Archive for the ‘Announcements’ Category
This is likely just a bit over-protective, but there are those parents in the world who wouldn’t let their kids out of a bubble if the law permitted such treatment. Well, this is the next best thing for those parents with teenagers just beginning to drive. The MyKey concept will debut in the 2010 Focus Coupe, followed by a myriad of Ford’s other vehicles later on. The system limits the cars top driving speed to 80mph and keeps stereo volume at a comfortable 44% of it’s max output. Another feature concerns seat belts, in which the stereo is muted until everyone in the car is buckled up. Sure, your kids will be safer, but no less annoyed at you as a parent.
AT&T has tried just about everything short of world domination. Awhile back they dropped their partnership with Dish Network to offer their own satellite service. Apparently that didn’t go so well for them. Now they’re looking into establishing a deal with DirecTV to offer something similar. If you’re in the market for a new cable setup, you may want to wait. Apparently AT&T is going to continue offering their current Dish network until January 31st before they switch over to DirecTV. It would probably be best to wait until the switch happens, but unfortunately it’s not always that easy to go without or get a contract you can cancel after that short of a time period.
Starting October 15th, the Nero LiquidTV/TiVo PC box will be available for purchase. The package comes in two options: software only or tuner model. The software only model will run you $99 while the tuner model will cost you $199. Both include a free year of TiVo (afterwards it will cost you $99 per year for the service). While Nero is known for their burning software, it looks like the exporting on this package is going to be limited to portable devices and the like. We’ll have to see how long that lasts or if it will cause the device to not sell as has been expected. It has also been over a year since the announcement of this partnership, so whatever steam there was may be gone by now.
Japan has always been ahead of the United States on technology. Now it’s just getting unfair. While we cry about the limits imposed by Comcast, Japan is enjoying fiber-optic service from KDDI. That means that they’ll be able to download and upload up to 1GB per second. That’s four times more than you can use through Comcast in an entire month! This service will be available for only $56 per month (I currently pay $65 for 20MB download and upload through FIOS) as early as October 1st.
Perhaps it’s time we all move to Japan?
In an attempt to get people hyped about the update that is clearly not happening this week, Microsoft has launched a website that tells you all about the New Xbox Experience. The whole feel is meant to give you that dashboard style look. What’s cool is that each section offers an in depth look at some of the new features, such as Avatars, Parties, and all of the new social content that they’re planning on bringing over to Xbox Live. Unfortunately there still isn’t a date available for when this will all launch, but again, it’s not happening this week.
Keep an eye out on your Xbox and definitely check out the site if you’re curious to see what exactly they have in store for you.
The number of mobile subscriptions in the world has skyrocketed. A recent report done by the UN’s International Telecommunications Union has just announced that by the end of 2008 we should expect the number of cellphone subscriptions to reach over 4 Billion. That’s a huge number considering that there are only an estimated 6.7 billion people in the world total! While this number is mildly altered by those who have multiple lines and phones, it’s quite a jump. The increase is over 700 million from last year’s final number thanks to countries like China, India, and Russia pumping up their economy.
The 2.2 Firmware has hit the developers hands (and the DevTeams hands, who have already cracked it!) and what we’re surprised to see is the choices they’ve made on things to fix and tweak. There is still no copy/paste, but I think the entire iPhone community has given up on that by now. What we have seen however is that they’ve decided to revamp the Safari toolbar. We had no idea that it needed tweaking in the first place!
Apparently the changes include a repositioning the address bar and the search bar. Both will be clearly displayed when you load up Safari so you don’t have to tap to get to the search box. The fresh button is now also inside the address bar itself. This doesn’t seem like anything that monumental or even that great, so we have to wonder, why put this on the top of the list?
What’s that you say? Pre-Order sold out? If you were looking to pre-order the G1 for launch day through T-Mobile, you apparently weren’t looking hard enough. The window to guarantee one of these bad boys on launch day is officially closed, but don’t fret! Rumor has it that only 60,000 units were made available for pre-order. That’s expected to be only 10 percent of the total number that HTC is looking to put out by the end of the year. Many are making the bold assumption that you’ll be able to walk right into a T-Mobile store on October 22nd and simply pick one up.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see!
For those of you wondering why your Xbox Live and Zune service are currently down, we’ve got some bad news for you. There are no updates at all coming for the Xbox Live or Zune service with the schedule maintenance time. That means that all those lovely places you like to visit like Zune Social, Zune.net forums, the Zune Marketplace, and all Xbox Live services will be offline for up to 48 hours (just 24 for the Xbox Live time).
It’s always amusing how upset people get when it comes to simply maintenance time. For once, there isn’t anything hidden behind this. Microsoft just decided to make sure things start working a little better.
Listen up gadget fans! The Guinness record holding EVOLTA batteries are making their way to the United States. These batteries were only available in Japan, but will find their way to our shelves starting this October. You can purchase these wonderful AA or AAA batteries in four ($5) or eight ($9) packs.