Gadgets Base

by Darren Murph, posted Jun 2nd 2008 at 4:20PM
What’s this? Some joyous news on the Palm front? No need to Windex your spectacles — the aforementioned handset maker has indeed managed to up its share of the smartphone market from 7.9% in the fourth quarter to 13.4% today, largely thanks to the popularity of its Centro. In general, analysts seemed quite pleased by the gains, noting that it (along with RIM) were able to take advantage of the 7.5% skid experienced by Apple during the same period. Despite the recent gains, Palm’s market share is still down from 23% in Q1 a year ago, but considering the sweeping slump in cellphone sales of late, we’d say this should still go down as a victory — however minor — for the firm.

[Via Palm InfoCenter]

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Filed under: cellphones

by Paul Miller, posted Jun 2nd 2008 at 11:28AM
Our stubborn pocket books and loved ones continue to chime in with a resounding “no” every time we start considering one of those fancy HP Blackbird 002 units, but that doesn’t mean HP isn’t on to something when it comes to fancy aesthetics and even fancier tech specs — all courtesy of that VoodooPC buy a while back. Now it appears HP has a big unveil set for June 10 that “could begin to establish the company as a provider of beautiful technology gear” according to a Fortune article on HP. Voodoo founder Rahul Sood likens Voodoo’s role as akin to Lamborghini within Audi, and has promised a “huge announcement” on his own blog. He even hinted at a laptop in a birthday post depicting him cutting his cake with a MacBook Air (pictured): “Ahh well, I wouldn’t be needing this notebook for long anyways… Stay tuned for more…” The subnotebook fanboy within us hopes that means HP has a X300 / macbook air killer in the works, but whatever it is we certainly hope it warrants the modicum of buzz HP and Rahul are building for it.

[Thanks, William M.]

Read - HP reaches for the cool factor
Read - Rahul on Audi and Lambo
Read - Rahul and the Cake Knife

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Filed under: Misc. gadgets, Laptops

by Nilay Patel, posted Jun 2nd 2008 at 7:03PM
The big ASUS WiMAX news at Computex is obviously the Eee 901, but the company is coming out with a load of new wireless gear that supports the standard. Laptop users will probably be most interested in the WUSB25E2V2 USB 2.0 WiMAX dongle (pictured above), which is a little big for our tastes but should get you connected on the go. Home and business users will probably want to look into the WMNV25E2+ and WMV25E1+ base stations, which can connect to a WiMAX network and provide all the machines on your network access. No word on how much any of this stuff is going to cost, but here’s hoping it’s cheap enough to justify being an early adopter. Oh — and if you’re not convinced that ASUS is commited to WiMAX, peep the graphic after the break of the company’s wireless vision of the future.

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Filed under: Wireless

Super Micro Computer has recently rolled out a couple of new desktop platforms that are based on the new Intel G45 and G43 (Eaglelake) Express chipsets, bringing even more options to the table for those who want to venture into the world of computing for the first time. According to Charles Liang, CEO and president of Supermicro, “Our new C2SEA and C2SEE desktop platforms based on the Intel G45 and G43 Express chipsets deliver workstation performance to the desktop market. These cost-effective solutions deliver outstanding processing performance with support for the latest 45 nm quad-core processors, as well as the best digital video with support for hd dvd and Blu-Ray high-definition formats. In addition, DDR3 memory consumes less power compared to DDR2, so customers benefit with better performance and more energy savings.”

These platforms also come with a PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot for those who want to get in their spot of gaming with a dedicated graphics card, and that alone will double the I/O bandwidth to 5 Gb/s from 2.5 Gb/s. These new releases won’t leave existing PCI-E 1.1 graphics cards in the dark as they are fully compatible with the new PCI-E 2.0 specification. C2SEA also features a complete high-definition playback solution with full bit-rate support at 1080i/p resolution. Both the C2SEA and C2SEE will support high-definition 7.1 channel audio via an S/PDIF connector as well as half a dozen analog audio outputs. In addition, other connectivity options include the following :-

• Six SATA ports
• Twelve USB ports
• One PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot
• A second PCI-E x16 slot (x4 electrical)
• A PCI-E x1 slot
• Legacy 32-bit PCI slots
• A Gigabit LAN port

They are specially designed for Supermicro’s SC733T-465 and SC733i-465 mid-tower chassis, being based on the ATX form factor. No idea on how much these will cost though, but they shouldn’t break the bank.

Press Release

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Want to make sure you don’t fall victim to an unsuspecting virus? Well, the Zadro Nano UV Disinfection Scanner ought to give you a certain degree of peace of mind as it claims to dispatch of 99.99% of germs on virtually any surface .

A quick 10-second scan is all it takes to destroy staph, salmonella, E.coli, flu viruses and more on keyboards, mice, phones, doorknobs, counters, pens - even a piano! Long-lasting, 4,000-hour UV bulb provides a lifetime of surface scans. Runs on 2 AAA batteries.

Well, what are you waiting for? Sharper Image is offering this for $79.95 each.

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Adobe has officially launched its new web-based office application suite available in beta at adobe.com. The web tool is kind of like a combination of both Google Docs and Microsoft’s Office applications. Adobe offers up a word processor called Buzzword, a web conferencing application called ConnectNow, file sharing, an online desktop solution and of course an online PDF creator which is a scaled-down version of Adobe Acrobat. The PDF creator allows users to convert up to 5 files only. So, it pretty much serve as an appetizer to Adobe’s proprietary Acrobat software.

In brief let us walk you through the different web applications that Adobe.com is offering. Buzzword as we said is Adobe’s take on word processing on the web. Utilizing Flash/Flex, Buzzword displays all text formatting seamlessly regardless of the size of the screen you are reading the Buzzword document. On the other hand, ConnectNow is an online whiteboard that lets users conduct live meetings online and features screen sharing, chat, whiteboards, VoIP and video conferencing. Share is your typical web based file sharing application where you can upload documents on adobe.com and share them among your friends and colleagues for collaboration purposes. Finally we have My Files, a document organizer and storage center which can be located and accessed easily. Adobe.com gives out up to 5GB of maximum storage, which for most users should be more than enough storage.

Via [Read Write Web]

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by Chris Ziegler, posted Jun 2nd 2008 at 9:04AM
First, the good news: we don’t think the global roaming Samsung i770 Windows mobile phone for Verizon is actually going to look like this. Now, the bad: it’s probably pretty close. We’re not here to bum you out, though — come get the lowdown on Verizon’s plans for the remainder of ‘08 by accompanying us on a magical journey through one of its fancy slide decks over on Engadget Mobile!

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Filed under: cellphones, Handhelds

With Computex just about to begin, we should be seeing more than a few new announcements coming tomorrow, but it seems Asus could not wait that one extra day and let the Eee PC 901 out today, choosing to show it off during the WiMAX Expo. While this comes with few surprises, it is at least, now official.

The official specs for the Eee PC 901 include a 8.9-inch display with a 1024 x 600 resolution, 1GB of RAM, WiMAX, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth, built-in card reader and will be powered by a 1.6GHz Atom processor. The Eee PC 901 will also feature a 12GB SSD on the Windows version and a 20GB SSD on the Linux version. It is estimated to give anywhere from 4 to 6 hours of battery life, and of course will come in either black or white.

While Intel still has not made the official announcement for the processor, this Eee PC 901 has not had its launch date or pricing announced yet. However with Computex beginning tomorrow I would imagine we will be seeing that information coming sooner than later. It was however, previously speculated that it will be available June 3 and retail “at a price below” $650.

Read [PC World]

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There is one image from Barack Obama’s standing-room-only political rallies that I haven’t seen yet in the ubiquitous campaign coverage. Maybe I missed it, but I doubt that the sight of thousands of people holding up their cell phones and punching in a five-digit text code so his campaign would know how to contact them would have escaped me.

Then again, it’s wasn’t Obama Girl, which may explain why it flew under the cable news radar.

That image speaks volumes about the innovative nature of Obama’s techno-candidacy. It’s included in one of two very good stories in the June issue of Atlantic Monthly which can be read online: “The Amazing Money Machine” by Joshua Green and Marc Armbinder’s “HisSpace.” Green’s piece throws a spotlight on the Silicon Valley insiders who led Obama’s record-breaking online fund-raising initiative and their novel use of technologies ranging from social networking to ringtones. “HisSpace” advances the story by picturing an Obama presidency based on the candidate’s campaign platform:

What Obama seems to promise is, at its outer limits, a participatory democracy in which the opportunities for participation have been radically expanded. He proposes creating a public, Google-like database of every federal dollar spent. He aims to post every piece of non-emergency legislation online for five days before he signs it so that Americans can comment. A White House blog - also with comments - would be a near certainty. Overseeing this new apparatus would be a chief technology officer.

Both stories make clear how Obama’s use of available technologies is just the latest way for candidates to bypass the mainstream media and head directly to the voters (and their checkbooks,) all of a piece with FDR’s radio “fireside chats” and Kennedy’s televised debates/press conferences. With Obama on the cusp of the Democratic nomination after a weekend of cantankerous DNC debate and a last week full of primaries, here’s one unrepentant political junkie looking forward to the coming online battle between Democratic and Republican strategists.

Read [The Atlantic/HisSpace] Read [The Atlantic/The Amazing Money Machine]

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by Darren Murph, posted Jun 2nd 2008 at 8:01AM
Talk about getting around. Auntie Beeb has jumped from Freeview to FreeSat to Sky HD to iPlayer to who knows where else in no particular order, and while the vast majority of Europe is still struggling to adopt vanilla HD, the network is already dipping its toes in the next best thing. Reportedly, the BBC is all set to participate in a transmission trial using the Super Hi-Vision (SHV) system developed by Japan’s NHK. The series of demonstrations will combine content from Japan and London, and the actual screenings are supposed to take place in the NHK Theater using an 8k x 4k projector. We’ll admit, this isn’t the very first time we’ve heard that The Beeb may be interested in this stuff, but with the UK-based 2012 Olympics growing ever closer, it looks like the dedication may be ratcheting up.

[Via TechRadar, thank L. Rawlins]

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment