Gadget And Technology

New Watch Phone EG200

2009-08-17T23:05:00.000-07:00

The EG200 watch phone is running on GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 Mhz network and comes with 260K color TFT LCD 1.33-inch touch screen, 1.3MP camera, audio and video player, FM radio, sound recorder, Bluetooth and microSD card slot. It is available at only $120. More pictures after the break.

LG launched ‘L-06A’ and ‘L-04A’

2009-08-17T23:00:00.000-07:00

LG has launched two touchscreen phones ‘L-06A’ and ‘L-04A’, will available via NTT DoCoMo on August 20 in Japan. Both phones feature the company’s fit ‘Live Character Park’ UI targeting young generation.

The L-06A comes with swiveling panel and supports HSUPA(High Speed Uplink Packet Access) service. It has a 5.1MP camera, microSD slot, a ‘G’ button on the keypad that allows the one-touch connection to Google’s business directory and available in White, Black and Red.

The slide touch ‘L-04A’ features a 3-inch full touchscreen and 1-Seg support and available in four different colors - White, Yellow, Silver and Pink.

Digital Cameras with YouTube Capture Mode

2009-07-18T13:19:00.000-07:00

Casio has announced two new digital cameras whose USP (Unique Selling Point) is a YouTube optimized video capture mode. Thankfully this promises to be more than just marketing fluff as the EX-77 and EX-S880 record video using the MPEG-4 H.264 video codec, something we've been asking manufacturers to implement for some time.

You can record almost 19 minutes of 640x480 video (with audio) at 30 fps on a 1 GB SD card, and of course both cameras support SDHC cards so that's an hour and 10 minutes of high quality video on a 4 GB card.

Moving back to still capture capabilities for a second, both cameras have a three times optical zoom lens, the EX-S880 has an eight megapixel sensor, the EX-S77 a seven megapixel sensor.

Casio Introduces Two Stylish New EXILIM® Digital Cameras with YouTube™ Capture™ Mode

EVGA InterView 1700 Dual-Monitor System

2009-07-18T13:15:00.000-07:00

EVGA has released their InterView 1700, the latest dual-monitor system, targeting on business presentations, researchers, physicians, financial consultants or creative professionals. It comes with two 17-inch LCD monitors that can be rotated 180 degrees vertically and folded 90 degrees horizontally.

Both of them support native resolution of 1440 x 900 pixels and featuring 8ms response time and 500:1 contrast ratio. Apart from those, the system also comes with built-in 1.3-megapixel webcam, three USB ports and a DVI connectivity. It is priced at $650.

New CDMA flip phone called TILT

2009-07-18T13:11:00.000-07:00

SKY has launched a new CDMA flip phone called TILT. It is an enhanced electronic dictionary function in Korea market. It is designed with straight line body and a metal frame.

Its dictionary supports 330,000 words and 2,467 conversations with native speaker voice. TILT comes a 2.7-inch display and seven LED lights, it features video playback, T-DMB, a 2.0-megapixel camera and an external memory. One more shot after the break.

Samsung full HD TV and monitor combo

2009-07-18T13:08:00.001-07:00

Samsung Electronics in Korea, has announced the launched of their new 23-inch full HD TV and monitor combo ‘P2370HD’. It comes in premium crystal design and features a built-in HDTV tuner, a HDMI port, and built-in stereo speakers. It is available at 526,000

HTC Hero - first Android phone with flash support

2009-06-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

The first Android phone with flash support has been unveiled. A true iPhone killer this time? Known as the HTC Hero, it is a phone which has been speculated with images leaked previously, now officially revealed and pictured below.

The new open source Android based HTC Hero sports a 3.2-inch HVGA (480×320) screen, a five megapixel camera with autofocus, AGPS, digital compass, gravity sensor, 3.5mm headphone jack and a dedicated search button. On the inside lies 512MB of storage, expandable by microSD, 288MB of RAM, and a 528MHz Qualcomm processor.
The Hero will be available later this summer in Europe in July and Asia later in the summer, but won’t be available to the US until some point later this year.

HTC Corporation, a global designer of mobile phones, today debuted HTC Sense™, an intuitive and seamless experience that will be introduced across a portfolio of phones beginning with the new HTC Hero™. With its distinct design and powerful capabilities fully integrated with HTC Sense, Hero introduces a unique blend of form and function that takes Android to new heights.
HTC Sense is focused on putting people at the centre by making your phone work in a more simple and natural way.

This experience revolves around three fundamental principles that were designed by quietly listening and observing how people live and communicate.
“HTC Hero introduces a more natural way for reaching out to the people and accessing your important information, not by following the status quo of today’s phones, but by following how you communicate and live your life,” said Peter Chou, Chief Executive Officer, HTC Corporation. “HTC Sense is a distinct experience created to make HTC phones more simple for people to use, leaving them saying, ‘it just makes sense.’”

HTC Hero
HTC Hero continues HTC’s leadership in cutting-edge design that focuses on introducing a variety of distinct devices to represent your own individuality. Boasting bevelled edges and an angled bottom, the HTC Hero is contoured to fit comfortably in your hand and against your face while you’re on a call. The HTC Hero is built to last beginning with an anti-fingerprint screen coating for improved smudge resistance and a longer lasting, clearer display.

The white HTC Hero includes an industry-first, Teflon coating, resulting in an improved, durable white surface that is soft to the touch.
With its 3.2-inch HVGA display, the HTC Hero is optimized for Web, multimedia and other content while maintaining a small size and weight that fits comfortably in your hand. It also boasts a broad variety of hardware features including a GPS, digital compass, gravity-sensor, 3.5mm stereo headset jack, a 5 mega-pixel autofocus camera and expandable MicroSD memory. HTC Hero also includes a dedicated Search button that goes beyond basic search, providing you with a more natural, contextual search experience that enables you to search through Twitter, locate people in your contact list, find emails in your inbox or search in any other area in Hero.

HTC Sense
Built on a culture of innovation and a passion to enhance people’s lives, HTC shapes the mobile experience around the individual. Debuting on the HTC Hero and available on all new HTC devices moving forward, Sense delivers on three basic principles: Make it Mine, Stay Close and Discover the Unexpected.

Make It Mine
Make It Mine, is about feeling your HTC phone was created for and by you. To do this, HTC encourages you to dictate and organize how you want to access the people and content in your life in a way that fits best for you. For some, this means adding glance view widgets that push content like twitter feeds, weather and other content to the surface while others may want quick access to business-focused information like email, calendar and world-times. HTC is also introducing a new profile feature called ‘scenes’ that enables you to create different customized content profiles around specific functions or times in your life.

Stay Close
Today, staying in touch with the people in your life means managing a variety of communication channels and applications ranging from phone calls, emails, texts, photos, status updates and more. HTC Sense takes a different approach by integrating these communication channels and applications into one single view enabling you to stay closer to your important people. With HTC Sense, friends’ Facebook status updates and photos along with their Flickr photos are included along side their text messages, emails and call history in a single view.

Discover the Unexpected
Many of the most memorable moments in your life are experienced, not explained. HTC Sense is focused on providing a variety of these simple yet innovative experiences on your HTC phone that will sometimes bring you moments of joy and delight. It can be something as basic as turning the phone over to silence a ring or as simple as improving the smart dialler for making calls quicker. HTC Sense also includes perspectives, a new way for viewing your content such as email, photos, Twitter, music and more in different ways.

Availability
The HTC Hero will be available to people across Europe in July and in Asia later in the summer. A distinct North American version will be available later in 2009.
(source:http://www.gadgetlite.com/)

Zune HD powered by Tegra

2009-06-25T10:52:00.000-07:00

Microsoft have announce its Zune HD will be powered by Nvidia’s Tegra chipset giving the OLED PMP brilliant visuals, great performance and better battery life which we all know is a massice problem when playing video on a PMP. Nvidia’s Tegra can give 1080p output on HDMI. The Zune itself will only do 720p playback but if its powered by the Tegra, this will give the Zune great rendering capabilities and it will be interesting to see how the UI can get the full potential of it.

Microsoft has kept quiet on the full specifications of the Zune HD but on an official Zune Insider Podcast, presenter Matt Akers said the Zune was “like a mini laptop in your hand” after confirming that it would indeed use the Nvidia Tegra.

Google, music labels launch China download service

2009-06-24T10:56:00.000-07:00

Google Inc. and major music companies launched a free Internet music download service for China on Monday in a bid to help turn a field dominated by pirates into a profitable, legitimate business.

The advertising-supported service will offer 1.1 million tracks, including the full catalogs of Chinese and Western music for Warner Music Group Corp., EMI Group Ltd., Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music and 14 independent labels, the companies said. It will be limited to use by computers whose Internet protocol, or IP, addresses show they are in mainland China.

"This is the first really serious attempt to start monetizing online music in China," said Lachie Rutherford, president of Warner Music Asia and regional head of the global recording industry group, the International Federation of Phonographic Industries.
Chinese pirate Web sites offer downloads of unauthorized copies of music despite repeated lawsuits and government crackdowns. Legitimate producers have no estimate of lost potential sales, but some Chinese performers have announced they were no longer recording because piracy made it unprofitable.

The venture gives Google a new way to compete in a market where its research shows 84 percent of people say finding music is their main reason to use search engines, said Kai-Fu Lee, Google's president for Greater China.

"With today's offering, we complete the puzzle and offer a complete set of services that are fully integrated," he said.

China has the world's biggest online population, with some 300 million Internet users, according to the government. Online commerce is still modest in China and most Web surfers are looking for music, games and other entertainment.

Lee said the company was optimistic that use would grow rapidly but he declined to give any revenue forecasts.

EMI launched a separate venture with China's dominant search engine, Baidu Inc., in January 2007 to compete with pirates by allowing free streaming pop music from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. It sells downloads for a small fee.

Google's service is to be run by Top100.cn, a 3 1/2-year-old Chinese Web site partly owned by Google. The site will sell advertising on its download page and split revenues with music companies, said its CEO, Gary Chen.

Providers will abide by Chinese censorship and withhold songs that are banned by the communist government, Rutherford said.

"When you're in the music business in China you know you have to follow the regulations," he said. "We wouldn't give files to people in China (in situations) where a song has been banned."

Google, headquartered in Mountain View, California, has struggled to expand in China, where it says it has about 30 percent of the search market. Baidu's market share is just over 60 percent, according to research firm Analysys International.

Google's Lee declined to comment on Beijing's blocking of its YouTube video-sharing service last week. China occasionally bars its Internet users from seeing YouTube to prevent access to videos considered critical of communist rule or unflattering to the government. (jakartapost.com)

Google to step up anti-porn efforts in China

2009-06-24T10:52:00.000-07:00

Google Inc. said Friday that it was working to block pornography reaching users of its Chinese service after a mainland watchdog found the search engine turned up large numbers of links to obscene and vulgar sites.

Google said in a statement that company officials had met government representatives "to discuss problems with the Google.cn service and its serving of pornographic images and content based on foreign language searches.

"We have been continually working to deal with pornographic content - and material that is harmful to children - on the Web in China," the statement said.

The statement followed accusations from the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center that Google had failed to "filter pornographic contents from its search engine results according to China's relevant laws and regulations."

The watchdog said tests found that the search engine provided links to a large number of lewd and vulgar pictures, videos and articles, though it gave no specific examples.

China, with the world's largest population of Internet users at more than 298 million, has the world's most extensive system of Web monitoring and censorship and has issued numerous regulations in response to the rise of blogging and other trends.

While the government claims the main targets are pornography, online gambling, and other sites deemed harmful to society, critics say that often acts as cover for detecting and blocking sensitive political content.

State media reported Friday that the government had stopped some of Google.cn's search functions. Details weren't given, and it wasn't exactly clear what had been closed off.

In its statement, Google said the company was working to fix any problems with improper searches. "This has been a substantial engineering effort, and we believe we have addressed the large majority of the problem results," it said.

Google, headquartered in Mountain View, California, has struggled to expand in China, where it says it has about 30 percent of the search market. China's homegrown Baidu search engine remains the most popular, with about 60 percent of the market.

The company launched Google.cn with a Chinese partner after seeing its market share erode as government filters slowed access for Chinese users to its U.S. service.

While sites on topics such as the banned Falun Gong sect or Tibetan independence are perennially blocked in China, readers could still gain some access to such information through Google's cache function.

Google.cn returns search results on sensitive political topics only for sites not offensive to the government. Human rights activists have criticized the new service, which excludes search results on human rights, the Dalai Lama and other topics banned by the communist government.

The accusations against Google.cn come as a controversy simmers in China over a government order to load Internet-filtering software on every new computer sold on the mainland from July 1.

The government says the Green Dam Youth Escort software is aimed at blocking violence and pornography, but users who have tried it say it also prohibits visiting sites that discuss homosexuality and even blocks images of pigs because it confuses them with naked human bodies, according to Hong Kong media reports.

The software has also aroused safety concerns, with computer scientists at the University of Michigan reporting last week that it contained "serious security vulnerabilities due to programming errors," and recommended users protect themselves by uninstalling Green Dam immediately.

After a major outcry by citizens used to the relative freedom of online life, legal challenges and petitions, the government appears to have backed off slightly, saying users would not be obligated to use or install the software.(thejakartapost.com)

New iPhone goes on sale with less drama

2009-06-24T10:45:00.001-07:00

The new iPhone went on sale in the U.S. Friday morning, greeted by much smaller lines and less hoopla than previous models.

The phone also went on sale in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K. Other countries will get it throughout the summer. A few hundred people were in line just before the 7 a.m. (1100 GMT) opening of Apple Inc.'s flagship store on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, a fraction of the people who lined up around the lock for last year's launch.

That launch turned into a debacle as Apple's servers failed to cope with the load of new customers trying to activate their phones. People who already had iPhones were trying to install a software update on the same day, adding to the pressure.

This year, Apple and AT&T In., the phone's U.S. carrier, defused the drama by taking pre-orders for the new phone online. That means fewer prospective buyers had a reason to stand in line, and it sped up the activation process.

Apple also released its software update for previous customers two days early. There were only scattered reports of problems with that upgrade.

The new model is called the 3G S. AT&T said it had taken pre-orders for "hundreds of thousands" of the phones. Apple sold one million units of the older model, the 3G, in the first three days last year.

For new customers signing a two-year contract with AT&T, the G S costs $199 or $299 depending on the memory capacity. Compared to the 3G, it has a faster processor and an upgraded camera.

Owners of the previous model, the iPhone 3G, will have to pay more than that. Most of them are not eligible for the new-customer pricing because AT&T subsidizes the cost of the phe and requires customers to "pay off" the subsidy through their monthly service fees before it will subsidize a new phone.

In line at the Fifth Avenue store, Brandon Dennie, 27, was not put off by the prospect of having to pay the unsubsidized price of $599 for the new phone. He's had a 3G for only six months, so he didn't qualify for the lowest price.

He's creating his own subsidy by selling his old phone for $200 to a colleague, and he has an Apple gift card.

"I want the video option and the speed," Dennie said.

In its two-year life, the iPhone range has revolutionized phone design and given AT&T a leg up on its rivals in recruiting customers willing to pay high monthly fees.

Competitors have started to catch up to some of the iPhone's signature features, like a user interface that's designed from the ground up to be navigated with finger touches. In particular, Palm Inc.'s Pre, which came out two weeks ago, has generated a lot of buzz and favorable reviews.

But the iPhone is still the king of smart phones. Pacific Crest analyst James Faucette estimated that exclusive carrier Sprint Nextel Corp. sold 90,000 to 100,000 Pres in the first week of sale, far lower than expected sales of the 3G S.

To grab even more market share, Apple is now selling the older 3G for a lower price: $99 with a two-year contract.

At an AT&T store in the New York borough of Queens, there were three people in line at 5:45 a.m. (0945 GMT) Sarah Gates and Ed Phyfe, the couple who were first in line, didn't know about the pre-order option until it was too late, and wanted to be sure to get phones from the small stock set aside for walk-ins.(thejakartapost.com)