Greg price an audio engineer for 33 years, has worked with artists like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne and Zakk Wylde. He says, “ There are two prerequisites for becoming a great audio engineer. First, you have to play an instrument and second, you have to use a Mac”.
He explains that playing an instrument will allow you to communicate with musicians in a language they understand. And for Mac he says, “You just have to know an Apple computer. There is only one computer to use when making music and that’s a Mac. Even GarageBand is an essential piece of software.”  Price emphasizes, when it comes to music, using a Mac isn’t something you should do, it’s a must. In the article on Macworld price talks about his setup and tools he uses for audio engineering. You can read the complete article here.

Google today announced that its search index has hit a major milestone: 1 trillion unique URLs. That means that there are more than one trillion web pages in the world. Based on Google’s index, for every one person on earth there are more than 150 web pages. Google said that index has grown exponentially since Google first launched.  Google had indexed only 26 million pages in 1998 and they reached the 1 billion mark in 2000. In less than 8 years that number has grown 1,000 times. Google says that in theory, there are an infinite number of pages as many sites can automatically generate new ones. Google’s search index ignores pages that are near exact reproductions of other sites and hence the number of URLs indexed doesn’t directly corresponds to number of pages on web. So can anyone guess what is the exact number of web pages?
[Via TechCrunch]

SanDisk has started developing next generation memory technology that will allow greater storage density and increased access speeds. SanDisk is convinced that flash memory will reach its limitations in less than a decade and hence is working on 3D memory technology that it acquired with the purchase of Matrix Semiconductor. While conventional circuits put all the active circuitry on the silicon substrate, SanDisk’s 3D architecture deposits multiple layers of active memory elements so that circuitry extends vertically also. In layman’s term the present flash memory stores data in two-dimensional space, but SanDisk is working on chips that can store data in three-dimensional space resulting in more storage in same amount of space.
Company’s CEO Eli Harari said at this weeks earning conference “SanDisk has been making good, steady progress since our acquisition three years ago of Matrix Semiconductor… We currently have more than 200 issued patents that cover key elements of 3D rewritable memory technology”.
SanDisk has partnered up with Toshiba for development of the new technology. The company already sells a product that uses 3D technology but the device can only be programmed once. SanDisk and Toshiba are working on technology that will allow multiple rewrites of data.
The 3D memory chips won’t come to the market for at least next 5 years. For the mean time SanDisk will continue advancing it flash memory technology. The company will start production of X3 Flash memory chips this year that stores three bits per memory cell in place of present two bits per cell. SanDisk also plans to move to X4 technology allowing four bits per cell by end of 2009.
[Via CNET]

The much talked about Nikon D700 DSLR is now available for sale on selected online retailers. The D700 features 12.1-megapixel FX-format sensor, EXPEED Image Processing System, 51-point auto focus, 3D focus tracking and two Live View shooting modes. Nikon had announced that the camera would start shipping by July end. It is available now through major online retailers like Amazon and RitzCamera. The Body only price for the camera is $2,999.95 and Body with 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IF VR Nikkor Zoom Lens is priced for $3,599.95 on Amazon.

Apache Software Foundation today announced a surprising news that Microsoft has joined it platinum sponsor club that include Google and Yahoo. Microsoft will contribute $100,000 annually to the foundation. The ASF is a nonprofit organization that manages software projects like Apache web server, host of web libraries, frameworks and programs. The foundation’s president Justin Erenkrantz said this participation of Microsoft would increase interoperability between the two platforms. This would benefit both sides, as with increased interoperability users of both platforms will find in easier to port functionality for both the platforms. It is largely believed that Microsoft interest in funding Apache projects is driven by consumer demand for interoperability. The use of Apache based technology on top on Windows servers has been increasing in businesses. For Microsoft to keep growing it has to understand and support open source adoption in enterprise environment. Right now it seems that this collaboration will be beneficial to both Microsoft and Apache.
[Via Ars Technica]

Asustek plans to add new features to its highly successful Eee PC lineup. The company has been working on extending the battery life of the mini-notebook and plans to introduce a model with whole-day battery life. The new model will last complete 8 hours on a single charge. The other feature the company plans to implement is online storage. With decrease in size of the notebooks, mobility of the user has increased and to address on-the-go storage needs of the users, the company plans to add Internet storage to its Eee PC lineup. Asus will also provide software and hardware upgrades to it existing Eee PC user base. These upgrades will add new features and improve performance of the existing products. The company expects channel demand to be very strong for the month of August, especially in Western Europe, where the company is working with local telecommunication vendors to provide wireless access to Eee PC computers.
[Via Digi Times]

Samsung today announced its Q2 earnings report. The company made a profit of $2.12 billion on sales of $18 billion in the quarter. The cellphone business saw a jump of 22 percent year-over-year with sales of 45.7 million handsets. The number was down compared to last quarter’s 46.3 million and Samsung said it was a result of low demand in China and US. The 45.7 million gives Samsung 15 percent mobile market share placing it second behind Nokia’s 40 percent share. LG is in the third place with 9.1 percent market share. Samsung forecasting that the company will see a 10% increase in handset sales in second half of this year due to normal holiday season and new products it plans to release.
[Via MobileBurn]

9to5mac has posted that they have heard O2 UK’s exclusive iPhone deal with Apple will be up later this year and Orange will gain access to the device for offering it in UK market. According to Electricpig, Orange will be allowed to sell the iPhone 3G in UK, possibly as soon as October. Orange has already partnered up with Apple to sell iPhone in France, Austria, Belgium, Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland and Africa. On Apple’s side the company has already started partnering with multiple carrier in countries like Australia and India. This could very well be a sign that Apple is slowing moving away from exclusive deals with the carriers and is forming partnerships with multi carriers in a country. This would increase competition and result in lower price plans for the iPhone. But here is US we shouldn’t get our hopes high because the other big carrier in US is Verizon, which uses CDMA networks and Apple most probably is not going to design a CDMA based iPhone in near future.

Last week, Intel launched their updated Centrino 2 platform with new Core 2 Duo processors that had clock speed range of 2.26GHz to 2.8Ghz. According to new leaked information, Intel is already working on an update and will introduce a new top of the line 2.93GHz processor within months of original release. The new processor will have the same 1066MHz bus speed and 6MB of L2 cache. The processor will close the performance gape between the 3.06GHz Core 2 Extreme and the regular Core 2 Duo processors, while keeping the TDP to 35 watts. This will allow the use of this processor in notebooks weighing around 5 pounds. Intel has already said that it will launch the first ever quad-core processor for notebooks next month. This new processor will have a TDP of 44 watts and as a result its use will be limited to desktop replacement systems only. The introduction of the new Core 2 Duo series and first ever quad-core processor for laptops will further increase the performance gap between Intel’s mobile processors and AMD’s mobile processor lineup.

Gear Live is reporting that Apple has seeded a beta version of upcoming iPhone firmware 2.1 (beta1, build 5F90) to developers. Along with the firmware Apple has also posted new iPhone SDK. The new SDK can’t be used to submit applications to App Store at this moment. The firmware update brings a bunch of Core Location feature that track the direction you are heading and the speed you are traveling at. According to MacRumors Apple has also added Push Notifications APIs that allows applications to process notifications in the background. Apple had promised that they would implement this feature in September. It looks like the firmware 2.1 upgrade won’t be just about bug fixes but will also include new features like may be turn by turn navigation or push services for instant messenger clients and other applications. Apple might even allow third party developers to develop GPS navigation software for iPhone.

Update: The Webkit framework in firmware 2.1 has commands for plugins, copy, paste and cut. It looks like Apple is at last working on copy/paste function or it is also possible that these strings have always been there as the mobile framework is a direct derivation of desktop Webkit framework.

Last year, when Microsoft announced the Surface computer it said that they are working on different form factors of the technology. Today it was unveiled through the floor map of Research group’s DemoFest event that Microsoft is planning to demonstrate spherical Surface display at the event. Booth 110 that belongs to Microsoft is listed as “multi-touch spherical display” that sounds as a variant of company’s Surface multitouch computer. Presently, the Surface computer that is available in table form is used in AT&T stores and Harrah’s casinos. The spherical Surface display will help demonstrate the advancements Microsoft has made since they introduced the original Surface table. If Microsoft can develop various form factor of Surface multitouch display it will increase the adoption rate of the technology. This will bring down the cost of this technology from more than $5,000 per table to more reasonable price, resulting in home user-oriented Surface devices very soon.
[Via Macnn]

AT&T has posted customer update on its website for iPhone 3G. The update goes as follows:

So basically it looks like AT&T store will not start stocking iPhones for at least next two weeks. iPhone inventory in Apple stores are also running low, on Monday only three stores had iPhones in stock and today less than 40% showed iPhone stock. Apple has already announced that it will launch iPhone in 20 more countries on 22nd August. It is very likely that this iPhone drought will continue throughout August.

Research in Motion today launched its BlackBerry Media Sync application for syncing iTunes library with Blackberry phone. The software gives the owner of BlackBerry phone the option of syncing some or all of their iTunes contents. You can sync different iTunes libraries and playlists for playback on the phone. The software will allow BlackBerry owners to block out part of the phone’s storage space for work, photos and other content. The Media Sync works on all current generation RIM products including 8800, Curve, Pearl and upcoming Bold. The software works on Windows XP and Vista. RIM doesn’t plan to introduce software for Mac OS X. To get more information and download the Media Sync software visit BlackBerry’s website.

iPhone gaming is one of the most talked about topic in gaming industry now days.  Every other company at E3 had something to say about iPhone game development. Many big and small developers have already started developing games for the new platform. GarageGames is the latest company to join the iPhone gaming bandwagon. The company has announced that their popular Torque Engine now supports the iPhone. The company said that it has been developing games for Mac OS X and that made the transition to iPhone very easy.
“We’ve already seen enormous interest in the iPhone within the Torque community,” said Brett Seyler, vice president of business development. “Game developers want to make games for the iPhone and this is a natural step since we’re already a very good choice for developing OS X games.”
With Torque Engine support iPhone has become a new platform for porting popular Torque games such as Marble Blast. The Torque Engine is available for Macs, PCs, Wii and Xbox 360.
[Via Ars Technica]

Intel today introduced EP80579 integrated processor, which is a system-on-a-chip that includes main processor, interface and memory controllers, communications, graphics and security on a single chip. Putting all together on a single chip reduces the overall board size by as much as 45 percent and also decreases power requirement by about 35 percent. Intel is using a new technology QuickAssist that speeds up the process of data transfer and adds security component to the design. The system-on-chip approach brings down power requirement to a range of 11 watts to 21 watts. The decrease in power requirement would allow use of these chips in Mobile Internet Devices and similar sized devices. The initial launch lineup will consist of chips ranging from 600MHz to 1.2GHz and will be available very soon to hardware manufacturers. Intel says that in future the system-on-chip design will use the upcoming Moorestown platform that should further increase the performance and battery life of the devices based on the chips. It is rumored that Apple is working on a tablet type device that is slightly larger than the iPhone and it will use a chip designed by Intel. It is very much likely that this is the chip that will go in Apple’s tablet type device.

The two most talked about touchscreen phones other than iPhone are LG Dare (VX9700) from Verizon and Samsung Instinct from Sprint. Both Verizon and Sprint have claimed that their offering is better than the iPhone 3G offered by AT&T. Jonathan Takiff of Philadelphia Daily News compares the three phones based on form factor, user interface, call quality, features, additional applications available and battery capacity. Jonathan says the in form factor iPhone comes on top because of it 3.5-inch screen that is very good for watching movies, sharing photos, reading web content and typing on the virtual keyboard. In user interface, iPhone is superb and Samsung is quite capable but LG Dare is a dog that should be taken out and shot. Call quality on Sprint Instinct and iPhone was pretty good. In applications and games both Instinct and Dare didn’t even come close to the iPhone. Battery life was about five hours for all three phones. The two features where iPhone fell short were voice activation/GPS and camera. LG had the best camera with face detection and LED flash. For voice activation Takiff says “How come Apple’s tech geniuses still haven’t figured out how to offer voice-activated calling on their “state of the art” mobile phone.” GPS on both Instinct and Dare offer turn-by-turn directions that iPhone doesn’t offer. Overall he concludes, “Let me say flat out that the new iPhone still reigns supreme in overall performance and enjoyment.” You can read his complete comparison here.

According to a study done by Forrester Research Vista usage among businesses is up by more than 40 percent, but less than 10 percent of 50,000 companies surveyed used Vista. Forrester says 87.1 percent of the companies continued to use Windows XP and most of the Vista installed are replacing older version of Windows other than XP. In another study of IT department’s analysts found that more than 60% of the companies were planning to stick with XP in 2009 also. Around 40% are not even considering switching to Vista. Microsoft Senior Vice President Bill Veghte told CNET that Vista adoption is actually on par with past releases pointing to some new customers, such as the U.S. Air Force. Right now it looks like Vista is facing lot of difficulties in getting acceptance in business community. It a good thing Microsoft has started their $300 million Ad campaign to improve Vista’s image.
[Via CNET]

Western digital announced the VelociRaptor 10,000 RPM enterprise SATA hard drive in 2.5-inch form factor for blade server and 1U and 2U rack servers. The new drive is designed for business critical application and packs up to 300GB of capacity. It is more power efficient than previous VelociRaptor drives and consumes 35 percent less power. The 2.5-inch drives are made using enterprise-class standards for high reliability, resulting in the highest available reliability rating of any SATA drive at 1.4 million hours of mean time before failure. The drives will be available through select commercial distributors by end of the month for an undisclosed price.

Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer sent out a memo to company’s employees discussing strategic changes for the upcoming year. In the memo he shares his thoughts about Windows, Apple, Google and Yahoo. Ballmer then talks about his five priorities that are consistent with his last year goals. He says the company must continue to:

He says by focusing on these five areas, we can continue to grow revenue and increase profits and expand our market share. You can read the complete email here, in which he talks about Apples market share, competition with Google and Yahoo was a tactic, not a strategy.

Walt Mossberg the godfather of tech journalism has posted the review of Apple’s new MobileMe service. He notes that in theory it is a brilliant concept, but Apple has failed in execution. Mossberg says that his issues are not related to technical problems faced by Apple in rolling out the service, but with the features that don’t work perfectly.  The problems he faced included sluggish website, occasionally calendar entries wouldn’t load, syncing with Windows is not flawless, sometimes sync contacts on iPhone appeared as names only and email that were depended on Mail program rules on computer disappeared from MobileMe inbox. Walt concluded by saying “If Apple does get MobileMe working smoothly, it could be a terrific service. But it’s way too ragged now.” You can read the complete review here.

Samsung today announced INNOV8, which will ship globally in August. INNOV8 has an 8-megapixel camera that uses technologies like smileshot, blinkshot, face recognition, image stabilizer, auto-panorama shot and auto focus. The 2.8” QVGA LCD screen with 16 million colors is designed to provide best possible photography, video and gaming experience. The phone comes with 8GB or 16 GB internal storage and the memory card slot gives the option of expand total storage space up to additional 16GB. The other features on the phone include, A-GPS, quad-band GSM/EDGE, dual-band HSDPA (Europe only), Bluetooth (A2DP), USB2.0, WiFi and accelerometer. The A/V formats supported by the phone include DivX, H.263, H.264, WMV, MP4, MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, AMR and RealAudio. The battery life of the phone is up to 300 minutes on 3G networks, 500 minute on 2.5G networks and 330 hours in stand-by. Samsung has not announced the price yet but expect it to be on the higher-end, as it is Samsung’s flagship phone.
[Via PhoneMag]

Customers of Yahoo Music Store are receiving emails from Yahoo informing them that the online music store will no longer be available as of September 30, 2008. The Email says:

So if you are a Yahoo Music Store customer go ahead and burn audio CDs of all the music you have purchased from Yahoo Music as soon as possible. When Yahoo Music Store closes its doors, we would suggest, rather then going to Rhapsody go to Amazon MP3 for largest DRM free music catalog or iTunes Store for largest available music catalog in the world.

Intel had originally planned to launch the upcoming Nehalem architecture based Bloomfield processors in November or December. But, according to the latest information received by Digi Times from its sources at motherboard makers, Intel will now launch the Bloomfield processor in September along with X58 chipsets. The new CPU and motherboards will not officially appear in the channel until early October. The Bloomfield processors would not be socket compatible with previous generation Intel platforms and hence it is believed that an accelerated launch will not cannibalize other Intel product sales. The Nehalem architecture based processors will see around 30 percent increase in overall performance and power efficiency compared to present processors.

Creative today introduced the new Zen Mozaic media player that includes a built-in speaker for on the go music. The player is available in three colors black, pink and silver. It comes with 1.8” LCD screen, FM radio, microphone for voice recording and a mosaic style control panel. The player is bundled with Creative Centrale an application for managing music, photos and video. The Centrale creates playlists and transcodes video to the proprietary video format (that is not good) for playing on the ZEN Mozaic. We don’t need another proprietary video format. The formats supported by the player include MP3, WMA, WMA-DRM 10, Audible and JPEG. The ZEN Mozaic will available in August in Singapore, the 2GB player will be priced S$99 (US $72) and the 4GB player will cost S$129 (US $95). Creative said that it would ship 8GB and 16GB version in late August. The company has not announced when the player will ship in other countries.

Crackberry has got its hands on the upcoming BlackBerry Kickstart a flip phone from Research in Motion. The website says that the device they have is a pre-release model and it is possible that things will change a bit by the time it is launched. The website has posted hardware review of the upcoming phone. There will be two flip models “Kickstart” that is 8220 will feature WiFi, where as “SeaWolf” that is 8210 will feature GPS. Other features on both the phones are similar and will include Quad band GSM/EDGE (no 3G), 240 x 320 internal LCD, 160 x 128 external LCD, 2-megapixel camera, microSD card slot, SureType keyboard and OS version 4.6. Crackberry has done side-by-side comparison of Kickstart and other phones and has posted detailed reviews of the hardware. The website says, “All in all, the KickStart’s hardware is good.” You can check out the complete review on CrackBerry’s website.

Samsung revealed Series 8 850 and 860 LCD HDTVs featuring Touch of Color design (rose for 850 and deep blue for 860), Full HD resolution, 50,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, Ultra Clear Panel and Auto Motion Plus 120Mz technology. Both the 850 and 860 lineups will have InfoLink RSS for news, weather or stock info, WiseLink with MPEG 4, XviD, MP3, JPEG decoders and DLNA certification. The HDTVs will come with standard set of A/V connection excluding composite inputs. The Series 8 850 HDTVs will be available in September in 46-inch models LN46A850 for $ 2,699.00 and 52-inch model LN52A850 for 3,399.99. The Series 8 860 models will include an additional USB 2.0 connection and a variation on bezel design. The 46-inch model LN46A860 will be priced $2,799.99 and the 52-inch model LN52A860 will be priced $3.499.99, both will ship in September.

Samsung today announced the flagship Series 9 LCD HDTVs using LED SmartLighting technology. The HDTVs will have full HD resolution, 1,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, 4ms response time, Auto Motion Plus 120Hz technology, DNle pro imaging engine and Wide Color Enhancer 2. The TVs will feature InfoLink RSS for news, weather or stock info, WiseLink Pro with MPEG 4, XviD, MP3, JPEG decoders and DLNA certification. The A/V connections on the TV will include four HDMI port, USB 2.0, two component input, a composite input, one S-video, one PC input, headphone jack and Ethernet jack. The 46-inch model LN46A950 will be priced $3,199.99 and the 55-inch model LN55A950 will be priced $4,199.99. Both the HDTVs will ship in August.

Samsung today unveiled that latest Series 7 plasma HDTVs featuring full HD resolution, 1,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, Touch of Color technology and Ultra FilterBright technology. The TVs can be calibrated differently for daytime viewing and nighttime viewing. The A/V connections on the TVs include four HDMI ports, USB, two component inputs, two composite inputs, one S-video, one PC input, Headphone Jack and Ethernet jack. The TVs has two down firing 20 watts speakers with SRS TruSurround XT support. The TVs come with InfoLink RSS support for news, weather or stock info, support for flash memory, WiseLink Pro with MPEG 4, XviD MP3, JPEG decoders and DLNA certification. The 50-inch model PN50A760 will be priced $2,799.99, the 58-inch model PN58A760 will be priced $4,499.99 and the 63-inch model PN63A760 will be priced $5,499.99. The Series 7 Plasma HDTVs will be available in August.

Cowon has unveiled the 5” touchscreen (800 x 480 resolution) media player with haptic feedback. The brushed aluminum player uses a 700MHz RMI Alchemy AU1250 processor and comes with USB support, T-DMB broadcast TV, FM radio, Bluetooth, TV-out and up to 80GB of storage. The player doesn’t come with a built in WiFi receiver but you can use USB dongle to get WiFi support. The preinstalled software includes Internet browser, MS Office document viewer and electronic dictionary. The media format supported by P5 are AVI, ASF, WMV, MPG, OGM, DivX, Xvid, MPEG4, WMV9, MP3, WMA, AC3, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC. The player has a battery life of 9 hours for video and 14 hours for audio. It will be available in Korea on 29th July in black, red or platinum color. No word on price or when it will be available in other countries.

AT&T today announced results for second quarter of 2008 and said that it sold almost twice the number of iPhones in first 12 days as it did with the original iPhone launch a year ago. AT&T also noted that since the launch of original iPhone last year the total number of smartphone owners on its network has more than doubled. In June 2007 only 8 percent of its customers were smartphone owners and the number has risen to 18 percent by June 2008. Neither AT&T nor Apple has announced the number of iPhone 3Gs sold in US since launch on July 11th 2008, but analysts suggest the number will be more than 500,000 so far. Some analysts believe that the number will cross one million within 30 days.
The carrier added 1.3 million new customers bring the total number of wireless customers to 72.9 million. This basically dismisses Verizon’s claim that it has more wireless customers (68.7 million) than any other wireless brand in the US. AT&T topped Verizon by a margin of 4.2 million customers. AT&T says it has reduced churn (new customers replacing old customers) to an all-time low of 1.1 percent and U-Verse is also seeing strong growth. Total revenue increased 4.7 percent year-over-year to 30.9 billion, while operating income came at 35 percent to $6.6 billion.

Microsoft started the first phase of its $300 million advertising campaign for improving and clearing up ‘misconceptions’ about Windows Vista. The ad campaign is in response to Apple’s “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” marketing campaign. The first ad that appears on company’s website (photo above) says, “At one point, everyone thought the earth was flat.” The image links to a page informing how far Vista has come. On the page Microsoft posts:

It is very clear that Microsoft is doing the ad campaign to improve Vista’s image and it admits that initial launch of Vista was disappointing for users (few). Even though Microsoft is trying to make it look like they believed it was the best OS when released in January 2007, the truth is many of its employees weren’t satisfied with Vista. In fact, Bill Gates responded to a question about what product he thought was not polished enough to be released, by saying, “Ask me when we launch our next OS, and I’ll be more inclined to give you a blunt answer.” It’s not just Microsoft’s own employees only; many of its hardware partners have openly said that Vista is causing them lot of trouble. Yesterday, SanDisk CEO said, “unfortunately, performance in the Vista environment falls short of what the market really needs”. The ad campaign that Microsoft has started is not to convince average computer user, as they will be forced to buy a Vista based computer since Microsoft has stopped selling Windows XP. The campaign is designed to pursue large businesses, that have already decided not go for Vista, to reconsider Vista again. Microsoft has a very tough road ahead because for businesses, Windows Vista is still a flat proposition.

9to5mac is reporting that Apple might introduce multiple color iPod Nano. Basically each Nano will have plethora of colors like a rainbow. The Nano will also see a storage boost and addition of new features. The website said that it can’t elaborate on everything they have heard but more information will be forthcoming soon. We have heard from our sources that Apple will update its complete iPod lineup by end of this quarter or in first two weeks of next quarter. But we can’t confirm that Apple will be releasing multi-colored iPod nanos.

Onkyo announced four new home entertainment products, consisting of two THX certified receivers and two home theater systems. The two receivers TX-SR806 and TX-SR706 come with THX Loudness Plus audio processing technology for improved low volume listening. The SR806 is THX Ultra2 plus certified and the SR706 is THX Select2 plus certified. Both the receivers can upscale digital video sources to a 1080p output using the Faroudja DCDi Cinema video processor. The SR806 comes with five HDMI 1.3a input port and will ship in August for $1,099. Where as the 706 has four HDMI 1.3a input port and is shipping now for $899.
The two home theater in box systems – HT-S7100 and HT-S6100 are both 7.1 channel systems with 130 watts per channel output. Both the systems support 1080p video, DeepColor capability, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS-HD High Resolution Audio format and Upscaling video to 1080i. The systems come with iPod Dock (just audio support for S6100 and both audio/video support for S7100) and four HDMI inputs. The HT-S7100 will ship in August for $799 and the HTS6100 is shipping now for $699.

For past few days all the mobile phone news has been about iPhone 3G and AT&T only. It felt like there is only one carrier in US AT&T and only one phone the iPhone. But today the other big cellphone carrier in US announced that for second quarter of 2008 it added 1.5 million new customers. At the end of the quarter the company had 68.7 million customers, including 66.7 million retail customers, which are those it directly serves and manages and who choose the Verizon Wireless brand. The company said more customers use the Verizon Wireless brand than any other wireless brand in the US. AT&T has yet not announced their last quarter results but to get to the number one position they will have to add more than one million customers.
[Via Verizon]

Yesterday, Panasonic announced three 10-megapixel cameras and today it decided to increase the pixel count and announced the 14.7 megapixel DMC-FX150 pocket-sized digital camera. The new camera comes with 28mm wide-angle Leica DC Vario Elmarit lens, 3.6x optical zoom and many shooting modes. The features on the camera are RAW support, Red-eye correction, optical image stabilizer, face detection and intelligent ISO. The camera will ship next month in three colors black, gold and silver for $399.95.
[Via Adorama]

Yesterday, NVIDIA announced GeForce 9800M and 9700M series Graphics cards for laptop. The 9800M series have three cards 9800M GTX, 9800M GT and 9800M GTS. The top of the line GTX card uses G92 core with 500MHz frequency and 112 shaders each running at 1250MHz. It is capable of 420 gigaflops and has 256-bit memory interface. The 9800M GTX can be used in SLI mode also. Next in line is 9800M GT that uses G94 core running at 500MHz. It has 96 shaders each running at 1250MHz and is capable of 360 gigaflops. The last of 9800M lineup is 9800M GTS that uses the same G94 core but has only 64 shaders running at 600MHz and is capable of 288 gigaflops.
The 9700M series includes two cards 9700M GTS and 9700M GT. The GTS uses G94 core that runs at 530MHz and has 48 shaders running at 1325MHz. The 9700M GT uses the G96 core at 625MHz and has 32 shaders running at 1500MHz. The 9700M GTS is capable of 190.8 gigaflops and the 9700M GT is capable of 148.8 gigaflops. NVIDIA says that the new cards will increase graphics performance while lowering power requirements and improving battery life.

SanDisk CEO said that Windows Vista is not optimized for solid state drive and that is delaying the company in releasing solid state drives. Speaking at second quarter earning conference, Eli Harari CEO and Chairman of the company said “as soon as you get into Vista applications in notebook and desktop, you start running into very demanding applications because Vista is not optimized for flash memory solid state disk.”
“The next generation controllers need to basically compensate for Vista shortfalls,” Harari said. He added “unfortunately, performance (SSDs) in the Vista environment falls short of what the market really needs and that is why we need to develop the next generation, which we’ll start sampling end of this year, early next year.”
According to Eli in the very low end market this is not the issue as existing controllers can get the job done for 8-, 16-, and 32-GB storage. The problem starts with multilevel cell flash drives requiring sophisticated controller for capacities of 128GB and above.
The list of Vista-bashers is getting longer and longer everyday.

Canon introduced two new HD camcorders today and both will be ship in August for Japan. The HF11 is an update for HF10 and comes with 2.7” LCD monitor, 32GB memory, 1/3.2 CCD (Canon’s Full HD CMOS sensor), 12X optical zoom and SD Card slot. The camera can record in full HD resolution at 24 frames-per-second in AVCHD video format. The camcorder can also take still images at 2048 x1536 resolution in JPEG format. The HG21 has almost the same feature as HF11, but comes with 120GB internal hard drive. Both the camcorders will be priced around $1,300 when they ship.

Audi wants to keep its Multi Media Interface and Navigation system one step ahead of other automakers. For that the company has redesigned its Multi Media system / navigation for A8 luxury sedan. The new system will use two CPUs (800MHz and 500MHz) and NVIDIA’s Graphics card for faster and better rendering of 3D maps and user interface elements. The other features on this new high-tech system are 7” LCD (800 x 480 resolution), DVD drive, 40GB internal Hard drive, Support for Dolby Digital surround sound, TV tuner and updated optional Audi Music Interface for connecting various portable media players. The new MMI system will be added to 2009 Audi A8. But you should see the system in other high-end Audi’s by end of 2009.
[Via Engadget]

Along with three new Walkman phones, Sony also launched slew of new accessories for the Walkman series phones. The company announced three new portable speakers and three new stereo headphones. The MBS-200 and MBS-400 are both wireless Bluetooth speakers designed for no cords, no hassle and no complicated setup process. The higher end MBS-400 comes with two speakers and allows you to experience higher quality stereo sound compared to MBS-200. Both the speakers will ship in Q4 2008.  The MPS-100 is an update for the original MPS-60, the new affordable speakers directly plugs into your phone to provide you with ultraportable solution. It will also ship in Q4 2008. In the headphone lineup HBH-IS800 wireless stereo headphones are the smallest Bluetooth headphones available on the market today. The stylish and compact headset rests discretely on your neck and boasts a top of the range audio performance for Bluetooth headphones. The second headphones HPM-88 are noise-cancelling headphones that are designed to reduce background noise by up to 75 percent. According to Sony this is the first noise cancelling mobile phone headset on the market that is powered by phone itself. The last in headphones lineup is HPM-66 a behind-the-ear active stereo headphones. These affordable headphones are designed for convenience and easy of use. All the headphones will ship in Q4 2008. Sony has also announced a stylish phone case IPC-40 that will be available in two colors in Q4 2008.
[Via PhoneMag]

Sony Ericsson today added three new phones to its Walkman lineup. The top of the line W902 comes with 5-megapixel camera (16x digital zoom), all the basic phone features and 8GB Memory Stick Micro card. According to Sony the phone improves the stereo field and bass response compared to other music phones. The candy bar phone supports quad-band GSM/EDGE (US/Europe support), but has dual-band 3G support (Europe only). The phone will ship in three colors black, green and red. The second phone W595 is a slider phone with 3.2-megapixel camera, 2GB Memory Stick Micro and “Share Jack” feature that lets two users listen to the same music over earphones. Other features on the phone are similar to W902, except it doesn’t support the sound field enhancement feature. The last phone in the lineup is W302 –the most affordable Walkman phone to date, according to Sony. This 0.4” thick phone comes with 2-megapixel camera, 512MB Memory Stick Micro, FM radio, Bluetooth and support for GSM/EDGE. All three phones will ship in fall of 2008 and Sony has yet not announced pricing for the phones.

Apple on Monday posted revenue of $7.46 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.07 billion, or $1.19 per diluted share for its fiscal 2008 third quarter ended June 28, 2008. In the best June quarter in its history, the company sold almost 2.5 million Macs, or a 41 percent increase from the year-ago quarter and over 11 million iPods. These results compare to revenue of $5.41 billion and net quarterly profit of $818 million, or $.92 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 34.8 percent, down from 36.9 percent in the year-ago quarter, while international sales accounted for 42 percent of the quarter's revenue.
Apple said it shipped 2,496,000 Macs during the quarter, representing 41 percent unit growth and 43 percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. The Company also said it sold 11,011,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 12 percent unit growth and seven percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone units sold were 717,000 compared to 270,000 in the year-ago-quarter. ?
"We're proud to report the best June quarter for both revenue and earnings in Apple's history," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We set a new record for Mac sales, we think we have a real winner with our new iPhone 3G, and we're busy finishing several more wonderful new products to launch in the coming months."?
"We're extremely pleased with the growth of our business and the generation of almost $5.4 billion in cash in the first three quarters of fiscal 2008," said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO. "Looking ahead to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008, we expect revenue of about $7.8 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $1.00."

Esquire’s editor in chief told New York Times that the magazine would celebrate its 75th year by releasing an issue of the magazine with electronic cover that flashes “The 21st Century Begins Now”. E Ink – a company that designs displays for Amazon’s Kindle will produce the cover. Esquire has exclusive right to use the technology through 2009. The electronic cover will be used in only 100,000 copies of the magazine. The monthly circulation of the magazine is about 720,000. The magazine with electronic cover will run out of juice after 90 days of use. The display cases and batteries are made in china and the device is inserted by hand into each magazine in Mexico. The issue is then shipped via refrigerated trucks to preserve the batteries. Kevin O’Malley of Esquire said “This is really the 1.0 version, imagine when the consumer walks by a newsstand and sees that it is alive.”
[Via The New York Times]

Panasonic today announced three new cameras for the summer. The first in the lineup is that megazoom DMC-FZ28 with 18x optical zoom. It comes with 10.1 megapixel sensor, Intelligent Auto Mode, Auto Focus and 27mm wide-angle lens. It will ship in August for $449.99. The second camera is an update of DMC-LX2; the LX3 comes with 10.1 megapixel sensor 24mm Leica Vario-Summicron lens and ability to capture 720p video at 24 frames-per-second. It will be available in August for $499.95. The last in the summer lineup is a pocket sized 10.1-megapixel camera DMC-FX37. The camera features a 25mm wide-angle lens, 5X optical zoom and capability of taking 720p video. It will ship in September for $349.95.

Apple Insider is reporting that upcoming Mac OS 10.6 will extend support of QuickLook technology to Finder icons also. In Mac OS X 10.5 QuickLook opens a specialized preview window to show the content of the selected file without opening the require application. According to a person familiar with the pre-release OS X 10.6 software, if you take the mouse pointer over an audio file in Snow Leopard, the finder will trigger a triangular ‘play’ button on the icon itself. By clicking the play button the file will start playing the song without opening the specific application required to play the song. As the audio file is playing a ring will form around the play button and slowly fill to indicate the length of the track that remains. Video files can also be played in similar fashion. By pressing space bar the user can alternate between traditional QuickLook and icon preview feature. User can use the icon QuickLook for other file types also like document, presentation and PDF. But it won’t be much useful unless the user sets the Finder icon size to maximum. Apple Insider further adds that another change in Mac OS X 10.5 will require user to enter Admin password twice for software installation. First time when the installer application launches and again right before the actual install process starts.

Virginia Tech announced that it has installed a new Mac based supercomputing cluster that uses 324 Mac Pros operating as servers. The computers are networked together via a 40Gbps copper LAN connection. Each Mac Pro has eight cores bringing the total number of cores in the cluster to 2,592. The cluster is being used by the university’s Center for High-End Computing Systems. According to the university, the system with 29 teraflops output is ranked among the 100 most powerful supercomputers in a June list complied for Top 500 Supercomputers. The Center for High-End Computing Systems says it intends to use the cluster for the development of new power-aware computers, and ones with shared memory and/or distributed storage. Today, a specifically designed supercomputer can cost more than $5 million and it is believed that Virginia Tech designed and built their Mac based supercomputing cluster for less the one million dollars.

LG today announced their financial results for Q2 2008, the company shipped 27.7 million mobile phones. The year-over-year growth was 34.4% and the sales reached US $3.8 billion. With the increase in sales LG has now captured 9.1% market share and is now in a position to overtake Motorola as the world’s number three cell phone maker. The company said that devices like LG Secret, Viewty and Venus are the force behind their recent success.
LG also revealed that it has sold seven million touchscreen phones since the company first launched the full touchscreen device (Prada Phone) in early 2007. The company claims the leader of touchscreen phones, though that is up for argument, as Apple announced last Monday that they sold 1 million iPhone in first three days bringing iPhone total to seven million one week before LG. The top selling touchscreen handset for LG was KU990 Viewty. In North America Venus and Voyager toped with 1.6 million and 1.3 million respectively. Though, LG had a very good quarter, but like Nokia and Sony Ericsson, LG also sees a slowdown in mobile phone market for remainder of the year.

NPD Groups released the latest figures for gaming console software and hardware sales in US. Nintendo Wii took the number one spot from Xbox 360 by reaching 11,008,200 units sold compared to 10,465,900 units for Xbox. Nintendo released Wii almost one year after Xbox 360 was released in 2005, but since its release it has been selling twice as fast as Xbox 360. For month of June, the top selling hardware in US was Nintendo DS (783,000) followed by Wii (666,700), PS3 (405,500), PSP (337,400), Xbox 360 (219,800) and PS2 (188,800). In gaming software Metal Gear Solid (774,600) for PS3 was number one followed by Guitar Hero On Tour (422,300) for DS, Ninja Gaiden 2 (372,700) for Xbox 360, Wii Fit (372,700) for Wii and Wii Play (359,100) for Wii. For past 6-8 months Wii and PS3 have dominated the console sales, Microsoft has announced a software update for Xbox 360 and decreased the price, lets wait and see if that would have any positive effect on Xbox 360 sales.
[Via eFluxMedia]

Apple started selling the iPhone 3G on July 11th and it has been selling like hot cakes since. Apple announced on July 14th that it sold more than one million iPhones in first three days. Long lines have continued to form throughout the last week in front of the stores that had iPhone 3G in stock. AT&T the official iPhone carrier in US had said last week that iPhone 3G was sold out at all their stores.  The iPhone shortage will continue this week also. In fact, it will be bad compared to last week. Last Monday around 70% of Apple stores had iPhone in stock, but today only 3 Apple stores have iPhone and each store has just one model only. The store at Stoneridge Mall in Pleasanton, California has 16GB black model, the store at Briarwood in Ann Arbor, Michigan has 16GB white and the store at Rockingham Park in Salem, New Hampshire has 16GB white. If you were planning to buy a 8GB iPhone today you are out of luck any where in US. Apple is saying that they are replenishing iPhone 3G stocks almost daily and AT&T says that they will have more iPhone in store this week. As of now, it looks like lines will continue to form in front of Apple stores to grab the new iPhone, as it is very likely that supplies won’t meet demand this week also.