Nokia Announces N79 Bundle with Bluetooth Heart Rate Belt

Nokia today announced Nokia N79 Active – bundle that includes N79 handset and wireless Polar Bluetooth WearLink heart rate belt. The N79 will use the A-GPS tracking along with a new version of Nokia Sports Tracker application to record and publish your exercise route and fitness data on the web. N79 Active owners will also be able to share the tracks they listen, as well as upload and geotag route images they follow for workout. Read More

Steve Taking Leave of Absence Due to Health Reasons from Apple

Apple has issued a letter stating that Steve Jobs is taking a leave of absence due to health reasons till summer of 2009. Steve has sent out an email to all Apple employees. It was rumored for past few months that Steve’s health was deteriorating. And, now the email confirms it. There is no information about how bad is Steve’s condition. But the email shows that he is looking forward to come back and work as CEO at Apple in July of 2009. We hope that he recovers fast and come back at Apple as soon as possible. Read More

Palm Pre Does it Compare with the iPhone?

There is no doubt that the new Palm Pre will be compared to the number one touchscreen smartphone on the market, the iPhone, as well as T-Mobile G1, which is slowly becoming the second best smartphone platform. If you look at the external design of the new handset, Pre is definitely better than T-Mobile G1, but it comes nowhere close to the slim and sexy design of the iPhone. Pre is shorter, rounder and thicker than the iPhone. The software demo that Palm showed of the new OS was very impressive. Read More

Sony’s New High-End VAIO P Series Netbook and Its First Impression

Almost two weeks before the CES, Sony started a teaser website for its upcoming netbook. Now, Sony has officially launched its new VAIO P series netbook. Specification-wise the new VAIO P comes with 8-inch LED backlit LCD screen, 1.33GHz Intel Atom processor, 2GB DDR2 RAM, Mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 500 with up to 760MB shared graphics memory, Intel’s High Definition Audio, 60GB hard drive (option of 128GB SSD), WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth, integrated 3G, GPS, built-in webcam, multimedia card slot and 82 keys QWERTY keyboard. Read More

Apple Introduces iWork 09

Apple today introduced iWork ’09, the latest version of Apple’s popular office productivity suite, which adds powerful new features without sacrificing Apple’s legendary ease of use. Keynote ’09 introduces advanced object transitions, which automatically animate objects with a choice of effects and Magic Move, an innovative way to create sophisticated animations just by applying a simple transition. Pages ’09 features a new Full Screen view that helps you focus on your writing and an outline mode to organize your thoughts. Read More

Apple Unveils iLife 09

Apple today introduced iLife ’09, which features major upgrades to iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand, and includes iDVD and an updated version of iWeb™. iPhoto ’09 builds on the ability to automatically organize photos into Events by adding Faces and Places as breakthrough new ways to easily organize and manage your photos. iMovie ’09 expands on the revolutionary super fast movie creation introduced in iMovie ’08 by adding the depth users want through powerful easy-to-use new features such as the incredible new Precision Editor, video stabilization, advanced drag and drop, and animated travel maps. Read More

Apple Announces New 17-inch MacBook Pro with 8 Hours of Battery Life

Apple today unveiled the new 17-inch MacBook Pro featuring a durable and beautiful precision aluminum unibody enclosure, and a revolutionary new built-in battery that delivers up to eight hours of use and up to 1,000 recharges for more than three times the lifespan of conventional notebook batteries. The new 17-inch MacBook Pro has a high-resolution LED-backlit display and the same large glass Multi-Touch trackpad introduced with the new MacBook family in October. In addition, the new 17-inch MacBook Pro includes state of the art NVIDIA graphics and the latest generation Intel Core 2 Duo mobile processors. As part of the industry’s greenest notebook family, the new 17-inch MacBook Pro is made of highly recyclable materials, meets stringent energy efficiency standards and is made without many of the harmful toxins found in other computers. Read More

Live Coverage of Apple’s Final Macworld Keynote on Tuesday, 6th January at 9:00AM PST

• Thanks for joining us today. We will be adding detailed posts on all products announced today.
• That's all from Apple today. Just hope that Tony's song rings true. We'll be waiting...
• Tony is on stage singing "The Best is Yet to come".
• The last keynote is ending with performance by a music legend - Tony Bennett!
• The iTunes music store is now available on 3G also and all songs are DRM free yippee!!!
• New pricing available in two tiers - $0.69 and $1.29
• It about iTunes, Apple sold six billion songs and has the largest music library.
• Phil says " We do have one last thing"
• So the base configuration will be 17-inch LED backlit screen, 2.66GHz processor, 4GB DDR3 RAM, Nvidia 9400M GT chipset, 512MB Nvidia 9600M GT graphics, 320GB hard drive and super drive for $2799. 
• Now he is showing ad for the new 17-inch MacBook Pro.
• If you run the new 17-inch MacBook Pro on 9400M graphics card it will give 8 hours battery life, if you use 9600M graphics card it will give 7 hours battery life.
• He is talking more about the battery, Advanced chemistry, intelligent monitoring and adaptive charging.
• Now he is showing the video of the battery making process.
• Apple says says the new battery on the laptop is not removable and hence Apple was able to create a 40 percent larger battery in the same space. the battery will last 8 hours on a single charge and can be charged 1000 time. The lifespan of the battery cells are three times the industry standard.
•  The laptop will be almost same as the new 15-inch MacBook Pro.
• The laptop will come with Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz up to 2.93GHz, 6MB L2 cache and up to 8GB DDR3 memory.
• There will be $50 anti glare option also.
• The new laptop will have 1920 x 1200 display with 700:1 contrast ratio and 60% color gamut.
• It is the worlds lightest and thinnest 17-inch laptop.
• One more thing: And its the new 17-inch MacBook Pro. What?!?
• You can use the iwork.com for Pages, Numbers and Keynote applications. Beta will be free but eventually it will be a paid service.
• You can edit the document on the iwork.com just like you do it on Google Docs.
• You can just upload the document from pages to iwork.com. it will generate a link which you can send by email to the person with whom you want to share the document.
• Apple is now talking about iwork.com a beta release, it help you to share and get feedback on documents that you are working on.
• The iWork 09 will be priced $79 for single license, $99 family pack and $49 if bought with new Mac. Ships today.
• Other features include advanced chart options such as mixed charts multiple axes charts, trend lines and error bars.
• Next up is Numbers 09 and Apple has added new features such as new Table categories and 250 functions along with the appropriate mouse overs and color coding.
• He shows various new Page templates and themes for Pages 09.
• Next is Pages with fullscreen view.
• Like the iTunes Remote for the iPhone and iPod touch there will be a Keynote Remote App but it won't be free. it's priced $0.99.
• The Keynote 09 will have Magic move, object and text transitions, chart animations and more themes.
• Phil is demoing the new Swing transition for Keynote 09.
• The second on list is iWork. it looks like there will be only one hardware announcement today.
• iLife is coming in late January for $79 and family pack will be priced $99.
• Each artist lesson for a song is $4.99, now he is showing video of various artist lessons.
• The feature will include 9 basic lessons for guitar and piano. the feature also allows artists to help you play... it is called artists lessons. John Fogerty, Fallout boy and Sting!
• He is now demoing the feature. he plays a snippet and an instructor in video shows how to play the snippet.
• He is talking about just one feature "Learn to Play". it shows users how to play an instrument.
• He now talks about Garageband 09.
• Phil is back on stage.
• He is now showing real time video effects like cartoon, X-Ray and aged film. he now shows addition of Map to the video. when the video is played back the map comes in a cool animated form.
• Merging clips and image stabilization looks awesome.
• Randy Ubillos, chief architect, Video applications is now demoing in detail the features of the new iMovie 09.
• A new dialogue feature allows you to put audio only clip on top of other clips just by dragging it on.
• Now Phil is demoing iMovie 09.
• iMovie will have context sensitive menus for clips, animated travel maps both in 2D and 3D, auto stabilization for shaky video and of course dynamic themes.
• Phil says that this new version will blow away your minds as it has features for every customer.
• It's iMovie 09.
• It's getting boring, what's next?
• Now Phil is showing the Geotagging feature of iPhoto.
• Phil is now doing live demo of all the iPhoto features.
• Apple uses face detection to properly position pictures, the pics are flipping in and out like iPod commercial, you can now use the same slideshow theme on your iPhone too.
• Now Phil is demoing new slideshow themes in iPhoto. He says that now you can customize the slideshow further.
• Apple is also adding inbuilt support for Facebook and Flickr.
• Maps for this feature comes from Google. it provides street maps as well as satellite images.
• Places uses geotagging, Phil is now demonstrating geotagging. for example iPhoto will provide information such as Eiffel Tower Paris based on the lat / long.
• The second addition is Places: where iPhoto will organize photos based on locations where they were taken.
• It can recognize same person in different photos automatically.
• Faces will let you organize photo by people and it uses face detection technology, you can tag photos just like you do on Facebook.
• Talking about iPhoto 09, the Event feature is well received by the customers and they are adding two new event features one is called faces.
• Three new things today, first is iLife 09
• Last year Apple sold 9.7 million Macs and Mac business is growing twice as fast as the rest of the industry.
• He says that today he is going to talk about Mac business.
• He says that Apple is having a very exciting time, people are lining up for the products.
• Lights are down and Phil is on stage welcoming everyone.
• Looks like Phil is about to come on stage.
• We have been asked to silence our cellphones now
• We are in the hall and there is lot of noise.
• What do you think will Steve come on stage?
• Well we have been waiting inline for about three hours now and the line as started moving.

Apple announced in December that Steve Jobs won’t be presenting the Macworld 2009 keynote and Phil Schiller will take his place. Apple also announced that this would be their last MacWorld Expo making this Macworld 2009 keynote one of the most talked about keynotes in Macworld history. We will be doing live coverage of the keynote starting at 9:00AM Pacific/10:00AM Mountain/11:00AM Central/12:00PM Eastern /5:00PM London on Tuesday, January 6th. Please join us tomorrow on live.techztalk.com for live coverage of the Macworld keynote.
Before the keynote starts you can go ahead and read our Macworld 2009 rumor roundup.

Rumor Roundup: Macworld Expo 2009

Rumor for Macworld Expo 2009 started in early December when XSKN leaked images of silicone case design for the new iPod nano. Initially, iPhone nano was the most talked about item for Macworld Expo 2009. But soon Mac related products started taking the center stage. Read More

iMac Rumors: New Cooling Module and Magnesium-Aluminum Chassis

MacWorld Expo is just a week away and rumors about new Apple products are flying high. Today, a Chinese language newspaper, Economic Daily, claimed that Foxconn has secured a contract with Apple to manufacture the upcoming iMac all-in-one desktops. The Economic Daily says that Foxconn Group’s Foxconn Precision Components and Catcher Technology will produce the new “magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis” for the upcoming iMac. Read More

Review Roundup: MacBook Pro (Unibody)

Apple launched their new MacBook Pro in October 2008 and while Apple updated the CPU, RAM and GPU, their main focus was on the new unibody design. In fact, Apple has posted a video describing the complete manufacturing process. If you look at the design of the new MacBook Pro, it is just stunning. The new unibody design has put Apple in a league of its own. There is not a single laptop maker who can even come close to the design of the new Macbook Pro. Below are the seven best online reviews available for the new MacBook Pro: Read More

Apple, Amazon and Nintendo have a Blockbuster Holiday Season

Economy is going down daily and most companies are suffering because of that. But Apple, Amazon and Nintendo just had the best holiday season ever in their companies’ history. Amazon today reported that 2008 holiday season was the ‘best ever’ with more than 6.3 million items ordered and 5.6 million units shipped during its peak day on December 15th. Amazon further added, “Based on the number of items ordered, Nintendo Wii, Samsung 52-inch LCD HDTV, Apple iPod touch and the Blokus board game were the bestsellers. Read More

Intel will not Block NVIDIA’s Ion Platform for Atom Processors

Few days back, it was reported that Intel has no plans to validate or form partnership with NVIDIA to support Ion platform. That has changed today, an Intel’s spokesman has denied the statement. Intel’s Bill Calder told InternetNews that nothing is stopping netbook makers from shipping Atom based products using NVIDIA’s Ion platform. He said, “We sell Atom as a stand-alone processor or as package with chipset”. Read More

Nokia China Publishes Unannounced 6208c Touchscreen Handset

Nokia’s Chinese website has published details about the unannounced touchscreen 6208c candybar handset. The 6208c will have a 2.4-inch 240 x 320 touchscreen, 3.2-megapixel camera with LED flash, 3.5mm audio out port, microSD card slot, Bluetooth and tri-band GSM. Battery life on the phone will be 3.5 hours talk time and 12.5 days of standby time. Read More

Apple Files Patent Application for Multitouch Swipe Gestures for iPhone Keyboard

Apple has been working very hard to improve multitouch user experience and hence it’s filing series of patents related to the technology. The latest patent application filed by Apple is called “Swipe Gestures for Touch Screen Keyboard”. In the application Apple showcases various ways swipe gestures can be used to make iPhone’s on screen keyboard faster and easier to use. Read More

Dell to Use 3.5mm Ultra-Thin LCD Panel for Adamo Notebooks

DigiTimes is reporting that Dell will use 3.5mm ultra-thin panels made by LG Display and Samsung Electronics for its upcoming Adamo notebooks. The LCD panels will have 16:10 aspect ratio and will be costlier than average thin LCD displays available. The New York Times has reported yesterday that Dell’s Adamo will be an ultra-thin notebook series rivaling the MacBook Air from Apple. Read More

Intel doesn’t want NVIDIA Inside Netbooks

Last week, NVIDIA announced their new 9400M based Ion platform for netbooks. The Ion platform combined GeForce 9400M graphics card with Intel Atom processor on a Pico-ITX mainboard. The only problem with the Ion platform was that Intel only sells Atom CPUs as a bundle with corresponding chipsets. And Intel has said that it has no plans to validate or form partnership with NVIDIA to support Ion platform. So, why is Intel against NVIDIA’s Ion platform? Read More

Next Gen iMac Coming in January

A Chinese newspaper Economic Daily is reporting that their sources in Apple’s supply chain have informed them about Apple’s plan to launch a new iMac in first quarter of 2009. Quanta Computer will make the new all-in-one desktop and the company is preparing to ship around 800,000 units for Q1 2009. According to the newspaper, Apple will announce the product in January 2009. Read More

HP Firebird 803 Gaming Desktop Leaked

Images and Specifications of new HP Firebird PC 803 have been leaked on Internet. The impressive new desktop looks inspired by gaming console design as it has a vertical slot loading disc drive, external power supply and very little configurability or expansion available. The leaked specifications are impressive for a small gaming desktop. Read More

Palm’s CEO Confirms Nova in Beta Testing Phase

Ed Colligan, Palm’s CEO revealed that both wireless carriers and software developers have started testing devices based on its upcoming Nova smartphone OS. Colligan said that both the carriers and software developers have been extremely pleased by the new OS. The company brought some existing software developers on-board with Nova development to ensure third party software support when the Nova platform is launched. Read More