Archive for August, 2008
Comcast, we’ve got a problem.
First you decide to invade the privacy of your customer base and establish which ones are torrenting and have slowly been killing their connection. Now you’re going to set a physical bandwidth cap per month?
The press release below issued by Comcast is announcing that their new monthly bandwidth cap is now set at 250GB per account. They’re even nice enough to break this down into the number of emails this would equate!
But the issue is, this doesn’t just hinder pirates, people who legally purchase movies and tv shows may easily find themselves at that cap on a particularly heavy month. What to do!
Read the press release after the jump.
We’ve already had a chance to discuss the new Shuttle desktop that’s coming soon, but we’ve just recently received a price clarification. The Atom based X27 mini PC will be going for a paltry sum of $189. That means that those of you looking for a tiny little computer to hide somewhere inside of your car or to place in those awkward to reach places in your house might just have found exactly what you’re looking for.
Luckily those of you interested in this system won’t have to wait that long. Shuttle is expected to be on schedule to release the X27 mini PC just next month and it looks like it won’t have a problem being found either as it’s being picked up by some larger distributors.
The Google Android Developers Challenge has officially ended! Out of all the developers who entered this first annual event, only fifty made it through to the final round. Out of those fifty, the top ten were awarded $275,000 each and contestants 11-20 received $100,000 each.
Most of the winning finalists took advantage of the location based aspects of the Google Android platform, such as the grand prize winner, Locale. Unlike the iPhone, these apps can run in the background, allowing for Locale to help you set multiple profiles and automatically switch to them depending on where you physically are.
The list of winners will no become the list of apps we’ll all be downloading on launch day. This developers challenge definitely seems like the best idea yet that Google has had for the Android developers.
NVIDIA has apparently offered up quite a bit more to Intel as of late in regard to their SLI technology. After board manufacturers didn’t pick up on the offer to let them use the nForce 200 chip for SLI on their product, NVIDIA has decided to let the Intel X58.
This is pretty big news as it means that every board manufacturer who intends to use th X58 chipset will be implementing SLI. And not just two PCIe x16 slots either. We’re looking at up to 4 allowing for 3-way SLI capabilities and the fourth card running a PhysX engine!
Sony continues to make smaller and smaller Walkman devices for those of you who haven’t yet had the urge to go get an MP3 player with video capabilities. The Walkman NWZ-S639F is the latest in the line of Walkman and offers up an itty bitty little device that does one thing and one thing only: play music.
The sound quality is exactly what you would expect from a Sony Walkman, nice and clean. But that should be kind of expected when that’s all this 16GB portable music player can possible do.
If you have no need for video on your portable player, then check out the Walkman NWZ-S639F. If you do, go get a real media device!
It looks like the biggest issue behind the 3G problems for the iPhone have finally been unraveled!
Sources from inside Apple have revealed that the latest iPhone firmware update (2.0.2) has actually done a little bit of fixing on the iPhone and network side. The problem that many people have been facing was a significant lack of 3G connection. It looks like the reason behind that was actually the fault of the iPhone.
When a phone makes a request to a cell tower for power, it only needs to take a certain amount. Apparently the iPhone was getting a little bit too greedy. The phone was asking for way more power than it actually needed, resulting in those who gained a connection managing to keep it, but those who just made connection with that tower would not be able to get any signal.
The firmware upgrade did make some changes and fix some issues with the iPhone, but until every iPhone is running this firmware, we still may be out of luck.
Samsung has had a chance to release a pretty nifty laptop that they call the X360. The issue with this laptop is, unfortunately revolves around a claim that it’s actually lighter than the Macbook Air. This isn’t exactly true.
While the X360 is very slim (.66 inches at it’s thinnest, 1.2 inches at it’s fattest) and light weight (2.8lbs) it doesn’t beat out the air for the title it holds. Nor does it look that great in manilla. But it is still a great laptop.
The X360 has a 13.3 inch screen running at a max resolution of 1280 x 800, Centrino 2 ULV processor,1-4GB RAM, 64GB/128GB SSD or 120GB HDD, and integrated X4500 graphics. There’s no optical drive, but you do have plenty of accessibility with it’s 7 in 1 card reader, three USB ports, PCI ExpressCard/34, HDMI and VGA output, Ethernet port, and a docking port. And for connections we’ve got WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0+ EDR, and even a 1.3 megapixel camera.
You’ll be able to enjoy this bad boy for about 6 hours with its standard battery, so definitely consider this before your net laptop purchase.
More information regarding Google’s soon to be released mobile operating system have come to light. Today on the Google Android Developers Blog we had a chance to learn a little bit more about how the apps are going to work with Android and what we have to look forward to.
Instead of a store, Google will offer the Android Market, a place where any and all developers can list their apps for use with Google Android immediately and without approval. There will be plenty of measures taken to make sure that you won’t be able to load the wrong version of the app onto your Android based phone (as not all Android capable phones can do the same thing) and of course make the distinction between free and paid (paid apps won’t be in Android Market 1.0, fyi).
We’re nearing the launch of Google Android, so stay tuned for more up to the minute information from your favorite tech blog.
Creative has always been well know for their….creativity. So when it comes to cool little devices, we’re never really surprised at just how far they will go to appease the masses. We usually just squeal with glee at how cool the devices are. At this years IFA, Creative unleashed their new X-FI Go! mobile sound card. This little doohickey is quite the enhancement over their old Soundblaster Play! and easily turns any USB 2.0 port into a full functioning soundcard.
You’ll have plenty of features to take advantage of, including a Crystallizer, CMSS-3D, EAX Advanced HD, OpenAL support, and even 1GB of flash storage. What’s nice about this storage is that it even comes loaded with Alchemy, WaveStudio, and a few other apps. Right now, the X-FI Go! is Singapore only for about $56, but we should see it debuting stateside shortly.
With the expected October launch date for the Nokia N79 and N85 in Europe coming on us fast, it’s high time that the specs of both systems get solidified.
Considering these phones have already received an FCC approval (just no set date as of yet for a stateside launch) we’ve got all the information you’ll need to decide if these phones are for you.
The N85 is a powerhouse with it’s 2.6 in screen, GPS, 5 megapixel camera, N-Gage compatibility, 8GB of storage, WiFi, and a purported battery life of 28-hours when it comes to playing music.
The N79 bumps the N78 out of the way, offering a 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, GPS, 4GB storage, WiFi, swappable covers, and up to 24 hours of music playback.
Either choice seems like a winner in our book.