Toshiba Details Third-Gen HD DVD Players
Toshiba confirmed that it will soon be launching its third-generation HD DVD players, with enhancements across the board. All three models are available for under $500, which could help spur adoption of the fledgling format.
As reported by BetaNews on Friday, the new lineup features the HD-A3, HD-A30, and HD-A35. Prices are $299, $399, and $499 USD, respectively. The HD-A30 will be available next month, while the HD-A3 and HD-A35 are not due until October.
San Francisco Wi-Fi May Be in Trouble
San Francisco's plans for free Wi-Fi access around the city may be in jeopardy following EarthLink's failure to respond to proposed changes in the city's contract.
The news follows comments by EarthLink CEO Rolla Huff that seemed to indicate the ISP might be backing off its ambitious municipal wireless plans. For whatever reason, the company did not respond to changes in the contract proposed by city supervisors.
Lenovo to Ship Linux on Select Notebooks
Following in the footsteps of Dell, Lenovo said Monday that it plans to give both consumers and businesses the option to have Linux installed as the default operating system over Windows on select models. The company announced a partnership with Novell that puts SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 on laptop models aimed at commercial customers, although they would also be available to individual customers as well.
Support for the OS would come from Lenovo itself, with Novell providing the maintenance updates directly to customers. "We have seen more customers utilizing and requesting open source notebook solutions in education, government and the enterprise since our ThinkPad T60p Linux announcement, and today's announcement expands upon our efforts by offering customers more Linux options," Lenovo notebook business chief Sam Dusi said.
Identity of 'Fake Steve Jobs' Revealed
The identity of Fake Steve Jobs is a secret no more. The author of the popular Web log that for the past year has taken a candid look at the world of CEO blogs -- and even has the real Steve Jobs reading it -- has finally revealed himself.
Writers at The New York Times discovered the identity of FSJ after it obtained the manuscript book to come out in October to be written in the voice of the Fake Steve Jobs character, Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody.
AMD's War with Intel Becomes a Street Brawl
The war between Intel and AMD this week became almost entirely rhetorical, following the European Commission's action last week, charging Intel with abuse of its dominant power status on that continent. While US antitrust law holds companies to a higher standard of conduct once they have attained monopoly power through non-illegal means, EU law sets the bar somewhat lower, where the test is dominant power.
But just what is dominant power, legally speaking? A Wall Street Journal editorial last Tuesday raised the question. It's easy to call Intel's 80% market share there "dominant;" but the article asked, why should a company expect to compete its little heart out using any means necessary, until it reaches 80% or some such point, after which time it can no longer be allowed to compete the same way?
Red Hat PM Says Global Desktop Linux Delayed to September
A highly anticipated consumer release of Red Hat Linux announced last May has been delayed a few weeks until sometime in September, according to a statement made in an e-mail by product manager Gerry Riveros to Reuters.
The "delay" may actually come as good news to many Linux users who had not yet actually known for certain which month the product would be released. In May, Red Hat announced the product's "availability," before pointing toward later in the year; since then, users have been relying mainly on rumor and speculation.
Vonage Testing New Style-Conscious Gateway
Many Vonage customers choose to hide their sometimes-bulky VOIP gateways under their desk. The company is hoping to change that.
A new gateway device produced by Ambit is now being beta tested by the company, described by the company as "cool and sleek, yet simplistic and approachable." Vonage is also hoping to gain some visibility for their service by making it more pleasant to look at.
Third-Gen HD DVD Players in October
Although they have not been officially announced, Amazon may have let slip the release date for third-generation HD DVD players from Toshiba. Several sites linked to product pages -- which have since been pulled -- that indicated three new models are set to debut on October 1.
The HD-A3, HD-A30, and HD-A35 will retail for $299, $399, and $499, respectively, according to the pages. Specifics on the players were not available, although an announcement may be forthcoming at CEDIA. The event is scheduled for September 5-9 and commonly is a launch pad for new audiovisual products.
Sony Recalls 416,000 Digital Cameras
UPDATED Sony is offering to repair 416,000 Cyber-shot DSC-T5 cameras following reports of the device's metal case warping and creating an edge that can cut hands. About 30 cases of cuts were reported in Japan, and several others overseas. Affected cameras were released in September 2005.
350,000 Cyber-shots sold in the United States, Europe and China are being recalled, along with 66,000 sold in Japan. Sony has posted a warning for customers, along with a list of the affected serial numbers and contact information for initiating a repair.
Microsoft Discounts Vista in China
Aiming to curb piracy, Microsoft said it had slashed prices on its Windows Vista as much as 67 percent to encourage consumers to purchase genuine copies of its software. As of Wednesday, the price of its Home Basic edition dropped from $201 to $66, and Home Premium was reduced to $118 from $238. The company hopes that the move will continue the downtrend in piracy in the country.
Piracy rates are still high: in 2006, about 82 percent of all software used in China was pirated according to IDC. However, this was down from 86 percent the previous year. Some of the reduction could be due to a new policy in China that requires manufacturers to ensure that legally-obtained operating system software is installed at factories.
Popular Torrent Site Suprnova Set to Return
Popular torrent site The Pirate Bay says it will relaunch Suprnova.org, one of the most popular BitTorrent sites on the Internet and target of the ire of the MPAA.
The site had been hinting for about four months that it would be making some type of major announcement, and had made cryptic comments to those who had pressed for more details. The project also apparently has the blessing of the former owner of the site.
Take-Two: No GTA IV Until 2008
Fans of Grand Theft Auto will have to wait a bit longer as Take-Two Interactive Software said Thursday that the next installment in the game series has been delayed until 2008.
The company said it wanted to have more time to perfect the game, with its chairman saying in a statement that "certain elements of development proved to be more time-intensive than expected," and that its dual development for both the Xbox 360 and PS3 contributed to the delay.
Engineer Demonstrates iPhone Hack After Acknowledging Apple's Patch
Though security consultant Charlie Miller went through with a scheduled demonstration late yesterday afternoon of how he and his colleagues discovered how to hack the Apple iPhone to obtain personally identifiable information from it, he and his company's Web site both acknowledged that Apple had patched the vulnerability.
The demonstration took place at the BlackHat convention in Las Vegas, where apparently Miller used an unpatched iPhone. Though the specific hole Miller discovered was apparently sealed over, the techniques he demonstrated for uncovering those techniques, and the information he learned along the way, indicate that this may not be the only hole to emerge from what could be characterized as a design flaw.
PS3 Sales Recover in Japan
Sales of Sony's PlayStation 3 recovered somewhat in Japan in July, closing the gap between it and market leader Nintendo according to sales data compiled by Japanese gaming publisher Enterbrain. The PS3 is now being outsold by the Wii by a four to one margin, as opposed to the six to one margin in June. By the numbers, the Wii sold 396,752 consoles to the PS3's 91,987 units. The Xbox 360 sold 17,970.
There really is no single reason that the uptick in sales can be pinned to. However, Sony has made a concerted effort to get more gaming titles on store shelves. This, along with the PS3's high price, have been seen as the biggest problems that it needs to overcome. The Wii sells for 25,000 yen in Japan, half the price of the base-level PS3.
'Open Access' Wireless Auction Could Be All for Naught
Tuesday's 4-1 vote by the US Federal Communications Commission begins a process whereby a portion of the UHF television spectrum - specifically, between 775 and 793 MHz, in the midst of what we now call Channels 64 through 67 - would be auctioned off only to companies willing to keep a promise: To allow customers of wireless services they deploy on that spectrum to use the devices of their choice, rather than the ones the carriers choose for them; they could use any applications they wish on those devices; and they would make their services available to public safety in emergencies.
Google had hoped for a few more concessions on the FCC's part, one being a net neutrality promise not to resell frequencies to select customers at discount rates, the other being a promise to allow smaller companies to purchase access to frequencies at wholesale rates.
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