Toshiba recalls overheating and melting Satellite T-series notebooks
Thursday, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission and Health Canada announced a recall of three Toshiba Satellite T-series notebook computers: T135, T135D and ProT130, for reports that the units' AC adaptors cause them to overheat and melt.
Though there have been no injuries reported, the CPSC said it received 129 reports of the computer cases melting and deforming, presenting a fire and burn hazard.
First voice-over-LTE call placed in US public safety band
Telecommunications company Alcatel-Lucent Thursday announced that the first voice call in the 700MHz band of LTE has been completed. This is the section of wireless spectrum that is being utilized in the United States' national public safety network.
Part of the FCC's National Broadband Plan (Chapter 16, to be exact) outlines the creation of a nationwide interoperable public safety wireless broadband communications network, used specifically for first responders and issues of national importance. The high speed network will utilize a 10MHz block of spectrum in the 700MHz band, and approval for construction has been obtained in a growing number of markets.
Samsung: new wireless USB chips capable of 480Mbps max
Samsung Thursday announced its latest two-chip wireless USB solution capable of transmission speeds up to 480Mbps with an actual throughput rate of 200Mbps. The result is reportedly ten times more power efficient than 802.11g Wi-Fi.
The product is made up of two chips, S3C2680, a baseband processor with an ARM 9 core, built-in NAND flash controller, SD I/O, and two USB 2.0 PHYs; and S5M8311a, a separate RF transciever.
HP wins 3PAR with $2.4 Billion bid, Dell backs down
The bidding war between HP and Dell over virtualized storage company 3PAR is in its third week, and as of Thursday morning, HP looks to have won. The Palo Alto IT giant turned the tables on Dell with a $2 billion bid last Friday that caused 3PAR to announce it was terminating the merger agreement it had reached with Dell in mid-August.
When Dell received 3PAR's notice of termination, it raised its acquisition offer once again, from $27 per share to $32, and modified the terms of its proposal to include an increased termination fee of $92 million.
Roku and Boxee weigh in on today's AppleTV update
While the over-the-top (OTT) streaming entertainment category has not made a big dent in the mainstream home TV viewing market yet, it's a hot business, and service providers, software makers, and hardware manufacturers are all jockeying for the biggest piece of the pie.
When AppleTV debuted alongside the iPhone at Macworld in 2007, it was more or less a stripped-down home theater PC so users could enjoy their iTunes media on their televisions. Relatively little had changed on the platform until today, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the box would lose its storage capacity and become rental-only, gain Netflix streaming and drop in price to $99. Jobs said these changes were based upon feedback provided by AppleTV users.
Windows Phone 7 is released to manufacturing
Microsoft announced that the highly anticipated Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system has been released to manufacturing on Wednesday, a major milestone for the project.
Following the release of its developer toolkit, Microsoft released Windows Phone 7 technical preview to its developer, carrier and manufacturing partners in July. Since that time, the mobile OS has been updated in a number of ways, such as including intelligent Facebook contact filtering (only real friends show up,) and the ability to "like" Facebook posts from within the People Hub.
Nokia to shut down Ovi Files 'digital locker' service on October 1
Nokia's cloud-based "digital locker" service Ovi Files will be shut down on October first, Nokia is warning users. The service was used for making files remotely accessible through a mobile device's browser.
Nokia added Files to the suite of Ovi services in 2008 after it acquired digital locker startup Avevenu. When we tested the service back in 2008, Nokia said it planned to make Files a premium service, but it was ultimately made free in 2009. Files was significant because it was the first service in Nokia's Ovi suite that utilized the Nokia account ID.
New iPods: Apple pulls buttons off the Nano and gives them back to the Shuffle
At Apple's annual iPod refresh event today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs revealed the "biggest change in the iPod lineup ever," which included dramatic changes to both the Nano and Shuffle which seem to reverse advancements made to the models last year.
Last year, Apple unveiled a shockingly small iPod shuffle which had no buttons. Instead, the controls for the device were put on the headphone cord, and required that users purchase an adaptor to use any headphones other than those made for the Shuffle. This year, Apple looks to have completely undone what was attempted with last year's Shuffle, and has brought back the design from the previous year which has the clickable control pad directly on the surface of the device.
A look at new portable media players for Fall 2010 that aren't iPods
Apple's annual iPod refresh has taken place in the first week of September for the last five years, and the event coincides with back-to-school Mac and iPod promotions. Since the iPod has held a dominant share of the United States' portable media player (PMP) market, this is often the time of year when other consumer electronics companies debut new PMPs for the back-to-school season too.
This year, in the days surrounding Apple's September 1 event, Sandisk, Phillips, Archos, and Samsung have all revealed new media players that will compete against the newly-refreshed 2010-2011 iPod line.
Microsoft's flexible Arc Touch Mouse goes up for pre-order
Microsoft Wednesday announced the availability of its Arc Touch mouse, a brilliantly designed mouse that can be flattened to fit into a laptop bag. The peripheral uses a capacitive touch panel in place of a scroll wheel, and provides haptic feedback that simulates the gentle ratcheting action of a traditional scroll wheel.
In light of the recent popularity of touchscreens and trackpads, Microsoft wanted to make it clear today that the mouse is far from dead.
Borders offers cheapest, most diverse e-reader selection among booksellers
Contrary to popular opinion, the competition between e-reader hardware manufacturers is nothing compared to the competition between e-book retailers. Tuesday, second place book retailer Borders revised its aggressive strategy for e-reader sales, slashing the price of its two e-ink readers before the arrival of its Android-based tablet readers from Velocity Micro.
In June, Borders unveiled its $149.99 Kobo e-reader, which was met with considerable consumer interest due in large part to its low retail price. After Kobo's launch, both Barnes and Noble and Amazon reduced the prices of their respective e-readers from $259.00 down to $149.99.
Google introduces Gmail Priority Inbox beta for intelligent message filtering
Google continued its reinvention of the Gmail inbox Tuesday with the introduction of Priority Inbox Beta, a new mail filtering system that prioritizes emails based upon the user's viewing and responding habits.
The feature will be rolled out incrementally to Gmail users over the next week, and will break up inboxes into three categories: Important and Unread emails, Starred conversations, and "everything else." Incoming messages will automatically be routed into one of these three categories, which Gmail determines by user trends. For example, if a particular contact is someone frequently exchanging emails with the user, their incoming messages will be ranked as more important than someone else's. Similarly, messages that users actually opened instead of skipped, deleted or "marked as read" from certain senders will be considered higher priority.
'Boxee Killer' Plex/Nine media center released, adds iOS app
Early Tuesday morning, a new version of Mac OS X-based media center software Plex was released, called Plex/Nine, and with it came a new app for iOS.
Plex is a fork of open source media center software XBMC, which has recently risen to prominence for being the software that powers Boxee and the forthcoming D-Link Boxee Box. It organizes multimedia content on a local media server, adds online content from more than 150 video and entertainment sites, and makes it available on client devices in the home network.
Xbox Live Gold subscription price to rise for the first time
On November first, Xbox Live will get more expensive than it's ever been.
Since launching in 2002, Microsoft's Xbox Live subscription gaming service has retained the same price in the U.S.: $7.99 per month, $19.99 per 3 months, and $49.99 per year. Monday, Director of Programming for Xbox Live Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb announced a price increase coming to the service on November 1, 2010 which will raise it to $9.99 per month, $24.99 per 3 months, and $59.99 per year.
DRM company acquires technology from music search engine killed by copyright suits
Monday, Intertrust Technologies Corporation, a company with more than a hundred patents for various Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies, announced it has acquired all of SeeqPod's software and patents. The company went bankrupt after being sued by Warner Music Group in 2008.
SeeqPod was a music search engine that found, and let users listen to, songs in their entirety. The engine's algorithm set and technology reportedly were developed by biologists working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to discover hidden relationships in genomic data. The technology identifies patterns in data that are distributed across the Internet. This included indexing and finding playable search results for audio, video, podcasts and text.
Tim's Bio
Tim Conneally was born into dumpster tech. His father was an ARPANET research pioneer and equipped his kids with discarded tech gear, second-hand musical instruments, and government issue foreign language instruction tapes. After years of building Frankenstein computers from rubbish and playing raucous music in clubs across the country (and briefly on MTV) Tim grew into an adult with deep, twisted roots and an eye on the future. He most passionately covers mobile technology, user interfaces and applications, the science and policy of the wireless world, and watching different technologies shrink and converge.
© 1998-2025 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy.