IBLOG SPACE

In an “Awesome” announcement on the 6th of July, 2011, Mark Zuckerberg announced several new items for their popular social networking site. The first item was Group Chat, the next was a New Design, and the most “Awesome” of the three is Facebook working with Skype for video calling. This move was seen by many chatters in the livestream room at http://www.facebook.com/FacebookLive where the announcement was streamed live. Mark noted that they were excited about announcing one item at a time instead of doing it like “Companies that focus will always do better than ones that try to do a million things.” Sound like anyone you know? Group Chat Inside group chat you’ll also find the “New Design” announced today for Facebook, a design that incorporates the ability to adjust for browser size. You’ll be able to see a list of people online at any given time (a feature currently in a smaller window in your bottom bar,) and the entire chat interface will be revamped for ease of use AND so that yo

BlackBerry may be the name associated with QWERTY messaging phones, but there’s a vocal cadre of Nokia users all too keen to talk about the merits of the Finnish company’s keyboard-blessed candybars. The E72 met with mixed reactions, failing to quite capture affection the way its E71 predecessor did; now we have the E6 (aka Nokia E6-00), pairing keyboard and touchscreen and offering a taste of the latest Symbian flavor, Anna. Is the E6 enough to distract us from the rapid approach of Nokia’s first Windows Phones? Check out the full SlashGear review after the cut. Hardware The E6′s hardware heritage is clear, though Nokia hasn’t missed the opportunity to tighten up the package along the way. Measuring in at 115.5 x 59 x 10.5 mm and 133g, it’s a solid, reassuringly weighty device finished in sturdy black plastic and lifted with a chrome bezel. The camera slice on the back protrudes somewhat, spoiling the clean lines, though you can drop it into a front trouser pocket without issue. A she

The last time we talked about a price cut for the Motorola Xoom was back in April when the tablet got a price cutin the UK to £479.99. The Xoom didn’t exactly sell like Motorola had hoped in the US or in the UK. The tablet was overpriced in some geek’s opinions and just couldn’t match the iPad and shoppers didn’t buy in volume. The price cuts will certainly help the Xoom sell. Motorola announced via Twitter that it has officially cut the price of the Xoom WiFi tablet to $499. The price for the Verizon 3G version with a new plan is $599 and the Verizon version without a contract is $799. The WiFi version is cheaper, but the hardware inside remains the same. If the new price has you interested and you didn’t follow the Xoom before it runs Android 3.1 and has a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 touchscreen. The tablet has 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, and HDMI output and lots more. The battery inside is good for about ten hours of web surfing on WiFi and can play MP3 files for about 3.3 days per charge

MSI has announced a new mainboard that sounds really cool the board is called the Z68A-GD80 (G3) and I will just call it the G3 from here on out. The coolest feature of the G3 is that it is the first mainboard to get the PCI Express Gen 3 slots onboard. These new slots are blazing fast and are ready for the faster add-in cards that need more bandwidth for the best performance. The new slots are perfect for the PCIe SSDs on the market. The Gen 3 PCIe slot promises to be 200% faster than a Gen 2 slot. The mainboard also uses high-end MIL-810STD Certified Military Class II components and has MSI OC Genie II tech onboard to overclock the system and improve performance with a push button overclocking function. The board also gets a new BIOS design called the Click BIOS II. The new BIOS is designed to make tweaking easy. The BIOS has an interface that promises to be good enough for noobs, but robust enough to proved the OC vet the flexibility needed to get the most performance. The board sup

Ruckus Wireless and KDDI Corp in Japan have announced that they have teamed up to deploy the world’s first and largest instant on WiFi access and mobile data offload service. KDDI is the principal telecommunications provider in Japan and has over 32 million subscribers on its network. The network tech was pioneered by Ruckus and is designed to offload the network data traffic from the huge number of subscribers on the KDDI network. The network will also be able to provide the user seamless high-speed access throughout Japan. That would mean a person moving from a wireless data connection into range of the WiFi network would not notice the transition to the WiFi service from the data service. The new network will be available to the subscribers of the KDDI packet flat rate plans. KDDI is calling the new service au Wi-Fi Spot and it is free of charge with the au Android smartphones in over 10,000 locations to start. By March of 2012 the number of locations will have been increased to 100

I would imagine most of us aren’t familiar with GCT Semiconductor. The company makes different chips that are found inside the mobile devices we are familiar with. These are the chips that give smartphones and tablets the cool features we all know and love. These chips are very important to the performance and battery life of devices like smartphones. We all want faster data speed when we are on the go so improvements in performance on the chips are welcome. GCT has a new WiMax 2 chip for mobile devices called the GDM7225. This chip is highly integrated and puts the WiMax 2 RF, MAC, and PHY in a single chip. The chip also has 4×4 MIMO system onboard for high-speed communications that are four to five times faster than existing WiMax technology. GCT is working with UQ Communications in Japan to enhance its WiMax network to support WiMax 2 speeds. The new chip allows for data speeds of up to 150Mbps download and up to 50Mbps upload. The chip supports multiple carriers at up to 20MHz band

Apple’s incoming fifth-gen iPhone is “complicated and difficult to assemble” according to sources at Foxconn, with the potential for that design trickiness to impact supplies of the much-anticipated smartphone when it launches in Q3 this year. According to the WSJ‘s tipsters, the iPhone 5 will indeed be thinner and lighter than the existing iPhone 4, as well as use an 8-megapixel camera as previously suggested; however, they also claim that Apple’s ambitious targets of 25m iPhone units by the end of 2011 may be impacted by Hon Hai subsidiary Foxconn’s current low yield rates. “Apple’s sales estimates of the new iPhone is quite aggressive” one anonymous supplier informed the paper, going on to suggest that the Cupertino company said “to prepare to help the company meet its goal of 25 million units by the end of the year. However, “the initial production volume will be a few million units… we were told to ship the components to assembler Hon Hai in August” they continued, echoing reports

Yesterday I mentioned that Microsoft had signed Wistron up for an Android patent agreement. Wistron was the latest firm to agree to pay Microsoft for patents it holds that relate to devices running the Android operating system. So far, the largest rumored licensing fee paid to Microsoft for the patented tech is HTC’s $5 per device. That is nothing compared to what Microsoft is reportedly looking to shake loose from Samsung’s pockets. Apparently, Microsoft is looking to get $15 per device from Samsung for each Android product it sells. Samsung makes a massive number of handsets too. Analysts predict that Samsung built 19 million mobile phones in the last quarter alone and many of those would be smartphones running Android. Reuters reports that Samsung might trim that licensing fee down to $10 per device. That would be based on agreements to build more Windows Phone 7 smartphones. The source of the report is cited as Maeil Business Newspaper according to Reuters. The amount of money Mi

Not long ago I talked about a 3D printer called the Solar Sinter that uses sand and solar power to print 3D objects. That was cool and all, but let’s face it printing a 3D object with sand is interesting, but those objects would not taste good at all. If you want to print edible 3D shapes what you need is this 3D printer that uses chocolate as the print medium. Yum. The special chocolate 3D printer was created with funding from the Research Council UK Cross-Research Council Program – Digital Economy. That a huge name, but what it boils down to is this printer was funded because it would allow someone to upload a digital file and create custom chocolates in whatever shape or design they want. The print medium can be changed as well to support printing in non-edible materials. The team of researchers was led by Dr. Liang Hao and the experiments used chocolate as the medium because the stuff is cheap. I would bet making chocolate shapes also ensures that the staff on the project comes to

China is notorious for censoring the internet within its boundaries to keep citizens from accessing things that might not meet the questionable moral code of the Chinese government. Google and China have a long running feud but things between Microsoft and China are seemingly smooth. Microsoft is making a big move to raise the awareness of its Bing search engine in the largest internet market with a new deal with the Chinese Baidu search engine. The deal sees no money change hands and Baidu will even keep the revenue generated by ads under the deal. What Microsoft gets out of the deal is its English language search results integrated into the Chinese Baidu search listings. Baidu gets to expand to English language searches and grow its English language reach since the engine is only strong in China. Baidu is the leader in the Chinese search market by a huge margin with about 3/4 of the market with Google having 19.6% of the Chinese search leaving Microsoft with very little reach in Chin

Streaming music service Spotify and UK ISP/TV provider Virgin Media haveannounced a deal to include cut-price premium membership to joint subscribers. Set to launch “in the coming months” the deal will see Virgin Media TV, internet and cellphone users offered discounts and bundles on Spotify’s Premium and Unlimited tariffs, including a specially-created Spotify app for TiVo. Discount pricing for the two packages is yet to be confirmed. Currently, Spotify charges £4.99 ($8) per month for Unlimited membership, which allows for ad-free, unlimited playback from the entire catalog of 13m+ tracks, or £9.99 ($16) for Premium membership, which throws in mobile playback on smartphones as well. While Virgin internet customers could obviously make do with Unlimited membership, playing music on their computers, and Virgin cellphone customers would need Premium for mobile use, it’s unclear at this stage which package will be required for TV use. However, based on Spotify’s partnership with Onkyo t

Details of Qualcomm‘s processor roadmap for 2012 and 2013 have emerged, with the company planning to leverage its “Krait” next-gen chips for up to 2.5GHz quadcore MSM8974 SoCs. According to a roadmap leaked to MobileTechWorld, the MSM8930 and MSM8230 will arrive first, in Q3 2012, with dualcore 1-1.2GHz Krait cores, Adreno 305 graphics and LTE/HSPA+/TD-SCDMA support. It’s all part of what Qualcomm chipset VP Raj Tulluri described to SlashGear as a “measured” approach to the battery and performance balance, something the exec doesn’t believe rivals NVIDIA or Texas Instrument can compete on. It should be Q1 2013 when things get really interesting, with the quadcore Krait chips arrival. The MSM8974 will run at between 2.0GHz and 2.5GHz, with 2MB of L2 cache, 800MHz DDR3 dual-channel memory support and Adreno 320 graphics. It’ll also pack LTE Cat-4, HSPA+ and various other connectivity support, and be capable of 1080p 60fps HD video together with processing images from up to 30-megapixel s

Facebook’s “awesome” announcement is set to be revealed in just a few hours time, but according to reports it won’t be the so-called Project Spartan intended to take on Apple’s iOS app dominance. In-browser Skype video calls are likely to be the big unveil this week, it’s believed, with TechCrunch ‘s sources suggesting the Spartan charge won’t be made until sometime between July 15 (when Facebook is apparently pushing developers to be complete by) and August 1. However, those sources are also sharing some tidbits to further whet our appetites – and raise questions over just who Facebook’s target really is, Apple or Google. The (supposedly somewhat modified, to protect sources) screenshots above show part of the Project Spartan interface, with the blue “chrome” bar at the top being the common wrapper that will pull all apps together. Those apps won’t necessarily be resident on Facebook’s servers, but the chrome bar will flag up notifications, call themes and generally act as the “glu

Besides all the awesome Google+ features, the search giant may be serving up some nifty travel search features very soon. Google’s $700 million acquisition of travel software company ITA was approved back in April and we are now finally hearing about some of the first travel search features that may come of that purchase. One of the features rumored is a map-based search tool that will show flight pricing based on destinations. Filters can be set to narrow down where you want to fly to and at what price range. The results from this search can all be accessed via a map view. Another rumored feature is that the ITA data will be integrated so that Google search results of flights, times, and pricing will be based on your search terms and IP address to be more relevant to your geographic location. Also, specific queries such as “cheap flights to Paris” will bring up search results that include schedule and airfare options. Google’s ITA acquisition was approved after several months of anti-

The popular video streaming site, Hulu, is currently shopping itself around for a buyer. Preliminary talks have begun with Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo revealed last week to be on the shortlist. Insider sources today say that Amazon, AT&T, and Verizon will also be among the top picks, which include Facebook, Liberty Media, Netflix, and Samsung. Hulu differs from other video sites thanks to its joint owners being Fox, NBC Universal, and Disney’s ABC. This allowed the site to stream top-flight TV shows without having to wait and pay for higher licensing fees as does Netflix for its TV show content. However, Hulu is viewed as an “inevitable competitor” to cable TV and could upset content partners that are still rely on traditional TV ad revenue. If Amazon were to acquire Hulu, it could certainly boost their subscription offerings to compete against Netflix and iTunes. For AT&T and Verizon, the Hulu acquisition will probably go towards a video portal for their IPTV services. Howeve

A new report was released today by comScore that compared the U.S. mobile phone market share differences between the last three-month period ending May 2011 and the previous ending February 2011. The study was based on a survey of over 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers and revealed that Android continued to dominate but that Apple’s iPhone numbers also continued to grow. When it comes to smartphone platforms, Google’s Android rules the roost with 38.1% market share with Apple coming in second with 26.6% share. RIM at 24.7%, Microsoft at 5.8%, and Palm at 2.4% rounds out the rest of the platform leaders. Out of the leading five, Android experienced a point change of 5.1%, Apple had 1.4%, and the rest all lost market share. Comparing U.S. mobile phone manufacturers, leading the pack is Samsung, LG, Motorola, Apple, and RIM—in that order. However, Apple is the only phone maker to experience a point change of greater than 1% while Motorola and RIM shares both dropped slightly. Overall, it app