Endless Iteration: Hidden key to Blizzard games

Blizzard have revealed in a recent interview that the key to their successes in games such as the upcoming Diablo III is ‘endless iteration’. As many of you are well aware, it has been 9 long years since Diablo II was first released, so any fresh hints about Diablo III is music to our ears. Read more

Apple’s App Store practices and the FCC

Following the massively unpopular decision for Apple to reject Google Voice from their App Store, a hugely detailed three page article has recently been posted on ComputerWorld, to see the fully detailed article follow this link. Read more

TomTom iPhone kit, app and rumored price

It has been reported that the highly anticipated TomTom kit for the Apple iPhone, has been made available for pre-order, from one online retailer in the UK. The pre-order price has yet to be officially confirmed by TomTom though, so it could be wrong. Read more

Almost Half Palm Pre’s Returned Due to Defect

Since the announcement of the Palm Pre, the handset has had so much hype surrounding it. Then when the phone was released, that excitement did show in early sales, although Palm only made a limited about of stock. Phones Review is reporting that almost half the Pre handsets are being returned due to defect. Read more

Apple: Microsoft stop Laptop Hunters ads

Microsoft have revealed that Apple wanted the company to take down their Laptop Hunter ads, that went out live recently. Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s Chief Operating Officer revealed the news recently at the Worldwide Partner Conference. Read more

Xbox 360’s Batman Arkham Asylum: First Look

Batman: Arkham Asylum is finally looking like the ‘decent’ Batman title we’ve all been waiting for. PlanetXbox360 have written their preview of the game, which is due towards the end of June. Read more

The Big Two: Palm Pre and Apple iPhone makes the grade

Apple (AAPL) knew that they had to do something special with their iPhone, as there is another handset on its way that many say will blow the iPhone out of the water. The handset in question is the Palm (PALM) Pre, which should be launched in the summer. Read more

Apple iPhone 3.0 Software: Attractive Palm Pre feature

Kevin Rose has announced that the much-anticipated Copy + Paste functionality will be made available on the Apple iPhone OS 3.0(AAPL), when it is released on March 17. The iPhone will also be getting all the features that the Palm Pre (PALM) has, which is what has made the phone more attractive than the iPhone, but not any longer. Read more

Speakaboos Releases Holiday Classics Available on iTunes and Rhapsody

Speakaboos have now released their digital content for children via iTunes and Rhapsody. Users will now be able to download Speakaboos holiday classics library of storybook videos of well-known holiday stories, as read by celebrities. Read more

No charge for MMO The Agency says Sony

Kevin O’Hara from Sony Online Entertainment has stated that upcoming MMO The Agency will not be making users pay a monthly subscription fee. Read more

Browser Speed Test: BlackBerry Storm vs. iPhone 3G

Both the Apple iPhone and the BlackBerry Storm both have good browsers in their own right, but if you were to put both Smartphone’s side by side for a browser speed comparison which would come out as the clear winner? Read more

White Spaces: FCC say yes

The row over the use of White Spaces has been going on for some time now; companies such as Google and Microsoft were all for it, while Television companies were worried that it might interfere with their broadcasts. The decision was down to the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), and they have now said yes, as they voted to authorize the unlicensed use of white spaces. Read more

FCC chairman supports white spaces for wireless broadband

Kevin Martin, FCC chairman has proposed that we open up unused parts of the television airwaves “White Spaces” and deliver wireless broadband service through it. Martin has been appealing to both the publics and groups of technology companies to bring a more affordable high-speed Internet connection the American people. Read more

FCC hopes to pass two wireless mergers by end of 2008

The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is hoping to pass two wireless mergers by the end of this year, according to Kevin Martin, the agency chairman. The companies involved in the mergers are Sprint/Clearwire and Verizon/Alltel. Read more

Netscape founder impressed with Google Chrome

Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape has been offering his opinion on what he thinks about the new Google Chrome web browser. His first thoughts are that he is suitably impressed by Google’s efforts.

During a conversation with Portfolio magazine contributing editor Kevin Maney, Andreessen said that any desktop application that has not been implemented on a web browser before is now going to be implemented in this browser.

The Netscape founder said that he was blown away by the speed of Google Chrome, along with its radical & innovative JavaScript engine. Andreessen also said that Firefox and Internet Explorer will now have to compete actively with Chrome, as a result will help to boost the browser as a whole.

Read the full interview at Gigaom

What new products will Apple introduce on September 9?

A number of sources across the Internet are buzzing about the new range that Apple will introduce come September 9. Kevin Rose from Digg has gotten in on the action. Rose is speculating what he thinks the new products will be.

The first product that Rose believes that Apple will introduce is a revamped iPod Nano. He also assumes that Apple will tweak their iPod Touch as well as launching iTunes 8.0.

Many iTunes users are hoping that the new version will offer a number of price cuts. As usual this is all speculation as Apple’s Steve Jobs keeps things close to his chest.

What else do you think that Apple has in store for us on September 9; my money is on some tweaks to the Mac as well as the iPod. What they will do with these products I do not know.

Source

What would you like to see from Apple come September 9?

Microsoft and Novell address growing customer demand

Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. are announcing an incremental investment in their relationship to meet accelerating customer demand for their business model solution, which is designed to build a bridge between open source and proprietary software to deliver interoperability and intellectual property (IP) peace of mind for organizations operating mixed-source IT environments Read more

Rat’s brain used in robot to help Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s

Love them or hate them rat’s could end up changing the lives of thousands of people who suffer from Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s. Researchers at the University of Reading in England have developed a small robot that is controlled by the brain of a rat.

Well when I say a rat’s brain I mean a Petri dish full of rat neurons. These neurons are able to remotely steer the robot via Bluetooth wireless signals. Professor Kevin Warwick said “If we can understand some of the basics of what is going on in our little model brain, it could have enormous medical spin-offs.”

The team at the University of Reading had to dissolve a fetal rat’s brain, which they then placed in into an electrode-ringed Petri dish. These cells then reassociated themselves with each other, they then begun to fire electrical signals randomly.

The electrical pulses that were sent through the ring of electrodes managed to calm the neurons down, after a period of time those cells then began to learn patterns among the external pulses.

The team hopes that by understanding their findings will help them to shed a bit of light on neurodegenerative disorders; this includes Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Source

IBM says Windows free computing by 2009

IBM have said that they want Windows free computing, this is something that they are working on with three major Linux distributors, Canonical/Ubuntu, Novell and Red Hat.

They aim to achieve a Vole-free personal computing world by 2009 however; this is a tall order. All four of these companies are in collaboration with each other and are working on the development of a PC which will come pre-loaded with Linux, IBM’s Open Collaboration Client Solution (OCCS), Lotus Notes, Symphony and Sametime.

Consumers as well as independent software vendors will then be encouraged to develop applications that will run on this new PC. This will be done via Lotus Expeditor; this is a software framework which is based on the open source Eclipse programming model.

IBM Lotus Software vice president, Kevin Cavanaugh has said “The slow adoption of Vista among businesses, coupled with the proven success of a new type of Microsoft-free PC in every region, provides an extraordinary window of opportunity for Linux.”

It seems that more and more PC customers are asking for a computer that does not have any Microsoft software in it. It looks as though IBM has listened to them; let us hope that this collaboration works and all four companies can come up with something that consumers have been waiting for.

Source

Can Apple 3G iPhone beat Blackberry Bold and HTC Touch Diamond?

We have three phones and three good ones at that and call this a debate or just a general what is the best model one way or another surely there must be a clear winner, the only people that will let us all know is you the people who will buy them. You will read below all about the Apple 3G iPhone, the Blackberry Bold and the HTC Touch Diamond where I will talk a little about each phone with specs and pictures and I will put across what I feel is the best, although you may agree or disagree with my review, feel free to leave your opinion.

Let me start with the much talked about Apple 3G iPhone, we all know by now that this device will be launching in June sometime and apparently is launching at the WWDC conference but is this the phone of all phones? The Apple 3G iPhone will come in three sizes which start with 8GB for $399 then there is the 16GB version for $499 and the one I would choose which is the 32GB version for $599, you must remember that the 32GB Apple 3G iPhone has not yet been confirmed as far as we can tell. So far what we know is that Apple are going to trim off a stunning 2.5mm off the current iPhone’s case which will give the 3G iPhone a very slim advantage over most phones similar to this one, the casings material may be different as well. The Apple 3G iPhone will boast an Infineon-based S-GOLD3H 3G chip which will be able to get HSDPA speeds up to 7.2Mbps (Not in America though), there were talks of a front facing video-call camera which may be supported by the supported by the Infineon S-GOLD3H 3G chip and speculated by Kevin Rose but this is just a rumor at the moment. We all know the main specs of the Apple 3G iPhone so I will move onto the next phone. Possible photos of the Apple 3G iPhone.

The next muck talked about phone is the Blackberry 9000 also known as the Blackberry Bold which is out now, this is a brand new messaging smartphone which will deliver so much more than any other smartphone messenger. I will talk a little about the specs but you can see the full specifications below this information, The all new BlackBerry Bold features a stunning and yes large TFT display with the same half-VGA resolution as the Apple iPhone’s (480 x 320 pixels) plus has a cool full QWERTY keyboard. The Blackberry Bold will run on the latest Blackberry OS 4.6, it has 1GB built in memory plus a microSD memory card slot which supports 8GB microSDHC cards plus there is promise of 16GB support. The 624MHz processor will run smoothly we have been told, just so you get an idea of the size it is the same size as the Blackberry 8830. The Blackberry Bold is apparently the first Blackberry smartphone to feature tri-band HSDPA support besides the quad-band GSM/EDGE one and with integrated GPS receiver and Wi-Fi you know you are getting something special. Check out the main specifications of the Blackberry Bold below.

Blackberry Bold Specifications -
2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900, 3G Network UMTS 850 / 1900 / 2100, Full QWERTY keyboard, Trackball navigation, Wallpapers, MP3 & Polyphonic Ringtones, Vibration, 3.5 mm stereo headset jack, Photocall & Phonebook, Call records, 128 MB built in memory plus microSD (TransFlash), microSDHC, up to 8 GB Card slot, 1 GB storage memory, 624 MHz processor, GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps, EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps, 3G HSDPA 3.6 Mbps, WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP, USB v2.0, BlackBerry OS, SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging, HTML Browser, Games, 2 MP Camera - 1600×1200 pixels, video, flash, Built-in GPS, BlackBerry maps, Media player MP3/WMA/AAC+, Video player DivX/WMV/XviD/3gp, DataViz document viewer/editor, Java, Organizer, Calculator, Voice dial, Built-in handsfree, Voice memo, Stand-by Up to 310 hours plus Talk time Up to 5 hours, 114 x 66 x 14 mm and 133 grams in weight with battery.

Last but not least we have the HTC Touch Diamond which is without a doubt a stunning cell phone and features the impressive HTC Touch 3D interface (aka HTC Manila), HTC Diamond is truly touch-optimized which will be favored by the masses. The HTC Touch Diamond is powered by Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro and has a stunning 2.8-inch VGA display and with a size of only 11.5mm thin this will be the phone we can see many people choosing, it also has the built in accelerometer which is basically the same as the Apple iPhone, just a re-cap of what the built in accelerometer is. Basically it allows screen auto rotation, so turn the phone and you get landscape and then turn it back and you get portrait. You will get a 3.2 megapixel camera with auto focus plus Wi-Fi and a GPS receiver.

The HTC Touch Diamond has 192MB DDR SDRAM, runs on a Qualcomm MSM7201A 528 MHz processor, FM radio with RDS plus 4GB of storage memory (no memory card slot). I really do like this phone but there are downsides, shame really because this is a sexy phone but in reality there has to be downsides to everything. The downside is the tri-band-only GSM support, yes there will be two versions one for Asia and Europe plus another for America, the other downside has to be the small 900 mAh battery. The HTC Touch Diamond will be available in June 2008 in Europe and Asia, and other regions at the end of the year. Please do check out the full specifications below.

HTC Touch Diamond Specifications -
2G Network GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900 for Europe/Asia - GSM 850 / 1800 / 1900 for Americas - 3G Network HSDPA 2100 / 900 for Europe/Asia - HSDPA 850 / 1900 for Americas, 2.8 Inch TFT Touchscreen Display with 65K colors & 480 x 640 pixels, TouchFLO 3D finger swipe navigation, Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate, Touch-sensitive navigation control, Handwriting recognition, Vibration, MP3, WAV, WMA & Polyphonic (40 channels) Ringtones, Phonebook & Photocall plus Call records, No Card slot but does have 4 GB user available memory, 192 MB DDR SDRAM, 256 MB ROM, Qualcomm MSM7201A 528 Mhz processor, GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots) 32 - 48 kbps, EDGE Class 10 - 236.8 kbps, 3G HSDPA - 7.2 Mbps, WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP, miniUSB, Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional OS, SMS, MMS, Email & Instant Messaging, HTML & WAP 2.0/xHTML Browser, Games, 3.2 MP Camera with autofocus, video plus secondary VGA videocall camera, Built-in GPS with A-GPS, Voice memo, Java MIDP 2.0, Pocket Office (Word, Excel, Outlook, PDF viewer), Stereo FM radio with RDS, Built-in handsfree, MP3 player, Up to 285 hours standby time, Up to 5 hours 30 minutes talk time, 102 x 51 x 11.5 mm and 110 grams in weight with battery

My personal opinion – This is a difficult one really, at the moment I am personally using the Apple iPhone and swear by it so sometimes when you love using something so much you become biast, personally the best looking phone without any doubt in my mind has to be the HTC Touch Diamond but it is the hope of a 32GB Apple 3G iPhone which sways me towards that. I do not have a lot of experience with any BlackBerry device but this Blackberry Bold seems like a very good business phone. The tri-band HSDPA support and Wi-Fi makes this a good contender, personally just going on the looks the BlackBerry Bold is off my list.

So that leaves me with the Apple 3G iPhone and the HTC Touch Diamond, I do love the look of the HTC Touch Diamond much more than the iPhone but it is the iPhone I would personally go for because I know how it works, how it acts and how easy it is to use and the fact 32GB storage within.

Please let us know what you would choose out of the Apple 3G iPhone, Blackberry Bold and HTC Touch Diamond. Can the Apple 3G iPhone beat Blackberry Bold and HTC Touch Diamond?

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