IBLOG SPACE

My love for video games is unconditional. I’m just as much a fan of the Nintendo Entertainment System as I am a fan of the PlayStation 3. I love the PSP as much as I love my old GameBoy. And I’m just as willing to pick up my Nintendo DS as the Sega Dreamcast. Simply put, I’m a gamer to the core. But I just don’t think I’ll be waiting in line for the Nintendo 3DS when it launches in the United States on March 27. Now, I know that Nintendo fans won’t like to hear that. They’ll say that I’m not a “true” Nintendo fan (whatever that is), and they’ll point to my previous column saying that my Wii is collecting dust to prove it. They will try and try to show that my issue with the 3DS has everything to do with Nintendo and nothing to do with the hardware it’s putting out. But I’m here to tell those folks (and everyone else) that my issue with the 3DS has nothing to do with Nintendo and everything to do with 3D. I just don’t see value in 3D. I don’t care if it’s in the theaters, at home on

Intel name-checked a number of storage and A/V companies on board with Thunderbolt and expecting to release products using the new 10Gbps port found on the early 2011 MacBook Pro , but we’re already hearing other rumors about potential adopters currently flying under the radar. According to Nikon Rumors ‘s source, the Nikon D4 will be the first DSLR to offer Thunderbolt as a connection option. Interestingly, the tip supposedly came in “[a] few weeks ago”, so this looks less like someone merely jumping in on the Apple hype. Intel itself expects to see general Thunderbolt computer and peripheral adoption in late 2011, though has confirmed that it isn’t mandatory for manufacturers to hold off and give Apple a window of opportunity. In fact, broader adoption would probably help the MacBook Pro, since right now there’s a dearth of gadgets for new owners to plug the notebook into. While shuttling data off of a camera at high-speed is the most obvious application for Thunderbolt on the D4, a

Sony has slashed the price of the PSP , with the handheld console going for $129.99 as of Sunday, February 27. Confirmed on the official PlayStation blog , the price cut will also see PSP Entertainment Packs – which bundle the PSP and one or more games – brought down to $159.99. There’s also a new flood of “Greatest Hits” and “Favorites” games, which are basically Sony’s two budget ranges. The $19.99 “Greatest Hits” line-up now includes: Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines (Ubisoft) DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY (Square Enix, Inc.) LittleBigPlanet (PSP) METAL GEAR SOLID: PEACE WALKER (Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc.) Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters Resistance: Retribution Toy Story 3: The Video Game (Disney Interactive) As for the PSP “Favorites” range, all at $9.99, that now includes: CRISIS CORE-FINAL FANTASY VII (Square Enix, Inc. ) Daxter Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (Capcom) Killzone: Liberation SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Fire Team Bravo Tomb Raider Anniversary (Square Enix, Inc.) Sony expects

Samsung Germany has apparently confirmed that the Galaxy S will get an Android 2.3 Gingerbread update in March 2011. The news was revealed at a Samsung blogger event in Frankfurt today, and tweeted out by Frank Feil according to SmartDroid . We’re assuming, however, that this refers to the European Galaxy S, likely kicking off with the unlocked versions of the Honeycomb smartphone. US carrier-specific variants will probably have to wait a lot longer; some, like the Captivate on AT&T, have only just got Android 2.2 Froyo after all. Oddly enough, Samsung Italy is only just preparing to release Android 2.2.1 for the localized Galaxy S there. Of course, Samsung is likely to slap TouchWiz on top of Gingerbread, while we’d much rather the company left well alone and delivered an untampered Android 2.3 experience as is going out OTA for the Nexus S and Nexus One . Also on the horizon is the Galaxy S II , announced back at MWC 2011 last week.

HTC has officially announced the HTC Merge, a phone we first heard rumors of so long ago we were beginning to think it had been cancelled. Headed to “multiple North American carriers” in Spring 2011, the Merge has a 3.8-inch WVGA touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera and slide-out QWERTY keyboard. There’s WiFi, GPS and 720p HD video capture, along with HTC Sense running on top of Android 2.2 Froyo. Although HTC isn’t saying which exact carriers will be picking the Merge up, the fact that it’s a CDMA World Phone – i.e. will operate on EVDO Rev.A networks in the US, and GSM HSPA networks while abroad – does imply that Verizon and Sprint are the likely candidates. No word on pricing, nor specific availability, but we should find out for sure in a few months time.

We’ve already been impressed by the quad-core speed boost shown by our early 2011 MacBook Pro review unit , but it seems the performance jolt is across the board with Apple’s refreshed machines . Primate Labs – responsible for the Geekbench tool SlashGear uses to profile notebooks – has pulled together benchmarking results for the new range, and the improvement is dramatic. The entry-level 13-inch with the 2.3GHz Core i5 CPU scores 5900; the entry-level version from early 2010 managed 3351. The improvement for the 15-inch and 17-inch versions is even more impressive, with the entry-level 15-inch jumping from 4866 last year to 8804 on this year’s quadcore 2.0GHz Core i7. The 17-inch goes from 5837 to 10026 with its new quadcore 2.2GHz Core i7. As you’d expect, the faster versions of each MacBook Pro do even better; the full graphi is below. It’s worth remembering that Geekbench only tests CPU and memory performance, not graphics card and HDD, so a speedy SSD and potent GPU will make a

Behold a concept for Vinyl Record playing that should have been brought to the real world years ago. This is the kind of tool that destroys digital music with a single blow. It’s a giant of a device with a teeny tiny knob that pulls out to be a wireless remote. It’s the greatest invention since the vinyl record itself! Inside you’ll find flat membrane speaker technology, each of these speakers (or “fins”) acting as the structure of the device as well, making it essentially look like a giant bird. And no, not the “Sweet Dee” kind, a big bird for your wall to transmit the lovely scratch sounds of Black Sabbath… or whatever else kind of music the kids are listening to these days. Each of the fins are a different size, each one calculated to work with the scope of the frequencies needed to bring you the sweetest beats you’ve ever heard in your life. Each one of these fins is also followed by an acrylic reflector plate which is tapered in three directions, each of these propagating the soun

HTC has confirmed its next batch of Android updates, with Android Honeycomb coming through the pipe for some of the most popular devices of the past few months. An HTC spokesperson told SlashGear that “We are excited to announce that the Desire HD, Desire Z, Desire and Incredible S will receive the Gingerbread update in Q2.” The news will come as a relief to HTC Desire owners, who have already seen their handsets updated once before – from the Android 2.1 the smartphone launched with, to Android 2.2 Froyo – and faced the prospect of the phone being left behind after the Desire S announced at MWC 2011 last week. The Desire HD is several months old (as is the Desire Z ), and is expected to be replaced later in 2011 with the dual-core smartphone believed to be codenamed the HTC Pyramid . Finally, the HTC Incredible S was only announced last week, and the only device of HTC’s MWC launch that came with Froyo pre-installed rather than Gingerbread. The HTC-made Google Nexus One is curre

No habla espanol? Then you’ve come to the right place for a good old fashioned AMERICAN tablet ad. Actually, it’s the same Xoom ad that popped up yesterday in Spanish . Since this is now an English-language ad, the narrator sounds vaguely constipated and the tiniest bit furious. Both ads feature a well-dressed male model who bears absolutely no resemblance to anyone you are likely to find playing on a tablet computer on a pier in the middle of the night. The ad is pretty much standard Android fare. Boy meets hovering tablet in an unlikely location, boy touches tablet, boy is enveloped by crazy alien pod. The pod appears to be a spacecraft from the new game Vendetta. If that’s the same space shooter Motorola was showing off at MWC 2011, it looks a hell of a lot like Jumpgate made love to Wing Commander. That’s a positive comment, in case you can’t tell. Anyway, if you too want the chance to be enveloped by a gigantic metal pod while wearing a fashionable leather flight suit, order a Mot

Google is flexing its muscles with the Android Market as it just pulled one of its most popular and long standing apps, Visual VoiceMail, citing violations of the Developer Content Policy. PhoneFusion, the company behind the app, says the suspension came without warning after more than two years of being on the market and even being a featured app at one time. The company believes that their app, which has been downloaded one million times, may have been targeted for not processing in-app payments via Google Checkout. When PhoneFusion contacted Google about the suspension, the Android Team replied with an email stating that the company had violated section 3.3 of the Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement involving pricing and payments. The sections states: “If you want to collect fees after the free trial expires, you must collect all fees for the full version of the Product through the Payment Processor on the Market. In this Agreement, “free” means there are no charges or f

Skype announced today their Skype To Go service as a new way to save on calling abroad. This new service lets you enjoy great rates on calls without needing an internet connection or being in an area with 3G coverage. It works on any mobile phone as well as landline phones. The Skype To Go service works by assigning a unique Skype To Go number to the overseas number that you want to call. Then you simply call the assigned local number whenever you need to dial that overseas number. It’s free to setup Skype To Go numbers, with a limit of up to nine. You do have to pay for Skype To Go service which can be charged through Skype Credit or via subscription. You get the same low rates you enjoy as when you call with their regular VOIP service, but local operator charges may apply if dialing from a landline and airtime minutes will be used if calling from a mobile phone. Skype’s standard connection fee also applies.

The time when you can pay for that Starbucks coffee with the swipe of your BlackBerry may very well be upon us. A source from BGR claims that Bank of America has begun testing out its new Mobile Wallet service that uses NFC technology for mobile payments. The program has already begun inviting select customers for the trial. Only customers with BlackBerry smartphones will be able to test out the new service. A new battery cover and a microSD card is being sent out to testers to make their existing smartphones NFC-enabled. The following phones are supported: BlackBerry Curve 8520, 8530; BlackBerry Bold 9000, 9650, 9700; and BlackBerry Tour 9630. Payments using the NFC-enabled BlackBerry phones can be made at any location that accepts Mastercard’s PayPass. The trial program is scheduled to start this Spring.

When the iPhone 4 first debuted on AT&T users experienced the famous “death grip” as their reception plummeted after holding the phone in a certain way. Consumer Reports has tested the new Verizon version of the iPhone and the reception problem seems to have followed the device to its new network. While complaints rained down on AT&T and Apple when the iPhone launched, complaints have been far fewer for Verizon’s iPhone. Consumer Reports ran the device through the same series of tests as AT&T’s iPhone, as well as five other Verizon smartphones: Motorola Droid 2, HTC Droid Incredible, Samsung Fascinate, Motorola Droid X, and the LG Ally. All tests were done in a radio-frequency isolation chamber which blocks outside signals. Sending a signal to the phones, they were then tested by placing a finger on different parts of the phones to see if there was any signal degradation. The only phones who experienced a signal drop were the iPhones. The drop in reception comes from the de

You may notice that Google is functioning a little differently today. The search engine recently made a major change to their search algorithms in order to strike back at so-called “content farms”. These sites, which feature large amounts of mass-produced content angled to rank high on Google, have been accused of reducing the overall quality of search results. Demand Media, owners of eHow, are perhaps the best-known content farm. Google expects these changes to affect roughly 12% of search results. 84% of the top dozen blocked domains on Google Chrome were included in the sweep. Since this is a blanket change, there is some fear that it could cause issues for legitimate sites. Sorting the good sites from the bad ones is complicated by the fact that many content farms also have legitimate arms. For example, Demand Media also owns Cracked.com, which is very definitely not a ‘farmed’ site. Demand responded to these changes earlier today. Their EVP of Media and Operations noted that some

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 could be taking over the life of a gamer near you very soon. A new teaser site has popped up online that some believe may be linked to the series. “Findmakarov.com” takes you to a website with a brief audio clip and a counter, with roughly five days left on it, counting down to zero. Vladimir Makarov was a major villain in the last CoD game. If this counter is ticking down to a game announcement, it could come at the end of next week’s Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco. The last Call of Duty was launched in November of 2009. It has a 94% score on Metacritic, and over twenty million copies have sold worldwide. It remains one of the finest ways to have your parentage insulted by a fourteen year old yet devised by man. The last game in the series shocked easily shocked people worldwide with its brutal display of a massacre at an airport. Money guesses on what horrible thing Infinity Ward will show us next include: the bathroom in a freshman male

At the International Solid-State Circuits Conference this week, European researches unveiled the world’s first flexible microprocessor made with organic semiconductors. Although the processing power is equivalent to a 1970′s era silicon model, the advantage of this development is that it can bend. This could lead the way towards cheaper flexible displays and sensors used for clothing, construction, or food and pharmaceutical labeling. Scientists have not been able to achieve an organic microprocessor till now because of how difficult it is to make organic transistors all have a consistent switch-on threshold. The Belgian research team behind the successful organic chip had to build an extra gate for controlling the electric field in the semiconductor to avoid accidental switching. The featured organic chip contains 4000 transistors compared to the hundreds of millions found in today’s silicon chips. Some scientists believe that organic chips will never achieve much on its own, but rath

The first Apple LTE product is coming to a Verizon store near you very soon. Dan Mead, CEO of Verizon, recently confirmed that his company will offer Apple mobile products on their LTE network. No product name was given, but the two likely candidates right now are the iPhone 5 and the iPad 2. Since March 2 brings the iPad 2 to us, Mead was most likely “announcing” an LTE slate there. This doesn’t mean we won’t also see an LTE version of the iPhone 5. Apple is thought to be very bullish on the new 4G technology. I’d imagine sales estimates for the Xoom will take a bit of a dive if it ends up losing its LTE advantage to the iPad as well as its camera advantage. If Verizon does launch an LTE iPhone 5, does that mean AT&T will launch a “4G” iPhone of their own, with access to HSPA+?

Microsoft’s Bing already has an edge over Google when it comes to travel search, but now it really ups the game with new Price Predictor and Autosuggest Flight Prices features. This improvement makes it really easy to find the best priced flight just by typing in your destination into the search box. By typing in something like “Fly to Chica” into the search box, the Autosuggest Flight Prices feature works with the Price Predictor feature to automatically display what it predicts to be the lowest priced flight and during what time period over the next 90 days. All this shows up before you even hit the enter key. The Autosuggest Flight Prices feature will recognize where you are, for instance Seattle, and and when you type in something like “Fly to Chicago” or “Chicago Flights,” the Price Predictor will automatically show up below the search box to show you the best flight price from Seattle to Chicago. Colloquial names such as Chi Town are also recognized, so that you are not required

With the HTC Thunderbolt release once again postponed, it seems fans are getting antsy and a little crazy. One fan has taken it upon himself to figure out a way on HTC’s online store to force the listed device into his shopping cart even though he could not checkout. He was then kind enough to share his process and even offer up the below screenshot as proof of his deed. The device is already listed on the HTC online store, but is shown as unavailable and therefore cannot be added to the online shopping cart. The anonymous fan was able to get the item to show up in the shopping cart by some method of copying and pasting of the url address and then changing the item number. Below are his own words: Go to HTC’s online store, go to any product detail page. ’Copy link address’ for the “Add to cart” link. Paste to the address bar, change product ID to 38411, submit. You’ll be taken to an HTC Incredible page, but when you click to view your “Cart,” you’ll have an HTC Thunderbolt there for $

OnLive is trying a new tactic that could prove to be pretty smart. The company is offering a deal right now where if you pre-order THQ’s Homefront game from February 25th to March 14th you’ll get a free version of its OnLive gaming system. The system normally retails for $99, but by giving it away free they may be able to get the system into a lot more hands than otherwise. OnLive lets gamers stream games to their MicroConsole and play games off the “cloud” that is OnLive’s servers. It gives gamers the ability to play games at 60 fps on either their computer or HDTV. Homefront is a futuristic first-person shooter where North Korea has invaded and occupied the U.S. The gamer then has to fight back the occupying forces. It is one of THQ’s marquee games this year. You can use OnLive’s system to stream the game to your computer or use the MicroConsole and stream the game to your television. “This is a watershed event: It’s the first time a game system has ever been given away with a purcha

For those of you much more interested in the webOS aspect of this article, you must forgive me, as I’ve got not only a healthy addiction to the mise on scene of music videos, but also the awesome implications of cross-branding. What we’re looking at here is a video for rapper / producer Dr Dre’s newest single “I Need a Doctor.” In this video you’ll see not only an HP TouchPad, not only an HP Pre3, but a very visible demonstration of webOS’ new “Touch to Share” functionality. What you’ll see the two sharing is medical information about the artist who in the video is receiving futuristic care for a terrible car crash he’s suffered. This is not the first time Dr Dre has supported an HP product (think Beats by Dre,) but it is the first time one of these products has carried webOS. The touch that happens in this video is very short and seemingly insignificant to the plot. However, when you do see the Touch to Share function working so very smoothly, you might expect that it’s some sort of

The new Nintendo 3DS hit Japanese shelves over the weekend, and that meant it was only a matter of time before engineers there decided to rip it apart. We’ve already seen one pre-release teardown of the 3DS, but TechOn is going one stage further and putting the parallax display under the microscope. Whereas in a regular LCD display the red, green and blue pixels are usually arranged horizontally, as you can see in the close-up above the 3DS has them arranged vertically. When the “3D volume” slider on the edge of the 3DS is switched on, a second layer over the LCD – believed to be Sharp’s parallax mechanism – turns on, splitting the image between the left and right eyes. TechOn is still working its way through the teardown, but they’ve already praised the 3DS’ ease of opening and the fact that the ostensibly non-user-replaceable battery is actually only held in with a few screws. Nintendo has confirmed that the 3DS will launch in the US on March 27 and in Europe on March 25 .

Verizon hasn’t officially announced what its first Windows Phone 7 device will be, nor when it might arrive, but if you were hoping for a brand spanking new smartphone running the Microsoft OS then you’ll be sorely disappointed. A shot of a Verizon-branded HTC 7 Trophy has leaked to Engadget , seemingly confirming earlier rumors that the entry-level smartphone would be headed to the CDMA carrier. That makes some degree of sense considering that, in Europe, the Trophy is a carrier-exclusive with Vodafone , the part-owner of Verizon Wireless in the US. The smartphone was part of HTC’s original Windows Phone line-up back in October 2010. Back when we reviewed the Trophy – in its GSM form – we found it to be a solid handset with, thanks to Microsoft’s stringent minimum specifications, little to differentiate more expensive models from what HTC told us was the cheapest device in its Windows Phone range. Still, we can’t help but think that we’d rather have the HTC 7 Pro , freshly announce

A BlackBerry rep has seemingly confirmed that the PlayBook tablet will indeed run Android apps, as rumored over the past few weeks. The demonstrator told MobileMondayRio that “we will also support Android apps when we release the Dalvik engine on top of QNX” during MWC 2011 . Video after the cut Somewhat confusingly, the demonstrator suggests that RIM will use the Dalvik virtual machine – as used on Android devices – on the QNX slate, something initially rumored but then later contradicted . RIM was said to be cautious of the ongoing litigation between Google and Oracle, and so had worked up a home-grown app engine of its own instead. However they’re doing it, this new tidbit adds fuel to a fire that looks unlikely to die down before the PlayBook’s launch later in 2011. Last week, the developer of Android app ShopSavvy discovered several mentions of BlackBerry handsets in its app logs, suggesting RIM was internally testing Android compatibility.

Microsoft has previewed a next-gen UI for smartphones, tablets and PCs, which evolves the traditional windows and icons into bubbles of information which can be manipulated with motion-tracking hardware. The video, presented by Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie, shows how gadgets like Kinect and multitouch displays like Surface can be used for more naturalistic interaction with data. Videos after the cut The demonstration follows Microsoft’s announcements for the Kinect SDK , which will be released later this year. In a second video, shown below, Microsoft demonstrated some of the potential interactions between Kinect and Windows Phone . All of the UI work is being billed as experimental and described as “futuristic demos,” with Microsoft cautious not to set up too many ambitious expectations for Windows 8 . Still, with the company’s desktop OS lagging in finger-friendliness on tablets, and the integration between Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox all still re

While enthusiasts on each side will readily – and lengthily – argue which Apple innovations have been “borrowed” by Android and which Google cleverness has been “embraced” in iOS, these lock-screen dots caught running on an internal iPhone app do seem to be heavily Android inspired. 9 to 5 Mac ‘s sources passed them screenshots of the gesture-based lock system, apparently in use on the employee-only Apple Connect app. Functionally, it’s just the same as on Android: a user sets up a pattern of swipes between the nine dots, that are used instead of a PIN code or password to unlock the app. “Use as many strokes as you want in your gesture” the tutorial screen suggests, with a progress bar to show if the pattern is long enough to satisfy Apple’s security paranoia. The same system is supposedly headed to other internal Apple apps, including the apps in use by Apple’s retail team. However, there’s no word on whether they’ll be opening up the gesture system to use by general developers, or in

Fujitsu has unveiled what the company is calling the “world’s first truly wireless display,” using a combination of cable-cutting wireless data and an inductive power system. Set to go on show at CeBIT 2011 this week, and expected to spawn commercial displays “within the next year,” the Wireless 22-inch Fujitsu screens use SUPA (Smart Universal Power Access) hotspots built into desks, countertops and office panels. SUPA has been co-developed with The Fraunhofer Institute, and basically works in a similar – but higher-power – way to your electric toothbrush or Palm Touchstone. Outwardly invisible, the magneto-induction transmitter antennas allow for “park and play” computing, with a single display toted around to different rooms or cubicles. As for the data, in the proof-of-concept that’s served with a wireless USB system with a roughly 10m range; hopefully that could be boosted to support whole-house (or office) range in the commercial versions. No word on pricing or specific availab

Intel’s Atom N570 processor isn’t just to be found inside Lenovo’s IdeaPad S100 ; server manufacturer SeaMicro has followed up its first Atom-based model, the SM10000 , with a new version boasting 64-bit support. The SeaMicro SM10000-64 answers the main criticism of the first, Z530 based server, running enterprise-friendly 64-bit software with no modifications required. The dual-core chips also mean that the SM10000-64 requires just half the processors of its predecessor, though that doesn’t make it necessarily cheap That means 256 Atom CPUs, rather than 512, but with the same number of cores available. Each chip runs at 1.66GHz and has access to 4GB of memory; four Atoms are packaged onto each “Compute Card” while a total of 64 cards can be bundled together in an entire system. Intel says that, despite the server company’s influence on the design of the 64-bit processor, the N570 isn’t exclusively intended for SeaMicro, but has admitted that “it just so happens there are relatively f

Apparently, Mok Young Bacq works on the weekends doing some sort of work for an online gaming company that involves needing three mobile phones and being able to call a number of things stop working correctly. The guy likes to travel and the roaming charges on the mobile phones were more than he could stand to pay so he cobbled up a DIY machine to press the buttons from home over the internet. The machine is what you see in the photo above in the center of that ladder. It’s a very complex looking machine with tons of wires, servos and a camera that lets the geek see the screen of the three phones and he can press any of the buttons on the phone with his system. The camera aims downward at the phone screens and moves in a pendulous manner. The buttons are pressed with a flexible cable. The thing I have always learned the hard way with a complex system to do something simple is that things go wrong. I wonder what the dude will do if his fancy machine breaks and he can’t dial a number whi

The Kinect has turned out to be something that in my house at least rarely gets used. It is a very cool device though and I continue to be amazed at some of the things that geeks are able to hack the Kinect to do. One of the latest hacks turns the Kinect into a crude 3D scanner that can turn the pose the person stands with in front of the camera into a foam bust. The pieces that are made by the 3D printer attached to the Kinect look like little puzzle pieces that can be connected together. The video taken by the Kinect is turned into a STL file and sent out to the printer. The Kinect system is called Fabricate Yourself and it’s interesting. You can see a video of the thing in action below. Other than just being cool, I wonder what real world applications that sort of hack could have.

If you are a Gmail user today may not be starting smoothly for you. Gmail is having a service disruption right now and according to some reports, the problem is going well beyond simply not being able to log into Gmail. Some users are reporting that once they are able to log in, they are being greeted by welcome messages as if they are a new user. Some of the people are claiming that the outage has resulted in the loss of emails, chat logs and more. I haven’t backed up my Gmail account in years; luckily, for me I use Outlook to get mail from Gmail so I have offline copies of everything. My personal Gmail account is fine right now so the disruption is apparently not affecting everyone. As of 5am this morning Google says that it is investigating the issue and the next update will come at 7am.

Apple’s AirDrop easy file-sharing feature in Mac OS X Lion may bring the company some headaches, with a French tablet and software firm claiming it borrows from a wireless sharing system of its own. eviGroup founder Nicolas Ruiz claims that AirDrop’s functionality shows considerable overlap with his own INPI-filed “Technique de Communication Réseau sans Configuration” (“technique of network communication without configuration”). The eviGroup method involves point-to-point WiFi connections with a simple proximity-based UI, that aims to bypass complex file sharing permissions and configurations. There’s no word on when eviGroup plans to actually produce an app based on it, however. Still, it looks like Ruiz is taking a sanguine attitude toward the whole affair, suggesting that “business is business” and pointing out that, because of the way European patents are formulated, it’s the specific technique which is covered rather than the concept itself. The advantage of eviGroup’s system,

Apple’s AirDrop easy file-sharing feature in Mac OS X Lion may bring the company some headaches, with a French tablet and software firm claiming it borrows from a wireless sharing system of its own. eviGroup founder Nicolas Ruiz claims that AirDrop’s functionality shows considerable overlap with his own INPI-filed “Technique de Communication Réseau sans Configuration” (“technique of network communication without configuration”). The eviGroup method involves point-to-point WiFi connections with a simple proximity-based UI, that aims to bypass complex file sharing permissions and configurations. There’s no word on when eviGroup plans to actually produce an app based on it, however. Still, it looks like Ruiz is taking a sanguine attitude toward the whole affair, suggesting that “business is business” and pointing out that, because of the way European patents are formulated, it’s the specific technique which is covered rather than the concept itself. The advantage of eviGroup’s system,

CeBIT 2011 kicks off this week in Hanover, and already we’re seeing information trickling out. ASUS has quietly confirmed that the Eee Pad MeMO launched at CES 2011 back in January will indeed debut running Android 3.0 Honeycomb; jkkmobile spotted the news on the MeMO’s full spec list, confirming a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8260 processor, microHDMI port and quadband HSPA+ connectivity. That’s on top of WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and microUSB (with Host support for plugging in peripherals), a 3.5mm headphone socket and microSDHC slot. There’s also GPS, a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash on the back, and a 1.2-megapixel camera on the front, while sensors include a gyroscope, g-sensor, light, proximity and digital compass. Storage is up to 64GB and RAM is 1GB, and the 7-inch display runs at 1024 x 600 and responds to capacitive finger control together with ASUS’ included stylus. A full charge is apparently good for up to 8hrs of video playback, and the MeMO can supposedly hand

CeBIT 2011 kicks off this week in Hanover, and already we’re seeing information trickling out. ASUS has quietly confirmed that the Eee Pad MeMO launched at CES 2011 back in January will indeed debut running Android 3.0 Honeycomb; jkkmobile spotted the news on the MeMO’s full spec list, confirming a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8260 processor, microHDMI port and quadband HSPA+ connectivity. That’s on top of WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and microUSB (with Host support for plugging in peripherals), a 3.5mm headphone socket and microSDHC slot. There’s also GPS, a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash on the back, and a 1.2-megapixel camera on the front, while sensors include a gyroscope, g-sensor, light, proximity and digital compass. Storage is up to 64GB and RAM is 1GB, and the 7-inch display runs at 1024 x 600 and responds to capacitive finger control together with ASUS’ included stylus. A full charge is apparently good for up to 8hrs of video playback, and the MeMO can supposedly hand

CeBIT 2011 kicks off this week in Hanover, and already we’re seeing information trickling out. ASUS has quietly confirmed that the Eee Pad MeMO launched at CES 2011 back in January will indeed debut running Android 3.0 Honeycomb; jkkmobile spotted the news on the MeMO’s full spec list, confirming a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8260 processor, microHDMI port and quadband HSPA+ connectivity. That’s on top of WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and microUSB (with Host support for plugging in peripherals), a 3.5mm headphone socket and microSDHC slot. There’s also GPS, a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash on the back, and a 1.2-megapixel camera on the front, while sensors include a gyroscope, g-sensor, light, proximity and digital compass. Storage is up to 64GB and RAM is 1GB, and the 7-inch display runs at 1024 x 600 and responds to capacitive finger control together with ASUS’ included stylus. A full charge is apparently good for up to 8hrs of video playback, and the MeMO can supposedly hand

CeBIT 2011 kicks off this week in Hanover, and already we’re seeing information trickling out. ASUS has quietly confirmed that the Eee Pad MeMO launched at CES 2011 back in January will indeed debut running Android 3.0 Honeycomb; jkkmobile spotted the news on the MeMO’s full spec list, confirming a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8260 processor, microHDMI port and quadband HSPA+ connectivity. That’s on top of WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and microUSB (with Host support for plugging in peripherals), a 3.5mm headphone socket and microSDHC slot. There’s also GPS, a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash on the back, and a 1.2-megapixel camera on the front, while sensors include a gyroscope, g-sensor, light, proximity and digital compass. Storage is up to 64GB and RAM is 1GB, and the 7-inch display runs at 1024 x 600 and responds to capacitive finger control together with ASUS’ included stylus. A full charge is apparently good for up to 8hrs of video playback, and the MeMO can supposedly hand

I like robots as much as the next geek, but some of them creep me out a bit. I blame it on Hector and Terminator scaring me as a kid. DARPA has some out there projects that often turn into some interesting finished items that may one day see the battlefield. Boston Dynamics has announced that it won a DARPA contract to build a robot called Cheetah. The bot looks like the real animal it gets its name from, is faster than the fastest human, and has the agility to evade enemies. The Cheetah can zig zag as it runs and make tight turns as well as stop on a dime. The company is working on another robot called Atlas that looks like Hector minus a head. As long as Atlas doesn’t develop a penchant for hot 70 starlets, we are all good. Atlas will be a walking bot that can walk over rough terrain, crawl if needed, and turn sideways to slip though narrow passages.

If you are the busy filed worker sort that needs to be able to work wherever you might be power is probably your biggest issue. Your computer and other gear need power to operate and many devices last only a few hours on a charge before you need to plug in. A new cordless energy storage device has been unveiled by designer Werner Aisslinger called the yill. The yill looks sort of like a rolling round carry-on suitcase with a handle. The round outer edges act like wheels when the user pulls it along. Inside the device is no space for clothing, just space for batteries. The yill can provide up to 300W of electricity using lithium titanium batteries. The batteries inside can be charged in a few ways. A solar panel on the yill can charge the batteries and they can be charged by plugging the device into a power outlet. At this point, the yill is a design concept and it will be shown off during Milan Design Week in April.

I mentioned about a month ago now that Huawei had filed a suit against former partner Motorola to keep the company from transferring Huawei IP over to Nokia Siemens. Nokia Siemens is attempting to purchase Motorola’s wireless network business where Huawei and Motorola have cooperated for over a decade. Huawei has announced that it has been granted a preliminary injunction against Motorola that would prevent Motorola from sharing any Huawei IP with Nokia Siemens. The ruling also forces Motorola to hire a third part to ensure that the confidential details of Huawei that Motorola is privy to are securely removed. The ruling also allows Huawei to audit the Nokia Siemens Networks record of service that it performs on Motorola-branded systems that use Huawei products inside. It’s not clear on how or if the ruling will affect the purchase by Nokia Siemens.

If you are looking for a new tablet computer CeBIT 2011 is right around the corner and you can bet there will be many tablets that debut at the show. One of the tablets that we know will be seen at the show is from a company called TazTag and is dubbed the TazPad. The tablet is claimed to be the first Android tablet with NFC on the market. The TazPad has a 7-inch screen that supports multitouch and has Full HD support and HDMI output. The TazPad also features WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, and ZigBee. Other features include a camera, GPS, and an accelerometer. The tablet is set to ship in Q2 and we don’t have any other specs or pricing details at this time. I wonder what CPU and version of Android the tablet runs.

We have talked a lot about Ford’s Sync system around here. The Sync system allows the drive to use their smartphone hands free and allows the control of many functions of the vehicle audio and HVAC systems using voice commands. Ford has announced that Sync now speaks more languages. Ford has expanded Sync’s vocabulary from three to 19 languages and has rolled Sync out globally. The new languages will debut first in Europe in 2012 with the Focus. Sync is still powered by Nuance and the update allows compatibility with more languages than any other system in the world. Sync can recognize 10,000 voice commands in any of the 19 supported languages and promises to cope with accents, vocabulary, and local dialects. The current system can have issues with accents at times. Abbreviations for text messaging are also now understood by the system in foreign languages.

With Apple’s iPad 2 event this coming Wednesday , the rumor machine is building up to its usual hype crescendo. Freshly skimmed from the tittle-tattle-tubes this morning are some leaked images, one claiming to be of a white iPad 2 screen digitizer, and another demanding to be taken seriously as an official iPad 2 render. 9 to 5 Mac ‘s Shenzhen component sources are responsible for the digitizer, with a clearly visible hole at the top of the bezel for the expected webcam. You can just make out the much smaller ambient light sensor in the shot of the reverse side of the bezel in the gallery below; it’s just above the FaceTime camera hole. As for the render, BGR ‘s source reckons this flat-backed slate is the official handiwork of Apple’s Photoshop wizards, though of course it could also be a fan-made mockup. It shows the same top-corner positioning of the rear facing camera as we’ve seen suggested in leaked iPad 2 cases . We won’t know for sure until Apple announces the iPad 2 and all th

AMD’s beastly Radeon HD 6990 video card has officially broken cover, with the company seeding shots of the dual-GPU monster ahead of its expected launch in early Q2 2011. Hexus was handed a trio of official pics of the HD 6990, and while exact specifications are still unknown, we can deduce a little from the shots. It’s obviously double-width, and there’s a sizeable fan for keeping the twin GPUs cool inside. Outputs include four Mini DisplayPort and a single Dual-DVI socket, which could potentially mean up to six displays hooked up to the one card. According to previous rumors, there’ll be in the region of 3,840 stream processors from the combined GPUs, and we’re expecting to see two 4-pin power sockets. Apparently Hexus had been given a fourth shot, with the Radeon HD 6990′s cover removed, but AMD later insisted it would have to remain offline until the official launch. That fits in with previous leaks suggesting AMD was holding off until NVIDIA had launched the GeForce GTX 590 so

Apple’s long-rumored iTunes cloud plans may not in fact result in a subscription-based streaming music service, with the company tipped to be looking to simply offer online storage to its users. According to the FT , music industry sources have quietly confirmed that Apple’s intent is to allow iTunes users to remotely host their paid tracks, and then stream that content to various devices. In that way, the system would not be a direct rival to services like Spotify , with Apple supposedly reluctant to “undermine the market that it dominates for paid downloads”; the company has apparently described the cloud service as “insurance” though it’s unclear if that’s for its own fortunes or to protect users against data loss. The system would be based on Apple acquisition Lala , and might be part of the broad-ranging MobileMe updates tipped as imminent.

You’ve been asking for it, and we’re excited to announce that the SlashGear Android app is now available for download from the Android Market. A free download, the app offers all the latest news from the site, features, review and editorials, together with on-time analysis and streaming video. You can also save articles for later reading, or email them out. It’s a great way to catch up with our extensive reviews while on the move, or to watch our new SlashGear Weekly Roundup Video with Rue Liu . We’ve got plenty more planned for future updates of the app, including full commenting support, so please do let us know what you think! The Android app joins our existing SlashGear for iPhone and SlashGear for iPad apps , which also offer news, reviews, editorials and video access.

Amazon and AT&T have announced that the Kindle 3G will go on sale in AT&T retail stores as of March 6, offering would-be ebook readers the opportunity to check out the best-selling device in person. Priced at the same $189 as Amazon sells the Kindle 3G online, the ereader already uses AT&T’s 3G network in the US. Those who want the WiFi-only Kindle, however, will still have to go online for it, as AT&T won’t be offering the cheaper variant in stores. It remains to be seen if Vodafone, who provides the 3G connection for the European Kindle, will be offering the ereader in its own stores.

Dell’s much-anticipated Venue Pro has finally gone on sale in the UK, with the official Dell store offering the Windows Phone 7 handset for £459 ($745) unlocked and including tax. Delayed because of a firmware issue spotted last month , the Venue Pro is the first portrait-orientation QWERTY slider to run Windows Phone. The HTC 7 Pro beat the Venue Pro to market – we reviewed it just ahead of MWC 2011 – but uses a landscape-orientation keyboard. Windows Phone is still yet to be entirely landscape-friendly, so in some ways the layout of the Venue Pro makes more sense. Hardware includes the usual 1GHz Snapdragon processor, a 4.1-inch WVGA AMOLED touchscreen, triband UMTS and a 5-megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash. There’s also 16GB of internal storage. According to Dell UK, it will ship in 10 days.

Fujitsu Semiconductor has become the latest company to sign up to ARM ‘s Cortex A15 cores, following Texas Instruments and others in creating the next-generation of SoCs. Although exact products haven’t been confirmed yet, the deal will give Fujitsu access not only to ARM’s processors but to GPUs like Mali. It’s not the first time the two companies have worked together, though the new agreement could see more high-power chipsets from Fujitsu Semiconductor. It’s likely that the company will supply its own Fujitsu smartphone arm, though the processors could also end up in tablets and other hardware.