You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'General News' category.
When someone had his GPS stolen from his car he turned to ebay to replace the item, only to find it being offered up for sale by the thief! He was able to recognise it from the “special power chord” and serial number which was listed on the auction. He contacted the police who arrested a Mr Danial Rangkar and found loads more stolen gear at his home.
Source : Engadget
Intertainer Inc., a company that few have heard about, has made major headlines recently announcing that it has already filed a lawsuit against Google, Apple and Napster for “infringing a patent on a way to distribute digital entertainment over the Internet.”
It is doubtful that Intertainer Inc. would ever receive any money because it “suffered irreparable harm” for what these three major tech giants infringed, but still, this is the last thing that Apple needs. They are already facing numerous lawsuits for various allegations, including one relating to iTunes becoming a monopoly in the legal online music distribution market.
Source : Paidcontent
Tags: intertainer, law suit
Over the last year we have seen a lot of gadgets old/new and various fancy stuff, one of them is definitely a ‘Mp3 watch’ which i own personally. This is a Stainless Steel Mp3 watch with 1GB of memory. The watch looks pretty good just like any other watch, but the main feature is the storage capacity and its usefulness.
You can play MP3 files (MPEG 1/2 and Layer3) and the memory is U Disk formatted. The battery life of the watch (for MP3 playback) is close to 9 hours when fully charged. This is really good for such a product. There is also a recording feature by which you can record audio in WMA format.
MP3s can be saved on the storage watch through USB 2.0 transmission. The Stainless steel MP3 watch will cost you around $75 which is not a great deal of money. Along with the watch you get the needed Usb cables and a earphone. It is currently available at Brando.com.hk, with free shipping so get over there if you need one of these.
Tags: No Tags
Logitech has added more speakers to their already impressive collection with the release of the X-240 speakers. These are a bit similar to the Logitech Z10 but those come with a LCD display ofcourse and are much more expensive that these.
The Logitech X-240 cost you only $50 and they will be available from Q2 of 2007. These are pretty good for the price and come with a iPod and Zune docking stations. You can connect your Mp3 player via the Auxiliary input and enjoy great music from your iPods/Zunes. These speakers don’t have on board controls for changing tracks, but you can always stretch yourself to the player and do the needful.
The Logitech speakers come with 2 year warranty and 50 watts of peak power. The speakers measure 6.9″ x 2.6″ x 3.8″ while the sub woofer is of 8.7″ x 5.9″ x 8.7″.
Tags: No Tags
Fujifilm has released the low-end versions of their digicams for beginners or people who just can’t afford those slim and tiny cams.
The Finepix A610 comes with a 6.3 megapixel CCD with 3x optical zoom. It has between 100-400 ISO range and comes with a 2.5 inch LCD display. The camera has a xD picture card slot as well as a SD card slot for storing your photos and videos along with 10mb of internal memory. The A610 comes with a 2 shooting modes and 14 scene positions.
The Fujifilm A800 camera has a 8.3 megapixel CCD also with a 3x optical zoom and 2.5 inch LCD like the A610. The difference between them is the 12mb of internal storage plus 3 scene positions more than the A610.
The cost for the A610 and A800 is $129 and $179 respectively. The reason for this low pricing is that the camera is more heavy and bigger in size than the others. Also these cameras use AA batteries instead of rechargeable ones which are expensive.
Tags: No Tags
2007 has surely started with a bang as far as Hitachi goes and for the media storage market. Hitachi had earlier said they will be announcing the 1TB hard drive soon, but we thought it would take much more time that they suggested.
Well, we have been proved wrong and they have actually announced the launch of the 7K1000 Hard drive which comes with 1TB of space. These babies will cost you about $400, which is pretty aggressively priced in our opinion. The disk is available in both SATA II and PATA 144 variants.
The 7K1000 comes with a 32mb buffer, super quiet whilst operation feature and 7200 rpm sindle speed. We thought we could get a 10k rpm drive from them but they have stuck to the much common lower speed drive. The transition from 7200 rpm to 10,000 rpm has not been quick at all but we expect a few manufactures to go aggressive on this one and probably come out with a 15k rpm drive by the year end.
Tags: No Tags
Matsushita is a Japanese company we have been hearing about a lot recently and now, the company has officially announced that they have created a prototype of a human robot suit with artificial muscles. Now unfortunately, this suit won’t turn you into Super Man and instead of giving you super strength, but it will help with the rehabilitation of stroke victims who have trouble moving their limbs. This suit is expensive with an estimated cost of $17,000 (so its definitely not for everyday personal use for the average person…yet), but when it is mass produced, the cost should decrease. The company has said they hope to have this product released by 2009 and we will just have to wait and see if they can make that deadline.
Source : Yahoo News
Tags: robot suit
Dubai-based real estate developer Omniyat Properties has announced that they plan to spend $800 Million or more to build a 23 story building based on the Apple iPod. The building will be in the shape of an Apple iPod tilted on an iPod dock.
“Our aim was to launch three projects this year but strong market demand encouraged us to deliver more. Out of the entire portfolio, we have sealed sales worth approximately Dh2.4 billion,” said Mehdi Amjad, president and CEO of Omniyat Properties, an arm of Almasa Holdings.
Construction will start next year in 2007 and is expected to be completed by 2009. The iPad will be in the Business Bay of Dubai and the concept was designed by Hong Kong-based architects James Law Cybertecture International.
Tags: iPod building
Meizu has always been known as an innovative company who has created MP3 Players and other portable gadgets that were “total media centers” and allowed you to store everything you wanted in one place. Well now, Meizu is letting their customers design their newest MP3 Player to generate interest and save millions in research and development.
You can draw up your own design and submit it here. I wonder if other companies will follow in Meizu’s footsteps. After all, many companies have been getting their customers to do all the work for them from creating advertisements to designing products.
Tags: meizu, mp3 player
Mitsubishi has come out with a 22inch widescreen LCD display. The LCD has a very standard 800:1 contrast ratio with 5ms response time. A straight competitor to this would definitely be the Dell E228WFP which was recently released in Canada and is about to be announced in the US.
The RDT221WM was announced a few weeks back and will be available soon, to be precise the date is set for a January last week release. The LCD has a 160 degrees display angle and comes with a 1680 x 1050 display resolution. The TV has an impressive 16 million color display and 300 cd/square brightness measure. The audio is not too great with a 1W plus 1W stereo output.
The Mitsubishi LCD will cost you around $500 and is pretty much priced in line with the other LCD monitors and TVs. The RDT221WM measures close to 505.2 × 210.8 × 427.8 mm and weighs approximately 20 pounds. We will be looking forward to more additions by Mitsubishi in their LCD showcase, but for the moment lets just be content with this one.
Tags: No Tags
Microsoft’s move to give away heavily loaded Acer Ferrari’s to various tech bloggers out there has back fired on them. Earlier last month Microsoft had given away quite a few Acer Ferrari models, the Acer Ferrari 1000 and the Ferrari 5000 worth almost $2500 dollars each.
These laptops were loaded with their latest operating system, ‘Windows Vista’ and the bloggers were encouraged to review the machines and if possible for them to post their feedbacks on the heavily read blogs. This has not gone down well with a few and have come out angry saying that it’s a ploy for MS to bribe them in giving away good reviews of their latest Operating System.
After all this, the company sent out letters and emails asking them to only evaluate it on true basis and after doing that they could return it or give it away. This was certainly a pretty foolish thing to do (sending letters/emails) as it made the situation even worse.
I for one would definitely not mind an Acer Ferrari 5000 coming my way, would you ?
Tags: No Tags
United has created a new suite for their aircrafts that has almost every amenity a tech lover could ask for. It comes with its own private 15.4-inch LCD TV, an iPod connector, and 50 XM Radio channels free of charge. There is also a plug for your laptop and the suite can unfold into a 6 foot 6 inch bed.
Now this is what we call flying first class. No word on cost or when this suite will be available.
Tags: first suite, united airline
If you are looking to purchase XM Radio this holiday season and want to save some cash, head over to Sirius.com where you can save 20% on all Sirius products sold online, such as many in-car Sirius Radios as well as the portable Sirius Stilletto, and Sirius monthly subscription packages.
To get the deal, you will need to enter the promotional code, HOLIDAY20, at Sirius’s online store while checking out. This sale will end on December 31st, which is exactly 2 weeks from today.
This new 35mm “old school” camera will make a great gift for any kid under 13 this Holiday Season. Not only does the new $14 Pop Art Camera allow you to take regular photos, it also allows you to “tint” your picture with four colors: yellow, green, red, or blue.
Each shot produces 4 images in one, allowing for “4 different hues on one single print.” The plastic camera’s measurements are 4″x2.5″x1.5″ and the Pop Art Camera can be purchased at Fred Flare.
This week, Amazon is offering a limited number of 20GB and 60 GB PS3s as well as the new Nintendo Wii at its regular asking price. While a savings of $0.00 is usually not that exciting, this is undoubtedly going to be the most popular “Deal of the Week” so far. So many people want one of these new consoles, but they are virtually impossible to find at a somewhat decent price.
A 60GB PS3 will cost you just under $600, while a 20GB PS3 retails for just under $500 and the Wii only costs $249.98.
To get the “deal” you have to enter your account into a lottery by 11:59 PST today and winners will be announced on Tuesday. We don’t know how many of each console are available, but Amazon has said users will have a 8 to 1 chance of getting the 20GB PS3, 36 to 1 chance of getting the 60GB PS3, and 20 to 1 chance of getting the Nintendo Wii.
You can enter yourself into the sweepstakes.
In the season of giving, a new charity based out of San Francisco, Inveneo, has started a drive to collect thumb drives and donate them to poor countries such as Uganda, Rwanda, and Mali so that they can be used in school labs. Inveneo wants as many thumb drives as they can get, provided that the thumb drive is 16mb or larger. So, if any of you have thumb drives just lying around and would like to help out, you can get all information at the organization’s website.
Tags: charity, thumb drive
There were some rumors earlier this year about how iTunes sales tanked in the first half of 2006, despite the release of multiple new iPods. Today, Apple announced that this statement is “simply incorrect” and that iTunes sales are still as strong as they ever were. However, They would not release any statistics on total revenue or sales quantity.
What we do know is that the iTunes store reportedly earned a profit from September to November of 2006, but many financial companies doubt what Apple is reporting, saying there is very little to no room for profit with low profit margins and costs such as credit card fees and others.
Dell has decided to start its competition with Sony Vaio and have announced its first Blu-ray notebook. The first from Dell is the Dell XPS M1710 laptop. This one comes with a 17 inch UltraSharp UXGA display with TrueLife. The processor used in the XPS is the Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 with a clock speed of 2.33 Ghz and comes with 4mb L2 cache and 667 Mhz FSB. The front side buss speed allows the RAM to function faster and you can put upto 4GB of SDRAM.
The laptop can be pushed in with a 160GB HDD at 5400 rpm or you can go with a faster 100GB HDD at 7200 rpm. The best part is the Blu-ray and with the Blu-ray drive you can burn and read Blu-ray discs. It also comes with dual layer write compatibility too. The Dell XPS M1710 comes with a really powerful graphics card in the form of a 512MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX. The only downside to the laptop is the keyboard, but that is with all Dell laptops in which it does not come with a full numeric keypad. On the whole the XPS 1710 looks really impressive.
The Dell XPS M1710 starts at $3699 which is pretty expensive, but with the amount of features you are getting you have to say that it is worth the cash.
Tags: blu ray discs, dell xps m1710, intel core 2 duo, nvidia geforce, uxga
Wild Charge is a new product that has been getting a lot of press and coverage recently. The device charges all your gadgets and gizmos, but instead of using a wire, it uses a plate that uses EM Waves to charge everything on it. The company hopes to have this product in stores sometime during the first quarter of 2007, but there are concerns over safety so this device does have to get approved by a Federal Commission. If we get any more details regarding the Wild Charge, we will update you.
The guys over at Toshiba are really working hard in all departments, be it phones, LCDs, Plasmas, or other computer hardware. This time the Toshiba Storage Device Division, the (TSDD) has come out with a 1.8inch 100 GB hard disk.
Samsung and Seagate have also come out with Hard disks of this size but none of them with such a high storage capacity. The Toshiba MK1011GAH hard disk is due to be released in January and when it actually comes out it will be the best in its class. To add to the increased storage ability it is also quite a bit smaller than its counterparts in size. The hard disk comes with a 8mb cache and supports all kinds of storage from all sources.
The HDD measures about 54 × 71x 8 mm and weighs close to 60 grams. It comes with four heads and works at 4200 rpm. The price of these is not yet known, but as we hear from Toshiba that it will be out within a month.
The Usb – Flash Drive market is rising day by day and it is progressing in the right manner in terms of new technologically advanced features. We have seen Biometric laptops from IBM and other such devices.
The Biometric flash drive by Elecom is one of the first ones in the market. The drive encrypts the data on the drive with the fingerprint of the person and it can be decrypted by the same fingerprint only. It looks pretty good and is small in size too.
The Elecom CR-FP2 drive costs around $75 and is not too expensive at all. At the moment, it is only available in 512mb sizes but we can definitely expect high memory ones to come out soon from Elecom or for that matter other companies too. There is no particular date when it is going to be launched but the rumor has it that we should see some of these babies by the start of the Holiday season.
Tags: biometric, elecom, usb flash drive
Ronaldinho has been a brand ambassador for the computer manufacturing company since a while now. The two have now decided it is time to do some charity work. 15 IBM Lenovo notebooks will be auctioned off at eBay and the proceedings will go the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The deal is also part of the Barcelona – UNICEF tie-up. The auction will be held on eBay and will last for 10 days. It begins from today evening itself, so get yourself there for a good cause!
The Laptops which will be auctioned are the IBM Lenovo Thinkpad 3000 series. There are two basic types of the 3000 series notebooks. One of the C-Series which was the first to come, then came the V-Series with the Ultra portable range of notebooks, and last the N-Series with the extremely light weight laptops. All these come with a Pentium M or a Celeron M processor.
Which series of the Laptops will be auctioned is not yet known, nor their configurations are. Although that’s not of too much importance since the focus of attention is actually the auction and your contribution for this great cause.
The US Government has announced that they plan to ban the shipment of luxury items to North Korea in a political move. The ban would include the shipment of products such as the iPods and other MP3 players as well as plasma televisions and other similar gadgets.
This report comes to us straight from the Associated Press.
It’s a new concept; it’s kind of creative,” said William Reinsch, a former senior Commerce Department official who oversaw trade restrictions with North Korea during Bill Clinton’s presidency. Reinsch predicted governments will comply with the new sanctions, but agreed that efforts to block all underground shipments will be frustrated.
“The problem is there has always been and will always be this group of people who work at getting these goods illegally,” Reinsch said.
Still, the ban may not have much of an effect as these products are shipped worldwide and there is nothing stopping other nations from sending the product to North Korea and US exports to Korea only amount to about $6 Million in the first place.
