There has been a lot of tablet talk lately. And most have been slated for release in 2010. But we haven’t really looked to the future in terms of tablets. Like, tablets are the future; so what’s the future of the future?
Well Nicholas Negroponte, head of the OLPC, hopes it to look like this. OLPC’s XO-3 is Negroponte’s $75 dream that he himself admits probably won’t happen. But it’s always a good idea to dream these things up, maybe someone else will make it. It is a very cool and innovative idea. What the XO-3 is, is an 8.5x11-inch multitouch tablet, with a backlit display, and made on a semi-flexible plastic. It would use less than a watt of power to keep the 8 gigahertz processor and a Pixel Qi screen powered. This thing is also conceptualized to be half the thickness of the iPhone with an included camera on the back.
Unfortunately, most of this design is based on technology that is not here yet. So if OLPC does decide to take this commercial, they will have to wait for technology to catch up. Let’s just hope they don’t have to wait as long as James Cameron had to to make Avatar.
In order to celebrate Hello Kitty’s 35th anniversary, Jebsen Korea, an official Korean retailer of Casio, will be selling a new Casio branded digital camera specially designed for Hello Kitty’s momentous occasion. The new Casio digital camera will be available in two different models; the only difference being the shade of pink.
It features 12.1MP, 3x optical zoom, Intelligent AF, which allows the camera to accurately zoom in and out and focus automatically depending on lighting conditions. It comes with another interesting feature called Dynamic Photo, which is useful when making a moving picture, such as in greeting cards. While the major selling point of this camera is Hello Kitty, it still is a pretty good camera spec wise and will definitely appeal to those who love Hello Kitty and wear their accessories often.
The suggested retail price is 350,000 KRW, which converts to about $300.
According to reports from CrackBerry and other sources, data in BlackBerry’s across North America is said to be down and currently functioning as it should. Browsing the web and using data intensive apps are said to not be working, or working extremely slowly. However, more important services such as email is said to be still up and running. In addition, BlackBerry Messenger is said to be down as well.
Fortunately for BlackBerry users, only some carriers and some users are experiencing problems, not all BlackBerry users. Unfortunately, it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly is going on since many BlackBerry’s on different networks are experiencing problems. Problems with BlackBerry data services seem to be an all too familiar occurrence for users, as another similar problem occurred just a few days ago.
If you own a BlackBerry, feel free to let us know what your situation is in the comments below. Stay tuned for any further developments
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A couple of months ago, the tech community got wind of a patent infringement allegation from a Toronto based company i4i against Microsoft. The basic accusations consisted Microsoft Word’s handling of .xml, .docx, and .docm files were infringing upon a certain XML handling algorithm i4i had patented. However, the buzz died within a few minutes of the story being released.
However, that fire has been lit again as Microsoft has lost its appeal case against i4i. And with the date of January 11 being the day that all software containing Word be yanked off the sales list, Microsoft must be getting a bit anxious to deal with the guys over at i4i.
The costly, fast way out would be paying the $290 million in damages to i4i and be done with it. But there most likely be another appeal to a greater court and another legal process. Most industry experts do agree, however, that the most likely outcome of this whole deal will be a settlement between Micorosoft and i4i in which a royalty will be paid to keep Word on the shelves.
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Dell has officially announced the first of what will most likely be a long line of Pine Trail processor based netbooks. The first is the Mini 10 and it will be available sometime in “early January.” Price wise, it will start at $299.
In terms of features, of course we have the new processor, which in this case is a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450.
Otherwise many of the features remain the same as what we have come to expect in terms of netbooks including the 10.1-inch (1024 x 600 resolution) display, 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive and 3 or 6-cell battery. Of course, that 6-cell battery is listed as offering up to 9.5 hours of life.
Thankfully though, there is some room for upgrades here. And some of those include choosing 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive and “available in the coming weeks” a high-definition (1366 x 768 resolution) display.
Other features include an optional TV tuner, Bluetooth and GPS as well as the standard Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, USB ports and VGA-out. Finally, in terms of operating system, the Pine Trail based Mini 10 will be running your choice of Windows 7 Starter or Windows XP. Dell will also be offering an option to choose Ubuntu 9.04, however that will not be available at the time of launch.
Sony originally announced the Reader Daily Edition back in mid-August, and the pre-orders came a while later in mid-November. But at the time, the shipping date was simply left as in time for the holiday season.
Well keeping true to their word, albeit cutting it pretty close, the Sony Reader Daily Edition is now shipping. Which basically means that anyone who was brave enough to place a pre-order should expect to see their reader soon.
According to the official announcement, those who placed their order on or before December 20 will have a before Christmas delivery.
And in a little extra good news, Sony has confirmed that the users of the Reader Daily Edition will be able subscribe to The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. Additionally, they are also teasing with more newspapers and magazines that will be “available soon.”
SAN DIEGO – December 21, 2009 – Delivering on its goal of getting the newest edition of its Reader family into customers' hands for the holidays, Sony today announced the Reader Daily Edition™ is now shipping. Pre-orders placed on SonyStyle.com through December 20 should begin arriving to customers within the next 48 hours.
The Reader Daily Edition has garnered intense interest since its unveiling earlier this year, with pre-orders exceeding expectations. The device gives consumers wireless access to Sony's Reader™ Store from most of the U.S., via AT&T's 3G mobile broadband network. Book lovers can browse, purchase and download books as well as select newspapers on the go. There are no monthly fees or transaction charges for the basic wireless connectivity and users still have the option to side load personal documents or content from other compatible sites via USB.
The Reader Daily Edition is optimized for newspapers and offers periodical content in an elegant, easy-to-read format. The Reader Daily Edition's responsive, menu-driven, seven-inch touch screen lets readers quickly and intuitively navigate newspapers, turn pages, highlight text and take notes with the swipe of a finger or by using the included stylus pen.
The following newspapers are currently available for wireless delivery to the Reader: The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. Sony has agreements in place with a host of additional magazine and newspaper publishers, including exclusive offerings from The Wall Street Journal and New York Post, that will be available soon. Key Facts
· The new Reader Daily Edition is now shipping and pre-orders placed on SonyStyle.com through December 20 should begin arriving to customers' homes before Christmas.
· The Reader Daily Edition provides wireless access to Sony's Reader Store from most of the U.S.
· Wireless access is provided by AT&T's 3G mobile broadband network.
· The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune are currently available on the Reader Daily Edition.
· Sony has agreements in place with a host of additional magazine and newspaper publishers that will be available soon
· The Reader Daily Edition's seven-inch wide, full touch screen display provides intuitive navigation and comfortable layout of content, including newspapers and magazines, in portrait or landscape orientation.
For more details on the Reader Daily Edition please visit sonystyle.com; Sony's online destination for book lovers – wordsmoveme.com; or the Sony Electronics Community, which includes a corporate blog, video, photos, polls and profiles.
Today we saw the announcement of the new Atom Pine Trail processors. Unsurprisingly, manufacturers have already had some time to see what they can do with the new chips. Makes sense that some would try to jump the gun and announce some new netbooks while we’re still waiting for the massive amount of netbooks that will likely be announced at CES in a few weeks.
One of the more interesting companies to do this is Fujitsu, which has announced it’s second netbook today. What sets the new Fujitsu LifeBook MH380 from others is it’s strange design. The netbook will certainly look similar to others at first glance, though the touchpad is a bit different. The picture features a secondary, circular touchpad next to the main one. Its purpose is said to be that of scrolling, rather than the more common two-finger or side-of-touchpad approach on other laptops and netbooks. Could prove an interesting innovation, though I think a good multitouch touchpad with two finger scrolling is the best option.
Aside from the secondary touchpad, the LifeBook MH380 has what looks to be the new standard in netbook specs. It has 2GB of RAM, 1.66 Atom N450, 250GB HDD, 10.1-inch 1366x768 screen and the standard webcam, wireless, bluetooth and ports. There’s no price yet, though Fujitsu’s current netbook, the M2011 Mini-Notebook runs for $449, so likely not much more than that. The LifeBook MH380 has no release date, but expect it to be CES where hopefully we’ll be able to test out the circular scroll trackpad.
In light of last weeks release of both Facebook and Google shortened URLs, YouTube has now decided to jump on the bandwagon with its own URL shortener. This time its the very original youtu.be. This will, of course be for shortening only YouTube videos for use on services like Twitter.
If you would like to try out the new feature, go ahead and link up your own YouTube account to Twitter using Autoshare. After that, all of the Tweets that are sent about your recently added video will contain a shortened link.
You can also manually use the URL by:
To use youtu.be manually, simply take a URL like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdeioVndUhs and replace the “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=” with “http://youtu.be/” to get: http://youtu.be/FdeioVndUhs
You always see year-in-review videos or articles or something similar. But this year, Whirled Interactive is stepping it up with a year in review wave. Well, it’s really a video of a wave but whats the difference.
The video shows the highlights of the year inside of the wave with different important people portrayed as contributors to the wave such as Barack Obama or Billy Mays. And it uses the various abilities of wave to show events in 2009 as well. My personal favorite part of the video is referencing the Taylor Swift and Kanye West incident. It occurs at time 0:49 so you can check it out on your own.
I’ll let you watch the video and post your own opinions in the comments. But I figure that in a time where we really don’t know what to do with Google Wave, this is a good use.
For those of you think they can’t update your Nook because you have rooted it, you’re in luck. You can update your nook and it will still be rooted according to the NookDevs team. As another bonus, 1.1 Nooks can still be rooted.
Also, NookDevs sat down with Nookaholic for an interview and they shared a few details on the Nook’s hardware. Nook’s Android build is called “Bravo” and is basically Android 1.5 except for a small tweaking to the WiFi to keep it from shutting off every three hours.
It seems they aren’t taking many steps to prevent the Nook from being rooted. If this continues, I look forward to see what they can do with it. Right now you can get on the internet if you root it but what’s to say you can’t take it farther. I guess its up to the creativity of the hackers.
According to new data from StatCounter, Firefox 3.5 has overtaken Internet Explorer 7 as the most popular browser. As of last week, FF 3.5 took 21.93% of traffic while IE7 had 21.2%, a difference of .87%. Safari 4.0 stays steady around 3% while other browsers hold steady at around 9%.
Electronista accredits Firefox’s growth to “Firefox’s added speed, compatibility and cross-OS support, which includes Linux and Mac OS X where Internet Explorer is using a comparatively aging web engine and is limited to Windows PCs.” But the biggest reason for the recent change is the fact that Internet Explorer shares are divided between Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8. IE7 is still larger than IE8 but that is going to switch in the next few weeks.
If we counted all three versions of Internet Explorer that are mentioned (6, 7, and 8) and compared them to the three versions of Firefox that are mentioned (2, 3, and 3.5), Internet Explorer would still hold the title of most used internet browser.
I personally am waiting for Chrome to jump on the scene and be listed on its own instead of in “Other.” It is currently my browser of choice.
We’ve learned a lot about the Nexus One. We have pictures, we have videos, we even have a potential release date; but what we don’t have is how this popular phone is packaged. Well thanks to djrobrob, we have some pictures of the Nexus One in all its packaging glory.
Unfortunately, we really don’t learn anything new from these pictures except it seems that Google is going for that sort of Apple-esque simplicity. The only thing we learn is what the back of the phone looks like. And that it is actually a bit more interesting then it would seem. The back of the Nexus features a QR code that sends you to a website where you can play the Nexus One-only game of Android-themed memory. Basically, you have to find matching pairs in a variety of different icons.
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According to reports from CrackBerry and other sources, data in BlackBerry’s across North America is said to be down and currently functioning as it should. Browsing the web and using data intensive apps are said to not be working, or working extremely slowly. However, more important services such as email is said to be still up and running. In addition, BlackBerry Messenger is said to be down as well. 
A couple of months ago, the tech community got wind of a patent infringement allegation from a Toronto based company i4i against Microsoft. The basic accusations consisted Microsoft Word’s handling of .xml, .docx, and .docm files were infringing upon a certain XML handling algorithm i4i had patented. However, the buzz died within a few minutes of the story being released.
You always see year-in-review videos or articles or something similar. But this year, 
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