IBLOG SPACE

Apple’s legal case against HTC – in which they allege the smartphone manufacturer impinged on their intellectual property with various Android and Windows Mobile based handsets – has been green-lighted by the US International Trade Commission (ITC). The decision means that, within the next 45 days, the ITC must announce a date by which it expects to have come to a conclusion over whether HTC did, in fact, infringe Apple patents; if it finds in Apple’s favor, HTC could be forced to block functionality in their devices or even barred from importing them into the US altogether. As for the likely timescale of that decision date, given the magnitude of the case it’s likely to be measured in months rather than anything more immediate. Once a ruling is made, it must be enacted on within 60 days; however, HTC would likely file an appeal which could further delay things. Ironically, the news comes after Apple themselves have been made the subject of a legal case for ITC investigation, over al

NEC has been tossing more and more LCDs for computer users onto the market packed with green features to save power. The latest such offering from NEC is called the AccuSync AS231WM (PDF). The display has the EPEAT Silver Rating, Energy Star 5.0, and TCO 5.0 compliance marking its energy sipping ways. The screen is 23-inches and has a native resolution of 1920 x 1080. It uses a 16:9 aspect ratio and has a contrast ratio of 1000:1 with a brightness rating of 250 cd/m2. When in power saving mode and power off mode the screen only needs 0.4W of power. Connectivity includes VGA and DVI-D with HDCP. The screen has a tilting stand and touch-integration capabilities. NEC also equips the screen with downward firing multimedia speakers and a headphone jack. The AS231WM will ship in May for $269.

Vivitek makes all sorts of projectors for uses ranging from the office to the home theater. The company has announced that it has dropped the price on one of its best performing projectors called the H1080FD. The projector now sells for $899. For that price, you get a projector with a 1080p resolution and a contrast ratio of 4000:1. The projector has 1800 lumens of brightness and uses TI DLP DarkChip2 technology. The projector can throw an image of 25″ to 300″ depending on room size. The projector is bright enough to work at distances of 3-feet to 30-feet. Inputs include HDMI 1.3, VGA, component video, composite video, S-Video, RCA audio in, audio-out and a few more. The projector weighs 7.8 pounds and measures 13.2″ x 4″ x 10″.

Sheesh, I can only imagine how hard a time I would have actually using the Instant Trend watch. Some days I am baffled by a watch with no markings at all, the thing doesn’t even have numbers in its extra geeky mode. The Instant Trend is more than a watch though. The longish blue text screen can also display messages from Twitter and Facebook. To display these messages it has to be paired with a smartphone via Bluetooth. I am actually surprised there is no mention of caller ID, if you are pairing with a smartphone that seems to be a no brainer to me. The watch can also display normal time clocks for multiple time zones for days when you can’t figure out what time it is in the Tokyoflash clock mode.

Back in February I talked a bit about the cool looking new Shuttle SG41J1 SFF PC aimed at gamers and media hounds. At the time, the little rig had just turned up in a PR for Shuttle Europe with nary a hint of a machine for the US. Shuttle now has the little rig on its US website. The machine is listed at the J1 4100G and it is aimed at PC gamers. Shuttle is also offering some nice upgrades for free right now to those who buy. For a limited time buyers get a free CPU upgrade, gaming mouse, and a copy of red Faction Guerilla. The SFF machine can be crammed full of gaming goodies like a Core 2 Quad processor and NVIDIA GT 240 graphics. That’s not exactly a high-end video card, but in a tiny machine, you can only expect single slot cards. The J1 4100G starts at $889 and versions for media enthusiasts and general computer users are available.

Another rumored blow to Intel’s CULV range of ultra-low-voltage processors for ultra-thins, as DigiTimes’ sources at notebook manufacturers claim the silicon company havedelayed the launch of a new CULV line-up. The decision – which would push the new ultra-thin CPUs back into Q3 2010 – is blamed in part on Acer’s decision to eschew the CULV chips in favor of low-voltage Calpalla-series processors for their newest TimelineX notebooks. Acer executives have previously expressed their disappointment with the “inferior power” of Intel’s CULV processors, pointing to underwhelming performance as a reason why sales slipped 5-percent. Instead, the TimelineX range uses Core i3-330M and i3-350M (2.12GHz or 2.26GHz), Core i5-430M, i5-520M and i5-540M (2.26GHz, 2.40GHz or 2.53GHz) and Core i7-620M (2.66GHz) chips, though Acer promises the same battery longevity. Intel, for their part, say they won’t comment on unannounced products, but market watchers reckon the Q3 2010 CULV refresh will be very

NVIDIA has recently unveiled its first Fermi video cards with the GTX 480 and GTX 470 getting official on March 26. As with any new and high-end video card, the things aren’t cheap or quiet. The beasts also eat lots of power. Apparently, some of the gaming geek hoards have been complaining about the power consumption and heat output of the video cards. Some have feared that the amount of heat the cards generate will result in a lower life expectancy for the GPU. Overheating has killed more than one GPU and CPU in a gaming rig. NVIDIA has posted on its official blog that the GPU in the GTX 480 was specifically designed to run at high temperatures. Big green states that the trade off for high power consumption and lots of heat generation is the performance of the video card. The crux of thepost is that the heat output is nothing for gamers to worry about; the cards were designed to handle the heat.

If you are one of the geeky masses that really want an iPad Saturday and you didn’t pre-order, you do have chance of landing one. The shopping search engine Milo may be your best friend. Milo will find you an iPad at a local Best Buy. Basically, you hop over to Milo, enter your zip code, and type in iPad and the engine will search for in stock iPads near you. Then you can run over and buy the thing, assuming you get there before other geeks. Another point of note is that many of the Apple Authorized retailers like those mom and pop local places that sell Apple gear will also be selling the iPad on Saturday. Be sure you check out the local Apple Authorized resellers, these may be some of the best places to find an iPad since many people won’t know about them.

Coincidentally published on the same day as we fell for the ThinkGeek iCade, Apple have applied for a patentdescribing a portable gaming controller into which a touchscreen device – like an iPhone or iPod touch – could dock into. Apple reckon such a controller could have anything from game-specific controls, like D-pads and joysticks, through microphones and cameras, rumble packs, motion detection or even a second display. Other possibilities include systems where the docking accessory – which could have an adjustable recess into which the main device would slot – could communicate with other units for multiplayer gaming, or with a nearby TV or media system. That would allow for local audio, visual or other information to be displayed, such as a game map or surround sound effects. The controller could have a battery, too, as well as an authentication chip to make sure you were only using legitimate Apple devices with it. It’s a premise similar to products we’ve already seen from thi

With Nintendo’s 3DS gaming handheld on the horizon, any glasses-free 3D display technology announcement is being examined closely. Back in March we pondered whether Nintendo might use Hitachi’s 3D system, based on the company already being a DSi screen supplier, but now Sharp – who also supply Nintendo with LCDs –have announced their own 3.4-inch 3D LCD technology. As for whether it works, Akihabara News reckon it’s “REALLY impressive” and the equal of systems requiring 3D glasses. Sharp’s system uses a parallax barrier system – basically a series of vertical slits which control what light reaches which eye – and can be used in both portrait and landscape orientation. It’s switchable between 2D and 3D models, and the company reckons it’s the brightest such display so far, at 500cd/m2. Two versions are planned, one with a touchscreen and the other without – remind you of any particular gaming handheld? – and mass production is expected to begin in the first half of the 2010 fiscal ye

After we scoffed at the leaked iPad Wall Street Journal pricing last month, it turns out the paper themselves were deadly serious. A new promo page for the WSJ’s iPad app has gone live, and we now know it’ll cost you $3.99 per week if you want access to subscriber-only content, seven-day access to the archives, and the ability to save sections and articles for later reading. That works out to $17.29 per month, and of course you may have to pay sales tax on top of it too. Payment is by credit card, not through the App Store itself, and if you choose to download the WSJ app but not actually subscribe, you’ll only have access to the top articles section and their market data. Is $17.29 per month reasonable for access to the Business, Markets and Opinion sections, among others? Only you know how much you value the WSJ’s insight to answer that. Still, it seems on the heavy side given Apple’s tablet was supposed to be the salvation to ailing print margins.

The comparative benefits of HTML5 and Flash are still being argued, but thanks to a team of three Google engineers we can mark another point up to the HTML5 side. They’ve managed to port Quake II’s game engineover to HTML5, so that you can play it completely within the browser. The end result is 30fps gaming complete with file saving and multiplayer support. After ID open-sourced the Quake II engine, it was ported over to Java; the Google guys then compiled it to Javascript using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). In order to get everything working, they had to create a new WebGL based renderer, convert the UDP multiplayer network layer to WebSockets and multiple other tweaks; not bad, given this was their 20-percent project. If you’re interested in trying it yourself, the team have released all of their code here. Unfortunately there’s only Webkit and Chrome versions at the moment, since Firefox doesn’t support some of the HTML5 code necessary.

If you thought the ebook saga was settled after Amazon conceded to agency model pricing with both HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster, think again. Certain Penguin and Hachette Book Group ebook titles have been removed from sale by the retailer, as independent negotiations with each publisher continue to take their toll. Meanwhile, analysts are calling for Kindle prices to be slashed in response to the iPad. Amazon have described the Hachette freeze as an “interim” measure, but the Penguin situation looks like the retailer attempting to ramp up pressure. It’s not a new move for Amazon; the retailer yanked all Macmillan titles – both print and electronic – back in January 2010 after the publisher demanded agency model pricing. However it later capitulated, though described Macmillan’s prices as “needlessly high”. In the case of Hachette, it seems that Amazon have reached another agency agreement but that “operational” issues mean the updated catalog won’t be ready until April 3r

Conspiracy theorists start your engines: either the JooJoo really is shipping, or Fusion Garage have crafted a special unit just for Engadget to unbox and are sitting, sniggering behind their hands at our ongoing gullibility. Mere days before the iPad is set to hit shelves, the contentious JooJoo has finally arrived and – going by the demo video which you can see after the cut – it even works, too. Fusion Garage announced late last month that the JooJoo was (finally) shipping to preorder customers, though there was speculation about exactly how big a group of people that actually was. The whole project has been laced with difficulty; the company initially partnered with TechCrunch to product the so-called CrunchPad, but therelationship broke down and resulted in ongoing legal spats. Engadget are promising a full review once they’ve had a chance to play with the JooJoo a little, a move which is already whipping up their comments section into a frenzy (so much so, in fact, that they’ve

If you didn’t already have enough reasons to get the new tablet from Apple, it looks like one of the largest companies in comic book history (if not the largest) is giving you 500 reasons to jump on board the early adopter train. Just announced today, Marvel is releasing an iPad application, specifically designed to bring you a combination of old tales, mixed perfectly with the latest and greatest from the Marvel Universe. The application is available right now in the iTunes Store. It’s coming packed with 500 of the company’s comic books, spanning over the Marvel Universe’s expansive history. There’s going to be a bit of everything, from the tales of old, to more recent editions. It will also feature you favorite characters, like Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America, and Hulk. And, while it may be cool to have all those comic books at your fingertips, it’s not going to be entirely free. The application allows you to preview three pages of the particular comic you want to see, but fro

No shock and awe here. Apple’s offensive on Flash Player continues, and this time they’ve created a website that details exactly which sites have joined the foray. It’s a nice site, sure, but we’re wondering if this kind of thing is all that necessary. After all, the general rule of thumb is that people are going to browse the Internet to whichever site they want. No Flash Player, or Flash Player, probably won’t change any of that. (Outside of the video streaming sites, of course.) But, that’s not stopping them, so here’s the list after the break. CNN, Reuters, The New York Times, Vimeo, Time, Major League Basebal, The White House, Virgin America, Sports Illustrated, Flickr, People Magazine, TED Is there any hidden rules to be part of this list? Not that we can see. To be included, all you have to do is make your site include one of, if not all of the following: HTML5, CSS3, an JavaScript. As we can see from the list, many of the sites are standardized for the iPad, but the main focus

Microsoft has launched their brick-and-mortar stores in two previous locations: Phoenix, Arizona and Mission Viejo, California, and both of which are pretty large successes for the company. So much so, apparently, that Microsoft is up and ready to expand their footprint in the physical realm, by launching two more stores. Based on a job board posting, Microsoft is branching out to San Diego and Denver. There’s no official word on when the sites will be launched, but it looks like it might be sooner than later. Of course, if you’ve never been into one of these things, you might not be too surprised by what you find. That would only be because you’ve probably seen the general design quality before, if you’ve ever been in an Apple Store. We’re not saying they’re direct rip-offs, but it’s pretty close. We imagine that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because the Apple Stores are definitely working for the Cupertino-based company. We’ll have to wait and see if they turn out to be some kind of

All this talk of notebooks, netbooks, and everything in between, tells us that the market is definitely growing. Even earlier today we saw Fujitsu get another LifeBook get outed by the FCC, and sure enough, here’s another one. Going strong, and that’s the way we like to see it. This time around, we’ve got the real deal, with some standard features that may get the notebook fans out there excited. Or, maybe the 10.1-inch display and Atom N450 processor is just too run-of-the-mill for you. The Fujitsu LifeBook MH330 is less than an inch thick though, so that has to count for something. The notebook is powered by the Atom N450 processor (1.66GHz, 512 L2 Cache, at 667MHz) and is packing a 250GB hard drive. As mentioned above, it features a 10.1-inch WSVGA, 1024×600 resolution, backlit LED display. It’s also rocking a 400:1 contrast ratio. It’s also got dual built-in speakers, so you should get some pretty good sound quality from them. Connectivity and features wise, you’re looking at Bluet

So, here they are. We’ve already seen them a couple times, still images along with it, but Apple has gone ahead and released the floodgates. That’s right, if you were looking to catch a glimpse of what’s to come for the iPad in the applications front, you can go ahead and head into the iTunes Store, and knock yourself out. As you can see from the image, which is a very, very brief glimpse of what you’ll find in your own spelunking adventures, it looks like the applications are going to be a bit more expensive. We already got a glimpse of that before, but now we can basically say that it’s confirmed. Applications like Fieldrunners have taken a bit of a price increase. The original appilcation goes for $2.99, while the iPad specific application is going for $7.99. As for Flight Control, which tacks on the “HD” moniker for the iPad release, jumps up from $.99 to $4.99. Truth be told, we can imagine that some developers out there believe that higher prices make sense. After all, with the i

The promo of Yash Raj Films' next release Badmaash Company starring Shahid Kapoor and Anushka Sharma in lead roles was unveiled last week and going by the looks of it, the film promises to be a complete entertainer. Directed by Parmeet Sethi, the film tells the story of four friends (Shahid, Anushka, Chang and Vir Das) who want to make it big in life. For both Shahid and Anushka, this is the second film with the coveted Yash Raj banner. While Shahid starred in the fairly ordinary Dil Bole Hadippa alongside Rani Mukherjee, Anushka made a super debut opposite none other than SRK in Aditya Chopra's Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi . In Badmaash Company however, both Shahid and Anushka would be seen in a young, fresh and altogether new look. Anushka, who in her first film, was mostly seen sporting Indian wear has gone glamorous for this role wearing cool and funky tops and hot pants. Shahid on the other hand too seems to be sporting a new cropped spiked look compared to his l

By now its common knowledge that Sonakshi Sinha (daughter of Shatrughan and Punam Sinha) will be making her debut opposite Salman Khan in Arbaaz Khan's home production Dabangg . The film, which also stars Sonu Sood in a pivotal role, of Anurag Kashyap). We came across some on-the-sets stills of the cast shooting for the film. As can be seen, both Salman and Arbaaz will be seen sporting a moustache in the film. One can also see Sonakshi looking pretty dressed as a village belle and behind her is mommy dearest Punam Sinha whave accompanied her daughter on the sets. The cast and crew seem to be engaged in a serious discussion in between shots. Major portions of the film have been shot in Wai in Maharashtra and the film is all likely to release in the second half of the year.