After strongly backing HD-DVD during the format wars of yesteryear, Toshiba has announced that they plan on releasing a Blu-ray player, and have applied to join the Blu-ray Disc Association.

“In light of recent growth in digital devices supporting the Blu-ray format, combined with market demand from consumers and retailers alike, Toshiba has decided to join the BDA,” stated an official press release. “Toshiba aims to introduce digital products that support the Blu-ray format, including BD players and notebook PCs integrating BD drives, in the course of this year. Details of the products, including the timing of regional launches, are now under consideration. We will make announcements in due course.”

So, as you can gather, there’s no word yet on any pricing or availability, but they’ll surely keep the world posted.

For those of you that are looking to get a Windows 7 Vaio from Sony, don’t plan on using the Windows XP mode to run applications, because it won’t be included with the systems.

According to Sony’s Xavier Lauwaert Windows 7’s XP mode will be disabled due to security reasons. According to one of Sony’s engineers, they’re “very concerned that enabling VT would expose our systems to malicious code that could go very deep in the Operating System structure of the PC and completely disable the latter.”

Apparently Sony still plans to enable XP mode on some machines, but as to which models they choose or when it’ll be available, nobody knows.

For some time now, those of us using Gmail have had to gaze upon sponsored ads whenever we use our web mail client. But, thanks to a friendly signature using some vicious key words, that’s no longer the case.

According to his personal blog, Joe McKay was able to prevent the appearance of sponsored ads on Gmail by referencing tragic or catastrophic events (words which Google bans from their ads), as well as words from the late, great, George Carlin’s list of seven words you can’t say on TV.

But, if you’re looking to send an email to someone of importance, and you’re not interested in throwing down some dirty words (but murder still passes through your moral filter), then Mr. McKay has come up with the perfect sentence to add onto the end of each email:
“I enjoy the massacre of ads. This sentence will slaughter ads without a messy bloodbath.”

Apparently, after some folks tested it out using emails of differing length and subject matter, ads were completely eradicated. Do you have methods of removing ads in Gmail of your own? Be sure to let us know in the comments.

Yesterday Google released a brand new beta for their Chrome web browser, this time in the interest of ironing out kinks with some new features that they’ve added. Among the new features are an updated “New Tab,” the Omnibox, and the ability to beautify your browser by using colors, patterns and images.

The New Tab feature is being slightly tweaked by allowing you to move around your most visited sites by simply clicking and dragging, letting you show off just how not into Twitter you really are. You can even pin thumbnails to specific spots. The Omnibox (read: the address bar) is getting a facelift, and giving you Google search results and related history items whenever you type anything in.

Most notably though, the color changing feature will allow you to alter exactly how Chrome looks. Should you want to be reminded of fresh cut grass each time you browse the net, you may do so. Or if you want to have cute kittens gazing at you while you read the day’s news, you can do that as well, we’re not here to judge.

You can check out the beta here, but there’s no word as to when these updates will make their way to the official release.

The new PCI protocol, which has promised to double the data transfer rates of many add-on cards, has been delayed until mid-next year.

According to the PCI Special Interest Group, the protocol (which was due in 2009) will be held back even though most of the work has been done. Apparently, many problems have arisen with backwards compatibility and electrical requirements. But, moreover, the group has “underestimated the sheer amount of work needed” to get it out the door.

PCI 3.0 will reportedly provide speeds of 32GB/second, along with decreasing the amount of power drawn. Motherboards featuring this standard are expected to show up sometime in summer 2011.

Effective immediately, the U.S. Marines have banned Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and all other social media sites from their networks.

According to an official order issued to the Marines, “These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries. The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel… at an elevated risk of compromise.”

The ban is currently slated to last a year, and was drawn up by U.S. Strategic Command due to network security concerns. But, if a Marine is able to provide a “mission critical need,” the sites could be temporarily unblocked. But, other than that, there will be no tweeting from the frontlines.

For some time now we’ve been hearing about the wonders of the SDXC flash media cards, and their ability to reach up to 2TB of storage. And, as evidence of the progress of this medium, Toshiba recently announced that they’d have 64GB cards ready by 2010.

This year Toshiba will be offering faster versions of their 16GB and 32GB flash cards using the SDXC format, thanks to Microsoft’s exFAT file system. The exFAT system will allow individual files to exceed 4GB, which is important for videos.

No word on how much it’ll cost or when exactly it’ll be out, but we’ll surely keep you posted.

In between the random thoughts and pictures of people’s cats on Twitter, there are some gems to be found. Among those gems are celebrity feuds, our very own Will Smith giving things away, and now cheap airfare.

JetBlue and United Airlines have begun offering “Cheeps” and “twares,” respectively, in an effort to load off empty seats for low prices. JetBlue’s first Cheep was a $9 one-way flight from JFK to Nantucket, and since then they’ve have repeated success. “By promoting the Cheeps through Twitter, we give the already spontaneous audience of Twitter users a chance to grab great last-minute fares,” stated Morgan Johnston, a JetBlue spokesman.

Apparently these tickets have become quite popular, too. According to Robin Urbanski, a United spokeswoman, “Twares are all about surprising our customers with low fares for a very, very limited time. They sell extremely fast because the prices are unbeatable.”

If you’re interested in getting in on the fun, be sure to check out JetBlue’s Cheep Twitter account here, and United’s account here.

Thanks to swirling rumors suggesting that Intel is in the process of killing off its Atom Z CPUs early in favor of focusing on their new Pine Trail platform, Intel has come out to debunk any heresy, stating that they have no such plans.

“Rumors of 'industry sources' stating that Intel is no longer taking Atom Z processors orders for netbooks, or any other products, or ending production by end of year are 100% inaccurate,” stated an Intel spokesperson, regarding the matter.

It should be noted though, that once Pine Trail is introduced the Atom Zs will be eventually phased out. Intel still plans on a later part of this year to do so.

According to some recent reports, Acer was able to ship out 6.65 million netbooks during the second quarter of this year, raising their share in the global netbook market up to 18.5 percent, compared to 17 percent in the first quarter.

HP was able to hold onto their number one spot amongst netbook vendors, with 8 million shipments during Q2 of this year, giving them a 22 percent market share. Acer, however is in second place, followed by Dell, who maintains a share of 13.2 percent.

The total shipments were 36 million units during Q2, up from the 34.1 million shipped in Q1.

In the wake of a leaked master OEM key from Lenovo, Microsoft is hoping to prevent a piracy free-for-all of their soon to be released OS.

The master key that was leaked has since been blacklisted and replaced, and Microsoft is reportedly working very close with Lenovo to insure that there won’t be any activation issues.  “We've worked with that manufacturer so that customers who purchase genuine copies of Windows 7 from this manufacturer will experience no issues validating their copy of Windows 7,” said Alex Kochis, Director of Genuine Windows at Microsoft. “At the same time we will seek to alert customers who are using the leaked key that they are running a non-genuine copy of Windows. It's important to note that no PCs will be sold that will use this key.”

Now that the can of worms has been contained, there’s little worry from Microsoft that piracy will be an issue due to this key. But, they’re undoubtedly very unhappy about the leak up in Redmond.

For some time now Barnes & Noble has been a WiFi hotspot for hipsters with ironic t-shirts all across the nation, however these hipsters have had to create accounts and pay in order to reap the benefits. But, thanks to a recent desire to push a fledgling online bookstore, the prices and account requirements have been lifted.

Barnes & Noble struck a deal with AT&T to provide free Internet access to those within their walls, all thanks to an online bookstore that they hope will compete with Amazon. They’re so confident, in fact, that they’re in the process of developing a reader of their own (currently in development with Plastic Logic).

Barnes & Noble is boasting that their eBookstore is launching with 700,000 titles (500,000 of which were public domain offerings from Google), compared to Amazon’s launch catalog of 300,000 volumes.

Should you find yourself in a Barnes & Noble enjoying the free WiFi, feel free to check out the online bookstore here. Or, if you’d prefer, continue to spend time with us. We prefer the latter.

Thanks to a recent announcement, we now know that Creative’s new Zii Egg Plaszma (read: open source iPod Touch) will be the first to boast a flexible StemCell system architecture, which will make use of 24 floating-point processors.

The Egg, which is shipping out to developers now in a $399 SDK is being marketed as an Android-friendly “handheld computer,” that has many features similar to Apple’s offering, but beefed up in a few areas. Most notably, it features a full-sized SD card slot, a rear facing HD video camera, a front facing VGA camera, Flash Lite support, GPS, WiFi, and it has enough power under the hood to output 1080p video.

The Egg will likely retail for $199, but there’s no official as to when we can expect it on store shelves.

According to recent reports, it’s not expected that neither Asus or Acer will launch any more netbooks during the second half of 2009, thanks to Intel’s push to launch their new Pine Trail-M platform.

Asus is still planning to go forward with their touchscreen Eee PC T91 and T101, as well as an Android-based netbook during the second half of this year. Acer, on the other hand, doesn’t look to be doing a whole lot until Intel makes their big release.

Pine Trail-M is slated for the first quarter of 2010, so the delay shouldn’t be too long.

In a move that’s both upsetting and not surprising to anyone, Apple has pulled all Google Voice-enabled apps from the App Store, claiming that they have “duplicate features that come with the iPhone.” Well, duh. But, what’s more upsetting is that Apple is blocking Google’s official Google Voice application from the store.

In response, a Google Spokesperson stated, “We work hard to bring Google applications to a number of mobile platforms, including the iPhone. Apple did not approve the Google Voice application we submitted six weeks ago to the Apple App Store. We will continue to work to bring our services to iPhone users — for example, by taking advantage of advances in mobile browsers.”

And sure, it is easy to look at Apple as the bad guy here, but it’s safe to say that a majority of the issue is with AT&T. There’s little doubt that Google Voice has put pressure on mobile carriers, thanks to free SMS messages and cheap long-distance service. Goodness knows that their gigantic world would come crashing down, should they let users participate in a beta.

According to Jon Peddie Research, a firm that specializes in tracking the graphics market, AMD is on the up and up when it comes to graphics card shipments, beating out both Intel and Nvidia.

According to their latest report, many graphics vendors stopped ordering new cards and made sure that their inventories were depleted for the first quarter of this year. But, during that same first quarter, improvement was shown for the sales of Intel, Nvidia and most notably, AMD, who had a growth of 41.5 percent.

It’s expected that Q3 of this year is gearing up to be a very healthy one, thanks to Apple’s Snow Leopard, Windows 7, as well as AMD and Nvidia’s 40nm designs, which should bring better performance and aggressive prices.

With the introduction of the SNE-50K, Samsung has finally entered the Ebook market, hoping to compete with Amazon’s Kindle.

The SNE-50K (notably, the name isn’t as catchy as its competitors) will come with 512MB of onboard storage, a five-inch touch screen, a stylus, and no wireless or Internet capabilities. Though, while it can’t connect to you to the net, it is awfully slim, measuring only nine millimeters thick.

The reader is currently looking to launch in South Korean first, where it’ll partner with the Kyobo Bookstore, one of the largest booksellers in the region. No word yet on how much it, or its books, will cost but it’s expected to be on display in January at CES.

After being the first to release a 1TB desktop hard drive, Western Digital is at it again with the release of the first 1TB 2.5-inch mobile hard drive.

The drive, known as the Scorpio Blue 1TB, will be accompanied by a smaller 750GB brother as well. These are both already shipping to retailers, and will run you for $189.99 (750GB) and $249.99 (1TB).

Now, it should be noted that this isn’t truly the first drive of this size, given that pureSilicion released a 1TB SSD of this form factor, but kudos to WD on releasing the first 1TB HDD measuring only 2.5-inches.

Late last week SteelSeries unveiled three new products: the SteelSeries Kinzu Optical Mouse, the SteelSeries 9HD mouse pad, and their latest flagship product, the SteelSeries Xai Laser Mouse.

The Xai will feature a 10.8 megapixel per second sensor, which is capable of processing 12,000 frames per second at 5,001 CPI at a movement speed of 150 inches per second. And, for further personalization, it’ll come with SteelSeries ExactAim, SteelSeries ExactRate, SteelSeries ExactSens, SteelSeries FreeMove and automatic lift distance calibration. But, most importantly, it’ll come equipped with an LCD on the back, so that you can store all your settings within the mouse itself, instead of having to reinstall drivers on every machine that you use.

There’s no word yet on how much these will cost, but they’re slated for an August release.

According to a recent interview with Sony’s Senior Vice President of Information Technology Products Mike Abary, there has been a recent push towards bringing touchscreen Vaios to consumers, as well as integrating them with a plethora of goodies.

The touchscreen Vaio, which will be known as the Vaio W, is reported to integrate the PlayStation Network to deliver movies and TV shows (possibly games) and come with eBook functionality. They’ll also be based off of Windows 7.

No official word yet on pricing, but you can expect them in time for the holidays.