IBLOG SPACE

It may look a little like Project Natal, but this lengthy webcam is actually Panasonic’s Skype camera for their latest HDTVs. The Panasonic TY-CC10W is intended to use with select Viera models, bringing 720p HD video and active noise cancellation audio to the sets for straightforward video conversations. Panasonic reckons the system will appeal to grandparents and other tech-phobic users, who might find a notebook too much hassle and a standalone Skype phone unnecessarily indulgent. Plugging it in – via USB 2.0 – adds an new Skype option to the HDTV’s on-screen menus, and you can browse contact lists and add new contacts directly from the UI. The Panasonic TY-CC10W is expected to go on sale come June 11th; Panasonic have not confirmed pricing, but AV Watch expect it to be around 18,000 yen ($194). That’s expensive for a webcam (especially one that will only work with your Viera HDTV, not if you plug it into a computer), but the company are obviously counting on people spending the e

Apple’s iPad is on the market (in the US at least), rivals fromNotion Ink, Toshiba, HP and others are expected sometime this year; if you’re a manufacturer and want a tablet of your own then you need all the shortcuts you can get. SoC manufacturer Socle Technology have pitched upwith GlobalFoundries 65nm chipset, an ARM Mali 3D GPU and full 1080p HD hardware decoding in their sPad A11 Design and Development platform. More complete and more powerful than Apple’s A4, so Socle say, the sPad A11 supports Android and other Linux platforms complete with 3D graphics and multitasking. There are also onboard camera, Bluetooth, WiFi and memory controllers, and Socle already have a software reference design to go with the hardware. Unfortunately they’re not using the newer 28nm GlobalFoundries Cortex A9 chips, but as we’ve seen in the past ARM’s Mali GPUs are certainly capable of pushing out the high-def media many tablet users are looking for. We’re all for more challenges to the Tegra/Apple

Apple have confirmed that preordered iPad WiFi + 3G units should arrive with buyers on April 30th, though the company’s online store currently lists a May 7th expected delivery date. The press release also says that Apple’s retail stores should have stock of the WWAN-enabled iPad in, though not until 5pm on the 30th. As with the WiFi-only models, there will be three versions of WiFi + 3G iPad. Starting price is $629 for the 16GB iPad – a $130 premium over the non-3G – while 32GB and 64GB units will be $729 and $829. 3G service itself is provide by AT&T in the US, with 250MB for $14.99 and unlimited data for $29.99 per month.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has revealed new details regarding the upcoming Chrome OS based netbooks, including some of the thought processes behind the development of the web-centric platform and what price tags he expects to see hardware land with. According to Schmidt, “the price points you should think about are the current netbook pricings which are 300 dollar, 400 dollar price points,” figures he points out that are led by manufacturers and are predominantly derived from the cost of processors, glass and other components. However, while Chrome OS carries no software cost, there is an associated price in bringing software up to speed. Schmidt admitted that even Google “found applications that were part of our business; operations, sales, accounting so forth” which they had to translate into the “perfect web app.” As for why Google decided to get into the netbook OS business, Schmidt says that, rather than just search, the company is all about information and sharing, something that

While the new Verizon Droid Incredible isn't supposed to arrive until April 29th, a few blessed pre-orderers are getting their units early. From the sound of it, there was a glitch in Verizon's system that was allowing some phone orders to be shipped right away -- sadly, that apparently has since been plugged. Interestingly, the boxes these are being shipped in so far just say "HTC Incredible," not that it's any surprise that the Droid Incredible moniker was a late-in-game addition. Of course, cries of "fake!" rang out in the forums, so one of the recipients (appropriately self-dubbed "SoSmarmy") posted a video of the phone booting up for all to see. Check it out after the break. Not seething with envy yet? Perhaps you should re-read our review of the new flagship Android handset.

Talk about being flexible. Sierra Wireless' newest 7.2Mbps-capable AirCard (the 890, if you're curious) obviously isn't content with fitting into just one slot. Rather than forcing users to choose between compatibility with PCMCIA (PC Card) or ExpressCard, this particular WWAN card actually fits into both... but not at the same time, naturally. It's the first DataConnect card on AT&T's network to boast a 2-in-1 form factor, and moreover, it touts integrated GPS functionality for use with location-based services. 'Course, you won't be using one of these with your shiny new 15-inch MacBook Pro (smart move on that SD-for-ExpressCard swap, Steve-o), but everyone else can procure one starting May 5th for $49.99 after mail-in rebate and a new two-year DataConnect contract of at least $35 a month.

Talk about random gifts from the ether. British Android device owners are waking up this morning to discover their robot-themed operating system has gone and upgraded itself overnight. We've confirmed for ourselves thatGoogle Maps Navigation -- yes, the free turn-by-turn stuff with voice directions -- has made its fully functional way across the Atlantic. This is the 4.1.1 Beta released on April 6 to US customers, but as we say, it's now working over in Blighty as well. We've tested it out on a Desire and Nexus One from HTC, with the latter offering the extra-cool option to orally instruct your Google search bar to "navigate to" your destination. Check out the gallery below for some visual edification. [Thanks, Tes] Update: We're now also sure the full Navigation service works on at least some Android 1.6 devices, such as the Dell Mini 5 and a reported Sony Ericsson X10 success over on the xda-developers thread. Update 2: Numerous users have reported success

From what we know of Anssi Vanjoki, he's a great guy and one that isn't afraid of admitting his company's mistakes. Alas, now we can also add to that dossier the ignominious fact that the fella doesn't seem to know how professional cameras work. Talking about the rapid improvement in cameraphone technology during a speech in Helsinki yesterday, Vanjoki said that very soon "there will be no need to carry around those heavy lenses." He's really enthusiastic about HD video coming to phones, which he predicts will be here within 12 months (if you ask Sony Ericsson, it's here already), but we just can't let that spectacular line about lenses slide. The glass you shoot through is, for a lot of people, the most important piece of photographic equipment and there are genuine reasons why said lenses are heavy, elongated, and typically unfriendly to pockets. Then again, this dude also thought the N-Gage was gonna be a success, so don't start selling off

Color us unsurprised, but it's still notable to hear that Adobe is stopping investment in its software's capability to port content over to iPhone OS. The company's great hope on this front, Packager for iPhone, will still ship as part of Flash CS5 as planned, but beyond that Adobe is essentially giving up on Apple's mobile OS until further notice. In spite of being repeatedly rebuffed by Jobs and company before, the Flash maker had kept up hope that it could sway (or nag) Apple into validating its wares, but the final straw in this relationship seems to have been Apple's dev tool lockdown. So what will Adobe do now? Principal Product Manager Mike Chambers tells us that Android is doing kind of okay and his company will shift its attentions to it and other mobile platforms. Of course, we're just giving you the cleaned up version -- for the full finger-pointing diatribe against Apple, you'll have to hit the source link.

According to BGR , we're apparently looking at the first shots of a phone numbered 9670 in RIM's BlackBerry parlance, a true QWERTY flip running BlackBerry OS 6.0 on a 480 x 360 display with WiFi, a 5 megapixel camera, optical pad (as is the case with every new BlackBerry these days), microSD expansion, and a huge external display that's eerily reminiscent of Moto's RAZR 2. The device is said to be running CDMA, which almost certainly means it's being shopped around to Sprint and Verizon exclusively among major carriers -- the only other big potential takers would be Bell and Telus, and they're in the midst of migrating to HSPA -- so we'll just sit back, relax, and see if this thing materializes at WES next week. Granted, we've got to see it in person and gaze at a few non-blurrycam shots before passing final judgment, but we're admittedly a little worried about the merciless beating the ugly stick may have delivered up in Waterloo this time around.

It's been pretty low-key, so we totally understand if you haven't heard anything about it yet, but it turns outthere's a next-gen iPhone floating around somewhere outside Apple's sphere of reality-distorting influence. We'll spare you the backstory there, but Gizmodo saw fit to do a little non-destructive (more on that in a moment) teardown of the device today. There's actually not that much to see or learn from it, but we couldn't help but notice the prominently-placed translucent tab underneath the battery imploring only "authorized service providers" to proceed, which we figure is a pretty strong sign that Apple will continue its nefarious legacy of blocking owners from managing their own juice -- a fact that's corroborated by Giz 's claim that it takes the removal of two screws and a suction cup to get in there anyhow. As for the delicate, decidedly un-iFixit-like nature of the teardown, the site explains that it didn't want to &qu

Though much of Microsoft's technical strategy for Windows Phone 7 materialized at MIX last month, the company stayed hazy on a handful of key details -- portions of the hardware specifications were left to guesses and hearsay, for instance, as was the software update strategy. Much of that appears to be coming to light now thanks to a leaked "architecture guide" slide deck where we seeing that retail devices will be required to feature cameras (that could be a problem for corporate devices in high-security environments), FM radio tuners, compasses, and proximity sensors, among other more obvious features like capacitive touchscreen displays; of course, these are requirements for the initial volley of launch devices at the end of 2010, and it's probably reasonable to assume that future chassis specs will be tweaked. Moving to software, the deck confirms that a Windows Live ID will be required to set up the handset -- much the same way that Android strongly encourages t

Nothing here we didn't already know, but it's nice to have some final, official confirmation: Microsoft Germany's just posted the specs for the Kin One and Kin Two on its Facebook page, and they line right up with that original, Google cached leak. As originally foretold, the Kin One will sport a 2.6-inch capacitive TFT LCD screen at 320 x 240 resolution, a 5 megapixel CMOS camera, 4GB of flash memory and a 1240 mAh battery, while the Kin Two ups its game with a 3.4-inch 480 x 320 screen, an 8 megapixel CMOS HDR shooter by Omnivision with a LumiLED flash, 8GB of solid state memory and 1390 mAh of juice. Both get 256MB of DDR, Bluetooth 2.1, 802.11 b/g WiFi, GPS, FM radio and an accelerometer; neither will own up to the Tegra they hide inside their svelte plastic frames. Not a fan of specs? Find out what Kin's really all about in our full guide.

"Multitouch on a resistive screen?" We must be joking, right? Not at all -- if we've learned anything from our encounters with a little firm named Stantum, resistive multitouch is not only possible, but potentially preferable to its capacitive counterpart. Of course, that knowledge doesn't help you any if you're currently stuck with single finger commands, but if your phone is made by HTC and running Windows Mobile, you may one day get to see what two digit input feels like. Adel Al Zubeir figured out that when two fingers are placed on a single-touch screen, the digitizer reads the spot between the two... and with a little bit of math, he cooked up a program that can figure out the relative position of both fingers to allow vaguely useful pinch-to-zoom and other dual-touch gestures. Sadly, you can't just drop this onto your phone to instantly enable the tech a la Cyanogen, but if you develop for WinMo, you can start building functionality into your apps wi

That's right: a little under two weeks since the launch event and the release of the first beta, Apple has pushed out beta 2 of its next-gen iPhone OS 4.0. Considering that our units have seemingly gotten buggier over time the longer they've had beta 1 loaded, we've got high hopes for this one -- hopes that stand a very real chance of being crushed, of course, as long as this isn't a gold build. Guess we're still months off from that, huh? Stay tuned for a report of anything that's changed, new, awesome, or lame.