Etymotic Launches hf5 in-ear Headphones

Etymotic the company known for their high quality in-ear headphones has officially launched the new hf5 in-ear headphones. Etymotic hf5 are the successor to company’s highly successful ER-6i earbuds and are the fifth generation of pure listening devices. The new earphones are smaller and have full metal body, which makes them more comfortable and sturdy. Read More

Good Omen for Google, Ballmer Dismisses Google Android

Last year, when the iPhone was announced, Steve Ballmer laughed at the phone’s cost and said it won’t appeal to business customers. Well, in first quarter of sales the iPhone took off like a rocket and left Windows Mobile in dust. Now he has dismissed Google new Android mobile operating system. Speaking at Telstra’s annual investment day, Ballmer said, “They can hire smart guys, hire a lot of people, blah dee blah dee blah, but you know they start out way behind, in a certain sense.” Read More

Apple Might Update Mac mini Soon

There has been a debate going on about Mac mini’s demise/update around blogosphere for past few months. AppleInsider is reporting that one of the mini loving customer got feed up with the guesswork and emailed Chief of Mac Hardware Engineering Bob Mansfield with his concerns. He didn’t receive a reply from Mansfield, but was contacted immediately by a person from Apple’s executive care division asking him to be patient and assured him that Apple was aware of mini’s market value. Read More

SanDisk Developing 100x Faster Solid State Drives

SanDisk has developed a new file system called ExtremeFFS, which uses a page-based method that no longer ties the logical location of data on the drive to its physical space. The new file system dynamically writes and alters the position of data on the drive based on where it would be most efficient as well as the user’s own habits. The new file system improves the random write speed by 100x compared to current drives. Read More

IBM Introduces Hardware Security Device ZTIC for Online Banking

IBM says that more and more attacks to online banking applications target the user’s home PC, changing what is displayed to the user, while logging and altering key strokes. In order to foil these threats, IBM has introduced the Zone Trusted Information Channel (ZTIC), a hardware device that can counter these attacks in an easy-to-use way. The ZTIC is a USB attached device containing a display and minimal I/O capabilities that runs the full TLS/SSL protocol, thus entirely bypassing the PC’s software for all security functionality. Read More

Apple working on Software Fix for MacBook Pro Trackpad Problem

On Monday, new MacBook owners started complaining about a trackpad issue with the new MacBook, where after every 50 clicks the trackpad stopped responding. The trackpad would start working normally after few seconds. Macrumors is reporting that one of their reader also emailed Steve Jobs about the same trackpad problem and got a reply back simply stating, “Software fix coming soon.” Read More

Dell Asks Employees to Take Unpaid Leave To Prevent More Layoffs

Dell’s CEO Michael Dell has sent a memo to all the employees outlining company’s efforts to cut costs. In the memo Dell has asked employees to consider taking up to five days of unpaid leave to prevent more layoffs. The memo also calls for temporary companywide hiring freeze, the elimination of contract employees, severance packages to those who depart voluntarily and a voluntary furlough of one to five days. Read More

Olympus Launches 12.3 Megapixel Evolt E-30 Digital SLR

Olympus has announced the new midrange Evolt E-30 digital SLR with 12.3-megapixel image sensor and 11 point autofocus. The camera fills the gap between entry-level E-520 and the professional E-3 DSLR. The features on E-30 are swiveling 2.7-inch screen, 5fps continuous mode, ISO range of 100-3200, sensor-shift image stabilization, Face detection, Art Filters and new multiple exposure mode. Read More

Windows 7 Touchscreen and New Desktop Features

Ina Fried of CNET got to spend some time with Windows 7 touchscreen and new desktop features. She has posted few videos showing the new touchscreen and the user interface. The video on the top shows the use of touchscreen in upcoming Windows 7 operating system. On the touchscreen, you can use your finger anywhere to scroll a document, you can flick your finger to scroll faster. Microsoft has added visual cues, such as making a window bounce when one has reached the end or beginning of a document. Where have we seen that… Oh the iPhone. Actually the process is so similar to the iPhone that it looks like a direct rip off. Read More and Watch Video

Apple’s OS and Browser Market Share Saw Slight Decrease in October

Net Applications is reporting that after seeing record increase in OS and Browser market share Apple saw slight decrease in October 2008. In Operating Systems, Windows usage increased from 90.29 percent to 90.46 percent in October, while Mac share declined from 8.23 percent to 8.21 percent. Apple’s iPhone OS continued it upward rise and its OS market share increased from 0.32 percent to 0.33 percent. Linux market share dropped from 0.91 percent to 0.71 percent, even though many new netbooks are shipping with Linux on them. Read More

T-Mobile Offers Motorola ZINE ZN5 for Just $99

During summer, Motorola announced their first serious camera phone the ZINE ZN5, which it developed with help from Kodak. Initially, the phone wasn’t offered in US, but that changed today as T-Mobile has started offering the new Motorola ZINE ZN5 in US, and that to just for $99 with two-year contract. The main feature of the phone is its camera that Motorola developed with help from Kodak. Read More

Intel Core i7: Review Roundup and Pricing

For past few years, Intel has been following the Tick-Tock cycle, Tick is the year when Intel mainly updates the manufacturing process and Tock is the year when Intel introduces new Core architecture. The new Core i7 is not just new core architecture, it will also bring along on die memory controller, QuickPath interface and support of triple channel DDR3 memory. Intel will introduce three Core i7 processors at launch: 2.66GHz Core i7-920 for $284, 2.93GHz Core i7-940 for $562 and 3.20GHz Core i7 Extreme 965 for $999. Below are the latest reviews for the new Core i7 processors and the general concise is that the new processors are blazing fast. Read More

Microsoft Puts “I’m a PC” Kiosk Near Apple Store…

Microsoft has started next phase of their $300 million ad campaign by putting a kiosk near Apple Store in Birmingham, UK. The kiosk lets users record their own “I’m a PC” video for contribution to the ad campaign. Microsoft says that this phase of campaign will use videos uploaded by customers rather than paid professional spokespeople. Microsoft started the $300 million ad campaign to improve Vista’s image and to counter Apple’s “I’m a PC” and “I’m a Mac” ad campaign. Read More

Intel Plans to Present 32nm Chip Details While AMD Plans to Show Off First 22nm Part

On December 15th, IEEE will kick off International Electron Devices Meeting, where representatives from various chip-manufacturing companies will present paper related to latest development in chip design and manufacturing. Intel will release details about its 32nm manufacturing process, which they will start using to produce chips in 2009. Intel will talk about how they produced a 291Mb SRam memory that uses high-k and metal gate technologies to test 32nm process technology. Read More

New MacBooks Supports up to 6GB of RAM, But not 8GB

Since Apple launched the new MacBooks there has been discussion going around the blogosphere about how much RAM the new laptop can support. Earlier, NVIDIA revealed that the GeForce 9400M chipset is capable of supporting 8GB of RAM. But Apple has listed on its website that the MacBooks supports just 4GB RAM. So iFixit.com decided to test whether MacBook can support 8GB RAM or not. They found that even though the system recognized 8GB memory it wasn’t able to use it. Only 4GB RAM was used and rest was left free. Read More

Samsung Showcases World’s First 40-inch OLED Display and 0.05mm Thick OLED Displa

Samsung displayed their latest development in OLED display technology with a 40-inch Full HD OLED display and a flapping 0.05mm thick OLED at IMID Korea. Samsung claims that it is the world’s first company to show a prototype 40-inch OLED display capable of 1920 x 1080 (1080p) resolution. The other important prototype that Samsung showed was a 0.05mm thick, 4-inch OLED panel. Samsung named it “flapping display” because the display was flexible enough to flutter in breeze of air. Read More

HP Officially Announces Three New Mini 1000 Netbook Models

HP has released three new models of Mini 1000 netbook series, the piano-black HP Mini 1000, vibrant red HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition and HP Mini 1000 MIE. The first model of HP Mini 1000 will be based on Windows XP Home and Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz processor will power it. The netbook will have option of 8.9-inch or 10.2-inch Brightview widescreen display with 1024 x 600 resolution, 1GB RAM, Ethernet jack, 2 USB ports, built-in webcam and microphone. Read More

Microsoft Developing New Surface Prototype “Secondlight”

Slashdot is reporting that Microsoft is working on new Surface Table technology called “Secondlight” that projects an image through the table itself, so that any translucent material held above the Surface Table screen displays a different image to what you see on the table’s display. According to Slashdot this means you can have a satellite image of a town on the table and have the street names projected on to a piece of paper that the user holds above the map. Read More and Watch the table in Action.

Microsoft Previews New Web Applications Based on Office Software

Along with Windows 7 Microsoft also demoed its new Web applications for Office at Professional Developers Conference 2008. The Web applications are lightweight versions of Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote that can be used within standard web browser. Microsoft showed how users could use Web, Phone and Computer version of Office to edit the same rich document, switching among them seamlessly without losing file compatibility. Read More

Microsoft Delivers Pre-Beta Release of Windows 7 to Developers

Microsoft today delivered pre-beta build of Windows 7 to Professional Developers Conference (PDC) attendees and announced plans to release a full Windows 7 beta early next year. Microsoft also did the first full public demo of Windows 7 showing various new features. Microsoft says that Windows 7 is designed to make everyday tasks faster and easier and make new things possible for end users. Read More