4K and 8K are an emerging standard for resolution in digital film and computer graphics. The name is derived from the horizontal resolution, which is approximately 4,000 and 8,000 pixels. This designation is different to the standard resolution designations which are represented by the vertical pixel count; for example 720p and 1080p. 4K represents the horizontal resolution because there are numerous aspect ratios used in film — so while the horizontal resolution stays constant, the vertical resolution depends on the video source.

4K = Ultra Definition Television

There are several different resolutions that qualify as 4K.

QFHD (3840×2160): Quad Full High Definition (QFHD), at 3840 x 2160 pixels, doubles the 1080p high-definition television standard in both the vertical and horizontal dimensions. So it is like having 4 Tvs with 1080p.

Digital film standards
Full Aperture 4K: 4096×3112, Pixels: 12,746,752
Academy 4K: 3656×266, Pixels: 9,739,584
Digital cinema 4K: 4096×1714, Pixels: 7,020,544

YouTube format
Youtube 4K: 4096×2304 pixels (16:9) and 4096×3072 (4:3) (Registered users)

4K monitors
Toshiba Regza 55X3: 3840×2160 (QFHD), 55 inch ($11,730 USD)
Panasonic TH-152UX1: 4096×2160, 152 inches ($500,000 USD)
Sharp EYE-LCD6400-4K: 4096×2160, 64 inches ($53,000 USD)

4K Projector:
Sony VPL-VW1000ES: 4096×2160 ($25,000 USD)

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Via Wikipedia

8K Resolution: UHDTV, SHV

Ultra High Definition Television (or UHDTV, 4320p, and 8K) is a digital video format currently proposed by NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories. It has roughly the same resolution as IMAX, which is about 16 times the number of pixels of existing HDTV (high-definition video). NHK advocates this video format as Super Hi-Vision (SHV).

SHARP demonstrated a direct-view 85″ LCD display capable of 7680×4320 pixels at 10 bpp.
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Via Wikipedia

In this first video, it seems that they get along.

Richard Hammond is in Johannesburg, South Africa to test the Marauder, a ten-ton military vehicle so tough it can withstand high explosives. Great HD clip from Series 17 of Top Gear.

Like the original Hummer, the Marauder is a military vehicle, that not all the civilians can buy, at a cost of 300 thousand pounds.

Among the activities tested in the tv show, were ordering fast-food from a drive-through restaurant, driving off-road, and — specifically in comparison with the (non military) Hummer H3 — being blasted by seven pounds of plastic explosive. Unlike the (civilian spec) Hummer, which was completely destroyed by the explosion, the Marauder was still operational and sustained only minor damage for the most part, although it did drive off with a flat tire

The Marauder is an armoured, mine-protected vehicle that is produced by the Paramount Group in South Africa. It was launched during the 2007 International Defence Exhibition (IDEX) and Conference in Abu Dhabi, the largest arms exhibition in the Middle East.

A bigger vehicle than the Marauder, is the Matador (11 ton, also produced by Paramount Group)

This is a live demo of how the Artificial Intelligence of Siri (in an iPhone 4S) answers to some silly and funny questions like:

Hi Siri, how are you?
I’m fine. Thanks for asking.

Where were you made?
Like it says on the box… I was designed by Apple in California.

Who’s your daddy?
You are. Can we get back to work now?

What should I eat for lunch?
I found a number of restaurants… 24 of them are fairly close to you: [List]

What are you wearing?
You have the wrong personal assistant.

Will you marry me?
That’s sweet. Is there anything else I can help you with?

What’s the population of Kansas city?
Checking my sources… Ok, here you go. [a paper with the data even with a population history chart]

Where do babies come from?
I found 2 baby stores fairly close to you.

Knock, knock.
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Ramsey. Ramsey who? Ramsey, I do not do knock-knock jokes.

Wow much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
42 cords of wood, to be exact. Everyone knows that.

Which is better, Android or iOS?
That seems like a false choice to me.

This video is being uploaded in its raw and unedited format straight to YouTube. This video features a split of the center 50% from each camera. The iPhone 4 is on the left while the iPhone 4S is on the right.

Here are some facts about this video:

Source

Format:
iPhone 4: H.264
iPhone 4s: H.264

Resolution:
iPhone 4: 1,280 x 720
iPhone 4S: 1,920 x 1,080

Audio:
iPhone 4: AAC, 44100 Hz, Mono
iPhone 4S: AAC, 44100 Hz, Mono

FPS:
iPhone 4: 27.62
iPhone 4S: 27.91

File Size:
iPhone 4: 375.7 MB
iPhone 4S: 855.8 MB

Data Rate:
iPhone 4: 10.53 Mbit/s
iPhone 4S: 23.96 Mbit/s

The iPhone 4 appears to do less depth of field during filming than the iPhone 4S.

Both the iPhone 4 and 4S require manual focus adjustments by the person taking the video as the subject moves closer or further away. No adjustments were made during the shooting of this video.

Audio on the iPhone 4 appears to be noticeably more muffled than that of the 4S.

Due in part to a lower video resolution, the iPhone 4 shot video at a data rate that is below half of the iPhone 4S. This means you’ll need double the available storage space on the phone when shooting video on the 4S.

The iPhone 4S includes a more dramatic built-in image stabilization feature. You’ll probably notice a clear difference between the two videos, even though they were both held in the same hand.

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Via Lockergnome and thanks to Chris Pirillo.

Only the first three ones have the zoom linked to the original photo (just because they have pro accounts).

Technical Data:

Quality: 8 Megapixel
EXIF Summary: 1/60s f/2.4 ISO80 4.28mm (35mm eq:35mm)
Equipment Make: Apple
Camera Model: iPhone 4S
Camera Software: 5.0
Sensing Method: One-Chip Color Area
Focal Length (35mm Equiv): 35 mm
Horizontal Resolution: 72 dpi
Vertical Resolution: 72 dpi

Photos

Author: Chris Pirillo [Zoom 3264 x 2448]
Macro to an Android toy

Author: novkoba [Zoom 3264 x 2448]
Akihabara

Author: m1.m1. [Zoom 3264 x 2448]
Landscape, Town, outdoors.

Author: RonnTan [Zoom 1600 x 822]
Comparison: Canon PowerShot SD630, Nikon D700 and iPhone 4S.

Author: RonnTan [Zoom 1600 x 822]
Comparison: Nikon D2X, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4S.

Author: Jyoti Mishra
Landscape, United Kingdom.

Author: Jyoti Mishra
Mailbox, United Kingdom.

Author: Jyoti Mishra
Landscape, Nature.

Author: Jyoti Mishra
Macro.

Author: Samuelwilliambrown
Macro.

Author: peternoster
Indoors.

Author: digitalbear [Zoom 1024x768]
Tokyo, Japan.

Author: Dirk Dallas [Zoom 1024x685]
iPhone 4 (Left) vs iPhone 4S (Right)

Author: renambot [Zoom 1024x768]
Chicago, USA.

Video in HD 1080p with iPhone 4S

From the same author of the last photo, renambot, he also recorded this video using the iPhone 4S camera taht records HD 1080p video.

As usual, at the beginning he mentioned the latest data of Apple numbers, as follows:

Good morning, this is my first product launch since being named CEO.It is a pleasure to host you today. I love Apple.
In particular, I want to welcome you to this room, that we call our Town Hall. This room has quite a history at Apple. Just ten years ago we launched the original iPod here.

- Tim Cook

China Apple Store: This is Apple’s largest store in Asia, and it set a record by welcoming 100k visitors on opening weekend. Apple thought they’d done well by welcoming 100k visitors in LA in the course of one month.

Hong Kong Apple Store: Apple sold more Macs on opening day in this store than they had in any store in the world.

Mac Os Lion: For the first time Apple has offered Mac OS as a digital download. The results are staggering, Lion has been downloaded 6 million times. It took Windows 7 20 weeks to reach what it took Lion 2 weeks to get to in terms of install base.

MacBook Air: The customers love it, and the competitors are trying to copy it. The MacBook Air is just a portion of Apple’s entire lineup of Macs.
MacBook Pro and iMac: Both are the #1 best selling notebook and desktop in the US. This momentum is not just limited to a mode. The Mac outgrew the PC market by almost 6x. Every single quarter for 5 years the Mac has outgrown the PC market. Apple is now approaching 60 million users. In US retail Macs are now selling in about 1/4 PCs in the store.

iPod: Across the last ten years the iPod became the number one music player in the world. And in the US the market share has been above 70% for a very long time. Over that period of time Apple has cumulatively sold 300,000,000 of iPods around the world. To put that in context, it took Sony 30 years to sell 230,000 of Walkman cassette players. The MP3 market is a mature market, and the iPod is still a large and important market for Apple. 45 million iPods have been sold in the last year ending in June. Almost half of those are going to people buying their first iPod.

iTunes: It started 8 years ago, Apple had 200,000 songs in our music library. It now has 100x that many: 20,000,000 songs. iTunes is the #1 music store in the world, with over 16 billions song downloads.

iPhone: The iPhone 4 has sold over half of their total iPhones sold in the entire time they’ve been selling iPhones. It’s the number one smartphone in the world. Apple has a great customer satisfaction according to the following Bar Chart:

iPad: iPads passed a quarter billion unit sales mark. Apple believes iPads can change the way teachers teach and kids learn. Pilots are replacing 40 pound flight bags with iPads, making pilots more efficient, and planes more fuel efficient. iPad in medicine: 80% of the top hospitals in the US are now testing or piloting the iPad. Companies: 92% of Fortune 500 are testing or deploying iPad. This is in less than 18 months.

App Store: There are more than 500,000 apps in the App Store. More than 140,000 of these are made specifically for the iPad.

All of these together makes the App Store the number one store for downloading apps. Customers have downloaded more than 18 Billion apps. And it’s accelerating. They’re downloading them at a clip of more than 1 billion per month.

Apple has paid developers more than $3 Billions.

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Photos by live.gdgt.com

iPhone 4S: A5, new antenna system, new optics, HD video, and now Siri.

The iPhone 4S has the same Retina Display than the iPhone 4. It also looks the same. But inside it is all new.

Screen: 960-by-640-pixel resolution at 326 ppi. 800:1 contrast ratio (typical). 500 cd/m2 max brightness (typical). Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating on front and back.

The A5 chip is now making its way into the iPhone: Dual-core CPU, 2x as fast at CPU tasks. Also dual-core graphics. Up to 7x faster in the previous iPhone. One area you really see it scream is in games.

Battery life: Increased to 8 hours talk time. (iPhone 4′s Talk time was up to 7 hours on 3G, so we gain one more hour)

Wireless system: iPhone 4S can now intelligently switch between two antennas between send and receive to make even better call quality. Data can now be downloaded up to 2x as fast. Theoretical max performance used to be 5.8 up and 7.2 down — now doubles to almost 14.4 Mbps down.

Technical data:

• World phone
• UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz)
• GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
• CDMA EV-DO Rev. A (800, 1900 MHz)
• 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi (802.11n 2.4GHz only)
• Bluetooth 4.0 wireless technology

Camera: It has a new 8 Megapixel sensor. CMOS backside illuminated sensor — gets 73% more light than the iPhone 4 sensor, and 1/3rd faster. On top of that, a high-end IR filter for greater accuracy and uniformity.

New lens system: five lens elements, wide f2.4. Fast photos thanks to the chip.
Video recording: HD video, and for the first time, 1080p video. 1080p, real-time video image stabilization, real-time temporal noise reduction.

Front camera with VGA-quality photos and video at up to 30 frames per second
The Back side camera is the 8MP one, the front camera has a very low quality for photos (0,3MP) VGA-quality (640 x 480 pixels) and video at up to 30 frames per second.

Siri: the intelligent assistant to get things done just by asking. For decades technologists have teased us with this dream that we can talk to our technology. But it’s never come true! It’s such a let-down! What we really want to do is just talk to our device with natural language and not structured phrases. Siri has high-end advanced Artificial Intelligence.

What’s the weather like today?
Find me a great Greek restaurant in Palo Alto. Siri: I’ve found five Greek restaurants, and I’ve sorted them by rating.
Well, who is Siri? Siri: I am a humble personal assistant.

Instant Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha searches by voice. Compose and dictate email right to Siri. Set timers. Look up contacts, create notes, search the web, search Wikipedia.

Now whenever you see a keyboard, you’ll see a microphone. Talk to Siri, tap done, and in the blink of an eye it comes back with your text. Speak with your natural language.

Languages available for Siri: It’ll be built-in with support for English, French, and German. It will be beta at the start; Apple will add more languages and services over time.

iOS 5: Notification Center, iMessage, iCloud, Twitter is integrated by default, Safari with reader, PC-Free, Push to all devices, and over 200 more features.

iPhone 4S Prices

iPhone 4S Black and white: 16GB for $199, 32GB for $299, and 64GB for $399.

64GB is the first time in an iPhone.

The iPhone 4S is not the only phone in our lineup. The iPhone 4 will now be available in Black and white for just $99. The iPhone 3GS in 8GB: free. (with contract, of course).

Pre-orders on the October 7th, and then launching on the 14th.

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Photos and Data via apple.com/iphone/ and live.gdgt.com

Apple will launch a slight refresh to the MacBook Pro this fall in time for the holidays.

Don’t get too excited. It’s only a minor refresh with the faster processors Intel announced last week. The quad-core i7 processors will get a bump to 2.4GHz, 2.5GHz and 2.7GHz.

Currently the MBP offers are:

MacBook Pro 13:
2.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with 3MB L3 cache
2.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 processor with 4MB L3 cache

MacBook Pro 15:
2.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with 6MB L3 cache
2.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with 6MB L3 cache
Optional 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with 8MB L3 cache

MacBook Pro 17:
2.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with 6MB L3 cache

It won’t be the major MacBook Pro redesign (probably keeped until next year) we’ve been hearing about, nor is there any indication of a super-thin MacBook Air model.
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Via businessinsider.com

And Finally: The iPhone 5 and iOS 5 will be ready for launch by mid-October.
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Via businessinsider.com
Image: Illustration: Ellis Hamburger

Now that it’s over a year, I can talk about it.

I was probably the sixth person to get an iPad.

We got two of them flown out.

The criteria was that we had to have a room with no windows. They changed the locks on the door.

Three developers and I were the only people allowed to go in the room. Apple needed the names and social security numbers of the people who had access.

Apple needed to be able to drill a hole in the desk and chain the devices to desk. They used those bicycle cables.

They had these custom frames built around them so we couldn’t even tell what the iPads looked like. We could plug into them so we could code to them and we could touch the screen and play with that, but we couldn’t see the form factor.

Then they took pictures of the wood grain. If any pictures leaked out, they could trace it back to which desk they came from.

I wasn’t allowed to tell our CEO. I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody anything about what we were doing. I couldn’t even tell my wife. She was like, “You’re going to get fired if this doesn’t work.”

I hadn’t thought about that but she was probably right.

Luckily, it worked out very well.

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Via businessinsider.com

HP is going to discontinue operations for webOS devices. And that’s the end of the line for its just-launched tablet, the HP TouchPad.

In the press release detailing its preliminary Q3 2011 financial results, the company had this to say:

HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.

WebOS lasted as long as an ice cube in the midday sun at the beach.

It is expected that a new MacBook Air will be released in the middle of July 2011 (in a few days).

This is of course all speculation:

Most Probable:
- 17W Sandy Bridge Processors (i5/i7 in the 13 inch, possibly i3/i5 or i5/i7 in the 11 inch)
- Thunderbolt port

Very Likely:
- Improved SSD technology
- Improved facetime camera

On the table but really nothing we can count on:
- Backlit keyboard
- 4GB standard RAM
- Increased baseline storage capacity of SSD

On the table but leaning toward more unlikely:
- 25W i7 chip in the 13-inch model

Unlikely/Major stretch:
- Some sort of graphics solution beyond the HD 3000
- Screen improved to IPS panel
- Improved screen resolution
- Significantly notable battery life improvement
- Notable change to the shell
- Built-in 3G or 4G network card or something of the sort (Apple’s push for cloud; could be more likely than just a major stretch)
- Improved screenspace use (particularly a larger screen while maintaining the same enclosure, or slightly smaller enclosure in the 11.6-inch version which has quite a thick border around the screen)

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Via MacRumors Forum

As seen on the photo, Pope Benedict XVI has sent his first tweet via an iPad 2 to launch a Vatican news and information portal (www.news.va) on the 60th anniversary of his ordination.

His message read:

@news_va_en: Dear Friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI.

The Pope, 84, tapped an iPad to activate the portal and send the tweet.Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are all now being used by the Vatican to spread its Christian message.

The Vatican’s twitter account in English: @news_va_en has more than 63,000 followers but “follows” nobody.

Tomorrow’s news: Pope gets addicted to Angry Birds.

Video and Photos

As we can see in the video, at first the Pope couldn’t press the button correctly, he needed some help. It is clearly an iPad 2, since it has a webcam over its screen.

The site www.news.va/en, A Historic Tweet:

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Via BBC

• CPU: ARM® Cortex™- A9 core (4 core)
• GPU: SGX543MP4+
• External Dimensions: Approx. 182.0 x 18.6 x 83.5mm (width x height x depth)
• Screen: (Touch Screen) 5 inches (16:9), 960 x 544, Approx. 16 million colors, OLED
• Multi touch screen: (capacitive type)Rear Touch Pad
• Multi touch pad: (capacitive type)
• Cameras: Front camera, Rear camera
• Sound: Built-in stereo speakers. Built-in microphone
• Sensors: Six-axis motion sensing system (three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer), Three-axis electronic compass
• Location: Built-in GPS. Wi-Fi location service support
• Keys / Switches: PS button, Power button, Directional buttons (Up/Down/Right/Left), Action buttons (Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square), Shoulder buttons (Right/Left), Right stick, Left stick, START button, SELECT button, Volume buttons (+/-)
• Wireless Communications: Mobile network connectivity (3G), IEEE 802.11b/g/n (n = 1×1)(Wi-Fi)(Infrastructure mode/Ad-hoc mode), Bluetooth® 2.1+EDR (A2DP/AVRCP/HSP)

Prices: $249 (WiFi), $299 (WiFi +3G).

Web Page: us.playstation.com/psvita/

PS Vita E3 trailer

This video is the ad for the new PlayStation Vita showed by Sony in the E3 2011:

According to the recent WWDC:

Apple has so far sold 200 million iOS devices, with more than 25 million of those being iPads. There have been 14 billion downloads from the App Store, tallying over $2.5 billion paid out in revenue to app developers. The iTunes Store has with 15 billion songs sold. Game Center has 50 millions of users.

Tom from blendtec has finally met his match with one of the toughest cell phones around, the Sonim XP 3300 Force ($525 USD). It… mostly blended.

The Sonim XP3300 Force, though it looks a lot like the models that have come before it, the Force has a unique claim: it alleges to offer the longest talk time of any cellphone in the world at 20 to 24 hours, which can be traded in for 20 to 24 hours of continuous GPS tracking, along with 800 hours of standby. Sonim hangs on to its ruggedness chops by casting the Force in a fiberglass shell with 1.5 millimeters of Gorilla Glass over the display, all adding up to an IP-68-rated device that can withstand a two-meter drop onto concrete, two meters of submersion in wastewater, and temperatures ranging from 20 below zero to 55 degrees Celsius (-4 to 131 degrees Fahrenheit). (Source: Engadget)

iPhone 5 Back Part

This is an unverified image of what claims to be the back cover of the iPhone 5. The shell is white with 2 distinct holes in it. One for the camera, and the other presumably for the camera flash.

Parts like this, of course, are easy to fake, especially after the possibility of a separate camera flash was revealed last week.

Apple iPhone 5 with Curved Screen

The Cupertino based company has reportedly purchased 2-300 specialist glass cutting machines which are used to precision cut curved glass.

The machines are currently being stored at various locations where Apple currently manufacture their products.

iPhone 5 with an 8MP Camera

Largan Precision, a Taiwanese manufacturer of camera lenses for various phone makers is expecting a large order from Apple to supply them with 8 megapixels modules…

Taiwan-based Largan Precision currently sees 8-megapixel phone-use lens modules account for nearly 10% of its total lens module shipment volume, but it may see 8-megapixel modules replace 5-megapixel ones to become the mainstream for smartphones in the third quarter of 2011 due to possible orders from Apple, according to industry sources in Taiwan.

iPhone 5 Rumored to Have 64GB Capacity

A 64GB iPhone is the normal evolution of things and the iPhone 5 will probably have increased storage capacity. The iPod Touch 4G already comes with 64GB of storage. It’s just a matter of time for the iPhone to get that as well.

Smaller and Thinner iPhone with Smaller SIM Card

Apple has apparently agreed with wireless carriers to support a smaller and more lightweight SIM for the next iPhone. Apple has been working for years on reducing the size of SIM cards because they need space in the phone. They even thought about a device without any SIM card, that is what is known as the e-SIM project. Phone companies told them it was a bad idea because the SIM card is a critical piece of the security and authentication process.

The person who saw the prototype of the new iPhone said the device was significantly lighter than the iPhone 4 and had an edge-to-edge screen that could be manipulated by touch, as well as a virtual keyboard and voice-based navigation.

iPhone 5 to Ship in September

A September quarter launch is “normal” for new iPhone 5 hardware, because the impact of iPhone launches is typically not seen until the September quarter. While the iPhone 3G was released in July, placing it in the September quarter, the original iPhone, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 all came toward the end of the June quarter, placing a large number of launch sales actually in the following three-month frame.

The iPods are also usually presented in the first week of September, maybe apple will join both events.

In this video Steve Jobs introduces the first Apple Store in May 2001. So this month is the 10th Anniversary of Apple’s retail stores. On May 19, 2001 the very first store opened in McLean, Virginia, followed later that same day by a store in Glendale, California. Even though the McLean store opened first, the Glendale store carries the designation “001″.

Today the number of Apple Stores has grown to over 300 around the world. Congratulations to Apple on this achievement. Here’s to 10 more successful years.

Photo of the Apple Store in New York.

Photo: Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) and Tony Bates (Skype CEO) shaking hands and giving the news today May 10th.

Combined companies aim to deliver the future of real-time communications to consumers and businesses around the world. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Skype CEO Tony Bates to discuss the announcement via live press conference.

Skype CEO Tony Bates will assume the title of president of the Microsoft Skype Division, reporting directly to Ballmer.

Microsoft has acquired Skype by a huge amount: 8 billion dollars.

Last week Facebook and Google were also interested in buying Skype.

Microsoft and Skype today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire Skype, the leading Internet communications company, for $8.5 billion in cash from the investor group led by Silver Lake. The agreement has been approved by the boards of directors of both Microsoft and Skype.

Skype will support Microsoft devices like Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone and a wide array of Windows devices, and Microsoft will connect Skype users with Lync, Outlook, Xbox Live and other communities. Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms.

Microsoft, Google and Facebook know that the future in communications relies on VoIP technology.

This video shows how 3Gnet manufactures and tests Android phones in Shenzhen, China. We can see the assembly lines and the tests they perform to phones like: Humidity, temperature, shaking and drop tests, and so on.

iPhone 5 could be introduced in the September iPod event

According to a Japanese source, iPhone 5 is apparently not set to ship before the end of Apple’s fiscal 2011, which occurs in late September 2011.

Another rumor says that iPhone 5 will adopt an aluminum back and a redesigned antenna.

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Via MacRumors

Tom is invited to the introduction to the new iPad 2. But as great as it is, Tom shows Steve Jobs how the Blendtec Total Blender can handle even the greatest of inventions.

I’m gonna make the iPad 2 even more compact …

And at the end we hear the voice of Bill Gates… nice touch !!!

Check also the blending of iPad 1 and iPhone 4.

The United States has stepped up its attacks by pilotless drones in Pakistan since a suicide bomber killed seven Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives at a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan on December 30. The drone strikes are a source of friction between the United States and its ally Pakistan, which says they are a violation of its sovereignty.

U.S. officials say the missile strikes are carried out under an agreement with Islamabad that allows Pakistani leaders to decry the attacks in public. Islamabad denies this. The latest drone strike targeted a house in a village in the Datta Khel district, 35 km (20 miles) west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, a region known as a hotbed of Taliban and al Qaeda militants. “One missile hit a compound and the other hit a vehicle outside it. Six militants were killed”, one of the Pakistani officials said. The death toll had initially been put at three.

Last Thursday, a U.S. drone targeted Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud in the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border but it was known if he was among 12 militants killed. The Pakistani Taliban, who are fighting the Islamabad government, later issued an audio tape purportedly from Mehsud, denying he had been killed. Mehsud appeared in a farewell video sitting beside the bomber, a double agent, who killed the seven CIA operatives.

The iPad 2 is 0.34 inches thick, about 33% thinner than its predecessor. People who enjoy reading will love the thinner body: Cradling an iPad 2 in your hands for an hour doesn’t feel that cumbersome. You will also be surprised how often you will be using the tablet with one hand. Even though it is only a few ounces lighter than the older iPad (1.3 pounds versus 1.5 pounds), the changes to the tablet’s weight and ergonomics feel substantial.

Price: $500 to $830

How Japan’s Earthquake Alert System works on TV, the case of the Earthquake magnitude 8.8 and Tsunami on March 11 2011.

Simple, effective Tv audio message, with relaxing music like an airport message, obviosly to preserv the calm.

The new iPad 2 is now 33% thinner and up to 15% lighter. It has a Dual-core A5 chip. Two powerful cores and faster graphics mean better surfing, better watching, better gaming, better everything. All with the same 10 hours of battery life (which sadly wasn’t improved).

iPad 2 also comes with 2 cameras: Facetime, HD video recording, photos with Photo Booth.

It has Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n) and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR technology. 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch. 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi). Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating.

iPad Smart Cover: It attaches magnetically and aligns perfectly. Open and close it, and iPad 2 wakes up and goes to sleep. Fold it into a stand for watching and typing. It’s smart in more ways than one.

The hardware

Contrary to the rumors, the new iPad 2 has been improved a lot internally. Faster processor, faster graphics, HDMI Full HD output, the 720p HD camera on the back, the frontal VGA camera.

Hardware: Positive factors

• Dual-core 1GHz A5 processor, which is “up to two times faster” than the previous version, Steve says.
• The graphics have been improved too. The GPU goes at 9 times the speed as before.
• Same low power consumption as the A4.
• Built-in cameras for photos and video.
• Back camera: Video recording, HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio; still camera with 5x digital zoom
• Front camera: Video recording, VGA up to 30 frames per second with audio; VGA-quality still camera
• Photo and video geotagging over Wi-Fi
• The cameras support the same exposure and focus control as the iPhones: Just tap where you want to focus for video and stills photography.
• Sensors: Three-axis gyroscope (great for innovative Apps), Accelerometer, Ambient light sensor.
• The 25-watt battery’s life is 10 hours on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music. Up to 9 hours of surfing the web using 3G data network. Just like before, but in a much thinner package. And one month stand-by time.
• Input / Output: 30-pin dock connector port, 3.5-mm stereo headphone minijack, built-in speaker, microphone, Micro-SIM card tray (Wi-Fi + 3G model).

Hardware: Negative factors

• The screen hasn’t changed, it still is 9.7-inch with same resolution, 1024 x 768-pixel IPS display. There is no better pixel density.
• No Thunderbolt support.
• The mic records Mono audio.
• The Wi-Fi model still lacks a GPS, it uses Wi-Fi location services. The 3G model has Assisted GPS.
• No Flash (camera). It uses its backside illumination sensor improving by software the low light photos.
• No Flash for the Internet browsing.

The Megapixels of its Rear Camera: 0.7 MP

It is far from being the 5 Megapixels of the iPhone 4, like the iPod Touch 4G, it recrods 720p HD video but takes 0.7 Megapixel photos.

The Best: The Design

The new iPad 2 comes in color white and looks GREAT!!!! I love it.

It is Thinner than the iPhone 4 and 33% thinner than the current iPad. That’s going from 13.4mm (more than a centimeter) to 8.8 millimeters (0.34 inches). For reference, the iPhone 4 is 9.3 millimeters. The weight is going down too: From 1.5 pounds to 1.3 pounds.

8 days to wait

It will be available on March 11 (black and white models) to the US, and the 3G model will be available on both AT&T and Verizon networks.

Internationally, the intro date will be March 25 in 26 countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and UK.

Price

The prices will remain the same across the line. The Wi-Fi model will come for $499, $599, and $699 for the 16, 32 and 64GB models.
The 3G takes that to $629, $729, and $829.

In the Box: iPad, Dock Connector to USB Cable, 10W USB Power Adapter, Documentation.

Smart covers

They come in Polyurethane and Leather. They connect with the iPad using built-in magnets from the iPad’s frame.

iPad 2 Camera Connection Kit

The iPad Camera Connection Kit gives you two ways to import photos and videos from a digital camera: using your camera’s USB cable or directly from an SD card. iPad supports standard photo formats, including JPEG and RAW.

So you can get photos off your camera and onto a more picture-friendly display, moments after you take them.

This video shows the Augmented Reality and Kinect’s motion sensor working together so you can do a Kamehameha as if you were Goku from Dragon Ball.

This is not a official game from Dragon Ball, it is a Fan-Made application.

Source Code: code.google.com/p/kinect-kamehameha/

Run this program on Windows PC with fairly fast CPU and fairly advanced GPU (with at least OpenGL 2.0 and programmable shader capabilities).

Awesome. Samsung Galaxy S2 uses Samsung’s new Exynos Orion ARM Cortex-A9 processor, Multimedia High-definition Link technology, the new 4.3 inches Samsung Super AMOLED Plus screen with better anti-reflection, better colors, better clarity and more, all of this in a thinner and lighter form factor. To be available around April 2011 or so. But Samsung is probably not going to make this cheaper.

Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, was sighted at the Stanford Cancer Center where he is presumably receiving ongoing medical treatment.

Jobs, 55, has been attending the Stanford Cancer Center in Palo Alto, California, where actor Patrick Swayze sought radical chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer before his death in September, 2009.

The media is suggesting that Jobs is worse off than expected. All the speculation appears to be based on the photos in which Jobs apparently looks particularly frail.

Steve Jobs had previously suffered from pancreatic cancer and had been thought to be been cured of the disease back in 2004. In 2009, Jobs took a six-month leave of absence and it was later revealed that he received a liver transplant. In January of this year, Apple announced Steve Jobs was taking another medical leave of absence with no timetable for his return.

Steve Jobs is the most important tech visionary in the world. He inspired so much even to its competence. He is also a great leader and a good influence to the technology that we can enjoy today. We hope that he will be healthy soon.

In particular, the talk of a 4 inch-screen and rumors of an “edge to edge” screen resulted in this mockup which shows that a 4″ screen could fit on an existing iPhone 4 sized device by extending the screen to the left/right edges. Similarly a smaller iPhone could use the existing 3.5 screen in a similar fashion.

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Via MacRumors

By now, you know how HP’s new slate compares to the crowd, now see how it looks up close and personal. We just got our hands on that dual-core Palm webOS tablet here in San Francisco, and it’s a beautiful tablet, with a slim black profile that highlights the brilliant 9.7-inch screen with 1024×768 resolution.

Hp TouchPad has Google Docs, social networks (twitter, Facebook) and Dropbox integrated by default.
Its browser has Flash support.
It is 190×240 mm, and 13.7 mm. It eights 700 grams.
It has: Qualcomm MSM8660 – 1.2 Ghz with 1 GB RAM DDR2.
WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3G with A-GPS.
Inside Memory: 16 and 32 GB.
Sealed battery with 8 hours of productivity, 6300 mAh. Similar to the future iPad 2.
Speakers with Beats Audio, webcam: 1.3 MP, Touchtone, microUSB and NFC technology.

The RoboEarth-project exploits a new approach towards endowing robots with advanced perception and action capabilities, thus enabling robots to carrying out useful tasks autonomously in circumstances that were not planned for explicitly at design time. The core of the innovation proposed by the consortium involves the development of a world-wide web-style database: RoboEarth. RoboEarth will allow robots to share any reusable knowledge independent from their hardware and configuration. When a robot starts performing a task, it is able to download available high-level knowledge on both task and environment, next, it can use and translate this knowledge to its hardware specifications and its configuration and will improve it by learning during the task. Finally, it will upload its knowledge to RoboEarth again. As a result of the proposed project, major innovations are expected in the fields of:

• 3D sensing (object recognition and localization)
• Control strategies (linking perception and action)
• Learning.

Next to these new methods that fully exploit the available a-priori knowledge from RoboEarth, RoboEarth will due to its standardized way of sharing knowledge contribute to a more modular design of robotic systems; robot hardware with a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) for RoboEarth will be enough to build a functional robot, using the knowledge available from RoboEarth.

Opera Software is optimizing a version of their Opera Browser for Android Tablets, thus providing some higher resolution user interface features.

Macworld 2011: the video shows a first look at the iFusion which turns an iPhone into a desk phone via Bluetooth 2.1 technology. Also streams, charges and syncs your iPhone.

The revolutionary iFusion utilizes built-in Bluetooth technology and a full duplex speaker phone to deliver superior voice quality and convenience.

The unique cradle design of the iFusion supports the iPhone 3G, 3GS and 4, providing a means to securely dock the phone while supplying power, battery charging and data synchronization via an integrated USB cable. With support for A2DP Bluetooth streaming, users are able to enjoy their favorite iPhone music over the internal speakerphone.

Pre-orders are available now for shipping in April 2011, it will come in black and white.

Price: $169 (pre-orders in $149)

Official website: thefusionphone.com

Samsung will release a new line of 3D LED monitors, the new 750 series and the asymmetrical 950 series, they’ll come in both 23 and 27 inch sizes with 1080p resolution, two-millisecond response time, 1000:1 contrast ratio. They can be ordered with a TV tuner for hybrid HDTV / monitor operation. These monitors do 3D for gaming, TV, films, and user-generated content, and the hybrid 750s and all the 950s can do 2D-to-3D conversion from PCs, Blu-ray players, gaming consoles, and set-top boxes.

There are a plethora of inputs and outputs too: HDMI, USB 2.0, RF In, Audio Out, Digital Audio Out, PC Audio In, Component, Composite, Ethernet and RF Out. With the straight monitors, you’re looking at just the DisplayPort and HDMI.

All models supposedly have an Eco Motion sensor, for switching the monitor off when you leave the room.

The new line hits stores in March 2011, but Samsung has yet to set a price.

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Via Samsung News

This video shows how Multifl0w runs in iPhone 4. This is an app that shows all your running apps with screenshots previews like Expose in a Mac.

The Vstone Robovie, also known as Kumotek KT-X is sold for $1,500 and provides for some pretty impressive programmable moves, specially dancing and ninja moves. It is bluetooth controlled. The robot comes with an easy to use (so they say) programming interface for inventing new moves, triggering more sounds and doing more fun things with it.

This robots also are controlled with a Playstation 2 Style Wireless Gamepad Remote.

KT-X robot models

• The KT-X Lite is the perfect robot for first time robotics builders. This robot utilizes 13 servo motors (degrees of freedom) and offers all of the plug and play features available in the higher end KT-X models. Upgrades are not available.
• The KT-X Superbot is the flagship humanoid robot of KumoTek Robotics. This robot boasts 17 degrees of freedom, a powerful 60MHz microcontroller and comes with a remote control (domestic customers only). Upgrades to the KT-X Gladiator model are available.
• The KT-X Gladiator is the higher end KT-X model, boasting a whopping 19 degrees of freedom, which allows the robot to pivot, or yaw on the hip axis. The KT-X Gladiator offers the most realistic motions within the KumoTek humanoid line.
• The KT-X Gladiator Pro is the top-of-the-line hobby/entertainment robot within the KumoTek line. The PRO series offers an amazing 19 degrees of freedom and extremely high torque servo motors. The Gladiator PRO can lift objects and even carry other robots on its back. You can find this robot currently on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

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You can find more information about this robot and more robots being made by this manufacturer at kumotek.com/products/humanoid

We all know that this probably going to happen once that Apple puts a photo camera on the iPad 2. And the irony is that this view will be very frequent in future Steve Jobs conferences.

James May attempts to break his personal speed record in a brand new, even more powerful version of the amazing Bugatti Veyron.

Teams of quadrotors (flying drones) autonomously build tower-like cubic structures from modular parts using Artificial Intelligence. Work done by Quentin Lindsey, Daniel Mellinger, and Vijay Kumar at the GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania.

Motorola unveils in this conference (in CES 2011) the Atrix 4G, which is not only the most powerful smartphone yet based on Nvidia’s Tegra2 ARM Cortex-A9 processor, but has actually worked feverishly on making software layers on top of Android to provide for a Desktop/Laptop replacement experience, all powered by the phone! Motorola presents full HD resolution Firefox web browser running on top of Android, Citrix virtualization integration for running all other x86 apps that can be virtualized, they put Android in a Window so you can still run any Android apps in that Window when in Desktop mode! And this is the first generation of this type of product, so you are only witnessing the beginning of ARM Powered Pocketable Smart Mobile Devices to be able to power everything you would do on a Laptop powered by Intel/Microsoft. Expect even faster dual-core processors to run this type of product soon with unlimited amounts of tabs with lots of pictures/embedded videos and do it all fully smoothly.

this vide shows a short review of the new Casio TRYX camera, at CES 2011. Definitely a cool form factor, and impressive 1080p video recording. Basically looks like a pocket camcorder that happens to take 12mp pictures, should be interesting. Out April 2011

Price: $249.

The company Robo Builder is selling this Robot building kit for around $840 which allows the user to build a robot in any of 5 or more configurations, as normal robot, spider, dog, dinosaur or car configurations, and then program it’s movements and it has some sensors too. It takes in average 1 hour to build it for the consumer.

They already sold 30.000 units in 20 countries and this is their first version of the product. WOOW hands down they are genius. The next product is a kit to build a 1 meter tall robot.

The video was recorded in the CES 2011.

Photo:

The Razer Switchblade is the perfect portable laptop for PC gaming. Its concept was designed to bring the full keyboard / mouse experience on the desktop on a handheld device. The main feature is its dynamic keyboard and the ultra-sensitive multi touch screen. This portable gaming device has the ability to let you play anything on the go without sacrificing precision and control. The keys are customizable and they change according the game, even their symbols change (every key has a digital LED screen) so that you can use them for many powers and configurations.

Dimensions: 172mm x 115mm x 25 mm
WiFi and 3G are available on the Razer Switchblade.

More info: www2.razerzone.com/switchblade

Unnamed for now, it’ll be released once Android Honeycomb is open sourced and available for implementation. It’s got a 1280×800 capacitive 10.1″ touch screen, 5 megapixel camera and more. It’s being developed by a different group at Toshiba than the one working on the Folio-100 tablet.

Facebook numbers

• Facebook has more than 500 million active users.
• Facebook is currently the world’s most popular web site, with more than 690 billion page views each month.
• Facebook currently accounts for about 9.5% of all Internet traffic, slightly more than Google.
• There are 100 million new photos uploaded to Facebook every day.
• Facebook infrastructure must support platform services for more than 1 million web sites and 550,000 applications using the Facebook Connect platform.

Facebook Servers

Facebook operates at least 9 data centers on both coasts of the United States, and is in the process of building its first company-built data center in Oregon. Although more than 70 percent of Facebook’s audience is in other countries, none of the company’s data centers are located outside the United States.
Each data center houses thousands of computer servers.

Facebook leases wholesale data center space from third-party landlords. Wholesale providers build the data center, including the raised-floor technical space and the power and cooling infrastructure, and then lease the completed facility. In the wholesale model, users can occupy their data center space in about 5 months, rather than the 12 months needed to build a major data center. This has allowed Facebook to scale rapidly to keep pace with the growth of its audience.

In January 2010 Facebook announced plans to build its own data centers, beginning with a facility in Prineville, Oregon.

Facebook currently leases space in about six different data centers in Silicon Valley, located in Santa Clara and San Jose, and at least one in San Francisco. The company has also leased space in three wholesale data center facilities in Ashburn, Virginia.

In the data centers where it currently operates, Facebook typically leases between 2.25 megawatts and 6 megawatts of power capacity.

Facebook planned Data Center in Prineville, Oregon

These are 3D renders of the building:

How Many Servers Does Facebook Have?

This chart provides a dramatic visualization of Facebook’s infrastructure growth.

In June 2010 Facebook was running at least 60,000 servers in its data centers, up from 30,000 in 2009 and 10,000 back in April 2008.

What kind of software does Facebook Use?

Facebook was developed from the ground up using open source software. The site is written primarily in the PHP programming language and uses a MySQL database infrastructure. To accelerate the site, the Facebook Engineering team developed a program called HipHop to transform PHP source code into C++ and gain performance benefits.

How much Does Facebook Spend on Its Data Centers?

An analysis of Facebook’s spending with data center developers indicates that the company is now paying about $50 million a year to lease data center space, compared to about $20 million when we first analyzed its leases in May 2009.

The $50 million a year includes spending is for leases, and doesn’t include the cost of the Prineville project, which has been estimated at between $180 million and $215 million.

How Many People Are Needed to Run Facebook’s Data Centers?

As is the case with most large-scale data centers, Facebook’s facilities are highly automated and can be operated with a modest staff, usually no more than 20 to 50 employees on site. Facebook has historically maintained a ratio of 1 engineer for every 1 million users, although recent efficiencies have boosted that ratio to 1 engineer for every 1.2 million users.

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Via the-facebook-data-center-faq

Nintendo 3DS leaked picture, we can see it together with the previous versions of the portable Nintendo console, like the Nintendo DS, Nintendo DSi and the Game Boy.

The video shows the performance doing an Instant On and Boot Up of the new Macbook Air 2010 (11.6″, 1.4 GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, Flash Memory) and a first generation MacBook (2.4 GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM).

Aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Expedition 26 Commander Scott Kelly of NASA and Flight Engineers Cady Coleman of NASA and Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency offered Christmas and New Year’s greetings to all people on Earth from the orbital outpost on Dec. 21 as they flew 224 statute miles above. Kelly, Coleman and Nespoli are part of the six-person crew that includes Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Kondratyev, Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka.

Word Lens instantly translates printed words from one language to another using the video camera on your iPhone, this is a cool way to use Augmented Reality with Diminished Reality. No network delay, no roaming fees, and no reception problems.

Word Lens is a dictionary evolved. It looks up words for you, and shows them in context. You can use Word Lens on your vacations to translate restaurant menus, street signs, and other things that have clearly printed words.

Word Lens has its limits. Sometimes the translation will be hard to understand, but it usually gets the point across. If a translation fails, there is a way to manually look up words by typing them in. Word Lens does not read very stylized fonts, handwriting, or cursive.

Word Lens is available for iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPod Touch 4G.

Download it FREE on the App Store: Word Lens

You have to pay for each language

Languages currently available using in-app purchase:

• Spanish to English (Price: $4.99)
• English to Spanish (Price: $4.99)

Screenshots and Photos of Word Lens

An iPhone (or iPod Touch)with the accelerometer technology became the perfect remote control for an AR Drone, a WiFi quadricopter.

The Game

There is also an Augmented Reality game with 2 AR drones in an aerial battle.
The game is AR.Pursuit and you can find it in the App Store.

AR Drone photos:

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More info: Parrot.com

This robot girl is the HRP-4C.
The dancing robot invasion is coming from Japan !!!

The robot was developed at a cost of $2 million dollars by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). This is the first humanoid robot to walk on two feet. HRP-4C’s muscles run on a series of battery powered motors. His creator believes that it will take another 20 or 30 years of research to create a robot that looks and moves like a supermodel.

Japan Fashion Week

Here is the HRP-4C in the catwalk.

HRP-4C Humanoid Robot singing naturally

How the mouth movements were created thank s to the technology Vocawatcher. There is also some technology that simulates her breathing during the singing process.

Some rumors says that Apple will include at least a front-facing camera in the iPad 2G (2nd generation), there are market rumors about a Taiwanese firm Largan Precision as having been selected to provide camera lens modules for the new iPad. The company, however, refuses to comment on the rumors.

Largan Precision has declined to comment on market rumors indicating the company will be the sole lens module supplier for Apple’s upcoming iPad 2 tablet with shipments to kick off in the first quarter of 2011, according to a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE).

While the report does not specify whether Largan has been claimed to be providing VGA-resolution front-facing cameras or higher-resolution rear-facing cameras (or both), the report comes just as Largan has reportedly begun shipping 5-megapixel lens modules for tablet devices. According to that report, Largan has begun outsourcing production of VGA-resolution models in order to focus on the higher-resolution versions, leading to speculation that the company may be gearing up for high-volume production of the 5-megapixel module for a rear-facing camera on the iPad.

Largan currently supplies the 5-megapixel lens module for the iPhone 4′s rear-facing camera.

Back in October, Verizon Wireless announced that its 4G network would be live by the end of 2010. What’s more, Verizon has said that it will launch in 38 cities, making it the largest 4G network in the U.S.

LTE is important for a number of reasons, but most of all, because it has the potential to become the first true global standard in wireless. By contrast, Sprint has embraced WiMAX as its 4G standard, which is mainly prevalent in parts of Asia. Regardless, both technologies are exceptionally fast compared to today’s mobile broadband standards — and let’s face it, that’s really the most important factor.

Photo: HTC EVO with 4G network

Jeremy Clarkson test drives the Lamborghini Gallardo, convertible version, on the Top Gear test track.

Gallardo Spyder (2006-2008)

The production spyder model of the Gallardo was unveiled at the Los Angeles Auto Show in January 2006. It is considered by the company to be an entirely new model, with 520 PS (382 kW; 513 hp) and a lower-ratio six-speed manual transmission. The soft top is fully retractable.

Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer was the first person in North America to take delivery of the Gallardo Spyder.

Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson announced on 18 February 2007 that he had bought a Gallardo Spyder, replacing his Ford GT.

Base Price: $195,000

LP 570-4 Spyder Performante (2010)

In November 2010, Lamborghini announced the LP 570-4 Spyder Performante – a convertible version of the LP 570-4 Superleggera. As usual, the convertible parts make the Spyder Performante heavier than the Superleggera coupe (up to 3,275 lb (1,486 kg) from 2,954 lb (1,340 kg) in the Superleggera,) but Lamborghini has taken extra steps to ensure the Spyder is still 143 lb (65 kg) lighter than the standard Gallardo Spyder.

Using the same 562 horsepower 5.2-litre V10 from the LP 570-4 Superleggera, the Spyder goes from zero to 100 km/h (62 mph) comes in only 3.9 seconds.

Base Price: $221,000

Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder Photos

Controllers of video game consoles get themed all the time, and now the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii Controllers look like TRON gadgets, with cool illuminated lines tracing along the contour of the controllers. Definitely signatory of the TRON legacy.

Are they going to sell these? No. Apparently they are just being used as marketing materials at the E3 conference.

This is the unboxing and review of the Archos 70 Internet Tablet, a $275 US Dollars (€249 Euros) alternative to the $499 iPad and the $599 Samsung Galaxy Tab. It is very thin and weights just 300 grams, it feels like it is empty of electronics. The capacitive touch screen on an Archos tablet is different than with resistive screens. The screen is 7 inches. It uses Android so it has multi-touch, quite good web browsing speed, email, facebook, Google Maps, Street View, Live wallpapers, video playback, HDMI output and more.

Here are some basic and useful tips and tricks for your iPhone and iPod touch that you may not have known about.

For Example: You can double tap in the lock screen for the music controls, experience your music differently, monitor your data usage, spotlight search your device, take screenshots, make use of the accessibility options, invert colors, delete and move apps easily, use caps lock, clear all history and turn off some notifications.

This is a review of Android 2.2 Froyo works pretty much awesome. It has flash support, it is smooth and fast. Few optimizations and few bug fixes still to be done before Archos can release this cool firmware update.

This is the Nexus Two. It’s made by Samsung. It’s black and shiny, built with glossy plastic. The screen is 4-inch AMOLED affair from the Galaxy series, is flat, the front is “sort of concave” with hard edges. And the back is curved. The tapering makes it feel thinner than Galaxy S, though it might be about the same thickness. It has a front-facing camera, Google’s supposedly trying to building video chat into Android Gingerbread, using the same protocol as Google Talk.

The Nexus Two looks like a refreshed Galaxy phone.

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Via Gizmodo

Barnes & Noble just released its new Nook Color, an Android tablet fronted by a 7-inch color touchscreen… so long, e-ink! (Not really, the $149 original Nook is sticking around for now, owns 20% of the e-reader market, and is about to get a major software update).

The Nook Color is a hybrid of eBook reader and tablet device, and it has Facebook and Twitter integration. There’s built-in WiFi (802.11b/g/n) and 8GB of storage, but no 3G connection at this point.

The Price

The price is: $249. You might think that means the screen is going to be weak and cheap, but B&N has managed to put an impressive-sounding “VividView,” 16 million color, 1024 x 600 IPS display in this thing.

The Nook Color comes with a microSD slot, with a 0.48-inch thick body and a 15.6 ounce overall weight. Battery life takes a notable hit, of course, with a rating of 8 hours of reading with the WiFi off. Of course, underneath it all is still Android, and Barnes & Noble is launching the Nook Developer program to allow third party apps on the device, and it even ships with a few favorites like Pandora and Lonely Planet. The color screen also enables a new library of “Nook Kids” children books, full-color magazine and newspaper subscriptions, and video playback if you’re in the mood. The Nook Color ships on November 19th, pre-orders are available now.

Nook Color Video Review

Tech Specs:

• Size: 8.1 x 5.0 x 0.48 inches
• Weight: 15.6 ounces
• 7-inch Vivid View touchscreen display with IPS technology
• 1,024 x 600 resolution
• Storage: 8GB up to 6,000 books from over 2 million titles to choose from
• microSD support of up to 32GB
• MP3 & AAC audio player support
• MP4 support
• Mono speaker
• 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack
• Support for various text files: EPUB, PDF, XLS, DOC, PPT, PPS, TXT, DOCM, XLXM, PPTM, PPSX, PPSM, DOCX, XLX, PPTX
• Rechargeable battery: up to 3 hours of use
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n: Free Wi-Fi in Barnes & Noble
• Personalized wallpaper
• Media Gallery: JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP

Photo: Nook Color vs Nook

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Via engadget

This is the PlayStation Phone by Sony Ericsson you’ve long been waiting for. The device you see is headed into the market soon, likely having Android 3.0 (Gingerbread), along with a custom Sony Marketplace for apps which will allow you to purchase and download games designed for the new platform. The PlayStation Phone has 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 (a chip similar to the one found in the G2, but 200MHz faster), 512MB of RAM, 1GB of ROM, and the screen is in the range of 3.7 to 4.1 inches.

The handset has a long touchpad in the center which is apparently multitouch, and you can see in the photos that it’s still bearing those familiar PlayStation shoulder buttons. There’s no Memory Stick slot here, but there is support for microSD cards.

The particular model in these shots is still in prototyping mode.
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Via Engadget

At a rally in Seattle at the University of Washington, the President of USA, Barack Obama, signed his autograph on an iPad using the Adobe Ideas app.

Generally, Obama doesn’t sign autographs because pens can be used for harm, so Mr. Sylvester Cann handed Obama his iPad with a message on it saying, “Mr. President, sign my iPad”.

Obama looked at it for a second and then used his finger from his left hand to sign.

It was kinda funny because he looked up and gave him a big grin afterwards as if he thought it was pretty cool too.

This has to be the first time the iPad has received a Presidential autograph.

The video

A few funny things to notice:
1. Look at the secret service behind him shake his head at first
2. Listen to the iPad owner, Sylvester Cann, saying: Can you sign it with your finger? at around 0:17

In the news.

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Via TechCrunch

It’s been about 9 years since we were first introduced to the iPod, the gadget that surely changed the music market. Over those years Apple’s iPod has grown more powerful, gained some siblings, and become a household name. This Infograph is an overview of how this all happened.

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Via Gizmodo

In this 2 videos Chris Pirillo reviews the most important new features of Apple’s new suite, iLife 11: iPhoto 11 and iMovie 11.

It’s difficult not to like something that’s continually improving and is relatively simple to use, and almost all the new improvements are most welcomed.

iMovie 11 Review:

The addition of the audio editing features makes iMovie 11 worth the upgrade from earlier versions.

Apple released the first public beta of the free FaceTime Mac desktop app (apple.com/mac/facetime/). Chris Pirillo reviews it from first hand and discovers It’s not without its share of flaws, but for the most part works as advertised.

Hands on with Apple’s brand new 11 and 13 inches MacBook Air. Filmed at the launch even on Apple Campus, Cupertino, California.
Both are 0.1 inches thinner than the previous Air.

iLife 11: iPhoto 11

iPhoto 11 has a new fullscreen mode, the albums look like iPhone apps.

It has a lot of Facebook enhancements, they have made it easy and elegant to email photos, they have added some new slideshows, and letterpress cards. Photos grouped in maps and you can also pull in photos from Flickr. Photobooks: The albums view look a little like the albums you have on an iPad.

There are easy and great looking templates to send photos by email.

iPhoto now has a project view which is a fullscreen wooden bookshelf, like the iBooks from iOS.

Video: Apple, iLife 11: iPhoto 11 (New Features + Demo)

iLife 11: iMovie 11

iMovie 11 has new audio editing. Real-time preview of audio effects. One step effects. People Finder, Face detection technology from iPhoto is in use here. News and Sports themes. You are able to adjust FPS speed. And you can create Movie trailers.

This following video is the official trailer for the new iMovie 11:

iLife 11: GarageBand 11

GarageBand 11 has some great new features to help you fix timing in your music, something called flextime, more effects, new piano and guitar lessons, and the feature “How did I play?”.

Flextime allows auto dragging of lengths of waveforms. You can make notes longer or shorter at will.

iLife 11: Price

iLife 11 is free with every new Mac. If you want to upgrade your existing Mac,it costs $49 US Dollars.

iLife 11 is available today.

FaceTime for the Mac

FaceTime for the Mac is released in beta today.

Mac OS X Lion

Multitouch gestures in the trackpad and the Mac App Store. One click downloads. Auto app updates. Free and paid apps with a 70 / 30 split. Apps are licensed for use on all your personal Macs.

Launchpad: Mac OS X meets the iPad. It pops open a grid of apps on your desktop like the iPad grid. You can also create folders, exactly like iOS.

Mission Control: is an Expose view of your open windows, your open apps (at least the fullscreen ones), and your dock.

Video demo of the Mac OS X Lion:

App Store is a standalone app, it looks a lot like iTunes.

Updated Lion Stuff: Expose, Dashboard, full screen apps, and Spaces.

Lion will be available this summer, 2011.

The Mac App Store is not waiting for Lion, it is going to be in Snow Leopard, and will open within 90 days.

The New MacBook Air

The New MacBook Air in hardware is a mix of an MacBook and an iPad. It has great battery life, amazing standby time, solid state storage (no hard drive, only flash storage), and it’s thinner and lighter.

The new Air is complete Unibody construction. It also has FaceTime camera. There is no optical drive. 802.11n WiFi.

It comes in 11 inch or 13 inch (LED-backlit glossy widescreen).
1440 by 900 (native) and 1366 by 768 (native).

Video: MacBook Air 2010 commercial

Size: It’s amazingly thin. At its thickest point, it is 0.68 inches (1.7 cm) thin. And it tapers to .11 inches (0.3 cm).

Weight: 11 inch: 2.3 pounds (1.06 kg), 13 inch: 2.9 pounds (1.32 kg).

Long-lasting battery: MacBook Air gives you up to 5 hours of power on the 11-inch model, up to 7 hours on the 13-inch model, and up to 30 days of standby time.

High-resolution display: Pixel perfect. The MacBook Air display features a resolution so crisp and vibrant, it’s a big-screen feel in small-screen form. And even at a mere 0.19 inch, there’s room for a FaceTime camera.

Processor and memory

11 inch: 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache; or optional 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB shared L2 cache. 800MHz frontside bus.

13 inch: 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 6MB on-chip shared L2 cache; or optional 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 6MB shared L2 cache. 1066MHz frontside bus.

Both have 2GB of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM onboard (4GB maximum).

Only the 13 inch has a SD card port.

Flash Storage: 64GB or 128GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory.

Both have 2 USB 2.0 ports.

MacBook Air 2010: Prices

• MacBook Air 11 inch 64GB: $999
• MacBook Air 11 inch 128GB: $1199
• MacBook Air 13 inch 64GB: $1299
• MacBook Air 13 inch 128GB: $1599

Both of them are available starting… today.
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Photos thanks to Engadget

BigDog is a robot from Boston Dynamics, with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA.

No Flash or HDR were used in both still photos.

Sadly the camera of the new iPod Touch 4th Generation is only 960×720 pixels (lower than 1MP). The iPhone 4 has a 5.0 megapixel camera. The difference is huge,, iPod Touch photo camera is even worst than the camera from the first iPhone (2007).

For a lot of people this a reason to not update their iPod touches.

Both record HD Video (720p), the difference in the video recording is not as dramatic as the photos.

Verizon has expressed that it wouldn’t be carrying Windows Phone 7 devices until 2011, and now Microsoft is also confirming that its new platform will be GSM-only until the first half of 2011. So we won’t have a 4G Windows Phone 7 device.

Product manager Greg Sullivan said that trade-offs had to be made in order to meet the schedule and GSM was prioritized since it’s used worldwide, but that CDMA devices would be available early next year.

Both have the Retina Display, but…

The screen of the iPod Touch 4th Generation has more fingerprints than the one in the iPhone 4.
If you are under the belief that the new iPod touch 4th gen is made of the same material as the iPhone 4, you’d better think again. The iPod touch does not have an oleophobic screen – one that resists smudging and fingerprints.

Does it really matter?

Not so much. When the screen is actually on you can’t even see the smudges or fingerprints. So really there isn’t much of a problem.

In April 2010 Nokia launched the Make My App competition, inviting anybody and everybody worldwide to submit their best app ideas (only ideas no development or coding was necessary) for the chance of them being made into real apps for the Ovi Store. Nokia received lots of brilliant suggestions across 4 categories:

Fun and Games, Think Green, Easier Living, and Better World.

7,700 ideas were submitted from all over the globe. The public and a panel of judges then picked their 13 favourites, some of them are:

• Instant Voice Translation.
• Be understood wherever you go.
• Storymaker.
• For budding writers all over the world.
• BioSeen.
• Think Green.

The finalists were flown to Nokia World in London, where their apps will be built by pro developers an the Nokia Developer Summit.

The winning apps will soon be available from Ovi store.

This new Kindle ad shows its advantage when you want to read and the screen must be exposed to the brightness of the sunlight.

Who reads digital books at a resort honestly? Answer: Girls that look good in a bikini and wear really expensive sunglasses

KINDLE IS 10 times better than the iPad when reading ebooks!

Kindle price: $139 USD

Nokia is offering this new aluminum cellphone, the E7 QWERTY slider handset. One of the new family of Symbian 3 devices, it has:

• 4-inch tilting touchscreen display on the front.
• 8 megapixel imager capable of 720p video on the back.
• Comes with the ability to create PowerPoint slides on the go.
• Nokia’s new ClearBlack Display.
• Comes with preloaded apps including Mail for Exchange (with MS Outlook sync of contacts, calendar, and notes and multiple calendars with meeting request support), IBM Lotus Notes Traveler, Quickoffice dynamic premium, Adobe PDF reader, and F-Secure Anti-theft.

Video of the Nokia E7: The Ultimate Business Smartphone

Nokia E7 will be available before the end of the year in exchange for €495 = $635 US Dollars.

Nokia E7 versus Nokia N8

Nokia N8 Symbian 3 OS, AMOLED capacitive touchscreen 3.5 inches, 16 GB storage, microSD, ARM 11 680 MHz processor, 3D Graphics HW accelerator, Digital compass, Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF), Video/photo editor, Flash Lite v4.0

The Nokia E7 and N8 are almost identical outside of the E7′s 4-inch display and slightly bigger chassis required to host it. There are a few other differences, though. For example, The 12.9mm-thin N8 has an FM transmitter and 2mm charging connector unlike the slightly thicker 13.6mm E7. The E7′s bigger display also trims back the reported talk time to 540 minutes (the N8 does 720 minutes). The N8 counters with the better camera and stereo mic, thanks to a big 1/1.83-inch 12 megapixel sensor and Xenon flash that require some extra girth on the backend. Oh, and no MicroSD slot on the E7, you get 16GB and that’s it.

Price: $19.99

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Via Engadget

Chris Pirillo tests two apps to take HDR photos with an iPhone 4, or the new iPod Touch 4th Generation. It’s true that iOS will bring HDR capabilities to the iPhone, iPod Touch, and (presumably, when it gets a camera) the iPad, but sometimes dedicated apps handle things better than features tacked-on to default apps. He recommends the App: Pro HDR ($1.99 in iTunes).

I really liked it his RSS pillow.

Slogan: This is E-Reading.
The Sony Reader is an e-book reader. It uses an electronic paper display developed by E Ink Corporation that has 166 dpi (200 dpi in 5 inch version PRS-300) resolution and eight levels of grayscale (16 in the PRS-900 model), it is viewable in direct sunlight. The reader uses an iTunes Store-like interface to purchase books from Sony Connect eBook store. It also can display Adobe PDFs, ePub format, personal documents, blogs, RSS newsfeeds, JPEGs, and Sony’s proprietary BBeB (“BroadBand eBook”) format.

The Sony Reader can play MP3 and unencrypted AAC audio files.

Screen: 600×800 px,5″, 6″ or 7″ diagonal,
Memory: 420 MB Accessible
Memory card: Memory Stick Duo Up to 32 GB, SDHC Up to 32 GB (PRS-600, PRS-900
Weight: 10 oz (283 g)
Series: PRS-300, PRS-600, PRS-900
Predecessors: PRS-500, PRS-505, PRS-700

Battery: Sealed internal, up to two weeks of reading on a single charge

Sony Reader Photos

Sony Reader 2010 pink vs Amazon Kindle:

Sony Reader Pocket Edition (PRS-350):

Sony Reader: PRS 350 (Pocket Edition), PRS 650 (Touch Edition), PRS 950 (Daily Edition).

It is clear that from this ad the most important characteristic of Torch 9800 BlackBerry is its physical keyboard, wow, claps claps… what a fail.