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Preliminary basic specs and prices on Sony's Google TV range have been leaked, thanks to SonyInsider. There will be a 24-inch NSX-24GT1, 32-inch NSX-32GT1, 40-inch NSX-40GT1 and 46-inch NSX-46GT1 officially announced during the October 12 launch. Each houses an Intel CPU and the ability to connect to the web and surf Flash websites. During a Best Buy tech preview, it was revealed that the 46-inch GT1 set will have an edge-lit LED display and use a USB adapter for Wi-Fi access when an Ethernet cable isn't an option.
Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said his company remains open to partnering with handset maker Motorola on Windows Phone 7 devices, despite the fact Microsoft sued Motorola for patent infringement last week.
 "We are always excited to collaborate with anybody who wants to collaborate with us," said Ballmer, speaking at a BitKOM press conference in Cologne, Germany, according to the Dow Jones news service. Motorola co-chief executive Sanjay Jha also said this week that his company has not ruled out working with Microsoft on Windows Phone 7 smartphones, Dow Jones reported. Microsoft sued Motorola last week in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, claiming Motorola's Google Android phones violate Microsoft patents. Microsoft also filed a complaint against Motorola with the International Trade Commission.
There may be no jet packs yet, but we are very much living in the future. Proof enough of that is PayPal's latest addition to its iPhone app, which brings with it the capability to snap a photo of a check and have it be deposited to your PayPal account free of charge. Sure, this is something that customers of Chase and USAA have been able to do with each company's respective.. readmore...
CHIBA, Japan--This behemoth of a 3D display measures 71 feet by 16 feet. And that's just a fraction of how big it could be.
Sony is using its HD 3D LED Display System as the centerpiece of its booth here at Ceatec 2010. This isn't the first public display--it made an appearance at IFA Berlin last month and was used to broadcast the World Cup match between Japan and the Netherlands in June. But for all the 3D gadgets on display here at Ceatec (and there are a ton), Sony's stands out. Mostly for its extreme size.
Windows Live Essentials 2011 is full grown, out of beta, and ready as a free download. The suite includes tools like Windows Messenger, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Mail, Writer, Family Safety, Windows Live Mesh and Microsoft Outlook Hotmail Connector. But don't get your hopes up if you're using a Windows XP PC -- the software only works on Windows 7 and Vista.
We've been quite excited about the potential of streaming-video game service OnLive, which forgoes any physical software or system/graphics needs and lets players play games on remote servers via streaming video. The effect is largely seamless, and for some games like adventures it's a fantastic cloud-based substitute for owning an expensive gaming laptop. The only drawback was price: OnLive's games not only cost money, but the OnLive service also levied a subscription fee. 
Google plans to use Chrome as a tool to reform the Web by encouraging use of a technology the company says will reduce data-transfer delays.  The technology, called False Start, has the potential to reduce one round of back-and-forth communications between a browser and a Web server when establishing an encrypted connection. That's a significant time savings--about 7 hundredths of a second for communication across the United States and 1.5 tenths of a second from California to Europe.
The Windows 7 "family pack" is available once again , Microsoft said in a blog post yesterday. The $149 bundle of discs, which allows users to upgrade up to three PCs to the Home Premium version of the operating system, is available for the second time. It was first available when Windows 7 launched last year. readmore...
Looks like actual volume availbiliuty of AMD's upcoming Radeon 6000 series prodyct will be available later then the launch date. DigiTimes was told that mass shipments of AMD's new graphics cards are slated for November, and the site also reports that NVIDIA will cut the price of its GeForce GTX 460 768MB and introduce the entry-level GeForce GT 430 (GF108).
One single component of web pages is consistently responsible for the majority of the latency on pages across the web: images. Most of the common image formats on the web today were established over a decade ago and are based on technology from around that time. Some engineers at Google decided to figure out if there was a way to further compress lossy images like JPEG to make them load faster, while still preserving quality and resolution. As part of this effort, Google is releasing a developer preview of a new image format, WebP, that promises to significantly reduce the byte size of photos on the web, allowing web sites to load faster than before Google:
Images and photos make up about 65% of the bytes transmitted per web page today. They can significantly slow down a user’s web experience, especially on bandwidth-constrained networks such as a mobile network. Images on the web consist primarily of lossy formats such as JPEG, and to a lesser extent lossless formats such as PNG and GIF. Our team focused on improving compression of the lossy images, which constitute the larger percentage of images on the web today
Microsoft said Friday it has filed a lawsuit against Motorola with the International Trade Commission and the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington state. The suit alleges Motorola infringed on nine patents to produce its Android smart phones.
ASRock started introducing small form factor (SFF) HTPCs last year. Their first play in the market was an ION based Atom nettop, and it could best be termed as an entry-level machine. While being a good fit as a secondary HTPC, it failed to satisfy the power users. Absence of HD audio bitstreaming and lack of processing power for many common HTPC tasks were important reasons. In an effort towards alleviating these concerns, ASRock introduced a mainstream SFF HTPC a couple of months back, namely, the Core 100. With a Core i3 mobile processor combined with the integrated Arrandale IGP, things started to look good for the SFF HTPC space. We had unreserved praise for the Core 100, but the Intel HD Graphics did have some shortcomings for the purists in terms of support for the latest Blu-Ray features and potential for gaming.
Antec has been around for nearly a quarter of a century, making them one of the grandfathers of the modern computer industry. Well known for their cases and power supplies, we've looked at the EarthWatts line a couple of times in years past. Antec has updated the EarthWatts line with their new Green models, sporting a dark green exterior and more environmentally friendly packaging—including the removal of the power cord, since most users already have a surplus
Microsoft has stated that its new Internet Explorer 9 web browser will be need Windows 7 Service Pack 1 to work.
The Redmond-based software giant has published on its FAQs web page that users of Windows 7 OS will require SP1 to run the newly launched Internet Explorer web browser, Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), tech news website Computer World reports.
Canon EOS Rebel T2i DSLR Camera Review
Utilizing an 18 megapixel sensor and Digic 4 image processor, the Canon EOS Rebel T2i DSLR camera offers crystal clear pictures, HD video recording and more. Chris Hardwick and Carrie Keagan find out if this camera is worth the $750 price tag
What You Need to Know
- The Canon Rebel T2i is about .5” thicker than previous Rebel models, weighs a little over 1 lb. and the body's plastic case and rubber grip feel comfortable to hold
- The menu buttons are large and easy to access with your thumb, although the radial dial on top doesn't rotate completely, so it can be annoying if you switch back and forth between settings
- The 3” LCD screen looks bright and crisp, although you may need to adjust it in daylight
- It also has a built-in flash and a hot shoe for an external flash
- The T2i offers a lot of features for the beginner to mid-level consumer
- Start up time is really quick and the auto focus works well
- You have your standard shooting modes such as nighttime, landscape, and portrait, or you can just leave it on full auto and it will adjust the settings for you Read more...
Nintendo 3DS expected to make U.S. debut in March
Nintendo plans on bringing the 3D version of their DS handheld to the U.S. in March, the Associated Press reports.
The tentative release window was revealed during a press conference in Japan, where the publisher announced it was launching the 3DS in that country on February 26 for 25,000 yen (just under $300).
The 3DS will feature 3D technology without the need for special glasses. A depth slider located on the side of the handheld allows users to choose the level of the 3D effect.
Users will not only be able to play 3D games, but capture photos with a 3D camera.
Among some of the games revealed for the device: Metal Gear Solid from Konami, Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition and Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D from Capcom and Kid Icarus and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D from Nintendo.
Read more...
Facebook apologizes for worst outage in 4 years
Many Facebook users were unable to access the social networking site for up to two and a half hours on Thursday, the worst outage the website has had in over four years, Facebook said in a posting.
The problems were traced back to a change made by Facebook in one of its systems.
The change was made to a piece of data that was called upon whenever an error-checking routine found invalid data in Facebook's system. The piece of data was itself interpreted as invalid, which caused the system to try and replace it with the same piece of data and so a feedback loop began.
The loop resulted in hundreds of thousands of queries per second being sent to Facebook's database cluster, overwhelming the system.
The result for users was a "DNS error" message and no access to the site.
"The way to stop the feedback cycle was quite painful - we had to stop all traffic to this database cluster, which meant turning off the site," wrote Robert Johnson, director of software engineering at Facebook, in a post on the site. "Once the databases had recovered and the root cause had been fixed, we slowly allowed more people back onto the site." Read more..
Verizon iPhone 4 production in Nov 2010 claim Taipei tipsters
Another day, another Verizon iPhone 4 rumor, and it seems DigiTimes aren’t content with analysts muscling in on their supply chain sources. They’re claiming Pegatron will begin volume production of a CDMA iPhone 4 in November 2010 – a month earlier than Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Jeffrey Fidacaro suggested was the case – pumping out 3-4 million of the iOS smartphones in the first three months.
That’s predicted to rise to a heady 10m CDMA devices by mid-2011, though the Taipei gossip site does fall short of saying exactly when they expect Apple to begin selling this new version. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg told investors yesterday that what he really wants is a 4G LTE iphone, though we imagine that’s just the sort of half-answer any good exec would give with a few months to go before any official announcement could be made.
Read more...
IE9 To Require Windows 7 SP1 To Work
Microsoft has stated that its new Internet Explorer 9 web browser will be need Windows 7 Service Pack 1 to work.
The Redmond-based software giant has published on its FAQs web page that users of Windows 7 OS will require SP1 to run the newly launched Internet Explorer web browser, Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), tech news website Computer World reports.
Although the company is encouraging web users to use and explore IE9, which is still in its beta version, Microsoft’s Rich Reynolds in a company blog has advised businesses and enterprises system to refrain from running the new browser until the final version is out, and use IE8 instead to avoid any complication.
The FAQ page, which was first noticed by tech new stie Ars Technica, also reveals that Windows Vista users should have SP2 in order to run Internet Explorer 9 on their machines.
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