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In news that comes as little surprise, Asus has officially offered up the Eee PC 900. While we already knew the date, it is still nice to see that it came as scheduled, which means that anyone who was brave enough to pre-order will not have to wait any extra time.

The Eee PC 900 seems to be holding true to the expected $549 price tag, with availability just about everywhere we saw the pre-orders popping up. The Eee PC 900, so far seems to be available and in-stock at Amazon, Buy.com, ZipZoomfly, J&R and ExcaliberPC. The one exception seems to be at Buy.com where the retail seems to be just a little higher than the rest at $559.

Via [Laptoping]

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AT&T has officially announced they will be the “exclusive carrier for the Bold in the US.” While the details are still coming in, this bit of exciting information almost seemed like just a brief mention in what was an article covering the recent increase for RIM’s stock. Of course between the 3G support in the blackberry Bold and the 3G coverage that AT&T has to offer I suppose we should not be all that surprised. Still unknown is an exact release date, however according to RIM’s earlier press release it will be available “beginning this summer.” We also cannot help to wonder just how much the Bold will set you back in terms of dollars.

Read [MSN Money] Via [Engadget]

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by Donald Melanson, posted May 12th 2008 at 4:27PM Sprint affiliate iPCS has butted heads with its parent company in the past, and it looks like it’s causing a bit of a ruckus once again, this time over Sprint’s deal with Clearwire to form a new WiMAX-focused company. As the AP reports, iPCS (which has 640,600 subscribers in seven states) thinks that new service would compete with it in the markets it operates in, and therefore violate the exclusivity agreement Sprint signed in 1999. To put a halt to that possibility, iPCS has filed suit in the Cook County Circuit Court in Illinois to block the deal, adding that it “intends to fully and aggressively protect and defend its exclusivity rights.” Not surprisingly, Sprint saw this one coming, and it asked a Delaware Chancery Court to rule last week that the Clearwire deal didn’t violate its arrangement with iPCS, although there doesn’t appear to be any further word on that front just yet.

[Via Phone Scoop]

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Filed under: Wireless

I don’t know if you’ve been following the rumors concerning the release of a 3G iphone, but they’ve all been pointing to a release in the very near future. While I can’t claim to have any inside knowledge on the matter, I will say that there is one piece of evidence that leads me to believe that we’ll seen an update to the iPhone line. What evidence you say? How about you go try to buy one from Apple’s online store.

That’s right, they’re sold out. Why on earth would Apple allow their stock of one of the hottest phones become depleted? Sure, sales could have been higher than expected, but I think they’re smarter than that. No, there is an imminent upgrade happening, and I seriously doubt we’ll be seeing a simple hard drive increase.

I’ve been thinking hard about the iPhone since it was introduced last year. I picked up an ipod Touch, and love it, however, I just can’t justify a phone like that running on anything less than 3G speeds. Maybe if they do announce a 3G version I’ll finally take the plunge.

Source: GearLog

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by Nilay Patel, posted May 12th 2008 at 9:26PMQuick, what’s the best way to dress up an otherwise dry piece on how companies can register non-traditional trademarks? If you answered “mention Apple and the iPod,” you’re the big winner — and you’ve gotten yourself published in the Wall Street Journal. We’ll be the first to admit that Apple’s January registration of the three-dimensional design of the ipod strains credulity, but the simple fact is that non-traditional trademarks have been around for a while now — we seem to remember a little kerfuffle regarding magenta recently, but we can’t quite recall the exact details. Similarly, Nokia trademarked the 12 notes of its default ringtone back in September (even though they’re part of a larger piece written in 1902 called “Gran Vals”), NBC has a mark on its ding-ding-ding station ID, and Coca-Cola has registrations for basically every bottle design it sells. Still, you can bet Apple legal threw quite a pizza party when this mark was approved — and we can only imagine the kind of buttoned-down corporate lawyer jam that’ll go down if the company succeeds in getting a mark on the design of the iphone, which it’s currently applied for. Hope you’re ready for some more funktastic control layouts.

Read - WSJ article
Read - Apple iPod design trademark

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Remember that innovative Wi-Fi-enabled SD card aptly named the Eye-Fi? Well Eye-Fi, which is what the company is also called, must have been overwhelmed by the success of their product that they decided to add not just one new model, but three to the Eye-Fi SD card series. So, we now have the Eye-Fi Share, Eye-Fi Home and the Eye-Fi Explore.

Actually, there’s not too many differences with these three models. It is still the same Wi-Fi enabled SD card that was launched not so long ago. For instance, both the Eye-Fi Share and Eye-Fi Home are almost identical to the current Eye-Fi models in terms of features. However, Eye-Fi home is geared for users who want to sync their SD card to their PCs only. While the Eye-Fi share lets users to automatically sync their SD card to both their PCs and websites, such as Flickr.

On the other hand, the Eye-Fi Explore is more of a tie-up with Wayport, a major hotspot provider in the US. So, the Eye-Fi Share lets users to automatically upload their photos while connected anywhere there is a Wayport hotspot without the need to authenticate for each location. In addition, the Eye-Fi Share also allows geotagging and supports Skyhook’s Wi-Fi triangulation for GPS purposes.

The Eye-Fi Explore, Eye-Fi Share and the Eye-Fi Home are now available for $129, $99, and $79 respectively.

Via [Ubergizmo] Via [Gizmodo]

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by Darren Murph, posted May 12th 2008 at 2:52PM
Sanyo’s got a new duo of projectors hitting the Japanese market today, the LP-XC55 and LP-XC50. Both beamers boast white motifs, a boisterous 7-watt internal speaker, 1,024 x 768 resolution, a security bar enabling extra thick cabling to hold it in place and the Active Maintenance Filter system for easy maintenance. Essentially, the latter enables the filter to last longer between changes and “automatically senses when airflow is obstructed by dust, and advances the cartridge to the new filter.” The only notable difference between the two is the 3,100 ANSI lumens (XC55) / 2,600 ANSI lumens (XC50), and of course, the ¥365,400 ($3,529) / ¥312,900 ($3,022) price tags.

[Via AboutProjectors]

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Filed under: Displays

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted May 12th 2008 at 12:19PM
We love exit signs in Japan. They frame just about every door and hallway: guy with briefcase freaking out and bolting out an open door. This is clearly not the first USB hub in an unusual form factor, but Donya has fed our love for the panicky icon. Complete with ports on the little guy’s feet and briefcase, he’s available for about $10 or ¥999.

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Filed under: Peripherals

The GBDisk RS1 series of Serial ATA (SATA)-compatible industrial silicon disks is the latest addition to TDK’s roster, which will be made available in June with up to 16GB capacities. High-speed, frequent data writing and maintaining data reliability come first with the GBDisk RS1 series. And because of that, it features single level cell (SLC) NAND Flash memory, and GBDriver RS1 SATA controllers for use in NAND Flash memory controller ICs.

It also offers complete power interruption tolerance, error correction, distributed data writing, and bad block management. Basically, these are new types of hard disks, coming in at the same size as current generation HDD’s (2.5-inches) that should offer fast start up, stringent shock resistance, and low power consumption. It’s been reported to be already Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL)-certified, and now if only they could bump up the storage a bit more than 16GB’s, then we’d all be happy. Or at least, those who need to use hard disks in industrial equipment.

As of now, pricing is unknown, but as earlier mentioned, production will start in June 2008.

Via [Tech On]

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If you think your laptop bag has enough room in it for a gadget that will give you more USB ports than you’ll ever need, then you’ll be glad to set your sights upon Elecom’s newest little number. It’s a small USB hub that offers not three, not five, but a total of seven free USB ports for you to connect your other gadgets simultaneously. It measures only 23×144x23mm, and weighs 66g. Other than an external hard drive, ipod and digicam, I don’t know what else you’d want to plug in it. But if you want to get a feel of its 480Mbps transfer rate, then by all means, feel free.

Via [Akihabara News]

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