Sanyo PLC-XL50 Ultra-Short Throw XGA Projector

Sanyo have presented their PLC-XL50 in Korea. The ultra-short throw XGA projector is capable of getting a bright, vibrant 80-inch diagonal image via it's projector when placed only 3 inches from the display surface. The 2,000 ANSI lumen unit looks like a good step forward in projection technology.

iPod Touch 64GB + GPS?

According to tgdaily.com, Apple are going to be enhancing the iPod Touch by upgrading their top of the line model with 64GB of ram and adding GPS capabilities. The article also speculates on the rest of the iPod line too ... it's worth a read.

Dell Vostro 2510 Now Available

Dell have rolled out their Vostro 2510. Their new, slab like, 15.4-inch laptop comes in a two-tone black and red body, incorporates a slot-load drive and a cooling system that vents heat away from the bottom of the notebook. It uses current-generation Core 2 Duo processors, supports a slot-load Blu-ray burner, a minimum 1440x900 resolution display with a built-in webcam, a GeForce 8400M GS for video and a 160GB hard disk. you can increase the display to 1920x1200 and increase storage to 320GB. The laptop won't ship till mid-august but look for more goodies when it becomes available.

Dell Looking At MP3 Player Market

Gizmodo and Engadget amongst other sites are reporting that Dell are looking at getting into the PMP market. Rumours are that it will be the size of the new Nano, called the "Zing" and cost about $100 or £50.

Tom's Guide iPhone Gear Guide

Tom's Guide has produced a gallery of gadgets and gear that those of you who have invested in an iPhone 3G should really look at. Pop on over to www.tomsguide.com to see what's on offer. My faves are the Vaja iVolution SP case and the iClooly iPhone 3G Stand.

iRiver Announce Spinn

iRiver has launched its new PMP. The Spinn has a 3.2″ AMOLED display which is capable of 480 x 272 pixels. The widescreen format player displays video 30 frames per second and also features photo playback, MP3 playback, a built in microphone, an FM tuner, DMB and a text viewer. The device also supports Bluetooth and USB. The device is controlled via a toggle wheel and storage ranges from 4GB up to 16GB. Due out later this year the iRiver Spinn is bound to do very well and get very far on looks alone. For more info visit iRiver

Dell Release Studio Hybrid Desktop

Dell went live with their Studio Hybrid Desktop product page yesterday. The page shows the Studio Hybrid in a range of colors and offers the unit for a base configuration at $499 (UK prices start at £399). A bamboo version is available for an extra $130. The display will add at least $200 and for an extra $50 you can upgrade to 2GB of RAM. Blu-ray and Hi-fi will cost extra. Dell is offering some "Instant Savings" for preconfigured models but no idea if it's gonna be a long term deal. These cool little units can be viewed and configured online at Dell's product page.

Adobe Release Lightroom 2.0

Adobe have released Lightroom 2.0. They've added a few new features and improved the overall performance since its brief public beta. New features in v2.0 include: Local adjustment brush Enhanced organizational tools Volume management Extensible architecture Multiple monitor support Flexible print package functionality Streamlined Photoshop CS3 integration Enhanced output sharpening 64-bit support for Windows® and Mac OS Adobe has also released Camera RAW 4.5 to support the additional Lightroom 2 adjustments within Photoshop and Bridge. Lightroom 2 will cost £175 in the UK and $299 in the US. Upgrades from existing versions will cost £69 and $99. UK Pricing excludes VAT.

Ubuntu on Atom MIDs

Ars Technica writer Ryan Paul interviewed Canonical's Pete Goodall about the company's strategy for Ubuntu in the mobile market. It seems that Canonical are very enthusiastic about Ubuntu in the mobile space. With touchscreens and MID's all being touted, Goodall indicated that the future of sub-notebook based computing will be an interesting one. Goodall demonstrated the Ubuntu Netbook Remix on an Atom-based Acer Aspire One at OSCON last week. The article is worth a read.

Cuil - New Search Engine Launched

Another Search engine concept has joined the pack. Cuil.com (pronounced "cool") sees itself as a real competitor to Google. Calling itself the "biggest search engine on the web." it is run by a team of former Google employees, just how good it is and wether or not it can challenge Google remains to be seen. The engine claims to have already indexed 120 billion Web pages, and according to information on the site, it analyzes each page and organizes search results based on content, relationships and relevence.

Dell To Produce Smartphone

GigaOM are reporting that Dell are looking to produce their own Smartphone. In an interview with Michael Dell, they discussed all sorts of tech, from smartphones, MID's and his management of Dell.

Microsoft Zune Phone

Microsoft are rumoured to be producing a Zune based phone. There are several sites speculating on this at the moment, including crunchgear and gizmodo, but nothing concrete in the way of any announcements from Microsoft. The problem with this kind of speculation is that it leads nowhere and is hardly newsworthy. The iPhone may be making some folks think in a me too way but I'm of the opinion that if you want to make a decent alternative to the iPhone and its competitors, it'll take some serious design thinking and innovation and a look at the few mistakes made in the design and implementation of existing models.

E-Ball Concept PC

Apostol Tnokovski, a designer from macedonia decided to create the smallest PC ever made. He decided on a shape which was spherical in nature. The concept, which is called, E-Ball will hopefully feature a dual core processor, 250-500GB HDD, 2GB of RAM, an integrated graphics and sound card, 2 x 50W speakers, a HD-DVD or Bluray recorder , wireless optical mouse, laser keyboard, LAN and WLAN card, modem, Web cam and integrated LCD projector. The E-Ball PC also uses a paper holder, with the paper being able to act like a screen on which you can project movies or your display visuals. The E-Ball will use Microsoft Windows OS. For more info visit devicedaily.com and to more of Apostols work visit poce.deviantart.com

Toshiba Unveil Netbook Concept

Toshiba's has revealed a prototype for a netbook type product which will have a 5.6" touch screen display, Microsoft Vista, a 64GB SSD, GPS chipset and an Intel Atom processor. From the way the device looks, it will be in a different class from units like the Eee PC and other netbook type products.

UK ISPs Agree To File Sharing Notice Plan

The BPI, which represents the UK's largest labels, and six UK ISPs (BSkyB, Virgin, Orange, Tiscali, Carphone Warehouse, and BT) have agreed that the ISPs will forward letters received from BPI investigators on to customers who are suspected of illegal file-sharing. The ISPs have promised to work toward reducing illegal downloads. The agreement memo, however includes no enforcement mechanism. Telecoms regulator Ofcom has stated that they will work with the necessary parties for dealing with repeat offenders.

Yahoos DRM Legacy...

Yahoo are closing its Yahoo! Music Store for good. They are also taking their DRM license key servers offline on September 30, 2008. Problem is, that by doing so, they will be rendering any of the DRM based music bought through their store obsolete. Chalk one up for the protectionists in this one, congrats you just screwed a whole bunch of people out of their legally acquired music.

COWON Unveil iAudio P5 Media Player

COWON’s new 5-inch iAudio P5 Portable Media Player was unveiled today. The Touchscreen based 800×480-pixel PMP comes with UI support for Widgets and Haptics, it also features T-DMB and Bluetooth. The P5 comes in black, platinum or red versions with 40GB, 60GB and 80GB of storage. It also supports WMV, MPG, OGM, DivX, Xvid, MPEG4, WMV9, AVI, ASF, MP3, WMA and AC3.

British Library To Put Oldest Christian Bible Online

The British Library is intending to put the world's oldest Christian Bible online. The Codex Sinaiticus, was written in Greek over 1,600 years ago. The Codex is a controversial book, in that it contains parts which are not in the sanctioned bibles. Discovered close to Mr. Sinai, in St. Catherine’s Monastery in 1844 The Codex is shared between the monastery, Russia, Germany, and at the British Library. Thanks to digital trends for the lead.

Google Launch Knol

Google have launched Knol, a knowledge based service where users can share knowledge in a wiki type approach. Knol is different from traditional Wikis in that it places a heavy emphasis on accountability. It also intends to pay users for the use of their submissions via adsense based revenues.

Enzyme Design Icare Motorbike Concept

French design company Enzyme Design, has shown a motorcycle concept which would be right at home in a batman movie. The Icare would feature a 1.8 litre Honda flat 6 engine that would make any bike fan run at the mouth.

Crunchgear To Build Web Tablet

Having lost patience with Apple and other manufacturers, Crunchgear has decided to seek help in building a webtablet that is ... as thin as possible, runs low end hardware and has a single button for powering it on and off, headphone jacks, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, and a microphone. It will have Wifi, maybe one USB port, a built in battery, half a Gigabyte of RAM, a 4-Gigabyte solid state hard drive. Data input is primarily through an iPhone-like touch screen keyboard. It runs on linux and Firefox. It would be great to have it be built entirely on open source hardware, but including Skype for VOIP and video calls may be a nice touch, too. This unit will not be anything other than a web centric device, so don't expect it to run word, office or photoshop. It'll be interesting to see how far they get.

Rumours Abound Of Macbook Touch

Sites like MacDailyNews and Gizmodo are spinning with news of a new Macbook based tablet which features touch technology. Appleinsider have also posted a consideration for this concept in this post. Time will tell...

Shuttle Unveil XPC Barebone SX48P2 Deluxe

Shuttle have announced their XPC Barebone SX48P2 Deluxe which is capable of supporting up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM across four sockets. This is all thanks to Intels X48 Express chipset. The SX48P2 Deluxe also supports Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors and dual PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots. Gotta like their approach to things...

Pitvertising - Right Guard Goes Nutty

Ananova is reporting on a new form of advertising which is being pioneered funnily enough by Right Guard. Called Pitvertising, it uses displays placed in the armpits of roving "Pitvertisers" who were then unleased on the unsuspecting public in London. Peoples reactions were purported to be mixed, with some impressed and others merely bemused. I guess those who stare too much at someones artpit can be called a "Pitvert".

Gartner Reporting Future Death Of Computer Mouse

Gartner are reported to be predicting that the mouse will become obsolete in home computing use within five years. With facial and gstural recognition technologies being touted by Sony, Panasonic and other companies as well as touch and haptic based input systems also seeing some uptake in the market this may be true to some level. I can certainly see pen based computer input being popular amongst artists. The BBC have posted a news article which discusses some of the research.

AMD Prepare Bobcat

Despite their poor financial performance recently AMD have revealed that they will be revealing their rival to Intel’s Atom CPU later this year. The chip, codenamed ‘Bobcat’, will have a 1GHz clock speed, 128KB of L1 cache and 256KB of L2 cache and will come with an on-board memory controller for 400MHz DDR2 RAM.

Wii Passes X-Box 360 As Best Selling Game Machine

According to figures published at Bloomberg, Nintendo is now the top selling game machine. In June, stores sold 405,500 PlayStation 3s and 219,800 Xbox 360s compared to 666,000 Wii consoles. A total of 10.9 million Wiis have been sold in the US since it's launch.

Dell To Ship Systems With Ubuntu 8.04

Dell will begin shipping the XPS M1530N and Studio 15N with Ubuntu 8.04 sometime in the next few weeks. It'll be interesting to see the stats on these machines in this configuration a few months from now.

Opera Mobile 9.5 Public Beta Released.

The Opera Mobile 9.5 web browser is now avaialble as a public beta release. Although a beta, I'm going to install it as I absolutely hate IE for Windows Mobile. The Beta includes great features like support for double-tap zoom, landscape flip, off-line page save, tab-like browsing, auto-URL complete, and a Google-search bar. PhoneArena and CNET have produced first impressions, check them out.

Asus Eee PC With 30GB HD

The chinese Asus website has revealed an Eee PC configuration which has a built in 30GB Hard Drive. The article at electronista reveals no release date, but the unit should be available in both black and white Linux versions, and a black-only Windows XP model.

Crunchgear Demo of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed For iPhone

Crunchgear have a video of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed game for the iPhone. The video looks like there has been a lot of work put into the game. It also appears to have a lot of narratives too. The Game is scheduled to be released sometime this fall. September 16 the it the date being talked about, looks like the iPhone might become a bit of a game platform finally.

Samsung Announces New Cameras

Samsung have announced a number of new cameras. Their new NV100HD offers 14.7 megapixels, a 28mm Wide angle lens and can record 720p HD video. It also features a touch screen and has optical image stabilization. The new NV9 features a 5x optical zoom, 10.2 megapixel sensor and has the capability to play MP3 music files. The new Samsung L310W features a 13.6 megapixel camera and has a 28mm equivalent wide angle lens. Their S1070 compact digital camera, features a 10.2 megapixel sensor, a 3x optical zoom and a 2.7" LCD screen. The L201 is a 10.2 megapixel compact digital camera which feature Samsung's Auto Contrast Balance which will brighten dark areas in high-contrast and back-lit scenes. It can also charge batteries directly in the camera.

Intel Security Flaw Revealed

Kris Kaspersky claims that he's found a flaw in Intel's processors which would allow a hacker to compromise a computer using JavaScript or TCP/IP. The Flaw is present in the chipset meaning that it is irrelevent what operating system the computer is running. Kris indicates he'll unveil the flaw at the Hack In The Box conference in Malaysia this October.

Sony Reveals New 80GB PS3

Sony are releasing a new cersion of their 80GB PS3. The new unit will sell for around $399 US, but will have one drawback. It will not be backwardly compatible with older games.

Apple File Against Psystar

Mac-clone manufacturer Psystar has been served legal papers from Apple, which alleges violation of its shrink wrap license, trademark and also arguing copyright infringement. The suit, filed at the federal district court of the northern district of California will be an interesting one with Apple fighting to stop Psystar. Psystar will be arguing that Apple’s license policy contravenes US monopoly law. Apple if might be shooting themselves in the foot if Psystar are able to argue this point effectively. The outcome should prove interesting to other third partys who fall foul of Apples protectionist policies.

Nik Software Announces Silver Efex Pro™

Nik Software announced their new Silver Efex Pro photographic plug-in for use with Adobe® Photoshop® and Apple® Aperture™. Silver Efex Pro is an advanced solution which allows users to create black-and-white photographs which closely emulate real world films. It uses advanced imaging algorithms to protect against unwanted artifacts, and emulates 18 black-and-white film types. Silver Efex Pro also features a state-of-the-art grain engine that according to Nik software, "truly mimics the silver halide process and creates the highest quality black-and-white images possible from scanned or digital color photographs." For more information about Silver Efex Pro, and to download a free 15-day fully functional trial version, please visit silverefexpro.

Google Anonymizes YouTube Data

Google will anonymize an user identifiable data in the database they hand over to third partys. Much of this is because of the cry from consumer privacy and advocacy groups over privacy issues. Viacom relented due to the outcry and not wanting to look like the bad guys in this legal battle. Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other privacy advocates argued that disclosing users' usage histories and IP information amounted to a violation of the Video Privacy Act of 1988. Tread carefully big corp ... you don't want to piss off the little guy.

Intel Launches Centrino 2

Intel's Centrino 2 was unveiled today with the release of white papers. press releases, and OEM partner announcements. Intel is introducing five new dual-core processors, from the P8400 to the T9600. All new processors will be powered by their new Mobile Intel 45 Express chipset, the WiFi Link 5000 series, and the Intel 82567 gigabit Ethernet controller. This new chipset has incorporated improvements that should boost both performance and battery life. For more information visit arstechnica.com. Acer, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, Sony and Toshiba followed with announcements of new laptops based upon the new chipsets.

Phase One Intro 60 Megapixel Back

Phase One have announced their new P65+ 60 megapixel digital back. This unit is a full frame, 645 medium format back, which can shoot at 1 FPS, an uses a proprietary sensor built. The back will retail at $39,990 and will no doubt only be affordable for industrial level photographers.

iPhone 3G Big Hit For Apple

Apple have purportedly sold over a million 3G based iPhones this weekend and up to 10 million iPhone apps. Launched in 21 countries, the iPhone 3G lead to long lines at many stores that lasted throughout the weekend. This all making it one of the most successful device launches to date. There were however many problems, activation issues and system crashes. Indications are that sales in the US will slow down but with over 50 countries still awaiting their launch dates there will most likely be more records broken.

Konami Sues Harmonix, Viacom, and MTV Games

First Gibson and now Konami are sueing companies they think are violating their patents covering "simulating a musical performance," and "simulated musical instruments" respectively. Both Rock Band and Guitar Hero seem to be affected by these patents. The suits which were filed Marshall, Texas, are looking for big payouts. Seems like the flaws in the US patent system are making yet more lawyers rich.

iPhone 2.0 Software Launched

Apple have officially released Version 2.0 of their iPhone Firmware. For those of you who want to know more, visit Apple at the software update page to get more information.

iPhone 3G Launch Day Woes

Apple and 02 were faced with quite a few upset customers today when 02's systems couldn't cope with the launch day load. Many of the buyers had to wait for an inordinately long time to get their sets activated. Carphone Warehouse had to revert to using their own systems when 02's couldn't cope. The Apple Store in Regent Street ended up losing a few customers when they couldn't even access the 02 activation servers.

New Zealand Sells First iPhone 3G's

This isn't really true, but if you count retail store sales as the only legit form of sale, then the statement stands. Twenty two year old Jonny Gladwell was the first owner of the first retailed iPhone 3G. He apparently waited for over 48 hours to get his unit.

Nokia Acquires NAVTEQ

After Shareholders and EU regulators gave the go-ahead for the NAVTEQ aquisition by Nokia. The $8.1 billion deal means that Nokia and NAVTEQ will make a killer combination when it comes to combining the mobile experience with navigation and information technologies.

DNS Security Patch Released

According to digitaltrends.com, a security patch has been released which patches an error in the DNS System that can allow criminals to redirect folks to fake web pages, even if they typed the right address. The error is system independent and will require patching on any machine you are using. Dan Kaminsky of http://www.doxpara.com/ discovered the flaw earlier this year and has worked with a number of vendors on this security patch.

Canadian iPhone 3G Plan Updated

As reported earlier this week Canadians have been more than a little annoyed at Rogers since they announced their expensive iPhone 3G price plans. It appears that Rogers have responded with a deal which offers 6GB of data for $30 a month. The deal will be available for buyers who activate their iPhone with a three year contract before August 31. Read the press release here.

AspireOne On Sale

Aspireone.net are reporting that the Acer AspireOne is now on sale in the US. They've even gone so far as to order one. for those of you who are wondering what an AspireOne is visit the ultraportables website at AspireOne.

Pioneer Develops 400GB Blu-ray Disc

Pioneer has developed a 16-layer read-only Blu-ray disc capable of storing a phenomenal 400GB. At this moment only dual-layer 50GB discs are avaialble, however there were announcements about 100GB and 125 GB discs. Pioneer have indicated that the technology will also be applicable to recordable discs. There are issues however in that the industry will have to create commercial drives capable of reading from 16 layer discs. So not any time soon then...

Sony Release PS3 2.41 Firmware.

When Sony released PS3 firmware update v2.40 last week, they ended up taking it down again because the XMB wouldn’t display after the update was installed on a few boxes. Sony have fixed the issue and released the 2.41 update today.

Hasselblads 50 Megapixel Camera

Hasselblad are preparing to release their new 50-megapixel high-end digital camera, the H3DII-50. This baby will set you back a massive $37K and has been designed with the high-end commercial photographer in mind. The H3DII-50 features 3-inch display and Kodaks 50-megapixel CCD sensor, which generates a 300MB file at 1fps. Due out in October, this beauty won't be on my buying list anytime soon, unless of course some nice person out there is feeling extremely generous...

Averatech All-In-One

Averatech have launched their All-in-one PC. The design is based around the form-factor we've seen previously in the iMac and the Dell XPS One. A display case which also houses everything a PC needs inside. The Averatec All-In-One has has a 22-inch display and has 2GB of RAM, a 320GB HDD, built-in HDTV tuner and like the iMac and XPS One features a slot loading optical drive. The All-In-One is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 CPU and uses an NVIDIA GeForce 8400 for graphics. It is available for purchase now at an MSRP of $1249. For more info visit the

iPhone 3G Sells Out In UK

O2 UK started to take pre-orders for the iPhone 3G earlier today. The O2 online shop ran out of stock on the 16GB black iPhone 3G within 3 hours and shortly thereafter they ran out of the 8GB unit as well. This doesn't mean you can't get hold of one, it just means O2 can't get you one on release day. You can still try Carphone Warehouse and other suppliers of O2's products.

Ars Technica - Outsourcing Considerations

Ars Technica have posted an article by John Timmer, which hits very close to my own opinions on outsourcing. The article mentions some research which has been posted. The report was written and compiled by Jonathan Whitaker, Claes Fornell and Mayuram S. Krishnan. The gist of the report is that customer facing support services which are outsourced can create ill will from customers who experience the poor level of support offered by such services. In Ars Technicas words "The authors suggest this can, in part, be explained by the lack of specialized expertise in those providing customer support. ... Ostensibly, the potential payoff is that saved costs will be passed on to consumers, which will allow them to perceive the company as providing better value. The reality is that there was no correlation between outsourcing and perceived value; the authors suggest the companies are simply using the savings to increase their profits instead. As a result, from the consumer's perspective, outsourcing is a complete negative. " Talk about obvious, but the idiots who push outsourcing just don't seem to get it. The savings made by outsourcing are shortsighted at best. The article and the paper are worth a looksee.

Nikon D3 Firmware Update

Nikon have released a firmware upgrade for the D3. there are no major bug fixes other than one for a dead battery issue that some people have been experiencing with both the D3 and D300. There are however a a few additions worthy of consideration. Modifications enabled with upgrade of A and B firmware to v.2.00 Images captured with "Rotate tall", in the playback menu, set to "On", are not automatically rotated for display immediately after capture (image review). The following changes and additions have been made to "f4: Assign FUNC.Button > FUNC. Button + dials" ; "f5: Assign preview button > Preview + command dials", and "f6: Assign AE-L / AF-L button > AE-L / AF-L + command dials" menus in Custom Settings: The "Choose image area" option has been separated into two options, "Choose image area (FX / DX / 5:4)" and "Choose image area (FX / DX)" A new "Shooting menu bank" option has been added. When "Choose image area (FX / DX / 5:4)" or "Choose image area (FX/DX)" is selected and the function button (Fn) is pressed, the image area setting is displayed in the top control panel, in the shooting information display, and at the bottom of the viewfinder. A "Copyright information" item has been added to the setup menu. When "Copyright information" is enabled, the copyright symbol ( © ) is shown in the shooting info display. "Recent settings" can now be displayed in place of "My Menu". The virtual horizon can now be displayed with shooting in LiveView mode. The "Vignette control" setting can now be confimed in shooting information. The "Vignette control" item in the shooting menu now supports all types of G- and D-type lenses, except DX and PC lenses. The "Vignette control" compensation value has been optimized for shooting with "Active D-Lighting" the shooting menu. Electronic analog exposure displays are now shown in the control panel and shooting info display while the exposure compensation setting is being applied. The degree of the "High ISO NR" setting can now be confirmed in the shooting info display while the "High ISO NR" setting item, in the shooting menu, is being applied. Design of the FX-format icon in the "Choose image area" setting has been modified. Ankara, Riyadh, Kuwait, and Manamah have been added to the "Time zone" options for the "World Time" item in the setup menu. When a GPS device is used and no heading information is available, --.--° is now displayed for the "Position > Heading" option in the "GPS" item in the setup menu. When shooting in LiveView mode using Camera Control Pro 2 (ver. 2.2.0) or later with a PC-E lens, the aperture setting can now be adjusted from the computer. Autofocus performance has been improved. Auto White Balance performance has been improved. An issue that, in some rare circumstances, caused the battery indicator to blink, regardless of actual battery charge, has been resolved. Errors in the German help displays have been corrected. For further information regarding the new firmware, download the supplemental document for the new firmware, D3_FirmUp200_Jp.pdf. The supplemental document for A firmware version v.1.1.0, and B firmware v.1.11, D3_FirmUp110_111_En.pdf, is also available. Visit Nikon for information and to download the update.

Canadian iPhone Pricing Plan Is Robbery

Looks like Canada will be getting the iPhone on July 11th, 2008. Rogers Wireless and Apple will release the iPhone 3G into the Canadian market, but at higher prices than pretty much any where you can think of. The 8GB model can be had for just $199, but it will require a three-year service agreement with Rogers Wireless. If you want the 16G, it’ll cost you only $100 more. The big problem lies in their pricing plan, the smallest plan will start at a pricey $60 a month and this doesn’t include caller ID, licensing, access fees and taxes. The four iPhone 3G plans are as follows: $60/month: 150 daytime minutes, unlimited evenings and weekends, 400MB data, 75 text messages, visual voicemail $75/month: 300 daytime minutes, unlimited evenings and weekends, 750MB data, 100 text messages, visual voicemail $100/month: 600 daytime minutes, unlimited evenings and weekends, 1GB data, 200 text messages, visual voicemail $115/month: 800 daytime minutes, unlimited evenings and weekends, 2GB data, 300 text messages, visual voicemail Additionals are as follows: $15 a month will get you Caller ID, WhoCalled, Caller Ring Trax, 2500 text messages, and 2500 call forwarding minutes. For an extra $20 a month, you get much the same, except there are 10000 text messages and 6:00pm early evenings. Add the $60 monthly plan with the $15 value pack, system access fee, 911 fee, and taxes, and you get about $100 a month. Going over your minute plan will cost you $0.35 a minute, more than some prepaid services. If you go over your data plan, it'll cost you $0.50 per megabyte. This has all generated a big outcry and spawned several sites, including Ruinediphone.com. It remains to be seen what effect this outcry will have, but you can be certain of one thing, anyone one, who has any sense will not even consider getting one if they like texting or viewing online media and songs. Stick with getting an older iPhone, or even buy one offline... Even better save your money and stick with a phone which supports Java, Flash and other industry standard services and applications. Thanks to an article over at futurelooks.com for much of the information in this post.

Vista VS OS-X

For those of you who are interested or even bothered, ExtremeTech have an ongoing discussion happening at their forums. It's an interesting and honest comparison, however it's bound to ruffle some feathers.

Sony's 2.4 Firmware Bricking PS3's

Sony have pulled their newest firmware update due to reports of it bricking a number of PS3's. No news on when this will be fixed or updated. Sony indicated "As has been reported on many gaming blogs and websites, we have temporarily taken Firmware v2.40 offline. We've received a limited number of calls from consumers experiencing an issue with installing the system software update on their PS3. ... We are working diligently to isolate the problem for those few consumers and to identify a solution before we put the firmware back up."

Acer G24 LCD Claims Highest Contrast Title

Acers new Predator-themed 24-inch G24 LCD display claims to offer the world's highest contrast ratio: 50,000:1. The G24 is designed to complement the orange-and-black look of the new Aspire Predator gaming PCs and comes with technologies designed to reduce ambient light reflection and backlight diffusion. It offers 1,920 by 1,200-pixel native resolution, HDMI, Acer's OD overdrive technology which is designed to improve grey-to-grey transition times. Acer also claim that the display has a 2 ms response time, Acer image enhancement and color management tech and of course DVI. No news on price or availability...

Nikon Release D700 DSLR

Nikon have just released the D700 digital SLR camera. This DSLR is aimed at the Prosumer and is based upon technologies found in their D3, boasting pro-level performance and an extensive array of features and innovations. It also features the Nikon FX-format CMOS sensor, Nikon’s EXPEED Image Processing System, Nikon’s renowned 51-point auto focus system with 3D Focus Tracking and two Live View shooting modes. Having seen Live View in use on the D3, it is something I wish I had on my Canon DSLR.

Motion Computing Launches C5 and F5 Tablets.

Motion Computing has launched a couple of new tablets. The C5 mobile clinical assistant (MCA) and the F5 semi-rugged tablet PC look to be units aimed clearly at specific applications. The C5 is a tablet which features integrated mobile broadband and solid state drive (SSD) options that will make it look very appealing to users and buyers with medical applications in mind. certainly The F5 is a semi rugged tablet which will do well in industrial and commercial environments. It also comes with an additional 80GB hard drive without any additional costs. For more information on both devices visit Motion Computing.

Viacom To Get YouTube User Data

Viacoms $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube, has its first victim, us... Viacom had asked for the source code for the search functions that power Google and YouTube, and for the source code for YouTube's new "Video ID" program. It also asked for a copy of every video ever removed from the site, the databases containing information on every video ever hosted at YouTube, and a copy of every private video. The had some sense and "only" allowed Viacom to get a copy of every video removed from Youtube and the databases, which is like a kick in the teeth to the users because the database covers everything we've viewed on the sites. Civil liberties groups are already crying foul ... can't blame them really. Big brother isn't watching us, the media is...

Xandros Acquires Linspire

Growth in the Linux business - that is, the Linux business desktop - is slow. But determined companies can make things happen (and grow somewhat faster too?) as long as they keep their eye(s) on the ball. I remember when Xandros was a struggling little startup, but oh how times have changed. We still think that Xandros is the most business-facing Linux distribution (with kudos to Linspire and Red Hat as well, no doubt), and Xandros continues to remain focused on expanding its footprint on business desktops. The acquisition of Linspire (another Debian-based Linux distribution) helps narrow the somewhat bewildering field of choices confronting any business considering a jump to Linux. Choosing something other than Windows or Mac OS X has never been risk free, but we really think that Linux is a safe bet these days especially with Microsoft Office file compatibility so well covered by OpenOffice for Linux.