IBLOG SPACE

AT&T’s bid to purchase T-Mobile for $39 billion has collapsed following reports that the FCC was requesting anadministrative hearing regarding the deal. In a pre-emptive move, AT&T withdrew its T-Mobile proposal from the FCC and added the $4 billion breakup charge to its Q4 2011 finances. However, a source from Bloomberg is now claiming that AT&T may be considering one last plea of offering to sell more assets to save the T-Mobile deal. According to the source, AT&T is offering to divest a much larger portion of assets than it had initially expected. That amount could be as much as 40 percent of T-Mobile USA’s assets. The move would be to address the concerns of the Department of Justice (DOJ), which had sued to block the merger back in August. AT&T insisted that withdrawing its FCC application for the deal was so that it could focus on addressing the DOJ lawsuit first. The proposal to sell a larger portion of assets could be presented as soon as November 30, during

The iPod dock by the name of XtremeMac Tango TRX has been out for some time now, having been first announced all the way back in 2010, but it’s no worse for wear with the 2011 holiday season rapidly approaching, and since we’ve never had a look at it before and there’s a brand new bit of functionality now with Google Music out of beta, let’s have a look, shall we? This device comes with several parts – first being the main speaker complete with iPod dock which can house anything from the tiniest iPod to the iPad 2, though I wouldn’t recommend the latter as it does block a bit of the sound blast and isn’t exactly held the most securely in place. Then there’s the bit that makes this whole thing unique: the second docking station, one that allows you to charge the device on one side of the house while the speaker jams music out at the other.

A new and more detailed image of the HTC Ville has surfaced today, revealing what may be HTC’s thinnest smartphone yet. The device is said to measure in at less than 8mm thin and will sport Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, powered by a dual-core processor. It was first revealed earlier this month with a rendering from BGR and tipped for a February 2012 launch. The HTC Ville is expected to feature a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display with qHD resolution that slightly wraps around the edges. Some of the main specs revealed so far include a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor and an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with higher-quality optics capable of 1080p HD video capture. Other specs include HSPA+ connectivity, Beats Audio support, and a decent sized 1,650 mAh battery. It will run HTC Sense 4.0 on top of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and will likely launch under a different name, as HTC Ville is said to be only a codename. The device is expected to debut in mid-February at Mobi

The next most powerful Android device on earth is now available for pre-order from Best Buy, that being the Asus Transformer Prime, an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor toting 10.1-inch Honeycomb tablet. This device is available for pre order in two forms: one with a gray back, the other with a champagne back. Both models have 32GB of data storage built-in with a microSD card slot to expand by an additional 32GB if you wish. They’ve also got the official champagne-colored keyboard dock and a mystery portable dock which we must assume is the gray-colored keyboard dock, both up for $149.99 and at pre-order status as well. We’ve had a pretty decent introduction to this device (and its dock) just this past month at NVIDIA and Asus combined forces for a double-down on launching. This is the first place that NVIDIA will be delivering its quad-core mobile processor that up until recently was code-named Project Kal-El (aka Superman). What we’ve got here now is the Tegra 3 quad-core processor 

Sharp has long been rumored to be a runner up as a major display supplier for Apple and now new reports suggest that the company has successfully won the bid and has already been supplying screens for Apple’s iPhones. Citing sources familiar with the matter, the WSJ reveals that Sharp will be supplying Apple’s next-gen iPads with LCD screens that are manufactured at Sharp’s Kameyama No. 2 plant in central Japan. The source also claims that the Apple is investing in Sharp’s Japanese manufacturing facilities. Although no investment figure was divulged, we’ve heard rumors from analysts previously that Apple planned to invest $1 billion. The move is part of Apple’s efforts to work with multiple component makers to ensure sufficient supply of parts for its iPhones and iPads. The source further claims that Apple already uses Sharp displays in its iPhones and plans to also use Sharp displays for its next-gen iPhone that’s due out sometime next year. LG and Samsung were said to supply the disp

The Hidden Radio and Bluetooth Speaker is simple and elegant, featuring a unique canister design that twists to activate. The device is developed by two industrial designers, who have been working on the project for the past four years. They’ve now reached the point of patenting the mechanism and launching a Kickstarter program to get the first production batch made and distributed. The minimalist design should pair well with most any gadget and environment. Twisting the canister body reveals a speaker underneath, with more twists lifting the cover higher and revealing more of the speaker. This action also increases the volume of the speaker. Hence, operation simply involves pairing the speaker with a Bluetooth enabled media device and twisting the speaker open to your desired volume. The volume of the speaker can go as high as 80dB and it features an impressive battery life of 30 hours. The speaker also has an AM/FM radio as well as a 3.5mm audio jack. It will be available in three co

It appears that one inventor / designer by the name of Kyle Hart is sitting in a pretty great place after his EZ-Steady- iPhone, DSLR, GoPro Camera Stabilizer has found over $30,000 USD in backing money on crowdfunding site KickStarter with 19 days left to go – with an idea so simply wonderful as this, it’s no wonder! What this design consists of essentially is a camera mount, a handle that allows the stand to move freely whilst still attached, and a bar that wraps down below the handle with weights attached so that the whole rig can be balanced. What we’ve got here is a steadycam setup made real for all manner of personal cameras – coming soon! Have a peek at the video below to see how the whole thing comes together, and note that we’ve got a review of both the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S and a bit more information on the GoPro if you’d like to take a peek, but that essentially any DSLR will work as well. Plug any kind of camera you’ve got in there if it’s attachable, and enjoy yourself a

Microsoft’s Windows 8 isn’t due out in full until fall of next year, but security researcher Peter Kleissner has already found a way to exploit the platform. Kleissner created a Windows 8 bootkit that can bypass the User Account Control using just 14KB of exploit code. It’s said to be the first proof-of-concept to find a vulnerability in Windows 8 and he’s posted a demo video of the process. The exploit works on the current Windows 8 developer preview version, allowing a hacker to run command prompts under the SYSTEM account once exploited. It bypasses the User Account Control completely and does not prompt the end user. This appears to be an extension of the Stoned bootkit that Kleissner developed as a proof-of-concept to to exploit Windows XP, Vista, and 7 as well as Windows Server 2003. The issue will likely be addressed by next year’s launch, but it does show that despite Microsoft’s already beefed up security for Windows 8 that there’s still plenty of work ahead. Microsoft is step

So you’ve got a desire to record that lecture at school or the Wu-Tang concert you’re about to attend, but you just don’t trust the mic on your iPhone to do the full trick – how about a stereo mic device that pops in with ease from Tascam? Just in time for the holidays, Tascam has revealed and put up for sale the iM2, a stereo microphone attachment for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch – and it looks so sweet! How we’ve just got to figure out what we’re going to do with the sound once we’ve got it. You’ll have yourself a top of the line sound recorder with this set of condenser microphones, one device to give your iPhone the same high-quality recording abilities as Tascam’s best-selling DR-series recorders – and that’s hot. You’ll just connect this bumper in to the dock connector on your iDevice and you’ll instantly have recording with over 180 degrees of adjustment for the microphones. In addition, uni-directional elements sit inside the AB patten that’ll bring you no less than what Ta

The German Postal Service and Volkswagen have teamed up to bring forth a new concept in electric-powered mail delivery here in the eT! mail van, one that not only reduces the amount of fossil fuels the postal service in the country will use, but will be able to follow the mailman down the street should he need to call upon it to bring him a package. The models being shown this month include “come to me” and “follow me”, these still in a sort of beta phase from what it appears, the technology still not perfected enough to make sure they vehicle doesn’t clobber dogs and the mail carrier his or herself in the process. This vehicle, currently called the eT!, has been shown at a few auto shows already in one form or another, the folks at Co.Exist noting that the’ve taken a spin in a Volkswagen with a similar technology embedded just last year. No vehicle from the auto group is quite ready for commercial production, but a quick peek at the van image above and below will let you know how clos

A survey has surfaced this week courtesy of the fine folks at GfK Group which had one in five consumers who owned both an iPad and an iPhone saying that switching to a new smartphone would be more difficult than changing their bank account. Of course with how often they use their devices, the fact that each application’s data sits on that device or in many cases does not exist on other mobile OS platforms, the switch to a new iPhone is the only realistic choice. This research was conducted across nine countries including Brazil, China, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, UK and the US, and had an aim at finding consumers barriers to switching between types of smartphones and “the impact of their attitudes towards the overall user experience.” Findings in this study concluded that nearly 1 out of every 5 consumers (19%) owning both an iPad and an iPhone also thought that changing types of smartphone would be more difficult than changing their gas or electricity provider. This lends it

This week over at Dreamhack Winter in Jonkoping Sweden, the folks at SteelSeries have revealed two lovely black, white, and merigold (or orange, if you prefer) pieces of equipment, one limited edition Fnatic Sensei mouse and one 7H Fnatic limited edition headset. You’ll find first of all that both of these devices have an interestingly unique look to them, then you’ll find that their quality in attacking the gaming world is of course second to none. Inside the headset you’ll find 50mm dynamic driver units and SNDBlock ear cushions for sound isolation. Inside the mouse you’ll find a 32 bit ARM processor for its ExactTech settings and full customization abilities. The mouse has a light-up Fnatic team logo and contains the ability to be the most customized mouse on the market. For example the logo and the rest of the lighting on the device has three zones of 16.8 million color illumination options. Light it up in green if you’re using it with a computer with an NVIDIA processor, for examp

When you speak about Batman: Arkham City, you speak about not only the next chapter in a line of games that’ve redefined the superhero genre of video games, but have taken the ultra-immersive nature of the detective / puzzle solving game and have made it intuitive enough to be enjoyable for all – and the graphics are absolutely unmatched. What we’ve got here is a rig provided by NVIDIA to test this game specifically, an Alienware M17xR3 gaming laptop with a GeForce GTX 580 DirectX 11 GPU inside, this along with the newest set ofNVIDIA 3D Vision 2 wireless 3D glasses. It’s a very GREEN situation, needless to say, and playing the most advanced game on the market with the most impressive graphics processor on the planet, this is almost a no-brainer.

The BBC has developed a WiFi-enabled toy Dalek that can mimic the on-screen actions of the Doctor Who arch-villain, though fans hoping for a living room invasion will be disappointed. The “synchronised Dalek” project, theBBC’s R&D team reveals, is a proof-of-concept intended to demonstrate the Universal Control system, a way of getting internet-connected devices to perform specific functions in time with TV shows on-screen. Universal Control is being positioned as a way to replace the existing, button-encrusted remote, using internet-enabled devices like tablets and smartphones to not only function as universal remotes but interact with what’s being broadcast. However, it could also have more advanced implications, such as “dual screen” setups as part of the burgeoning “ internet of things ” concept. To demonstrate that, an industrial trainee placement graduate with the R&D team for six months took on the challenge of demonstrating how Universal Control could be integrated with

A souped-up GeForce graphics card, the Zotac GeForce GTX 560 Ti, packing a total of 448 cores rather than the usual 384, has been pictured ahead of its official release. The image, leaked to Fudzilla, shows box-art for the NVIDIA-based performance video card, as well as the hardware itself, clad in a brightly colored cooling system. Targeted at the performance gamer market, the Zotac card comes equipped with 1280MB of graphics memory and a 320-bit bus. Occupying two slots, it has HDMI connectivity – among other ports – and supports NVIDIA SLI for multi-card setups. The suggestion is that, rather than an overclocked regular GTX 560 Ti, Zotac could actually be using an underclocked GeForce GTX 570. That would make the core chip NVIDIA’s GF110, rather than the GF114, though of course we won’t know until the card hits the market. When, exactly, that will take place is unconfirmed, though previous reports have suggested November 29. Pricing is yet to be revealed.

German geek shave cracked the protection that prevents the theft of HD video. Specifically the HDCP protection that protects Blu-ray movies has been cracked. Intel is the company behind the encryption that was cracked. HDCP is used on a bunch of HD video signals including HDMI, DVI, and DisplayPort. This prevents the theft of the HD video by pirates until now. A group of computer scientists at Ruhr University in Germany have created a custom board to break the encryption using cheap FPGA chips. The chip used was a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA with an HDMI port and serial RS232 communication port. The board sat between the Blu-ray player and the TV, captured the data, and decrypted it. The total cost of the board used was a bit over $200. The board was constructed by the researchers as a project in copy protection. Apparently, the project will not be interesting to pirates who capture their video form receivers. The team says that the intention was to investigate the fundamental security of HD

If you like to read digital publications you will like this news. Digital magazine firm Zinio has raised some new funding that will help it to launch a digital newsstand. Zinio has apps for computers and just about every mobile device out there. The cool part is that the digital magazines are pretty much exactly like the print counterparts. There is no word on where the financing came from at this point. The tip that the money had been raised came from an SEC filing. We aren’t exactly sure that the new round of financing will be used for. At this point, there is no official word from Zinio. Perhaps they have something up their sleeve to allow more competition with Apple and other firms that have digital publications. It will be interesting to see what comes out of the new round of financing. Do you use Zinio? Which is better Apple’s digital newsstand or Zinio?

Netflix has been involved in an always dating back to allegations in 2004 that alleged it and Walmart had colluded to fix prices in the online movie market. Walmart had apparently decided the case was lost and had sent out emails telling subscribers they would receive payment over the suit settlement. It appears not that Netflix will not be paying after all. A federal judge yesterday dismissed a class action suit against Netflix. The allegations claimed that the price fixing resulted in Netflix subscribers paying more for DVDs between 2005 and 2010. Walmart had announced that it was setting aside $27 million to pay the class. It was assume that Netflix would be paying out as well. The crux of the case was that the deal allegedly resulted in Walmart deciding to leave the DVD rental business. The judge presiding over the case was US district Judge Phyllis Hamilton and she said that Walmart leaving the DVD online rental business and an alleged agreement was not enough for an automatic ant

AT&T and Deutsche Telekom’s decision to withdraw their FCC merger application yesterday is a sign that the deal is dead in the water, analysts and industry agrees, with the final question not whether the acquisition goes ahead but how much pain each carrier suffers as it fails. Deutsche Telecom is expected to in effect sink T-Mobile USA rather than commit the investments the carrier needs in order to remain competitive in the US market, though the exact way in which the company would be shuttered is unclear. T-Mobile USA could sell off its spectrum and network, but continue to operate with its existing userbase, analysts at Citi have suggested, in effect renting space on AT&T’s combined network, Reuters reports. However, because the carrier has expected the deal to go through, little effort is believed to have been expended on winning new custom or securing new devices; that, the NYTimes reports, would leave T-Mobile USA floundering in the market, albeit a potential new target

Today is B-Day for shoppers, Black Friday for the uninitiated. This is the day when you can get some of the best tech deals of the season just in time for holiday giving. Microsoft has some special deals going that will appeal to the geeks out there. We won’t tell Santa on you if you buy them for yourself rather than someone else. The deals are available at your local Microsoft Store and they have been gong since midnight last night. That may mean many of the items on sale are gone at this point. You can get up to $200 off an Xbox Ultimate Gaming Bundle. The Kinect Sensor is available for $99.99 rather than the $149.99 it normally costs. If you want a Windows Phone you can get at least one unnamed handset free. One of the better deals is on a new Acer Touchbook If you want the Acer Iconia dual-screen Touchbook can be had for $599 rather than the $999. You can also get a Sony S137GX notebook online only for $599, that’s $400 less than normal. There are also discounts on games in the sto

Today is B-Day for shoppers, Black Friday for the uninitiated. This is the day when you can get some of the best tech deals of the season just in time for holiday giving. Microsoft has some special deals going that will appeal to the geeks out there. We won’t tell Santa on you if you buy them for yourself rather than someone else. The deals are available at your local Microsoft Store and they have been gong since midnight last night. That may mean many of the items on sale are gone at this point. You can get up to $200 off an Xbox Ultimate Gaming Bundle. The Kinect Sensor is available for $99.99 rather than the $149.99 it normally costs. If you want a Windows Phone you can get at least one unnamed handset free. One of the better deals is on a new Acer Touchbook If you want the Acer Iconia dual-screen Touchbook can be had for $599 rather than the $999. You can also get a Sony S137GX notebook online only for $599, that’s $400 less than normal. There are also discounts on games in the sto

I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that the Blackberry smartphone is so popular in Indonesia that it sparked a near riot. RIM chose Jakarta, Indonesia as the place to launch the new Blackberry Bold 9790 smartphone. Hoards of people turned up for the launch event. One of the reasons for such a huge crowd was a special discount. The first 1000 people that purchased a Bold 9790 were supposed to receive a 50% discount on their purchase. Apparently the hoards of people starting to line up the day before the launch event at the Pacific Place shopping mall. Then rumors started to swirl that the smartphone was sold out. That sent the Indonesians over the edge and people started to break through the barriers and rush to get their hands on the device. The hoards of people running to get a Blackberry resulted in “tens of people” being injured. Some of those people were unconscious at the scene. Police and ambulances descended on the mall to help the injured and sort the mess

Big brother just got a bit larger in a couple malls in the US. Two malls operated by Forest City Commercial Management have installed systems from a company called Footpath Technology that will track where a shopper is and the path they take through the mall. The two malls are Promenade Temecula in Southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Virginia. The tracking tech uses some antennas installed around the mall to triangulate individual users’ locations and follow their path around the mall. According to the maker if the tracking system it can’t capture the shoppers phone number, data, texts, or any personal details. I’m not sure how much better that will make many privacy conscious shoppers feel. The malls say the system will only capture anonymous trends. Presumably, they are looking at ways to arrange the mall that will bring more foot traffic to important parts of the mall. The management says that the shopper can opt out of tracking. The opt out method is turning

If you are a netbook fan, you might be familiar with the Cedar Trial platform from Intel. Machines using the platform were expected this year, but Cedar Trail has now been delayed. Despite that delay there are a bunch of new netbooks coming that use the Cedar Trail platform. So far, the ones that have surfaced are from Asus and Samsung. Asus has the EeePC 1011CX, 1015CX, and X101CH incoming. Samsung also has machines coming including the NC110 and N102S using Cedar Trail. The Asus netbooks tipped including the 1011CX and 1015CX will have a chassis similar to the 1011 and 1015 machines. The tech specs that have surfaced point to an Atom N2600 processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 320GB HDD. The display is a 10.1-inch unit and they run Windows 7 Starter. The price is on some websites at 300 euros. The X101CH uses the N2600 as well running at 1.6GHz with 1GB of RAM. The cost on this machine is thought to be under 250 euros. Samsung’s Cedar Trail offerings include the N102S and NC110. The N102S wil

Samsung has accused an Australian judge of “fundamental errors” and of misunderstanding the law, as the company protests its recent legal failures against Apple. Challenging the Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales ban awarded last month in the appeals court this week, Samsung described the original ruling as being “grossly unjust” SMHreports, and arguing that Justice Bennett “misunderstood and misapplied the basic requirements” around deciding whether Apple’s patents were in fact valid. “We contend that the primary judge made a series of fundamental errors in her disposition of the interlocutory application” Samsung’s lawyers told the three appeals judges. “They were all errors of principle.” The end result, the argument went, was that Samsung was unfairly penalized at “a critical time at the development of [the tablet] market.” Unsurprisingly, Apple’s legal team has no such qualms about Justice Bennett’s findings and the legitimacy of the Samsung sales injunction. Instead, they described it as havi

NTT Docomo in Japan has landed a new smartphone that looks pretty cool and runs Android 2.3. The phone looks very cool with a rectangular design and bright colors. The device is also waterproof so you can use it without fearing rain or spills. The smartphone should go on sale December 2 according to a press release today. The phone has some nice features with a 4.5-inch LCD that supports 720 x 1280 resolutions. The display engine is Sharp’s AQUOS tech for better image quality. The screen also supports 3D using parallax barrier, meaning no glasses are needed. The smartphone also has Eco-Tech to extend battery life. The rear camera is 12.1MP and it has optical image stabilization. It can record HD video and shoot photos too. The processor the phone uses is a dual-core OMAP4430 at 1GHz. Other features include world phone capability, GPS, WiFi, an integrated TV tuner, and Bluetooth. The phone has a lot of other things it can do as well. Pricing is unknown and interestingly this phone went

I like robots quite a bit when they are cool. I have aspirations of one day owning a bot that can mow the lawn for me. This new little bot from Vstone won’t mow my yard, mostly because it has no legs. The bot is called the RPC-S1 and it is a little child-like robot covered in foam rubber. The bot has a round head with two eyes. It is 12-inches tall and has 17-degrees of freedom. Inside the bot are an embedded PICO 820 computer, a 1.3MP camera, two microphones, and a speaker. The bot is sized similarly to the Vstone M3-synchy according but has a head that isn’t as detailed as that M3. One of the coolest things about the RPC-S1 is that its eyes can move independently of its head. That means this bot can give you that same creepy feeling you get when you walk by a portrait that the eyes are following you. There is no word on pricing, but anything for robotics research tends to be expensive.

This is pretty interesting. We know that Apple and Intel worked together to bring Thunderbolt to the Mac line of notebooks. The interface is very fast and allows for all sorts of connectivity options. Word has surfaced that Intel is at work bringing the Thunderbolt port to its Ultrabook platform for use with a docking station. Intel would need to get the notebook makers onboard for this. You can already dock notebooks using USB 2.0 or 3.0 ports. If you are an Ultrabook fan, this might sound like a good idea to you. The catch is if you buy this docking station specifically for Ultrabooks the dock isn’t likely to work on your next computer. The docking interface puts a wide dock connector that looks in the photos like the old parallel printer ports to me, right next to a mini Display port connector. The setup would run signals for multiple devices through one cable. I think Intel should just stick to USB 3.0 rather than trying to set up a new standard on their Ultrabooks that looks to be

If you are a fan of the Google Chrome browser you will appreciate this. Chrome is said to be getting an update that will add some new support to make gaming on the browser more fun. The browser will be getting support for gamepads. The tip comes from Paul Kinlan, the Google developer advocate. Kinlan made the statement at Develop Liverpool. The update is set to land in Q1 2012 and will bring with it not only support for gamepads, but a couple other tricks as well. The update will allow Chrome to support cameras and microphones without needing plug-ins for them to operate. Kinlan apparently hinted that the games for Chrome might also get augmented reality and player tracking. Other plans for the update include support for webRTC, which is an open source application that supprots video chart. That would allow the browser to support video chat with no plug in needed. The tech might also allow Google to add a browser gaming service along the lines of On-Live. That would be interesting for

We have no idea if this ad is legit or not, but this is the price that we were hoping for. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone has been price tipped via an ad. Apparently, the ad you see in the photo below is some sort of flash ad that is running somewhere. I’ve got most ads blocked so that may be the reason I haven’t seen it. The ad claims that the LTE packing smartphone will sell for $199.99. That would put it at the same price as the iPhone. I had suspected the device would be more than the traditional $199.99 price tag. I hope the ad is correct and not some sort of fake. That volume issue that the phone suffered from is supposed to be fixed now. We reviewed the Galaxy Nexus a few days back and found that it is the best Android device on the market right now. The device has a slick curved screen that supports 720p resolution. The screen is very large at 4.65-inches and is a Super AMOLED HD unit.

Earlier this week I mentioned that Penguin was pulling its eBooks from the lending service for libraries called OverDrive. The reason for pulling the books according to the publisher was to reevaluate the terms of lending. That didn’t bode well for people with Kindles that like to check out eBooks from their local library. The eBooks were pulled from OverDrive a few days ago and apparently, the eBooks are back, for now. Penguin has agreed to allow the eBooks to continue to be lended via libraries for a limited time. Penguin has allows the books to remain in the lending library through at least the end of the year. At this late date that is only a bit more than a month that the books might remain. Penguin had pointed the finger at security concerns. The rub was that the company had continued to sell the same books in digital format, presumably with the same security measures in place. The more likely reason was that Penguin wanted the reader to buy the eBook rather than check it out.

Power struggles amid display manufacturers, as E Ink Holdings (EIH) apparently suspends its fringe-field switching (FFS) LCD panel production agreement with LG Display and instead shifts manufacture to rival CPT. FFS displays are a key rival to the IPS panels that LG Display and others supply Apple for the iPad, promising wide viewing angles among other benefits. In addition to ending the FFS production agreement, EIH will buy back bonds in its Hydis display subsidiary, DigiTimes reports, which LG Display had bought as part of its original agreement back in January 2010. EIH invested NT$1.5bn ($49m) in CPT (Chunghwa Picture Tubes) in July this year, in an attempt to secure production for its FFS displays. Panels using the technology were at one point tipped for inclusion in the iPad 3, with an analyst suggesting back in February that Apple would use an FFS Retina Display for the third-gen tablet. However, more recently it has been indicated that Apple will likely use AH-IPS panels prod

Today is a massive shopping day with people having been camped out to get deals in some cases for a while now. If you are in the market for a new smartphone or a tablet and want a deal you might want to head over to your local Verizon store. Verizon has some limited time deals that will save you some big money on a Droid Incredible 2 or the Motorola Xoom tablet. The Incredible 2 will be free with a new 2-year contact and the smartphone is one of the better offerings from Verizon. If a tablet is what you are looking for you might want to check out the special deal on the Xoom that Verizon has. The tablet is the Xoom packing 4G LTE connectivity and it is $199 with a new contract for data. It is a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 resolution tablet that has a 2MP front camera and a 5MP rear camera. It runs Android Honeycomb and has a 1GHz dual core processor. The Sony Xperia Play smartphone is also free with a new contract and the Droid 3 will be $149.99 on a new contract.

Apple’s Black Friday sales in the US have kicked off, hot on the heels of the company’s international discounts. The “special one-day Apple shopping event” offers an iPad 2 from $458, a $41 saving on the regular price, as well as a MacBook Air from $898 and an iMac from $1,098. You can even save money on iTunes purchases, with a $50 iTunes gift card just $45 for one day only. If you’ve wanted a new iPod for a while, Apple has discounts on both the iPod touch and iPod nano. The touch is down to $178, a saving of $21, while the nano is $118, an $11 saving. MacBook Pro buyers can save $101 off a new notebook, with prices from $1,098. Meanwhile, accessories and peripherals are also discounted in many cases, with both Apple’s own products and those of third-party manufacturers getting a Black Friday price cut. The Magic Trackpad, Magic Mouse and Bluetooth Keyboard are all down to $58, from $69, while there’s $21 off a Time Capsule or AirPort Extreme. iPad 2 Smart Covers are down to as littl

Apple has kicked off its Black Friday UK sale, offering £31 off of its best-selling iPad 2 tablet, £81 off a MacBook or iMac, and dozens of discounts on Apple and third-party accessories. Described as a “special one-day Apple shopping event” – since the UK hasn’t traditionally had Black Friday sales – the discounting is notable given how rarely the company agrees to slash its prices. That means, despite the iPad 2 having been on sale for months now, actually finding it at a cheaper price than Apple’s original RRP can be tricky. Apple is also offering the iPod touch at £154 and the iPod nano at £104, while the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro start at £768 and £918 respectively. An iMac will set you back £918. As for accessories, everything from Time Capsules (from £228) through Bluetooth Keyboards (£48) and the Magic Trackpad (£48) are included, along with iPad Smart Covers from £24. Plenty of third-party manufacturers have got in on the action too, with iPhone and iPad cases, speaker-docks