Amazon International Kindle Availability Plotted On World Map

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Amazon did two big things today. They lowered the price for the 6-inch Kindle eBook Reader to $259 and launched the new Kindle U.S. & International Wireless.
Amazon is selling the new International Kindle directly from the U.S. site to consumers in countries around the world. Since the Dollar is weak this is still quite a good deal despite shipping cost and customs fees.

BlogKindle published a great overview where the new International Kindle is available and what is supported in these countries. Read more

Posted on Wed, 7 Oct 2009 10:34:21 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

SMS Vulnerability for iPhone To Be Revealed.

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Today, at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, cybersecurity researchers will reveal a crucial vulnerability in the iPhone. This SMS-related weakness could apparently allow hackers to gain control of any iPhone in the world. This may all sound like fear-mongering right now, but Forbes describes the vulnerability as a potentially crippling issue;

“Using a flaw they've found in the iPhone's handling of text messages, the researchers say they'll demonstrate how to send a series of mostly invisible SMS bursts that can give a hacker complete power over any of the smart phone's functions. That includes dialing the phone, visiting Web sites, turning on the device's camera and microphone and, most importantly, sending more text messages to further propagate a mass-gadget hijacking.”

Posted on Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:20:00 CDT | by Robert Evans

ABI Research Says Mobile Phone Stock Increasing

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According to ABI Research, mobile phone handset vendors are starting to get optimistic as results of the first half of 2009 come in. According to the research firm 269 million handsets were shipped in 2Q 2009 and handsets sales are expected to build on that number for Q3.

Samsung and LG were the big winners in the market during Q2 with 19.4% of the market for Samsung and 11.1% for LG. Nokia was able to grow its share of the market by 1.67% up to 38.3% of the total market. Sony Ericsson on the other hand slipped 0.56% and Motorola and RIM saw shares decrease. Read more

Posted on Mon, 27 Jul 2009 06:22:17 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

ASUS RT-N16 Wireless-N Gigabit Router unveiled

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Asus unveiled a new high performance WLAN Router with the ASUS RT-N16.
The Asus RT-N16 suports the latest Wireless-N Local Area Networking standard for wireless communications. The new Asus Router offers maximum data speeds of 300Mbps.
According to Asus the powerful CPU in the ASUS RT-N16 delivers maximum bandwidth, ensuring effortless synchronous file transfers and downloads, flawless video streaming, incredibly low-ping wireless gaming, and VoIP calls with minimized jitter. Equipped with 128MB DDR2 video memory, it achieves eight times faster benchmarks, delivering multi-tasking with no system lags. Four Gigabit Ethernet ports are available for users to set up a wired LAN for faster transfer of data-intensive files. Read more

Posted on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:52:09 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Belkin Announces Gigabit Powerline Networking Gear

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Belkin has announced a new powerline networking starter kit that promises gigabit speeds over the wiring already installed inside the walls of your home. The kit is called the Gigabit Powerline HD Starter Kit.

The gigabit kit promises speeds of up to 1000Mbps making it great for gaming and streaming HD video from video on demand services. Setting the network up is as easy as plugging the adapter into a wall outlet and the RJ45 cable from the adapter into a device on your network. Read more

Posted on Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

AT&T Website Adds 'Send to Mobile' Capability.

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If you're an AT&T customer, you just got a moderately convenient present from your service provider. Today the communications giant added a 'Send to Mobile' function to their website, att.net. AT&T's website already provides free unlimited email accounts to their customers, and now they've giving smartphone owners another reason to stop by.

The 'Send to Mobile' feature will allow customers to move links to things on the Internet they want to keep up with (like news, or weather, or i4u.com) over to their mobile's automatically. They can also add fast-access links to popular mobile social sites, like Facebook.

Posted on Wed, 6 May 2009 11:30:00 CDT | by Robert Evans

Creative Windows 7 Driver Availability Chart published

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Creative today announced the availability of new beta drivers for Creative Sound Blaster, Audigy and X-Fi sound cards on the Windows 7 Beta operating system.
In addition you can now find out when drivers for your Creative product will be available. The release schedule shows that most audio components are already supported with beta drivers.
Several Live! Cam products are getting drivers later this year. Read more

Posted on Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:01:03 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

iPhone Apps for Babies?

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A developer in Colorado has created an iPhone app that caters to the one demographic greatly underserved by Apple… babies. Introducing, the iPhone Pacifier 1 application.

The app teaches kids aged 1-3 basic cognitive, vocabulary, and counting skills while holding their attention with “stunning visual effects” and classical music, according to the release. The difficulty settings can also be adjusted, seemingly for baby geniuses who master the app's shape and counting games.

Posted on Thu, 9 Apr 2009 19:00:00 CDT | by James Douglas

Jennifer Aniston leaves John Mayer because of Twitter Habit

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Twitter just cannot help itself to be kept out of the news. UK's Telegraph reports that movie star and everybody's favorite girl next door Jennifer Aniston left musician boyfriend John Mayer because of his Twitter obsession.
John Mayer has over 330,000 followers on Twitter, but he has only about 400 updates which is not that many unless he started to tweet just this week. Read more

Posted on Tue, 24 Mar 2009 01:19:15 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

PandaLabs Says Microsoft Patch Failed to Patch Vulnerability

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According to PandaLabs, the latest vulnerability patch issued by Microsoft failed to patch the vulnerability it was meant to fix. Update MS09-008 released yesterday was intended to patch Windows DNS and WINS Servers.

However, PandaLabs says that the patch doesn’t effectively protect against a vulnerability in DNS servers that could be exploited to redirect users to a malicious proxy. The remaining vulnerability could allow nefarious users to monitor the surfer's movement's online, access confidential info, and redirect them to malicious websites. Read more

Posted on Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Dell Wasabi PZ310 ultra-portable Mobile Printer unveiled

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Dell announced the Wasabi PZ310 ultra-mobile printer for instant photo printing. The stylish Wasabi PZ310 is designed to work with Bluetooth-enabled camera phones, digital cameras, and mobile PCs to print instant wallet-size photos like the Polaroid PoGo. The Dell Wasabi PZ310 outshines the Polariod PoGo in terms of design. The Wasabi design looks very fresh and cool. Read more

Posted on Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:55:39 CST | by Luigi Lugmayr

Microsoft Windows XP Availability Extended Again

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If Microsoft had held to its original plans, Windows XP would be a memory now as the move to Vista would have been completed by the software giant. The overall disdain for Vista in the market by many computer users and the fact that Vista was such a resource hog meant the new OS just didn’t work well on the new and massively popular netbook computers.

Microsoft began letting netbook makers use XP Home on their netbooks and the stay of execution made XP Home the defacto winner in the netbook market. This directly led to Microsoft postponing the retirement of XP earlier this year. Microsoft has now announced that it will again postpone the retirement of Windows XP. Read more

Posted on Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:55:00 CST | by Shane McGlaun

ABI Research Says Prices for Blu-ray Players to Drop this Holiday Season

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Blu-ray is the only remaining HD standard movie format that remains for home users. The problem with Blu-ray is that players are expensive for the most part. According to ABI Research, the cost of Blu-ray players will drop this holiday season as hardware makers try and lure new customers to the format.

ABI says that the price of older players will drop to prices of under $200. The research firm points to the Amazon Samsung player for $200 that also ships with four Blu-ray movies. Some Blu-ray players may even sell for as low as $150. The price drops come as penetration of the format is low and increased competition from streaming HD films impacts the market. Read more

Posted on Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:26:51 CST | by Shane McGlaun

SanDisk Speeds SSD Performance and Reliability with New Management System

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SanDisk has shown off new management technology that it says will make its SSDs faster and more reliable. The flash file system is called ExtremeFFS and is patented by SanDisk. The management system has the potential to accelerate random write speeds by up to 100 times.

ExtremeFFS operates on a page-based algorithm that has no fixed coupling between the physical and logical location of data on the SSD. The drive simply writes data to sectors that are the most convenient and efficient. SanDisk says this provides up to 100 times the performance for an SSD. SanDisk has also proposed a new vRAM measurement for SSDs to make them easier to compare to conventional hard drives. Read more

Posted on Thu, 6 Nov 2008 05:58:25 CST | by Shane McGlaun

ABI Research Says Consumer Navigation Still Faces many Challenges

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ABI Research says that consumer navigation devices still face many challenges on the road to mass adoption. ABI says that the industry needs to focus on new features like 3D maps, multimedia, connectivity, local search, convergence, and business models. These are needed before navigation devices will exceed the current 20% penetration rate.

ABI says that the removal of barriers to the GPS industry will take time. These barriers include the cost and lack of 3G coverage in many parts of the country, lack of interoperability, and user education. In my experience, the biggest improvement many GPS devices need is maps. Several I have tried simply have horrible map coverage in areas that are more rural. Read more

Posted on Mon, 27 Oct 2008 10:19:06 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

ABI Research says Fewer Terrestrial TV Viewers After Conversion to DTV

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ABI Research says that after the digital conversion terrestrial viewers of free TV signals will be left. According to the survey, 70% of analog TV viewers will get a converter, 10% will move to cable or satellite and 20% will simply not watch TV.

The study also claims that while HD satellite programming choices are growing and more and more subscribers are signing up, the new subscribers aren’t coming from cable defectors. Rather according to the study, the new HD satellite subscribers are coming from terrestrial viewers and teleco subscribers. Read more

Posted on Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:05:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

ABI Research says the Wireless Home Office is Coming

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ABI Research says that the wireless home office is finally coming. The research firm says the first stage of the wireless office is arriving now. UWB gear is hitting store shelves now and wireless USB tech is being embedded into computers, docking stations and external hard drives as we speak.

ABI says Dell and Lenovo are leading the charge for UWB-enabled laptops with Toshiba and Kensington readying UWB docking stations. A range of wireless hard drives is expected to hit market from Imation by the end of 2008. Read more

Posted on Fri, 3 Oct 2008 09:06:39 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

iViZ Announces New Class of PC Vulnerability

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According to iViZ, encrypting a hard drive is no longer enough protection. The firm says that it discovered a new class of vulnerability at Defcon 16 security conference that allows hackers to steal boot passwords and bypass the security of pre-boot authentication software.

The vulnerability allows hackers to bypass encryption software. iViz says that it has already briefed vendors like Microsoft, Intel, and HP on the vulnerability. Read more

Posted on Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

ABI Research Says Home Area Networks of the Future will Allow Customized Energy

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According to ABI Research future home area networks will allow users to customize the energy usage of their home. The networks will utilize smart metering that communicates electric, gas or water usage over a network.

The home area network will tie into smart metering devices like intelligent thermostats and other load centers like the washer and dryer. The four technologies that can make these new home area networks possible are ZigBee, Z-Wave and 61oWPAN along with HomePlug command and Control (HPCC). Read more

Posted on Wed, 9 Jul 2008 10:37:10 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Novint and Valve to Add Falcon Capability to Valve Games

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Not too long ago I reviewed the Novint Falcon controller and found that it was very interesting and added a lot to compatible game titles. The catch was that many of the top video games didn’t offer support for the Falcon.

Today Novint and Valve have announced an agreement that will add support for the Falcon to many of Valve’s most popular game titles. Valve’s action games account for about 80% of the online action market. Under the agreement Valve will add Falcon support to The Orange Box, Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life 2 series, Team Fortress 2, Portal and the Left 4 Dead series. Read more

Posted on Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:39:27 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

ABI Research Says Wireless HDTV Technologies to Battle for a Million Installs in

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ABI Research says that by 2012 competing wireless HDTV technologies will be fighting it out for a million installs. Fewer than 100,000 wireless HDTV devices are expected to ship this year. According to ABI three technologies will be fighting for dominance.

The three technologies include 5GHz, 60GHz, and ultra wideband (UWB). All three of these technologies will broadcast HD programming from sources like cable boxes and Blu-ray players wirelessly to TVs in the home making for fewer cables for installations. Read more

Posted on Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:10:07 CDT | by Shane McGlaun