Daily News Brief: Apple iPhone, Now with 3G!

Posted 06/09/2008 at 2:57pm | by

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Apple Announces 3G iPhone

If you've held off on buying an iPhone because of the lack of 3G support, your wait is almost over. Apple finally announced the much anticipated 3G iPhone today during a keynote at this year's WWDC, ending months of speculation and addressing the most oft criticized feature missing from the initial launch. The slimmer, faster iPhone will be available in 8GB ($199) and 16GB ($299) trim starting July 11, with the 16GB version also coming in white.

Intel Under the FTC's Eye

AMD has cried foul over Intel's alleged anticompetitive practices to anyone who would listen, and have found open ears in Europe, Japan, and more recently, Korea. That hasn't been the case here in the U.S., but that may be about to change. On Friday, the Federal Trade Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation, authorized by William E. Kovacic, the new chairman of the trade commission. Much more on this developing story here.

Commodore 64 Gets a Face Lift...

...and a new lease on life. In what's sure to appeal to both modders and C64 nostalgia fans, modder subatomicglue has turned a drab looking Commodore 64 into sleek and functional synthesizer. Underneath the hood of the MidiboxSID sit 8 SID chips with 3 oscillators each, controlled by a bevy of illuminated knobs on the outside. Catch a worklog of the entire process here.

Beep! Beep! Roadrunner Supercomputer Sets Record

An American military supercomputer has reached a long sought after computing milestone by processing more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second, making it twice as fast as the previous fastest supercomputer. Assembled from components originally designed for videogame machines, the $133 million supercomputer, called Roadrunner, will mostly be used to solve classified military problems to ensure the nation's stockpile of nuclear weapons will continue to work as they age. By breaking the petaflop barrier, the next thousand-fold goal is the exaflop, followed by the zettaflop, the yottaflop, and the xeraflop.

Amazon Back Online

Amazon.com became "unavailable" for two hours late last night, potentially costing the company $2 million or more in lost revenue. Wall Street estimates the online site will pull in $4 billion this quarter, or roughly $1.8 million in sales per hour, though those numbers include international sales, which were unaffected. The cause of the outage remains unclear.

Blackbird Flutters onto Retail Shelves

HP's now infamous Blackbird 002 gaming PC will march into the mainstream sector this summer available in an exclusive configuration at Amazon.com, Newegg.com, and select Best Buy, Circuit City, J&R, and Micro Center retail stores, the company said. Spearheaded by Raul Sood, head of HP's acquired Voodoo PC division, the Blackbird 002 garnered much attention over its internal construction and ability to run two AMD videocards in CrossFire mode on an SLI-capable motherboard. Priced at $3,299, the new model will include Intel's Q9450 processor, a pair of 9800GT videocards, 4GB Corsair memory, a 500GB hard drive, and more.