee and colleagues asked 112 students to choose between one of two hypothetical cameras: one boasted better resolution, the other having superior vividness. Based on sample photos taken by the two cameras, but without detail on the precise resolution specs, most participants (74 percent) chose the camera that took more vivid photos. By contrast, when given the resolution specs as well as the sample photos, many more participants chose the camera with higher resolution.

This notion of using innovative metrics–measures that gauge the unique value inherent in an innovation as a means of marketing it–goes well beyond the traditional approach of adding new “features” and “functionality” to attract consumers to products and services. By creating fresh language for the way people calibrate the worth and efficacy of a particular idea, innovative metrics have the potential to be so intrinsically compelling–or at least so creatively marketed–that they become, like horsepower, the overriding identity of a product or brand.

The term horsepower represented clever rhetorical engineering by Watt and partner Matthew Boulton, whose business had prospered by charging mine owners only one-third of the cost savings achieved by replacing less-efficient Newcomen steam engines with their own.

Second is an article by Michael Schrage that discusses the fascinating history of some specifications, such as horsepower, that today we take for granted but which were invented to make it easier to sell new technologies. James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, also invented the term horsepower that today we use to measure engines of all types.

Note that Schrage’s article may have limited free shelf-life, so take a look at it soon.

The first is from a study looking at how choices between competing products are made, first based on subjective criteria, and then when specifications are introduced.

In other words, after knowing the specifications more participants chose the worse-performing product. This explains why we see point-and-shoot cameras with gigantic megapixel counts, even though 4 megapixels to 5 megapixels is about all that a small camera (or to be precise, a small sensor) can handle well. The article goes on to describe some other nontech scenarios where the same situation played out.

A couple of recent articles dovetail nicely about how specifications, and what those specifications describe, influence how people make buying decisions.

Seeking to broaden their market, the collaborators thought brewmasters might find value in this new production technology. But 18th-century British breweries used horses–not steam–to power the turning of their mills’ grindstones. So it behooved Boulton and Watt to recalculate their steam engines’ appeal accordingly…

Then there’s the extra-special opportunity for fans to purchase 100 percent organic-cotton shooting shirts and recycled Spalding basketballs.

Launched Thursday, this is the NBA’s attempt to reduce its carbon footprint (size 45).

What has driven me to this “yes, we can” moment? Why, the first-ever NBA Green Week.

Nash is one player who, when it comes to preaching, would never utter Allen Iverson’s famous complaint: “Practice?? We’re talking about practice?”

Now doesn't that say No. 1 draft pick to you?

I mean, the NBA is where amazing happens, right?

But these are teams that drying paint refuses to watch.

As any fan of the Golden State Warriors will tell you, something is better than nothing. But wouldn’t it be the ultimate joy if LeBron James suddenly rolled up to a game in a Prius with recycled, personalized hubcaps?

And, should you be so inclined (though it might burn up quite some laptop power), there are seven NBA videos to encourage you to change your position on the environment from center to power forward.

(Credit: CC Alan D/Flickr)

The NBA has gotten its teams together to launch Green Week with the National Resources Defense Council, a green organization that proudly whispers the tagline: “The Earth’s Best Defense.” (This might cause a few of the Boston Celtics to cough a little furiously.)

You can see members of the Houston Rockets and the Atlanta Hawks planting trees. You can enjoy Louis Amundson of the Phoenix Suns riding his bike to work. And you can commune with the Suns’ Steve Nash as he talks about getting solar panels on the arena roof in Phoenix and about his clever basketball shoes made from recyclable materials.

The NBA even persuaded renowned, um, power hitter, Robert Redford to introduce the week on YouTube.

Nash lives in New York during the off-season and doesn’t even keep a
car there. Yet as you read on the special NBA site about the Denver Nuggets, the Charlotte Bobcats and the Chicago Bulls all wearing uniforms and socks made from 45 percent organic cotton, you wonder where the greenery begins and the greenbacks end.

It’s all very well for the Toronto Raptors to offer a 25 percent discount to anyone who shows up with a ticket from public transportation. And it’s lovely that any Minnesota Timberwolves fan who arrives by bus, train or, who knows, balloon for the game on Sunday will get a free upper-level ticket.

It’s a footprint that is characterized by large, pimped-out SUVs, vast, flashing scoreboards, long flights in 757s to New York and Los Angeles, and, especially, the infinite noxious detritus from its Pistons–exemplified by the fumes regularly emitted by power forward (and technical foul king) Rasheed Wallace.

He hasn’t twittered it yet, but I am suddenly full of belief that Shaquille O’Neal is about to buy a Smart car.

While convenient, it is worth noting that myAnalytics can get bogged down if you intend on using it for more than eight different sites. Also, the current version only shows you basic numbers and a small chart, unlike Google Analytics, which lets you dig deeper into each component of your site. Version 1.1, which is coming soon, will let you view each individual stat on its own graph, which is a good start.

Related: Sergej Müller’s mobile Safari-friendly version of Google Analytics (Note: this only lets you see page views and visitor counts.)

(Credit:
iphone-analytics.de)

If you're trying to access Google Analytics on the go you can avoid looking at the Flash cube of fail, and instead see some simple, and colorful graphs and charts with myAnalytics.

If you’re too impatient to wait for Google to release its own
iPhone app or
Safari-optimized version of Google Analytics you might want to check out myAnalytics. This $1.99 iPhone application (app store link) lets you see a general overview of how your sites are doing, and stores the data locally on your device so you can access it when you’re away from a data connection. Considering Google’s most recent release of Analytics requires Adobe Flash, this is the easiest way to get it short of getting your hands on a real computer.

Some analysts also believe that SanDisk can’t afford to reject an offer from Samsung in a down market, according to a Reuters report.

That’s not to say that SanDisk doesn’t need help. It is a laggard in the growing market for solid-state drives–where Samsung is currently the leader–and has been caught in a brutal downward spiral of flash memory prices.

Toshiba to the rescue? The Japanese electronics giant may try to stave off a Samsung takeover of SanDisk.

Japan-based reports also point to possible resistance from Toshiba. The Mainichi Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest dailies, cited possible resistance to the deal as it would force Toshiba to re-evaluate its semiconductor strategy.

Toshiba and SanDisk have a partnership dating back to 1999 and operate two joint ventures called Flash Partners and Flash Alliance, as EE Times
spelled out this week in an analysis of the dynamics of a possible deal.

SanDisk has a 49.9 percent interest in each of the two joint ventures, which also involves funding research and development expenses.

Samsung will not go away anytime soon, however. Indirectly, it has a large stake in SanDisk. Samsung pays more than $400 million annually to use SanDisk’s flash memory patents, dwarfing payments by any other company.

This means Toshiba is far from just a bystander. “Toshiba will clearly counter,” said Avi Cohen, managing partner at Avian Securities, in a research note issued this week.

Cohen listed reasons why the deal could be problematic, including the fact that if Samsung buys half of the joint venture with Toshiba, “a Japanese company will become a junior partner to a Korean company which we think is unlikely.” More problematic is that current “raw NAND customers of Samsung would be competing on the finished product side with their only supplier - both untenable and competitively harmful developments,” he wrote.

On the other hand, other factors working against the deal include objections from regulators because of the overwhelming market share (almost 50 percent) the combined entity would have, according to Cohen.

Samsung is the second largest chipmaker in the world behind Intel, and the largest supplier of flash memory.

All this makes for a vulnerable takeover target. SanDisk’s chairman and CEO, Eli Harari, said earlier this week that the $26-a-share bid from Samsung was “opportunistically timed at the trough of an industry-wide downturn.”

In the aftermath of Samsung’s $5.8 billion bid for flash memory supplier SanDisk and SanDisk’s unceremonious rejection, Toshiba looms as a large and potentially obstructive factor to a deal.

As SanDisk’s profits have been squeezed, its stock has plunged over $60 per share over the last two years.