Blogged with Flock
Filed under: Laptops
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Blogged with Flock
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops
In the second such incident in as many months, Microsoft has been accused of using a foreign organization's intellectual property without proper compensation, this time over a proprietary method of inputting Chinese characters called ZhengMa. Following last month's copyright suit in the Philippines, Redmond is now facing accusations from Chinese tech firm Zhongyi Electronic that it has been using the latter company's technology "without commercial agreement for a decade." Microsoft, for its part, denies the claims, stating that there was in fact an agreement in place and that it was fulfilling its fiduciary duties as laid out in that agreement. According to Reuters, a lawsuit may be in the works once Zhongyi figures out how many infringing copies of Windows are in the wild.
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Blogged with Flock
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops
Rumors of Microsoft's successor to Vista have been cropping up virtually since day one, and if this latest one is to be believed, it looks like one of the earliest may have been right on target after all. According to TG Daily, "several industry sources" are now saying that the a very early version of the so-called "Windows 7" OS has already shipped to "key partners," and that Microsoft is now eying the second half of 2009 for a release of the real deal. That's a slight revision from the most recent rumors, which had pegged the debut as late as 2010 or, more vaguely, sometime within the next three years. As if that wasn't enough, Microsoft's apparently also lined up the next two early versions to be released, with the so-called M2 build slated for April or May of this year, and the M3 release slated to drop sometime in the third quarter. Given recent history, however, it's probably not the best idea to start marking your calendars just yet.
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Filed under: Networking
It's not like we haven't seen consortiums working to establish better links between America and Asia, but the more the merrier, right? Apparently, Verizon Business has just recently received the all-important thumbs-up from the FCC to "activate and operate the Trans-Pacific Express submarine cable system in the US." The TPE cable is hailed as "the first next-generation undersea optical cable system directly linking the US and mainland China," and is the first major system of its kind to land on America's West Coast (Oregon, to be precise) in over seven years. For those curious, the 10,563-mile submarine communications cable will be able to support the equivalent of 62 million simultaneous phone calls -- which is "more than 60 times the overall capacity of the existing cable directly linking the US and China" -- and will initially provide capacity of up to 1.28Tbps. So, when will this thing be up and running? If all goes to plan, it should be fully operational by August (you know, prior to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing).
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Blogged with Flock
Go. Read. It. (if you haven't already)
Blogged with Flock
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Video
It's been hard enough to keep up with the CES onslaught of news over here on Engadget, so it's understandable if you missed the news over on Engadget HD that Sony Pictures Television is going to start releasing download-to-own but entirely DRM'd DivX content to DivX-certified products like the PS3 and DSM-330. Sadly, 360 owners will be left out in the cold thanks to that unit's lack of proper DivX certification. Otherwise Sony is short on details of actual distribution, so hopefully we'll be learning more soon.
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Like most Chinese Internet users, Chengdu native Gang Lu for years used Microsoft's (MSFT) Internet Explorer for his Web browsing. He switched to Firefox, the open-source browser, six years ago only after going to Britain for graduate school and finding most of his friends and colleagues using it. Today, Lu is the London director of business development at Netvibes Asia, which offers personalized home pages, and spends much of his time working with Chinese Web startups. He says he's frustrated because so few Chinese sites support Firefox. "I have visited quite a few Internet companies and talked to their developers. More than 95% of these guys say: 'We just need to make sure our Web site or our service can work on IE. I don't care about Firefox.'"
Now, Firefox fans are trying to boost the upstart browser's Chinese profile. Last month, Mozilla signed an agreement with China's most popular search engine, Baidu (BIDU), to cement an existing relationship that allows...
Blogged with Flock
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
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Blogged with Flock
They plan to release in Q3 2008 the Canmore, an x86 processor-based SoC supporting audio 7.1, hardware-decoding for high-definition video up to 1080p and advanced DRM management.
In summary, all functions required to build a new and more powerful Apple TV which could then become independent of any computer to get access directly to movie catalogs available on the iTunes Store.
According to Intel, the Canmore line shouldn't be ready until mid to late 2008. Apple, readying iTunes movie rentals won't need too much - if any- more horsepower to download and play rentals on the AppleTV. However, if the device is to operate as a standalone device, a speed bump may be in order.
Blogged with Flock
Apple did not wait until Macworld keynote to launch the ultimate desktop - Apple Mac Pro, now sporting dual quad core processors. It has anything in the world possible to be put in in the mac infrastructure and available now.
Now if you excuse me, I am continuing browsing the Apple Online Store....
UPDATE : Apple also released a refreshed X-Serve - so they let the beasts out first....
A new game introduced for Wii Fit - aerobic boxing. I am not sure at this stage whether it will be pre-packaged with the board.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I got hooked with Google tools and apps. Now I tell you that my life online is more and more tangled to Google. Yup, I had bit the bullet and stepped in to Google world. Not that I work for the company, but by storing my virtual life in Google infrastructure.
If you ask who knows me best, I'd say Google now. Google stores my idea, my rants, my thoughts, my memory, my life. It is a scary thought at some point - I sold myself to Google for the convenience using their tools. And just like selling a soul to Satan, it's hard to break the deal.
Google has miraculously provide tools where using a Google account you can do almost what you want to do online. And I am using those tools to allow me doing what I want to do seamlessly everywhere and using any machine. As long as I have internet access, log in to google, and I am basically home. I can access my documents, spreadsheets, photos, my favorite news, and beyond. I can even synchronize the pages opened in the browser so it shows the sites I visited last.
Like signing up a deal with the devil, this looks like a very sweet deal in the beginning. But with this deal, I had given up my privacy to Google and just have to trust them to respect my privacy. If Google turned evil, I am screwed big time.
PS: I am only selling my personal life to Google. I am not sharing my current employer sensitive information in any way against my company policy. I need to say this to keep me employed :)
TidBITS iPod & iPhone: 3G Cell Data iPhone Now Feasible
The more reason for me to wait for getting an iPhone. Q2-2008 may be too long for some people, but it fits nicely with my cashflow prediction. My concern is more on who will be the "chosen one" to carry iPhone in Australia...
I was looking forward in getting the new iPod Classic. I am going for a trip and the idea of carrying enough loads of music and movies would enhance my trip's experience. And most of all, I thought I could upload photos from digital camera so I won't need carrying laptop everywhere.
But no. Luckily I did some research before I click the 'Add To Cart' button and apparently iPod Camera Connector does NOT work with new iPods. I was checking Australian store and they said it worked.
I checked US site and below was on the site:
And this is what was in Australian store:
This is contradicting with the feedback that it was not the case.
Apparently Apple updated the site on 14 September, but did not replicate that update in Australian store - I don't know about other countries. This is misleading and potentially creates dissatisfaction to customer who did not spend extra effort researching. Normal people would assume that the existing accessories should work. And I did not see visible communication from Apple on these changes.
I am holding back my desire to get iPod Classic just because of this.
And I could not imagine how this impacted the current iPod users who already invested significant amount of dollars on accessories and now became useless if they wanted to upgrade to new iPod. I think Apple should find a solution or otherwise we need to hack the iPods.
YEP...
