It looks like we'll have to wait a little bit longer for Asus' Eee Keyboard, which was was supposed to launch in October. That didn't happen, nor does it look like we'll see the keyboard this month because it hasn't yet passed wireless regulation testing in te U.S. and Europe. How long that will take is anyone's guess, and it's up in the air whether Asus will manage to ship the Eee Keyboard in time for the holidays.
Perhaps turning lemons into lemonade, Asus said it will use the delay to its advantage by beefing up the hardware specs. The company plans to swap the CPU for one that is faster, and it will get a new OS too. On top of it all, the Eee Keyboard will add capacitive touchscreen capabilities. All this while still checking in around the $500 mark.
We'll update you with more info as soon as we have it.
Late last month, several owners of Intel's X25-M G2 solid state drives cried foul when a firmware update promising a 40 percent performance boost ended up bricking their drives instead. Oops! That marked the latest in a what's becoming a string of problems plaguing the 34nm SSDs, and once again, Intel says a fix is on the way.
"Intel has replicated the issue on 34nm SSDs -- X25-M -- and is working a fix," wrote Alan Frost of Intel's NAND Solutions Group. "Intel is pursuing the resolution of this as a high priority. Intel is seeking direct feedback on this issue from members of the [Intel Support Community]... asking them to send their drives directly to Intel to expedite the analysis of the issues. This action will enable us to more quickly generate a resolution for this issue."
Frost added that there have been no reports of related issues by users who were able to successfully upgrade to the 02ha firmware via the firmware upgrade tool, which would suggest the problem isn't the firmware itself, but a bug in the loader software.
Around this time last year, the topic of Nvidia included faulty GPUs, which ultimately ended up costing the firm millions of dollars, and stiff competition from a suddenly revitalized ATI. Now it's all about Nvidia's upcoming Fermi graphics and revenue gains.
Ending the third quarter on a positive note, Nvidia reported revenue of $903.2 million. Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said that marks an increase of 16 percent over the previous quarter, and is slightly up from this same time last year when the graphics chip maker posted revenue of $897.7 million.
"We continued to make progress in the third quarter with healthy market demand across the board," said Jen-Hsun. "Revenue was up from a year ago, with improvement in each of our PC, professional solutions, and consumer businesses. It's great to see us shipping orders with our Tegra mobile-computing solution, and growing enthusiasm for our Tesla platform for parallel computing in the server and cloud-computing markets."
Nvidia CFO David White added that the company's GPU business was up almost 25 percent sequentially.
It's all fun and games, until that game you downloaded from the iTunes App Store turns out to be harvesting your cell phone number. That's what gaming developer Storm8 has been accused of doing.
"The wireless telephone numbers of users' phones are not used or necessary to play any of Storm8's games, yet Storm8 has written the software for all its games in such a way that it automatically accesses, collects, and transmits the wireless telephone number of each iPhone user who downloads any Storm8 game," states a lawsuit filed on behalf of Lynwood, Washington resident Michael Turner.
Storm8 first came under fire in late August when news reports pointed out that Storm8's apps appeared to be phoning home. Addressing the reports, the company said the system had a "bug" and that it has since been fixed. But Storm8's explanation isn't enough for Turner's lawyer, who says his goal is to ensure the company is no longer allowed to collect private data in the future.
"A public admission is not the same as a legal representation or legal injunction," Turner's lawyer said.
Some changes are coming to Twitter that the microblogging site hopes will help curtail the amount of spam that flows through its Trending Topics area, the social networking site announced in a blog post.
"As Twitter grows and the number of tweets each day continues to astound us, we’ve noticed an increasing amount of clutter in the public timeline, especially with trending topics," Twitter noted. "Trends began as a useful way to find out what’s going on but has grown less interesting due to the noisiness of the conversation."
Twitter's solution is to start experimenting with ways of ranking retweets, though the service didn't say how this would work. If we had to guess, we'd say it would be based on some kind of algorithm that gauges a user's popularity, among other factors, rather than a manual approach.
According to the blog post, any initial changes will be minor and "the improvement won't be very noticeable at first."
Gigabyte will soon start shipping its Booktop M1305 ultraportable that was first shown back in June, and peering over the spec sheet, there doesn't appear to be much to get excited about. Not until you look closer, anyway.
The M1305 will come equipped with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Pentium, or Celeron ULV processor. Pushing pixels on the 1366x768 display is Intel's 4500MHD integrated graphics. It will also come with 4GB of DDR3 memory, 320GB or 500GB hard drive, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, a 1.3MP webcam, slim-type DVD burner, fingerprint reader, two USB 2.0 ports, an eSATA/USB combo port, HDMI, a 4-in-1 card reader, and Windows Home 7 Premium.
But where this ultraportable stands out from the crowd is with the included docking station. The docking station brings NVidia's GeForce GT220 graphics to the table, giving the M1305 a major boost over its integrated chipset, and includes a bunch of I/O ports. Sure, lugging around the docking station might defeat the purpose of an ultraportable, but leave the thing at home and unwind with a bit of gaming goodness after a busy day on the road.
No word yet on price or availability.
Not digging Droid's price tag but are still intrigued by the device? Maybe Droid's little sibling -- the Droid Eris -- is more of what you're looking for.
For starters. Verizon is selling the Droid Eris for a single C-note (after $100 mail-in-rebate) when you sign up for a two-year commitment on a voice plan with an email feature or email plan. Throwing down a Benjamin on the Droid Eris nets you a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen and trackball interface, a 5MP auto focus camera, 8GB of memory (via an included microSD card) expandable to 16GB, Bluetooth, WiFi, integrated GPS, full HTML browser with Flash Lite capabilities, and of course Google's Android OS along with a 7-panel home screen.
But the real question is, how does Eris stack up to its bigger brother? It comes clocked at 528MHz, compared to Droid's 550MHz processor, and it ships with Android 1.5 (Donut) instead of 2.0 (Eclair). You'll also sacrifice a physical QWERTY keyboard by stepping down to the Eris.
So what do you think, are the trade offs worth the lower price tag, or is it Droid or bust? Hit the jump and sound off!
During an interview with the Fox Business Network, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said his company has learned from Microsoft's past follies in terms of antitrust issues and letting the competition catch up.
"Hopefully we won't repeat the mistakes that Microsoft made 10 years ago that ultimately led to all these things that happened to them," Schmidt said.
Schmidt was also pressed on the potential for Twitter and Facebook to steal the thunder from Google among younger Internet users. But according to Schmidt, it's not a big concern because users of social networking services end up using Google even more.
You can view the two-part interview here and here.
Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite, the company's cloud-based communication and collaboration SaaS, now sports a new pricing model, more storage, and an international expansion that adds 15 additional countries and regions, according to TechCrunchIT.
That's great news for the suite's more than 1 million paying customers, who are now paying $10 per month instead of the former price of $15. Microsoft said it reduced the price because of "rapid customer adoption."
On the mailbox storage side, Microsoft now offers 25GB for users of the standard service, which has been expanded to include Singapore, along with trials to take place in Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania, and Taiwan.
Microsoft's Business Productivity Suite Online Suite includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Live Meeting, and Office Communications Online.
As part of a restructuring effort, Blue Coat Systems said it plans to slash nearly 20 percent of its workforce. The firm will issue about 280 layoffs in all and close its facilities in Riga, Latvia, South Plainfield, New Jersey, and Zoelemeer, Netherlands.
At the same time, Blue Coat announced plans to acquire S7 Software, a services company out of Banglaore, for $5.25 million in cash. The acquisition will also add 65 employees to Blue Coat's workforce.
"The combination of the restructuring program and the acquisition of S7 Software strikes an appropriate balance between profitability and investment for innovation," said Gordon Brooks, senior vice president and chief financial officer. "Together these actions will allow us to invest for future growth while aligning the Company’s cost structure to its current revenue level, which should drive higher and more consistent levels of profitability."
In addition to the layoffs, Blue Coat will relocate an undisclosed number of engineering jobs from its Sunnyvale, California, and Austin, Texas offices to S7's offices in Bangalore and a few other locations. After factoring in S7's employees and a few new hires, Blue Coat's workforce reduction will be closer to 10 percent.
Microsoft's security team is having a busy month when that traditionally hasn't been the case in November. As such, IT departments need to prepare for six security updates next week to fix flaws in both Windows and Office.
"Six is the lucky number this month," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security. "Really, anything less than 13 is a lucky number."
That's only half as many that were issued last month, which set the record for the most updates ever since Microsoft starting shipping the monthly patches six years ago. But next week's updates, which will patch 15 separate vulnerabilities, also sets a record for November, a month that's traditionally been pretty low-key.
On the bright side, none of next Tuesday's updates affect Microsoft's recently released Windows 7 operating system.
The most capacious 1.8-inch hard drive on the planet now checks in at 320GB, says Toshiba, who just introduced a new line of tiny HDDs
Toshiba's targeting thin and light mobile PCs and portable external HDD contraptions with its new storage series, which also includes two other models sized at 160GB and 250GB. All three drives sport a perpendicular magnetic recording head, efficient power consumption, a high level of durability, and quiet seek operation, Toshiba says.
The new drives come equipped with a SATA interface and spin at 5400RPM. All three models also include a 16MB buffer. Combined with improvements to areal density, Toshiba claims you can expect data transfer rates to improve by 15 percent over previous drives.
Toshiba's tiny drives will start mass production in December. No word yet on price.
There was a time when computer geeks might have been viewed as social outcasts, but that's certainly not the case anymore. And according to research by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, those who stay connected to the Internet and tote around a mobile phone tend to have more friends than those who don't.
It's not just about quantity, either. Researchers found that owning a mobile phone and participating in different Internet activities usually means a more diverse group of friends.
"Contrary to the argument that Internet use limits people's participation in the local community, local institutions, and local spaces, our findings show that most Internet activities are associated with higher levels of local activity," say the researchers. "However, we find some evidence that use of social networking services -- for example, Facebook, MySpaced, LinkedIn -- substitutes for some level of neighborhood involvement."
We blame the latter findings on Mafia Wars and Farmville.
After a short stint in the 680i chipset era, ECS hasn't aggressively targeted the motherboard market with its own-branded mobos, and instead has focused more heavily on providing boards for OEM partners. David Chien, VP of ECS' channel business, said that's going to change in 2010 and you can expect to see a lot more ECS-branded boards aimed at both the mid-range and high-end sectors.
ECS-branded motherboard shipments will likely remain flat at 7-8 million units to close out 2009, but next year, Chien said he expects growth of around 20 percent on shipments of anywhere from 8.4 million to 9.6 million units. Most of those will be Intel-based boards, with about 20 percent aimed at the AMD crowd, he said.
You can also expect ECS to promote its use of 15-micron Gold contact technology as it looks to gain some geek cred in the higher-end crowd. According to ECS, the 15-micron gold coating applied to the CPU and memory slot pins helps prevent rusting that, um, occurs from frequently removing the CPU and memory modules. o_0
It looks like Walmart is gearing up for Black Friday a little early this year. How so? The mega-chain has begun advertising several one-day in-store specials slated for this Saturday November 7th at 8AM.
Among the sale items is an Xbox 360 Arcade console for $199, which will be accompanied by a $100 gift card. That essentially brings the price down to just $99, provided you can make use of the gift card.
Other sale items on tap for the one-day special include a 15.6-inch HP notebook with an Intel Celeron processor for a shade under $300, a Blu-ray player for $150, a 42-inch 1080p Sharp LCD TV for $498, and a few more items.
According to Fudzilla, this is just the first of ongoing Saturday specials that will continue until Black Friday.
We wanted to scream bloody murder when our folks would hide the power adapter for our Atari 2600 after a night-long gaming session. For those of you who have no idea what we're talking about, it's the equivalent to having your DSi yanked from your backpack. But no matter which generation you grew up in, it looks like we all had it easy, at least compared to kids growing up in China. Up until recently, youths diagnosed with Internet addiction were subject to beatings and confinement.
New rules have now banned such unpleasantness following the beating death of a teenager in August, which led to the discovery of abuse at other clinics. That was enough for China to reach a revelation that maybe a different approach was needed.
"Parents and teachers must analyze the causes and not arbitrarily condemn, hit, or scold youths...intervention methods that restrict personal freedom are strictly forbidden and corporal punishment is strictly forbidden," read new regulations posted on the health ministry's website.
According to local press reports, China had up to 10 million teenage Web addicts and at least 400 private Internet rehab centers nationwide in August.
While most segments in the tech industry have had a hard time coping with a global recession, the smartphone market seems to have weathered the economic storm just fine, suggests a new report from research firm Canayls.
According to Canayls, smartphone sales saw growth of 4 percent against the same quater last year, and shot up 14 percent from last quarter.
"While growth has undoubtedly slowed, it is still outperforming the overall mobile phone market by some margin, as well as driving data revenue for operators, and smartphones are ushering in a range of changes in user behavior when it comes to what people actually do on their phones," said Canalys senior analyst Pete Cunningham.
The smartphone market has been particularly kind to Apple, whose iPhone 3G S helped the iPhone grow its market share by 4 percent to settle in at 18 percent of the market. That puts it in third place behind RIM, which holds a 21 percent share.
"Demand for the iPhone 3G S far outstripped supply, and we expect to see continued growth for Apple, especially with new operators coming onboard, for example in the UK with teh end of O2's exclusivity on the device," Cunningham added.
Already feeling bored with Ubuntu and thnk you're ready to start experimenting with other Linux distros? You may want to consider Mandriva Linux 2010.0, which was just released on Wednesday.
Mandriva 2010.0, or "Adelie" if you prefer to use its codename, promises to be snappier than previous versions, including faster boot times. It's built around the Linux 2.6.31 kernel, which means improved hardware support as well, and the feature-list unrolls from there. Just a sampling of these include improved parental controls, easier WiFi setup, easier partitioning with Ext4 now being used as the default file system, a new security framework, better virtualization, and more.
Some helpful links:
While the mobile world drools over Droid, there's another smartphone that has a shot of stealing a few headlines. We're talking about Acer's upcoming Liquid A1, which is expected to ship in Europe within the next few weeks.
The Liquid A1 is the first Android-based smartphone to be built around Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset. And even though the CPU has been downclocked to 768MHz, that's a lot more pep than most Android phones are boasting.
Oddly, Acer has decided not to step up to Android 2.0 (Eclair), and the Liquid A1 will instead run on Android 1.6 (Donut). That puts it a generation behind the Droid and other upcoming Android 2.0 smartphones, although this could change by the time the A1 ships. We also wouldn't rule out a software update after the fact, although Acer has spent some time tweaking "a new user interface with easy access to entertainment and web bookmarks."
No word yet on price or when this one's expected to land in the U.S.
Maybe the economy is recoverying after all, or so analysts are saying after Cisco reported fiscal first-quarter earnings that nudged ahead of expectations and showed strong sequential growth.
The network security firm reported a quarterly profit of $1.8 billion, or 36 cents a share. That's down from last year, when Cisco posted a profit of $2.2 billion, or 42 cents a share, but up from last quarter. Revenue for the first fiscal quarter climbed to $9 billion, which is more than the $8.75 billion analysts had expected.
"Our ability to launch four proposed acquisitions, the ecosystem-shifting coalition with EMC/VMware, and five new products and industry solutions into the Cisco pipeline in the past few months alone underscore this momentum," said John Chambers, Chairman and CEO of Cisco. "Our build – buy - partner innovation engine is clearly running on all cylinders, while our operational machine is pulling costs out of the business even as we scale new models for growth. Execution and results over time will demonstrate the long-term impact of this vision and strategy— but a new model of productivity based on collaboration is clearly emerging and we believe this may be the most profound opportunity for businesses in our 25 years as a company."
Cisco has been on a spending spree as of late, having recently agreed to purchase Starent Networks for a cool $2.9 billion and ScanSafe for $183 million.
© 2009 Future US, Inc. All Rights Reserved.