June 5, 2008
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Today T-Mobile [FRA: DTE] debuted a new version of their popular Sidekick mobile device, offically called the Sidekick LX Tony Hawk Edition. The Sidekick, which is made by Sharp, has found immense popularity in younger demographics, so a Tony Hawk version -- he's the professional skateboarder with a line of successful eponymous video games -- shouldn't hurt. This Sidekick is more or less the same as the old ones, with a few notable additions. The most salient is a feature called "play and share," which goes along with the also-new video recording functionality. The Tony Hawk Edition comes in signature blue and gray, with the Tony Hawk symbol, a bird skull, emblazoned all over it.
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June 5, 2008
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Sony [NYSE: SNE] rolled out a fistful of sweet-looking home entertainment products today, starting with some uber-thin LCD televisions that were first leaked in April. Never ones to name anything with actual, memorable words, Sony marched out the XBR8 series, the flaships of which are the 55-inch KDL-55XBR8
and the 46-inch KDL-46XBR8, which both make use of Sony's Triluminos three-color LED backlight, as well as much-sought-after 120Hz refresh rate, the Bravia Engine 2, and 10-bit processing.
Also in Sony's quiver were the new 70-inch KDL-70XBR7 and 40-inch KDL-40XBR7, which are a part of the XBR7 series. Below that series comes the XBR6 crop, which feature 32- to 52-inch sets. These new TVs represent the best of Sony's efforts to date, and reportedly feature improved color reproduction and enhanced black, thanks to a nifty little technology called ACE PRO -- it allows different areas of the screen to vary in brightness depending on which colors they're depicting, reducing unneccessary brightness that can wash out dark colors and blow out highlights. Complementing the new TVs is a little added functionality for Sony's Bravia Internet Video Link, which now supports YouTube. No word on prices, but Sony claims the LCDs will be available by summer's end.
In other Sony news, a new home theatre set (the HST-S100) has the tech blogosphere in relative disbelief. Made up of five tiny, strawberry-sized speakers -- with no central receiver -- the system integrates a 450W amplifier, 3 HDMI ports and Sony Digital Media Port into the back of the subwoofer, making for a pretty clutter-free arrangement. Whether they sound good remains to be seen, but for $700, they should.
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June 4, 2008
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According to Mac rumor site the Unofficial Apple Weblog, Apple seems to be poised to release the successor to its Leopard operating system, aka OS 10.5, at its World Wide Developer Conference later this month. The update to 10.6 will reportedly be called "Snow Leopard," as it will mainly be a revision and improvement on the current 10.5 release, with few totally new features. Those improvements run the gamut from "security and stability" to speed and performance, as well as another salient change: lack of support for Apple's old PowerPC chips (the G3, G4 and G5.) If Snow Leopard is indeed a clean, 64-bit Intel-only OS, it could mark the end of the once-controversial chip transition, and the end of the development of Universal applications. That probably won't be a welcome change to a lot of legacy Mac users, but then, Apple has always marched to the beat of its own drum -- not to that of focus groups.
Also in Mac-land are a handful of rumors about the next-generation iPhone, which will reportedly add true GPS and 3G speeds to an otherwise-unchanging revision. The new iteration will reportedly be available for the first time in Japan, on the carrier Softbank, leading many analysts to wonder if there's any market for the Western genius phone in a typically domestic-gadget-loving country like Japan. Whispers about the phone's new enclosure have also been revived, with some blogs resurrecting earlier-discredited leaks which report that the new iPhone will be slighty thicker in size, glossy black on the backside, with squared bezel edges and less chrome trim along the face.
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June 4, 2008
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At Computex this week, Foxconn [TPE: 2354] showed off a fancy little pico projector that is nary bigger than a carton of cigarettes. It's called the PD-W1001, and while it's not 1080p by any stretch, it does deliver a serviceable 854x480 resolution and 25Lm. It's powered by a 0.3-inch Texas Instruments DLP chip, which delivers its image in WVGA, and keeps the form factor down to a scant 65 grams. The utility of a small, but ultimately low-res, projector is limited at present, but as a proof of concept, Foxconn's PD-W1001 is an impressive feat that bodes well for the portability of fullly-equipped projectors in the future.
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June 4, 2008
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Today AMD made official its line of "Puma" notebook processors, which are AMD Turion X2 Ultra dual-core mobile processors with ATI Radeon HD 3000 graphics baked in. That's a mouthful, sure, but it translates into a consumer-grade laptop chip that will compete with Intel's delayed Centrino 2 chip, and AMD says it's making deals with a whole bunch of notebook makers: Acer, Asus, Clevo, Fujitsu, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, MSI, NEC and Toshiba, to name a few. While the chips are aimed primarily at consumers, AMD also notes in their press release that the chip will be an anchor to their business-oriented offerings as well.
Making a big to-do over the integrated Radeon graphics, AMD asserts that it's taking advantage of a new, "historic market shift" occuring in the mobile computing sector. That shift: towards do-it-all notebooks that are powerhouses of entertainment and graphics processing, but don't neccessarily tip the scales at desktop-replacement weight. In something of a backhanded compliment to Microsoft, they note one such "graphically intensive" task as the use of Windows Vista, the slick UI of which has been criticized as a hog of processor power.
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June 3, 2008
07:41 pm | 0 recommendations | 1 comment
In a small but significant announcement out of Cupertino today, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) announced that the band Radiohead will finally be available via the iTunes music store, complete with a la carte pricing. Radiohead made international tech news when it decided to release its last album, In Rainbows, on its website on January 1, 2008, asking buyers to donate whatever price they saw fit before downloading. Many users donated $0, but the album was still a sizable success by music industry standards; Radiohead refused to release sales numbers, but the album shot to the top of charts in the US and UK. Their do-it-yourself mantra might have set the stage for other prominent artists (like Madonna) to leave their record labels and strike out on their own mission to create, sell, and distribute music with private funding, and without a middleman.
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June 3, 2008
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One of Microsoft [NASDAQ: MSFT] Vista's most lauded features, called Sideshow, allows users to access their PC through another Windows device and retrieve documents, e-mail, and other information through mini-applications called Gadgets. Microsoft has just announced that it will expand that functionality to work with its Windows Mobile platform, placating the numerous Windows power-users who've been following rumors of the crossover for months. SidesShow for Windows Mobile Development is in early Beta -- version 0.01 -- and can be installed on Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices that use the Microsoft Bluetooth stack and have .Net Compact Framework installed. Ideally, all those ingredients should add up to your smartphone serving as a SideShow device when in Bluetooth range of your PC, but real-world trials have yet to be seen.
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June 3, 2008
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Seeing the incredible consumer interest in "netbooks" -- aka UMPCs, sub-notebooks, or "nettops" -- Intel [NASDAQ: INTC] has announced it will begin production of solid-state hard drives with the "value notebook and desktop" sector in mind. The SSD drives, competitors of the recently-announced SanDisk SSDs, will be produced first in 8GB and 4GB versions, to be followed by a 16GB iteration sometime in Q4. The P-Z230 model drives are one-quarter the size of a standard laptop 1.8-inch laptop hard drive, and use drastically less power than conventional drives. Since Intel has not released pricing information about the P-Z230, there's no way to know how the line's introduction will either help or hinder the pricepoints of the future crop of UMPCs.
Part of the attraction of SSDs for UMPC manufacturers isn't just their small form-factor and their low power consumption, but also their durability. Because many of these machines are oriented both at ultra-mobile users and school children -- admittedly a tough pair of demographics to please simultaneously -- the machines have to be rugged enough to withstand falls and bumps, but capacious enough to store a meaningful amount of data. That equilibrium hasn't quite been met yet, but hopefully Intel's entrance into the market will help bolster its arrival.
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June 3, 2008
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At an event in New York City today, Westinghouse (OTC: TOSBF) announced the availability of its refreshed set of LCD televisions, previously debuted at CES in January. The new displays almost unanimously sport what the company calls a “piano black” aesthetic: dark, glossy screen bezels with clear plastic trim and low-profile buttons along the screen's side. The TX series boasts the company's high-end offerings, which are all 1080p and come in 42, 47 and 52-inch sizes. The cheapest of the bunch, the 42-inch at $1099, has a little brother: the 40-inch VK-40F580D, which is identical in price, but includes a DVD player slickly tucked below the screen. Why no Blu-Ray? Company reps said the regressive licensing fees on Blu-Ray technology would have made a combo LCD/Blu-Ray player too expensive for consumer taste. That was also their answer to notable absence of any TVs with a 120Hz refresh rate; while other companies have stepped up to the plate to introduce 120Hz TVs, Westinghouse maintains that customers aren't interested in the $200+ price jump that the technology would require.
Scaling up from the $1099 pricepoint, Westinghouse has estimated street prices for the 47-inch and 52-inch at about $1600 and $2000, respectively. The company's 720p selections, that are offered in SK, PT and W series, are available in various sizes between 16 and 32 inches. Interestingly, company reps told FastCompany.com that the models in their product line receiving the most attention were the modestly-priced (and sized) 32-inchers of the SK series, which retail for about $750 (or $850 with built-in DVD player). The reason is anybody's guess; higher fuel costs, a stagnating economy, or a surfeit of houses that already have a primary big-screen television. In any case, Westinghouse seems to have their specs right and their prices at bargain level; whether the TVs perform commensurately remains to be seen.
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June 2, 2008
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Today chipmaker Qualcomm [NASDAQ: QCOM] debuted a concept slider mini-notebook computer that could cost as little as $300 and offer 3G wireless access. The device, to be produced by Taiwanese manufacturer Inventec, takes advantage of ultra-small and low-power chips with its slim and compact design. At present, the device runs Linux, but one Qualcomm executive is enthusiastic about the coming Windows Mobile 7. Windows Mobile's next generation of builds will be more laptop friendly, according to the executive, as the chipsets for mobile phones and laptops begin to converge.
Qualcomm hopes that Windows Mobile 7 will make its Snapdragon mobile chipsets more competitive with big-name chipmakers like Intel, AMD and Via, as sub-notebook devices begin to make use of high-power smartphone chipsets. Snapdragon chipsets are already at work in devices from Mio, HTC [TPE: 2498] and Samsung [SEO: 005930], but Qualcomm intends for a broader presence come next year's CES in January of 2009. Thanks to this glimpse at Qualcomm's concept sub-notebook, consumers gained insight into Microsoft's [NASDAQ: MSFT] roadmap for Windows Mobile, and their intentions for it as a mobile computing -- not merely a communcations -- operating system.
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