News Archive for 08/12/11
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| MacUpdate Weekend Sale | :This weekend MacUpdate has slashed prices on Painter 12 and Painter Lite. Painter 12 retails for $429, but has been reduced by 54% to $199. Painter Lite has seen a 58% price cut from $69 to $29. Hurry, because these deals are only available until May 19th 2013. |
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As hinted at in a leaked flyer, Radio Shack tonight rolled out a special version of the Acer Aspire One with built-in 3G data. The all-black model holds a built-in HSPA modem that lets it connect to AT&T's network for Internet access when Wi-Fi isn't an option. The system itself sites at the higher end of Acer's spectrum with 1GB of memory and a 160GB hard drive bolstering the by-now standard 1.6GHz Atom chip and Windows XP Home.
The most recent ChangeWave survey of consumers' spending outlook suggests that the negative trend has leveled off, but the forecast still remains bleak. The 90-day spending plans of surveyed individuals suggests that 60 percent of consumers expect to spend less during the next few months, while only 11 percent expect to spend more, marking the worst numbers that the research company has seen since the surveys began. The number of respondents in the category that plans on spending more has only risen by one-point since the November survey, while the spend-less group also increased by one percent.
Online retailers continue holiday sales on digital cameras, printers, notebooks, HDTVs and more. For a limited time PCconnection.com is offering a special bundle deal that includes a Nikon CoolPix 8MP digital camera, Epson Workforce color printer and 2GB SD memory card for $99.99 with FREE shipping. BestBuy.com has a range of great gift ideas for $50 or less that include the SanDisk Sansa 2GB MP3 player for $49.99, Family Guy volume five on DVD is priced at $29.99, Jabra Bluetooth headset for $39.99 and more.
As promised just yesterday, the full, non-beta version of Google's Chrome Internet browser is now available for download. The simple-appearing browser, which thus far supports only Windows Vista and XP SP2 systems, was released in beta form back in September and promises to make web browsing faster, easier and safer. It will allow users to perform Google searches straight from the address bar, which will return suggestions for searches and web pages as they type.
Sony is showing off an advanced lampshade made up of dye-sensitized solar cells that capture light and convert it into electricity at the Eco-Products 2008 show in Japan on Thursday. The prototype is called Hana-Akari and uses what Sony calls is a process similar to photosynthesis to capture energy from any light source.
Japan's Ratoc Systems has recently shown off its certified wireless USB starter kit, the REX-WUSB1. The system is designed for use with notebooks equipped with a PC Card slot and includes a three-port wireless USB hub that can also be wired. The kit is compatible with Windows XP or Vista PCs after the included drivers are installed.
Addonics on Thursday announced the release of its NAS Adapter that lets users add USB-based storage devices to local area networks. The USB storage device can then be shared by any user on the network and up to eight outside users with an Internet connection via FTP access. The adapter is compatible with SMB and open-source Samba network protocols, and can be configured as a printer server or BitTorrent downloader.
Sweden's telecommunications giant Ericsson announced on Thursday it is working with Intel to equip mobile broadband module-equipped notebooks with secure anti-theft solutions. The solution is meant to make stealing notebooks less attractive to thieves and protect data with encryption software. The concept, identical to the recent Lenovo solution recently unveiled, involves users sending an SMS message to the notebook's mobile broadband module that will trigger Intel's Anti-Theft function built into the processor platform and locks down the system. When the notebook is recovered, another message can restore the system to its operational state.
Rogers today claimed the distinction of being the first North American carrier to have a completed 7.2Mbps HSPA network. The speed allows anyone in Rogers' 3G areas to theoretically download twice as quickly as both the Canadian provider's earlier 3G network and for most of AT&T, either of which has topped out at 3.6Mbps. The company also plans to expand the total 3G area to cover about 75 percent of Canada's total population by the end of this month.
The incumbent White House administration today voiced public opposition to a measure that would require the winner of an FCC auction to offer free AWS Internet access across the US. A letter from Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez claims to represent the Bush administration in opposing the wireless plan and says the FCC should let bidders win without conditions, with "market forces" dictating the nature of any Internet service rather than government concerns for the public interest.
Comcast today said that its DOCSIS 3 Internet access has reached about 20 percent of its coverage areas in less than a year through expansion into three new areas. Subscribers in particular areas of Atlanta, Balitmore and Chicago now have the option of using the faster, channel-bonded access with either a 50Mbps Extreme tier with 10Mbps uploads or an in-between 22Mbps Ultra tier with 5Mbps upstream.
Tsutaya will soon offer downloadable HD videos in its home market of Japan that can then be recorded onto blank Blu-ray discs and other media from the hard drives of their home electronics. Users with compatible devices will have a choice of over 400 titles that include movies and TV shows from four US film companies before the year is out, with half of the offerings dubbed into Japanese. The service is offered via the Tsutaya TV service hosted by the acTVila portal site and will release content at the same time as they are officially released on DVD or Blu-ray discs to the public.
Ultimate Ears has quietly added a new range-topping in-canal earbud set. The Triple.Fi 10vi earns its name from its three separate drivers and is claimed to have the same sound characteristics as the company's studio and concert monitors but without the customization that adds to the cost; frequency response ranges as low as 10Hz and as high as 17kHz. As an in-canal set, the 10vi provides passive noise canceling and eliminates about 26dB of outside sound.
Google may begin offering downloadable ringtones and wallpapers for the T-Mobile G1 smartphone, according to a Wednesday report. Two icons revealed when unzipping the Market.apk file on the T-Mobile G1 hints at the possibility of Google selling ringtones and wallpapers via the Android Market. Nothing is official and Google has not made any mention of offering either ringtones nor wallpapers, and the icons are hidden in the drawable folder under res, called ringtones.png and wallpapers.png. If the ringtones and wallpapers icons are put to use by Google, their content will most likely be governed by carriers who will charge users for each download, as is the case in many current set-ups.
Microsoft may be facing harder times than expected going into 2009, various analysts argue. Although the company itself has posted conservative guidance for the near future, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Holt says he is lowering both his fiscal Q2 and fiscal 2009 projections, mainly on the belief that PC sales have slackened considerably. Complicating the situation, according to Bernstein's Jeffrey Lindsay, is that the emergence of netbooks represents a wildcard -- because of their limited purpose many of them are able to use Linux, or lower-end versions of Windows.
Apple's iPhone line and Research in Motion's BlackBerry have skewed the US cellphone market in favor of more expensive phones and designs, according to new ComScore m:metrics data. Following a year-over-year surge in which the iPhone jumped to second place for smartphone market share in the country, the researchers note that the average monthly percentage of touchscreen phones in use during the summer almost tripled from just 3.6 percent in September 2007 to exactly 10 percent a year later. Fixed QWERTY phones like the BlackBerry Curve also more than doubled their influence from 9.5 percent of users to 22.6 percent.
HP on Thursday broke new ground for itself by introducing its first-ever Linux desktop aimed at small offices and schools. The HP Compaq dc5850 now has the option of SUSE Linux preinstalled rather than having to choose FreeDOS and install the open-source software afterwards. It also comes preloaded with multiple similarly open-source apps such as OpenOffice as well as its web browser, e-mail and IM suites; schools also get access to about 40 educational games and learning tools.
NETGEAR hopes to lead the increasingly crowded networked media hub field with a new flagship, the company tells Wired. The Digital Entertainer Elite or EVA9150 will focus on brute hardware superiority to compete against rivals such as the Apple TV and will be one of the few in the category to play 1080p video. Appropriately, it will also carry a 500GB hard drive in an accessible bay that lets owners upgrade themselves if the storage is lacking.
AT&T today helped wrap up its year through the release of the Pantech C630. The candybar design aims to bring relatively high-end features to the budget realm and carries both 3G and assisted GPS. It also brings a slightly more upscale design with metal-like accents and a rubberized texture at the back to improve its grip.
JVC today gave a preview of potential CES camcorder launches with a pair of new Everio models for Japan. The 60GB GZ-MG840 and 120GB GZ-MG860 shoot in a DVD-resolution 720x480 wide format but also have a unique dual storage system that combines a hard drive and a microSDHC card slot. Videographers can capture either moving or still footage either to the core disk or to the removable format. As much as 28 hours and 40 minutes of MPEG-2 footage can be recorded to the 120GB disk, but an extra 1 hour and 54 minutes can be stored on an 8GB microSDHC card.
OCZ has continued on a string of solid-state drive introductions with the Vertex Series. Although it uses lower-cost multi-level cell (MLC) flash memory, the SATA II-based Vertex uses a new memory controller that gives performance closer to faster single-level cell SSDs; OCZ estimates peak read speeds of 200MB per second and nearly as quick write speeds at 160MB per second. The drives likewise have as much as 64MB of onboard cache to smooth out the few performance issues left with flash technology.
NVIDIA will kick off CES with a new dual processor video card meant to reclaim the performance crown, a leak from VR-Zone shows. The GTX 295 would use a relatively new 55 nanometer manufacturing process to fit two GTX 200-series processors in a single card. While clock speeds are unknown, the combined board would have twice as much memory as a GTX 260 with 1,792MB of RAM and run on a very wide 896-bit memory bus.
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