News Archive for 09/03/11
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Fusion-io has unveiled the ioDrive Duo, a series of PCI Express, server-based solid state drives (SSDs) that feature sustained throughput up to an astounding 1.5 gigabytes per second. The components also offer storage capacities up to 1.28TB, doubling the slot capacity of the company's previous ioDrive storage products.
Nintendo has announced that shipments of its DS handheld gaming devices have surpassed 100 million as of March 6th. In contrast, Sony has shipped 50 million PSPs in roughly the same period of time. Nintendo released the first DS model in 2004, followed by updates such as the DS Lite in 2006. The company claims that 83 DS game titles have sold more than 1 million units each, while seven have achieved sales exceeding 10 million.
Telefónica's Movistar has negotiated an exclusive deal with Palm to distribute the upcoming Pre handset in Spain and Latin America, according to a number of Spanish news outlets. Sources also claim that the company's subsidiary, O2, will sell the device in the UK market. The reports mark the first alleged confirmation of carriers beyond Sprint to get the smartphone, although outside of the domestic market.
The next-generation Intuos tablet from Wacom has been spotted, though the device itself has not yet been officially announced. The photo of the packaging reveals the new tablet will sport a wide-format tablet area along with a number of customizable ExpressKeys. It also reveals that the tablet will have a user-defined touch ring and the pressure-sensitive grip pen will be new and improved.
Archos has outed the TV Snap-on accessory for its Archos 5 Internet media tablet on its French website. The accessory allows the device to pick up free-roaming TV signals and display them on the device's 5-inch screen. The dual receiver antennas are matched by two tuners and two processors for the RF signals.
D-Link on Wednesday announced it is shipping its DSN-1100 Network Attached Storage (NAS), meant for use by small- to medium-sized businesses. The device's five bays are capable of holding five 3.5-inch 1.5TB SATA hard drives for a total storage capacity of 7.5TB. The DSN-1100 manages the drives via a built-in IP-SAN Device Manager suite of utilities. An embedded secure server lets users remotely configure and monitor their storage devices.
Graphics card and CPU chipmaker AMD announced on Wednesday that it has shipped 50 million of its GPUs, nicknamed Hollywood, for the Nintendo Wii gaming console. The milestone means Hollywood is the most popular AMD graphics processor for gaming consoles. AMD has a 10-year history of supplying Nintendo with graphics processors, as it provided the Nintendo GameCube system, the Wii's predecessor, with a graphics processing solution.
Habey on Tuesday announced its 1080p HD PC, the BIS-6550HD, powered by a 1.6GHz Intel N270 Atom processor. HD video decoding is handled by a low-power AVC/VC-1/MPEG-2 hardware decoder that can play back HD movies in real time from Blu-ray discs as well as HD files in the H.264 and VC-1 formats at up to 40Mbps and MPEG-2 files at up to 125Mbps. Habey says playing back H.264 1080p video uses less than 15 percent of the N270's processing power, with WMV HD videos using up even less.
Canadian cable, telephone, Internet and wireless provider Rogers has proposed a Hulu-like web video system on Tuesday at a Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) hearing as an alternative to government-imposed levies on Internet Service Providers to support online Canadian content. Rogers, along with another Canadian ISP, Shaw, expressed strong disapproval to the CRTC's levies. Under Rogers' plan, users wouldn’t need to have service from the company in order to access broadband video content.
MIT scientists led by professor Gerbrand Ceder today said they have developed a new improvement on lithium-ion battery packs that could potentially eliminate the need for long recharge times or, in some cases, for larger batteries. By applying a coating of lithium phosphate to an existing battery design, the researchers steer the ions more directly to the "tunnels" leading to the battery terminal and thus supply a charge much faster than the more passive approach used today.
AMD today expressed concern that reports of 17-inch MacBook Pro graphics errors may hurt not only NVIDIA but also graphics makers in general. The company, which owns the ATI brand, told CNET that fears of overheating causing visual artifacts are overblown and implied that the issue may be specific to either Apple choosing the GeForce 9600M incorrectly for the notebook or else the heat generation inherent to NVIDIA's parts. AMD has been careful to avoid identifying a particular cause but remained worried that any poor choice reflected badly on itself.
Last week at the Interaction 2009 show in Tokyo, Mitsubishi Electric showed off a prototype capacitive touch panel that can detect the distance between it and a user's finger. The prototype features a 5.7-inch touchscreen with 640x480-pixel resolution and is meant for use in mobile devices, and specifically in interfaces that have a mouse-over function, where the cursor can change depending on what icon or shortcut it is placed over without an actual click or touch. The panel is also capable of judging the speed of the finger's approach by calculating the time variation of capacity on the z-axis and so could trigger different actions based on velocity, not just position.
Vodafone has announced plans to switch the majority of its music catalog to a DRM-free MP3 format. The phone carrier says it has signed deals with Sony, EMI and Universal, which will allow tracks bought from the record labels to be copied freely between phones, computers and dedicated media players. Vodafone claims that it will also be the first provider in the world to do dual delivery, by which a track can be downloaded to both a phone and a computer at no extra charge, and with no device sync.
Klipsch on Wednesday updated its Image in-ear headphones with some of its first models outside of its normal high-end range. The Image S2 and S4 have the same oval ear tips as more expensive models but less complicated, moving coil drivers and a larger enclosure. Making the switch lets Klipsch lower the price while still providing roughly the same amount of comfort and ear isolation as more costly models. The S4 also adds a dual magnet motor that steps up the amount of damping and more closely replicates the attack rate of kick drums and similar bass without introducing distortion.
The European Commission today said it would give Microsoft extra time to respond to its statement of objection that accuses Microsoft of breaking antitrust laws by requiring that Internet Explorer ship with Windows. The American company now has until April 21st to provide an initial response after it complained that the original eight-week deadline, or March 12th, didn't give it enough time to offer a proper answer to the charges. It's not known if the delay will affect other aspects of the case.
Canon today told the Danish press it would hold a special press event on March 25th that will likely lead to a new high-end camera. The company is deliberately short on details but promises the conference will have something considered "the best" and implies that the event will focus on its central camera business. It's not yet known whether other countries have received similar notices.
Packard Bell will no longer bring its earlier announced DOT netbook to market, the computer maker said recently. The Acer Aspire One-based netbook was announced just a few months ago, and was due to go on sale this past January in Europe, priced at the equivalent of about $413. A Packard Bell spokesperson said in an interview the DOT netbook will be replaced by a new model, though did not go into specifics. The same person also mentioned that some changes will be made to the brand, again not expanding on this.
Microsoft on Wednesday published early details of its development tools for Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphones and also set out the revenue model for the Windows Mobile Marketplace. The company's first self-run mobile software store will almost exactly duplicate the business model used for the iPhone App Store: Microsoft will collect a flat 30 percent of the revenue from each app regardless of price or the number of copies sold. Free apps also won't incur any download costs for developers.
Lenovo is gearing up a competitor to Sony's VAIO P, a leak from within Lenovo's Beijing offices shows. The Chinese Engadget branch has obtained an image which shows a very wide but narrow netbook-sized PC that, like Sony's system, would have a trackpoint for control. The system would, however, have a tan leather back like the ThinkPad Reserve Edition and also appears to have a camera and controls to either side of the display.
The iPhone 3G successfully led Apple to more than double its share of the smartphone market before the start of 2009, according to late data from
Nokia this morning used an in-house music event to launch three separate media phones, including a pair of firsts. The 5730 XpressMusic is the first media-specific phone from the phone maker to get a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and uses this to bring an added messaging component; like an increasing number of Nokia phones, the 5730 has a newer home screen that shows up to 20 favorite contacts as well as gives quicker access to media playback and apps like Facebook. It also has dedicated music keys usable regardless of whether the slider is open.
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