Adobe DItches Flash For Mobile

In what you could call a backend bombshell, Adobe this week revealed plans to ditch Flash for mobile devices, and instead focus on HTML5 and Adobe AIR.

Who cares?

For one, “those [people] whose job it is to market and sell Android tablets,” writes AllThingsD. “Flash support has been one of the key vantages that aspiring iPad competitors have used to tout their devices.”

“Adobe will have a PR nightmare on its hands trying to convince its three million Flash developers to scrap projects in Flash and move to HTML5,” notes ReadWriteWeb, citing comments from Carlos Icaza, a early director and engineer of Flash at Adobe.

Not lost on anyone, “The annunciation comes after Apple boldly chose not to support Flash on the iPhone in 2007, citing concerns about the technology’s performance,” writes VentureBeat. “Now it seems Steve Jobs was right all along.”

CNN goes so far as to ask if Steve Job killed -- or is killing -- Flash.

So, what’s in store for Flash?

Well, “Adobe's conclusion to stop Flash Player development for mobile browsers will likely be repeated for browsers on the desktop, just not anytime soon,” writes PCWorld, citing analysts.

Indeed, “they're not getting out the Flash business," Ray Valdes, an analyst with Gartner, said of Adobe "But clearly they see that the future is HTML5."

Likewise, “as the Web moves more toward an HTML-oriented approach for multimedia content, perhaps the need for mobile Flash access leave diminish,” Computerworld concedes. “Right now, though, there's still plenty of content that is Flash-based out there.” mediapost.com

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The Asus Zenbook: a steely marvel with an appalling trackpad

arstechnica.com

Adopting the runaway success of the slim and powerful MacBook Air, PC manufacturers have finally arrived on the scene with their own blade-thin models. The Asus Zenbook is one of the first compelling "ultrabooks" and certainly the most striking, with a brushed metal body and clean lines.

While we found the performance of the Zenbook to comprise unfaltering, it does fall short in a few areas like screen and sound quality (the 11-inch Core i7 we tested is also cheaper than the MacBook Air). But in one key respect it absolutely fall down hard: the trackpad is fickle and barely functional, to the point that using the Zenbook as a primary traveling work machine caused us a good deal of frustration.

Asus "The Body" Zenbook

The Zenbook is made almost alone of brushed or anodized aluminum, with a few darker accents of metal and plastic (the frame around the screen and the surface in which the keyboard is inlaid are both dark plastic). The computer vents heat under the screen through slots in the hinge, which is also entirely metal. While Apple's MacBook Air uses a strip of plastic in the hinge to help the computer better pick up WiFi signals, we didn't notice any signal problems with the Zenbooks.

Edges and corners of the Zenbook are sharp, altho the body is low-profile enough that we didn't have a problem with the edges digging into our wrists. The underside of the computer is slightly curved, and the computer can get pretty warm on the underside during moderate to heavy use. The area near the vents under the screen gets near-scalding hot while editing images.

The underside of the Zenbook has four rubbery feet all but a quarter of an inch high. When we received our loaner review unit, we found these feet were uneven, and placing the computer on a flat surface meant it wobbled when weight was placed on the lower right corner. We are certain we were not the first hands to touch this review unit out of the box, but none of the feet had sustained any significant wear-in fact, the foot that the computer wobbles onto is the only one that doesn't show any wear. At the end of our time with the Zenbook, the other three feet seemed to have worn in enough that the wobble was less pronounced.

Other than the feet, the feel of the Zenbook is quite hardy. No parts of the notebook squeak or creak or flex, and it felt like the expensive machine it is when I used it (so long as the heel of my right palm on the palmrest didn't rock it).

Whenever I would open the Zenbook, it was a toss-up whether the screen would lift smoothly away from the rest of the computer or would have to be prised apart like an oyster. If the hinge had comprised loosened up earlier in the day and we had opened and closed the computer a few times, it was easier to open and the bottom half would remain stable on a surface. If it had been a day or two since the computer was opened, we'd have to work a fingernail under the nub along the top edge to pry it open.

Once open, the body of the Zenbook is equilibrated relative to the weight of the screen. We could tip the display all the way back without the computer tipping with it. The profile of the computer is thin, measuring 9 millimeters at its thickest point and weighing only 2.43 lbs, thinner but heavier than the same size MacBook Air. The computer comes with a brown nylon and leather sleeve that snaps closed, which makes it easy to just throw in a bag and go. We hope you like brown envelope-style cases.

Only a handful of ports are on the Zenbook: a DC ability jack, USB 3.0, and micro-HDMI on the right, and USB 2.0, miniVGA, and headphone jack on the left, and included in the box are a USB-to-Ethernet adapter and a miniVGA-to-VGA adapter. The ports are sufficiently spaced and we had no issue plugging things in next to one another. arstechnica.com

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Toyota recalls 420,000 vehicles in U.S. to fix crankshaft pulley

latimes.com

Reporting from Seoul—
In a different corporate sputter for beleaguered Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp., the company said it was recalling more than 420,000 vehicles in the U.S. in connection with potential steering problems.

The safety recall to replace the crankshaft pulley on the V-6 engine affects 283,200 Toyota and 137,000 Lexus vehicles in the U.S., the company said. Worldwide it covers 550,000 cars.

There have been no reports of accidents or injuries related to the problems, Toyota said in a news release from its American headquarters in Torrance.

If not corrected, the external ring of the crankshaft pulley may become misaligned with the inner ring, causing noise or a warning signal to light up. The belt for the power steering pump may become detached from the pulley, making it suddenly more difficult to turn the driving wheel, the release said.

Since September 2009, Toyota has issued recalls covering more than 13 million vehicles in the U.S. With the company facing hundreds of lawsuits, safety experts and industry analysts argue that quality problems could haunt the world's largest automaker for years to come, affecting its reputation and bottom line.

In February, Toyota announced that it would recall 2.17 million vehicles to correct mechanistic defects that could cause them to accelerate out of control.

The latest recall includes these Toyota models: the 2004 and 2005 Camry, Highlander, Sienna and Solara; the 2004 Avalon; and the 2006 Highlander HV. The affected Lexus models are the 2004 and 2005 ES 330 and RX 330 and the 2006 RX 400h, the company said.

Starting in January, the company will mail owners a notification to make an appointee with an authorized dealer to have their cars inspected after a sufficient number of alternate parts have been produced, Toyota said.

Meanwhile, consumers who detect any abnormal dissonances are asked to make an appointment to have the vehicle inspected, the release said. latimes.com

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Asus Transformer Prime Is the First Quad-Core Android Tablet

Android tablets are old news, I know, but Asus’ Eee Pad Transformer Prime hopes to get your attention again with its quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 chip.

The Transformer Prime, which got a quick tease end month, now has a December launch window—Asus still isn’t committing to an actual release date—and a price of $499 with 32 GB of storage, or $599 with 64 GB.


As you would anticipate, the Transformer Prime is a spec-boosted sequel to the original Eee Pad Transformer, which launched last spring. It’s thinner and lighter than its predecessor at 0.33 inches thick and 1.29 pounds, and it has an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, compared to 5 megapixels on the old model.

But the star of the show is that quad-core Tegra 3 chip, which boasts better power consumption—Asus says the Transformer Prime lasts 12 hours on a charge—and hopefully better performance with it is 12-core graphics processor. Some app developers are already working to optimize their software for the Tegra 3, including Rockstar Games, which is porting Grand Theft Auto III to Android tablets and the iPad.

Like Asus’ original Eee Pad Transformer, the Prime has an optional $149 keyboard and trackpad that docks with the tablet to form a laptop—hence the name. The Transformer Prime’s dock adds another six hours of battery life, and includes a full-sized USB port and an SD card slot.

For software, the Transformer Prime runs Android 3.2, but not for long; Asus promises to upgrade the tablet to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) later in December. The upgrade will bring new features like built-in photo editing, better speech-to-text and a system-wide spell checker.

No other hardware makers accept indicated that they are working on quad-core tablets for this holiday season, so the Transformer Prime could be your best choice if you’ve got $500 in tablet money to burn and are intent on not purchasing an iPad. techland.time.com

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ARM's new GPU chip design aims to boost mobile graphics

bbc.co.uk

The Mali-T658 offers up to 10 times the performance of its predecessor.

It paves the way for faster games and other more complex software on smartphones and tablet computers.

ARM hopes to expand its share of a rapidly-growing market. Demand for its mobile GPU designs lags behind that for its central processing units (CPUs).

The most high-profile use of its GPU to date is in Samsung's award winning Galaxy 2 handsets. They apply chips based on the T658's older brother, the Mali-400 MP.

A recent review by the influential website AnandTech rated the 400 MP the fastest GPU available in a smartphone today.

ARM says manufacturers are likely to have its new design in use in around two years.

"It all comes down to user experience," said Jem Davies at ARM's Media Processing Division.

"Faster graphics performance with snappier, more responsive user interfaces, more immersive game play and a whole range of new applications which are being enabled by the capabilities of GPU computing."
Calculations

GPU cores offer specialised processing capabilities that bolster up the power of the main CPU.

A GPU's key function is to accept all the polygon co-ordinates described by a piece of graphics software and work out how to draw, colour and shade them. It then uses this information to determine what colour each pixel of the screen should be as the image changes dozens of times every second.
Samsung Galaxy S2 Samsung's Galaxy S2 smartphone uses a previous ARM-based graphics processing unit

The more powerful the GPU, the more contingent is possible. Top of the range games can require millions of polygons on screen at the same time to create 3D-like environments.

To maximise performance, manufacturers can link several GPUs together.

ARM's previous design admitted up to four cores to be connected.

The Mali-T658 doubles the maximum to eight, with each core bidding double the arithmetic capability of its forerunner.

"It's all about power," said Mr Davies.

"The idea is that when the full performance is required, you power up all by those cores. But having a multi-core architecture means that when the performance needs are lower, we can power some of those cores down."

This allows ARM to play to one of its strengths - it is reputation for lower energy consumption.
Console quality graphics

The firm claims the new technology will offer battery-powered mobile handsets roughly the same graphics performance as Sony's Playstation 3 console.

However, its rival imaginativeness Technologies has made similar assertions about its upcoming PowerVR designs. Like ARM, the firm is headquartered in the UK. Its current architecture is used by Apple in its iPhone and iPad products.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

    More immersive game play and a whole range of new applications... are being enabled by the capabilities of GPU computing”

End Quote Jem Davies ARM Holdings

California-based NVIDIA and Qualcomm also talk up their GeForce and Adreno technologies.

But whatever the firms' claims, buyer expectations are hard to beat.

"You have cinema, you have high definition, you have hugely complex CGI movies on HD screens in your lounge," said Ian Smythe, director of marketing at ARM's Media Processing division.

"You anticipate this high quality experience from every screen that you look at. And so the user experience has to be of that sort of quality.

"Reproducing a CGI movie - which is generated on a server farm where it takes a day to render a frame with 50,000 processors - being able to reproduce that in a mobile experience is clearly a challenge."
Speech recognition

GPUs are particularly good at what are termed "parallisable" tasks - processes that can be broken down into several parts and run simultaneously because the outcome of any one computing does not determine the input of another.

This is particularly suited for applications offering augmented reality, allowing users to overlay graphical information over live images of whatever their devices' cameras are facing.

Other potential uses include image processing, pattern matching and speech recognition.

Challenger among the GPU designers is helping drive computing power to new heights, making possible processes unthinkable on previous generations of handsets.

However, developers need to code their software to take advantage of the graphics processors if they are to make the most of the accelerated performance on offer.

That is a challenge when different devices use different designs.

"At the moment many of the speech recognition applications that are out there are solely relying on the CPU," said Mr Davies.

"Very few are taking advantage of the speedup of the GPU - and that's clearly an area of growth for us." bbc.co.uk

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New iOS 5.0.1 Update ‘Nothing Short of Amazing’

wired.com

Good news if you’re one of the iOS 5 users who suffers from crippled battery life: Most early reports are showing that iOS 5.0.1 fixes the problem completely.

“Frankly the difference is nothing brusk of amazing,” said Wired reader Donald Kuntzman, who downloaded the update on his Verizon iPhone 4. “To go almost an entire day without a change in the meter reading seems unbelievable. Where before I could almost watch the battery drain, now it doesn’t move at all.”

Kuntzman noticed that the battery aliveness on his iPhone degraded after the iOS 5 upgrade. He needed to charge his phone once a day, and always worried it would die before he had a chance to recharge it. He could practically “watch the battery drain,” but since the update, his battery level doesn’t seem to drop at all.

Sam Bertolet tweeted to @GadgetLab that his previous fifteen percent battery loss per hour has been reduced to 4 to 5 percent with the update. Another reader tweeted that he only needs to charge every other day, as opposed to every day. Others like Khoi Pham “definitely noticed the battery life improvement” in the Beta 2 update.

Yesterday, reports surfaced that select iOS users comprised getting an early upgrade to iOS 5.0.1 to fix a number of iOS 5-related issues such as battery problems, Siri issues (for Australian 4S owners), and buggy iCloud documents. On Nov. 2, Apple confirmed that it had identified some bugs related to iOS 5, and said it would be delivering a fix in coming weeks.

But it looks like the fix Is not working for everybody. A few users have not seen any improvement with iOS 5.0.1 at this time. Gareth Evans tweeted that he saw no difference; he’s still getting six hours of usage on standby and four and a half when it’s being used. One user even reported worse battery life with the update, but that unlucky individual seems to be an outlier.

Wired has reached out to Apple to find out particulars of the 5.0.1 update, and will keep you updated as we find out more information. In the meantime, if you have a iOS 5.0.1 update story to share, please hit my e-mail link at the top of this article and describe what you’re experiencing. wired.com

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Seven Accused Of Infecting Computers With Malware In More than 100 Countries

Federal prosecutors accept charged seven people who allegedly ran a massive online-advertising fraud scheme and used malicious software to infect at least 4 million computers in more than 100 countries.

Six people from Estonia and another individual from Russia allegedly used the malicious software, or "malware," to hijack Web searches and drive traffic to other websites in order to generate "pay per click" income. In some cases, the software, known as DNSChanger, would replace advertising on popular websites with other ads when viewed from an infected computer.

The scheme, which ran between 2007 and 2011, allegedly infected computers when victims visited certain websites or downloaded software to view videos online, according to the indictment. More than 500,000 computers comprised infected in the U.S., including computers used by U.S. government agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

"We believe this criminal case is the first of it is kind and it arises from a cyber infestation of the first order," said Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan.

Six people are in detention in Estonia. A seventh person, a Russian man, is at large. Prosecutors plan to extradite the individuals from Estonia, Mr. Bharara said.

The two-year investigating began after NASA uncovered that 130 of its computers had been infected, said Paul Martin, NASA's inspector general.

However, there's no indication at this point that any space or scientific projects were impacted, he said.

U.S. prosecutors are assaying at least $14 million in forfeiture in the case, according to the 27-count indictment. The charges include engaging in conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, wire fraud and money laundering. The wire fraud and money laundering counts carry terms of up to 30 years in prison.

Federal agents, admitting the Federal Bureau of Investigation, early Wednesday seized servers and IP addresses allegedly used by the defendants, Mr. Bharara said.

According to the indictment, the spyware would direct a computer user's Internet searches to a "rogue" server operated by the defendants, including servers in New York and Chicago. Then, if the user tried to reach a popular website, such as Apple Inc.'s iTunes store or Netflix.com, they would be directed to another website, such as one purporting to sell Apple software, according to the indictment.

Also, the malware allegedly would replace ads on popular websites, such as Amazon.com, ESPN.com or WSJ.com, with other ads when viewed from an infected computer, according to the indictment.

The defendants, who claimed to be given legitimate online advertising firms, allegedly received payments each time computers clicked on the links or the advertisements, according to the indictment.

The malware also allegedly was designed to disenable anti-virus software on infected computers and prevented virus updates, according to the indictment. online.wsj.com

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Nook Tablet, Amazon Kindle Fire ‘mini-tablets’ will shake up market

Everybody really wants to make a tablet these days. You can’t turn around in your local electronics retailer without bumping into some variant of either an iPad 2 or Android device.

And those devices cover a wide range: from cheap and available $99 models for those willing to put up with drawbacks, such as sluggish performance or unattractive design, to high-end offerings from Sony and Samsung. Most people are opting for the $499 iPad, if market share shows us anything. But there is another class of tablet that’s on the rise: something in between.

Barnes & Noble has joined this fray by adding the Nook pad to its Nook family. Last month, Amazon introduced the Kindle Fire, which I wrote about a few weeks ago.

If the Nook Tablet looks a lot alike the Nook Color, which was released last year, that’s probably because they’re nearly identical.

These new tablets achieve about 80 percent of what you can do with an iPad, are backed by companies consumers know and trust and cost roughly half of Apple’s base model. And I think they’re going to make a huge impact on the market.

Let’s call them the mini-tablets.

Barnes & Noble’s newest model, which will start at $249, is clearly intended to compete with the likes of the $199 Kindle Fire. The devices sport the same size display, have dual-core processors, put content consumption (such as reading books and magazines, watching movies and listening to music) front and center, and run a deeply customized variation of Google’s Android operating system.

The Nook Tablet has a leg up on its challenger in a couple of minor categories — mainly the internal memory (1GB) and the storage available (16GB expandable to 32GB, vs. the Fire’s 8GB). Barnes & Noble says that its screen technology is better than Amazon’s and that it has better customer service. It does have real stores, after all.

The Nook Tablet comes pre-loaded with Hulu and Netflix software and plugs into it is parent company’s vast library of books. They’re lean-back tablets, maybe even more than the iPad 2. But in many ways, these devices are shockingly similar and clearly aimed at the same audience.

Both devices will have separate, non-Google-approved app stores. Amazon says the Fire will launch with more than 10,000 applications. Barnes & Noble says “thousands” of titles are available for its platform. For developers, the situation is somewhat of a nightmare, as they must customize their software for each tablet, and for Google’s own operating system. I feel for them.

But what will make customers choose Barnes & Noble’s model over the Fire, iPad 2 or the myriad of other Android options?

That’s a very good question, one I’m not sure the bookdealer has a great answer for. At the company’s presentation Monday, representatives took great pains to distance themselves from Amazon, pointing to product design and earlier sales of the Nook Color.

According to Barnes & Noble, the Nook Color is the runner-up selling tablet in the United States, behind only the iPad 2. Will the Nook Tablet help the company hold that position?

From a content standpoint, that’s unclear. Sure, the Nook Tablet has Hulu Plus and Netflix, but Amazon will offer all its streaming services (which now include TV, movies and music) along with its book catalogue (a large and quickly growing selection). Also, Amazon will offer its Prime subscribers thousands of content titles for no additional charge.

More important, the Fire is cheaper than the Nook Tablet and will be available sooner; $50 is significant when you’re talking about sub-$300 tablets. And Amazon clearly has an edge here.

From a retail perspective, them should be interesting to watch Amazon and Barnes & Noble duke it out. Amazon has a massive online footprint and says it will be in 16,000 old-fashioned brick-and-mortar stores, a place where Barnes & Noble traditionally holds ground.

One thing is sure: As the costs for tablets fall and more desirable partnerships are struck, consumers will be waking up to a whole new way of thinking about content — how they get it, where they get it from and how they use it.

The first test of this new world is about to come. If either Barnes & Noble or Amazon can prove there’s a viable tablet out there besides the iPad and can do it for less, it could have ripple effects throughout the technology industry. A few years agone, cheaper, lower-powered, “just good enough” netbooks upended the laptop market and made computer makers rethink their strategies. This could be a repeat performance. washingtonpost.com

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Microsoft unveils $50 smartphone Samsung Focus Flash

usatoday.com

Microsoft on Monday took its turn drive down the buy price of a smartphone by unveiling the $50 Samsung Focus Flash as part of a publicity event in New York City.

Last month, Apple dropped the price of it is 2-year-old iPhone 3GS model to zero (with a contract) to better compete against Google Droid models available since spring for $79.

Google, Apple and now Microsoft are moving sharply to amplify the market beyond technophiles willing to pay top dollar for the trendiest phones.

"Turns out about 70% of the folks in the U.S. haven't taken the leap to a smartphone yet," says Greg Sullivan, senior mobile communications manager at Microsoft. "Over the next few years, 100s of 1000000s of fresh smartphone users will come on board, especially at attractive prices like this."

Smartphones take photos and video and can do nearly everything a laptop does. They typically sell for $199 to $500.

Researcher IDC says the global smartphone commercialise will rise 49.2% this year, with more than 450 million units shipped, compared with 303.4 million in 2010.

Microsoft currently holds about 2% of the global smartphone commercialise and less than 6% of the U.S. market, despite spending billions over more than a decade on Windows cellphones. Last year, the software giant abandoned the clunky Windows Mobile operating system, and built a new one from scratch, called Window Phone 7.

On Monday, the company unveiled a six-story tall smartphone near Macy's in acclaim Square to juice up excitement about a new line of Mango OS handsets arriving on store shelves in the U.S.

Microsoft is touting the ability of the $50 Samsung Flash Focus; it incorporates a cutting-edge touch system for calls, texting and social networking. And it can directly access Xbox Live and work with Microsoft Office documents.

IDC analyst Al Hilwa cautions that Microsoft, Apple and Google must be careful not to cheapen the cachet of smartphones.

And Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg notes that retail price is only one consideration. Smartphone data plans typically run $80 or more a month. "Any consumer who can do arithmetical realizes that the cost of a smartphone over two years, when you add in monthly service fees, is far more than $50," he says. usatoday.com

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Apple boots security guru who exposed iPhone exploit

Protection investigator Charlie Miller has been booted out from participating in Apple's developer programs, shortly after releasing early findings of a security hole in the company's iOS software.

Miller annunciated the news on Twitter this afternoon, saying "OMG, Apple just kicked me out of the iOS Developer program. That's so rude!"

Earlier today Forbes' Andy Greenberg published a story featuring Miller, who is a long-familiar security researcher who targets Apple's products and services. Miller's latest discovery comprised a security hole in iOS that let applications grab unsigned code from third-party servers that could be added to an app even after it has comprised approved and is live on Apple's App Store.

To test the feature, Miller released a general stock-checking app called InstaStock that coulded and grab bits of code to show that it worked. As noted in our original coverage, such behavior is grounds for dismissal from Apple's developer program, as spelled out in Apple's App Store guidelines.

But as Apple notes in its letter to Miller (posted below), he violated sections 3.2 and 6.1 of Apple's iOS Developer Program License Agreement (a separate agreement), which respectively cover interfering with Apple's software and services, and hiding features from the company when submitting them.

"I don't think they have ever done this to another researcher. Then again, no researcher has ever looked into the security of their App Store. And after this, I imagine no other ones ever will," Miller said in an email to CNET. "That is the actually bad news from their decision."

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter.

Miller has foregrounded numerous security flaws within Apple software across the years, with one of his most high-profile discoveries being a hack for the mobile version of Safari in 2007, shortly after the first iPhone was released. In addition, he's been a fixedness at the Pwn2Own security contest to gain control of Apple's Mac OS X computers through the built-in Safari Web browser. More recently, Miller detailed that the low-level system software that ships on all of Apple's recent-model batteries was protected by the same two passwords, allowing would-be attackers theoretically disable the batteries given access to an administrator account.

In a tweet, Miller noted that he paid for his development accounts himself, despite the company doling out accession to security researchers. news.cnet.com

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Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch e-reader drops to $99

latimesblogs.latimes.com

Barnes & Noble dropped the cost on it is Nook e-reader, now renamed the Nook Simple Touch, to $99 on Monday.

The price cutting, down from $139, came aboard the unveiling of the new Nook Tablet at $250 and the drop in price of the Nook Color tablet to $200 from $250.

Along with the price change leave come a software change to all touch-screen e-Ink Nooks that will result in faster page turns and sharper text, the bookseller said. The Nook's hardware will remain the same, with a promised battery life of two months with about 1 hour of reading a day and a 6-inch touchscreen.

The Nook Simple Touch's price drop will put the device even in price on Amazon's approaching Kindle Touch with Special Offers, which runs advertisements on the Kindle's home screen and screen saver. latimesblogs.latimes.com

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GM To Recall More Than 38,400 Pontiac G8s Over Airbag Issue

(RTTNews) - Automaker General Motors Co. (GM: News ) is recalling more than thirty-eight,400 Pontiac G8 models to reprogram the sensor/control modules of airbags for the front passenger seats.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA said on Saturday that GM will recall 38,444 vehicles of model years 2008 and 2009, which were manufactured in Australia by GM's subsidiary Holden and foreign into the U.S. According to the agency, the airbag modules may not be in compliance with federal standard for head injury protection of riders.

The NHTSA noted that with the front seat positioned full forward, the seat-position detector will cause a 30-millisecond delay in deployment of the airbag. In the event of a crash, the delay may result in increased head injury to certain front seat occupants.

However, no complaints, crashes or injuries have been reported related to the air-bag issue, the NHTSA said.

GM's dealers will reprogram the detection and diagnostic module free of charge. However, the automaker has not yet provided an owner notification schedule.

GM closed Friday's dealing at $23.61, down $0.42 or 1.75 percent on a volume of 9.45 million shares.rttnews.com

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Twenty Minutes of Mass Effect 3 Beta Footage Emerges

Oh, you thought you accepted to wait till Jan to get your hands on the Mass Effect 3 beta?  A lucky few gamers in the Xbox Live Preview program were rather lucky, as Microsoft in reality put the beta up early on accident.  With the beta being snagged up rather quickly with a few lucky people, videos of the beta were bound to make their way out.

Thanks to YouTube user Gamer812, we have over twenty minutes of footage for the Mass Effect 3 co-op beta.  Please keep in mind that the beta is apparently not a finished product, but you’ll get the general idea of however everything acts.  Continue viewing below for the video footage.

stickskills.com

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Shaking it up many apps at a time

FROM a trickle to a torrent, the release of new travel apps has become such a regular occurrence, it is hard to keep up.

Destination data, booking services, trip contrivers and niche travel apps are lining up to challenge App Store favourites such as TripAdvisor, Urbanspoon and Webjet.

There are apps (or application program* for mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads and Android smartphones) for everything from booking a cab in a strange city to keeping track of your travel vaccinations - seek and you will believably find.

Apps for booking

Hotels.com recently launched a easy iPad app that allows travellers to search and book about 140,000 hotels around the world in a choice of more than 30 languages.

The free app provides fast accession to about 20,000 last-minute deals, more than 2.5 million user reviews and last-minute bookings based on location, so it should prove a strong rival to other hotel booking apps.

The emerging trend for hotel booking apps is "mobile exclusive", where smartphone and pad computer users can access deals that are theoretically not available through other channels.

Apps for inspiration

Some travel apps are as much about inspiration as they are about providing practical information.

Abercrombie & Kent's new World of A&K iPad app allows for users to virtually visit 26 "iconic destinations" around the world using multimedia content.

Travellers can use the app's interactional map to display the places they've visited or wish to visit and can then export the map to Google Earth to share with family and friends.

In Australia, the new, visually rich Australia: Where to Go app has multimedia imagery and information such as top 10 lists that provide inspiration for trip planning as well as practical information once on the road.

Users can filter the data using criteria such as family, de luxe, urban and wildlife to find places and attractions that suit their interests.

Apps for information

TripAdvisor is taking on destination-guide publishers such as alone Planet with free mobile city guides, so far available for 20 major cities.

Available on Android phones (iPhone apps pending), the guides are automatically synced with the last TripAdvisor content or they can be used offline, so travellers can avoid expensive roaming charges.

More and more destinations are now offering their own apps, to allow for information for visitants on what to see and do.

Tourism Victoria recently released a stylish Play Melbourne app with about 500 listings of cafes, bars, restaurants and shops in Melbourne, while Tourism Western Australia has just launched an Experience WA app with more than 7000 listings.

Even smaller areas are putting together their own oblations: the Mudgee area north-west of Sydney has released a free iPhone app about local wineries and attractions, while the Pacific coast has created an iPhone app that covers the tourist drive from Sydney to Brisbane.

Apps for niches

Food- and wine-oriented travellers can get free information on 1000s of vineyards, cellar doors, restaurants and food producers through a new iPhone app, VisitVineyards.

For nature-minded travellers, the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service has produced a whale-watching guide, Wild About Whales, for iPhones and Androids, with information on recent sightings, different types of whales and whale behaviour.

This year's Australian ski season has also seen the release of several snow apps, allowing skiers to check conditions, record their runs and find their friends.

Mount Buller is taking it one step further with a coming summer version, allowing mountain bikers to track their rides.

Apps for the future

The Dutch airline KLM has launched a clever TripShake app that allows travelers to find inspiration by giving their phone a shake.

Travellers can enter criteria such as travel dates or leave their options open and then shake their phone to get a destination to consider.

Another shake will bring up another destination and travelers can keep shaking till they find something that grabs their interest.

Overseas hotel-booking sites are also providing a glimpse of what future apps may offer, incorporating augmented reality and high-quality virtual tours into their apps, so travellers can almost experience a hotel before they book.
Future is mobile

Searches using mobile devices now account for fourteen per cent of Google's traffic — up from just 4 per cent a year ago.

Speaking at the Travolution Summit in London last month, the director of mobile for Google, Ian Carrington, said mobile represented the future, increasingly cannibalising "desktop business".

Carrington said Google explore showed more people were using mobile internet than apps, with 50 per cent of mobile users starting their interaction with a search. smh.com.au

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Barnes and Noble NOOK Tablet details leaked

 slashgear.com

This week the folks at Barnes & Noble accept had leaked out the newest addition to their NOOK family, a device by the name of NOOK Tablet, one that looks rather similar to the NOOK Color of the past but with a dual-core Texas Instruments OMAP4 processor instead. Inside you’ll also find 16GB of internal storage as well as a microSD card slot which can take 32GB, battery life of something around four hours of video playback (with wi-fi on) or 8 hours off. This device will connect over Wi-fi only and has the same 7-inch VividView IPS display as the NOOK Color.

The pad has been thinned out by .02 inches, made barge by .9 ounces, and increased in built-in storage by 8 GB. Other than that, This device seems to be rather similar to the original NOOK Color indeed. Have a look at our massive week-long look at the NOOK Color from back when it was called NOOKcolor right here: Week With NOOKcolor.

Other than that, there’s a blow in NOOK Color software in that it now features Hulu Plus, you’ve not got access to Rhapsody, MOG, and Grooveshark, and of course Pandora still works as it comes pre-installed. Real Simple and The New Yorker have been added to the Barnes and Noble library, and games such as Scrabble have been added to the basic NOOK Color store of games.

The current NOOK Color will be $199 in the near future although the new NOOK Tablet will be $249, this making us very much have to think about whether we want an ultra-inexpensive dual-core tablet or an undeniably cheap original NOOK Color. Think about that! Of course the whole thing will have to be rooted and turned to Android UNLESS the interface has been opened up beyond what we have seen on the NOOK Color thus far. We’ll just have to wait until Monday when all of this information comes out formally.  slashgear.com

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HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket go on sale

engadget.com

You did not anticipate Ma Bell to open it is 1st LTE markets without tossing in a few 4G friendly toys, did you? Of course not, we told you as much last week -- but today things get official: The Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket and HTC Vivid (formerly known as the vacation) are ready to take Ma Bell's new LTE nodes for a birl. Not much has changed since the last time we saw these phones -- the Skyrocket still knocks the Galaxy S II's screen size and processor speed up a notch (a 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus Display and 1.5GHz C.P.U., for those of you keeping track), and the Vivid still has a four.5-inch qHD display, 1080p HD video recording via an 8MP rear camera and a 1.2GHz CPU. What's new? AT&T is presently selling both handsets with an online discount, bidding the Galaxy S II Skyrocket for $150 with a two-year commitment, and the Vivid for a paltry $99. If you're lucky enough to live in one of AT&T's egressing LTE commercialises, skip on over to the outfit's webstore and have a look. engadget.com

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Apple gives devs second beta of iOS 5 battery fix

Less than 2 days after issuing its 1st crack at a fix for iOS 5's battery draining issue, Apple has issued a new version of the software to developers, suggesting its public release may come sooner than expected.

Apple nowadays posted a 2nd beta of iOS 5.0.1 to its developer site, an update to the initial release of iOS 5 that fixes a handful of bugs while adding new features to the original iPad.

The software hit Apple's developer site on Wednesday, shortly after Apple acknowledged that some users were indeed seeing poor battery life after upgrading to the newer version of iOS.

Besides tackling the battery life issue, iOS 5.0.1 brings multitasking gestures to original iPad owners, a feature that was a notable omission in the initial release of the new software, believing that earlier betas had the feature enabled.

The update also fixes a security issue with Apple's Smart Cover as the iPad 2 that would let users gain access to whatever app the owner of that device was running, even if they didn't know that user's lockscreen password, along with fixing a bug with documents in Apple's iCloud service, and voice recognition accuracy for Australian users using Apple's dictation feature on the iPhone 4S.

Apple said it would be delivering the software update to the general public "in a few weeks," however the reality that the two betas are so close to each other suggests Apple may be trying to push that deadline up. By comparison, betas between prerelease versions of iOS 5 comprised sometimes weeks apart. news.cnet.com

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Switched On: Motorola's manic modularity

engadget.com

When freshly independent Motorola Mobility introduced it is Atrix handset on AT&T at CES, the smartphone was generally well-received. But what drew more attention was the range of accessories that the company has continued to support through other high-end launchings such as those of the Photon on Sprint and the Droid Bionic on Verizon.

This products now admit a car dock for navigation, HDMI dock for entertainment, and lapdock for enhanced productivity. Motorola was not the first company to introduce an HDMI dock, and Asus' Padfone embeds a handset more directly into another device than do Motorola's products. Taken together, though, the Motorola dock derby better positions the handset as the heart of a mobile lifestyle -- one that can be easily transplanted so that it can overcome the limitations of it is native form factor. It is a fitting push for one of the few smartphone companies not vested in other traditional electronic devices such as personal computer* or televisions.

With the release of the Droid RAZR, Motorola hearkens back to the thinness and structural integrity of its once wildly popular featurephone. Of course, the new smartphone is generations ahead of its namesake flip phone in terms of software sophistication. But a new generation of Motorola accessories make the case that even smartphones have their limits. At the Droid RAZR launching, the company also announced MOTOACTV, a wearable screen that not only competes with a sudden slew of fitness activity monitors but as well acts as a remote user interface for notifications and music control, similar to Sony Ericsson's LiveView.

MOTOACTV isn't the only trick that Motorola has at the closing of its sleeve, altho. The square-screened device also communicates via Bluetooth to one of two headphone sets that not only play music from the phone, but include sensors to measure your heartbeat. (The headphones can also represent your heartbeat audibly without the MOTOACTV.) With the triad of a smartphone, Bluetooth earphones and the MOTOACTV, Motorola is marketing the first genuine personal area network aimed at consumers.

The company that began the year treating the smartphone as a molecular building block now seems to be breaking it into atoms strewn about your person. But both the larger and smaller accessories (and the accessories' accessories, which admit a MOTOACTV wrist strap, armband and bike mount) both simply expand what defines the modern smartphone. In the case of a lapdock or HDMI dock, it's the display. In the case of heartbeat-monitoring headphones or an external screen like the MOTOACTV, it's the size and sensors.

At the launch of the MOTOACTV, Motorola would not commit as to whether it would open up the device to third-party development, but there's already a number of companies -- at least some of which are also using Android -- intent on creating watch-sized devices with a wide range of brands. That quest has been a long one, but what Motorola's modularity demonstrates is that the smartphone software is becoming so entwined in our lives that they are seeping out from the confines from a single device. engadget.com

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Canon unveils high-end camera for filmmakers

Camera maker and office equipment giant Canon Inc. is first appearance a new high-end digital video camera, called Cinema EOS, and providing for filmmakers who use it from a support center in Southern California.

The camera similar in shape to a conventional still camera but comes with a variety of mounts.

CEO Fujio Mitarai unveiled the product on the overriding Pictures movie lot Thursday, saying its digital images had the warmth of film and brought out skin tones well.

The Japanese company touted the camera as aiding the company's return to Hollywood after an absence of forty years.

The company did not immediately say how much the camera will cost. businessweek.com

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Google updates search engine for fresher results

Google has modernised the way it serves up results in response to search queries.

The update is designed to work out whether a somebody wants up-to-date results or historical data.

The US firm estimated the changes to its core algorithm would make a difference to about 35% of searches.

The changes try to make results more relevant and beef up boasts which Google believes set it apart from rivals.

By contrast, Microsoft's Bing search engine emphasises social search.
Fresh spam

"Search results, like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer's day, are best when they're fresh," wrote Google fellow Amit Singhal in a blogpost explaining the changes.

The under-the-hood changes sought to understand whether a searcher wants results "from the last week, day or even minute" said Mr Singhal.

The update is supposed to offer a better approximate of how "fresh" the results should be.

For instance, said Mr Singhal, anyone searching for information about the "Occupy Oakland dissents" would probably want up to the minute news.

These need to be distinguished from searches for regular events such as sports results or company reports.

Other types of searches could call on older results, he said. Those looking for a recipe to make tomato sauce for pasta quickly would be happy with a page that is a few months or years old.

The update to improve the "freshness" of results builds on the big update made to the underlying infrastructure of Google's core indexing system in August 2010 known as Caffeine. That change made it easier for Google to keep its index up to date and to add fresh sources of information.

Writing on the Search Engine Land news site, analyst Danny Sullivan described the changes as "huge". The last big update to the Google algorithm, known as Panda, affected only 12% of searches.

The update could have potential disadvantages, warned Mr Sullivan.

"Rewarding freshness possibly introduces huge decrements in relevancy, new avenues for spamming or getting "light" content in," said Mr Sullivan. bbc.co.uk

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Apple makes IOS 5.0.1 available to developers

FRUIT THEMED GADGET MAKER Apple has made its IOS 5.0.1 OS  available to developers, signaling that Iphone users might soon have a fix for battery life problems.

Concording to macintosh Rumours, the beta version of the updated Iphone and Ipad OS is now available to developers.

Yesterday, The INQUIRER reported that Apple had confirmed it would release a fix soon for the Iphone 4S battery problems that have been plaguing its users.

The company accepted quite a while to acknowledge the problems, which as with antennagate were discovered by users and not adverted when the handset was launched.

The IOS update should fix the problems with battery life, altho as yet we aren't quite sure how.

The update evidently will also fix some bugs with documents in the cloud and add voice recognition for Australia and multitasking gestures for the Ipad. It will also contain security improvements.

Meanwhile, a problem where anybody with a Smart Cover could get into a password-protected Ipad 2 has also been fixed by the update.

The IOS 5 update probably will be ready for the general public at the end of this month, altho no date has been arrange. Until then, Iphone users will need to keep their charger convenient. theinquirer.net

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'Call of Duty' to let gamers compete across platforms

edition.cnn.com

(CNN) -- The "Call of Duty" franchise is a perennial blockbuster, with more than sixty-five million units sold so far in the United States and hordes of fans lining up each fall to buy the latest installment of the war-simulation video game.

Now, Activision Publishing will find out whether fans who are accustomed to dropping $60 on a new "CoD" game each year will also cough up an extra $50 to keep their game content fresh.

The much-hyped "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" is adjust to arrive in stores on Tuesday. As usual, players get inside the helmets of soldiers -- in this case, fighting a near-futuristic global war against Russian forces who have invaded multiple countries, including the United States.

The storyline, with battles in London, New York and Paris, is a continuance of its 2009 predecessor.

But "Modern Warfare 3" will be the first game in the series to launch with a new member service called "Call of Duty Elite."

Players will be able to sign up for a free social network that encapsulates the fresh game, last year's "Black Ops" and future "Call of Duty" games. They'll be able to create a profile that extensively tracks gameplay statistics for multiple "CoD" games across the various console platforms for which they're available.

Stat systems are typically maintained by console developers, like Microsoft and Sony, which means Xbox 360 gamers cannot rank themselves against PlayStation 3 players. The Elite service bridges that gap, although gamers still will not be able to play versus someone using a different type of console.

Elite users will also be able to share videos or screen shots captured within the game and download "Call of Duty" stat-tracking applications to their smartphones or tablets. Microsoft and Bungie maintain a similar dedicated service for "Halo."

Despite competition this fall from fellow first-person shooter game "Battlefield 3," which sold 5 million units in its first week, Activision is confident the "Call of Duty" franchise has enough muscle to persuade customers to spend the $50 per year for premium services.

"'Call of Duty' is a franchise that's developed every year of its existence," Activision publication CEO Eric Hirshberg said in a recent interview. "I think that we are finding that people have a very healthy appetite for content."

Subscribers will be served a new piece of content they can download each month and use to participate in competitions. The content will include new maps and gameplay modes.

"The things that we're charging for are things that we really wouldn't be able to provide if we didn't," Hirshberg said. "It's not modeled after anything. It's kind of a new entry into the model here."

Activision has been working on the Elite service, which was previously called Project Beachhead, for two years, Hirshberg has said. The company formed a division called Beachhead Studio to maintain its development. "Black Ops" players were able to beta test Elite until mid-October, when Activision shut down parts of the service in advance of "Modern Warfare 3's" debut.

Subscription gaming has proliferated in a genre called massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMO, or MMOG), the most prominent being "World of Warcraft." That game happens to be owned by Activision's Blizzard arm, allowing the Beachhead team to learn from the pros.

"There are a lot of big brains that we picked down at Blizzard," Hirshberg said. "They've done this kind of relationship with consumers, with gamers, very well, probably better than anybody."

Sony has tried to marry the first-person shooter genre with vast online worlds in a game called "PlanetSide." It wasn't a hit, but the company announced a sequel this summer. Activision believes it has found a sweet spot that won't muck with the "Call of Duty" formula but will still spur gamers to open their wallets.

"Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" will be available Tuesday for PCs and the PlayStation3, Xbox 360 and Wii consoles. The game retails for $60 and is rated Mature, meaning it contains content suitable for people ages 17 and older. edition.cnn.com

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EU Antitrust Authority Investigates Samsung's Use of Patents Against Apple

The European Union's top antitrust authorisation has launched an investigating into Samsung's apply of patents to block sales of Apple products.

The news will be a boost to Apple in the ongoing legal battles between the two companies.

Samsung has sued Apple in five E.U. countries averring infringement of its patents on 3G mobile technology. The European commissioning will now consider whether the South Korean company is abusing the principle of fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing in these cases.

FRAND licences allow companies to develop open criteria for schemes such as 3G mobile networks by sharing information and technology. Standards bodies typically require that companies participating in the development of a standard agree to certify any relevant patents they hold on FRAND terms whenever their technology is essential to the standard. That's notably the case with the 3G Partnership Project, which maintains the standards for UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) 3G mobile networks. The aim is to allow the industry to work smoothly and give more choice to consumers. Samsung and Apple are both 3GPP members.

Samsung brought its cases against Apple in retaliation for Apple's claims that Samsung was copying its products. In a recent California court filing, Apple said: "Samsung's efforts to coerce Apple into tolerating Samsung's imitation have not been limited to counterclaims. Samsung has launched an aggressive, worldwide campaign to enjoin Apple from allegedly practicing Samsung's patents."

However on Friday Samsung answered: "Samsung has at all times remained committed to fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing terms for our wireless standards-related patents. We have received a request for information from the Commission and are cooperating fully. Note that this is a overture investigation and the European Commission has not yet determined whether to conduct a full investigation."

In a preliminary investigation the Commission requests information from the concerned parties. Such requests for information are standard procedure in antitrust investigations to allow the Commission to establish the relevant facts in a case. If there is sufficient evidence the the EU's competitor rules have been broken a wider investigation will then follow.

If the Commission finds that Samsung is guilty of antitrust infringements, it could force Samsung to drop its legal cases against Apple in Europe, with possible repercussions on other cases worldwide. The Commission as well has the power to impose fines.

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Fresh iPhone Apps for Nov. 2: GarageBand, AmazonFresh, Russian Dancing Men, Bring Me Down

Grab your iPhone and download GarageBand, the app that Apple used to show off the power of the iPad 2 way back in March. It's now available for the iPhone as well, along with AmazonFresh, a new app from online retailer Amazon that allows you to purchase groceries applying your iOS device. In games, you will find yourself addicted to rhythm game Russian Dancing Men before long. We’ve also got a tough new physics puzzler in Bring Me Down, which bundles great Unreal Engine 3 graphics.

GarageBand (iPhone, iPad) $4.99

A banner app from the launch of the iPad 2 is now available on the iPhone. Grab GarageBand and you can turn your iOS devices into musical instruments using their touchscreens, including guitars, keyboards and more. Your iPhone will generate the audio as if you were playing a real musical instrument, and the app can even teach you how to play.

Once you're confident enough, you can also apply GarageBand to record the music you create. You can save several tracks with the app, then edit and produce the music you record, as if your iPhone were a full studio.

AmazonFresh (iPhone, iPad) Free

Amazon is great for purchasing merchandise online, ranging from books and movies to technology and everything in between. Now, you can even order groceries on Amazon, and you can do so with your iOS devices thanks to AmazonFresh.

AmazonFresh lets you shop for groceries and use Amazon’s secure servers to make your purchases. When you buy something, you can choose when you want your groceries delivered to your door. The app also lets you scan barcodes to find products and order them quickly. Inititally available only to Seattle-area residents, hopefully AmazonFresh will expand to other major cities too.

Russian Dancing Men (iPhone, iPad) $0.99

Rhythm game Russian Dancing Men has a Soviet slant and an easy-to-learn gameplay premise. In each level, you control a group of Russian dancers moving from left to right across a landscape riddled with obstacles you’ll have to avoid. You’ll hit various buttons in time with music to avoid spikes, pits and other objects in your way. The better you match the rhythm of the music, the higher your score.

Russian Dancing Men includes three difficulty modes and Game Center support that provides leaderboards and achievements, so you can see how your high scores rack up against players all over the world. It also includes a lot of humor and a cartoony style that makes it hard to put down.

Bring Me Down (iPhone, iPad) $1.99

Unreal Engine 3-powered physics game Bring Me Down has some pretty great-looking 3-D graphics, but its gameplay is pretty tough. In each level, you are tasked with annihilating a stack of blocks to lower a character to the floor below. The trouble is, the guy you are lowering to the ground is trapped in a ball that will roll off if you aren’t careful about how you lower him down.

Tapping blocks removes them, and you’re scored by how well you can delete the blocks without dropping your ball or two bananas (also encased in balls) off the side of the main platform. Bring Me Down includes 50 puzzle levels to play through. It also admits tips to help you solve each level and HD support for its great-looking graphics. appolicious.com

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HP Reveals Project Moonshot: Ultra-Low Power Datacenter in the Works

xbitlabs.com

Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday exposed a new industry program comprising a new server development platform, customer discovery lab and partner ecosystem to help customers significantly reduce complexity, energy use and costs. Under the new Moonshot program, HP, along with partners from AMD, ARM, Calxeda, Canonical and Red Hat will develop technologies for ultra low-power datacenters.

Project Moonshot is designed to fuel the advancement of low-energy server technology, while promoting industry collaboration to break fresh ground in “hyperscale” computing environments such as cloud services and on-demand computing. HP’s project Moonshot combines with HP Converged Infrastructure technology to admit the sharing of resources – including storage, networking, management, power and cooling – across thousands of servers. It paves the way to the future of low-energy computing for emerging web, cloud and massive scale environses.

Through these efforts, data center efficiencies are expected to reach new heights for select workloads and applications, depleting up to 89% less energy and 94% less space, while reducing overall costs up to 63% compared to traditional server systems.

Project Moonshot is a multiyear, multi-phased program that builds on HP’s experience powering the world’s biggest cloud infrastructures and 10 years of extensive low-energy computing infrastructure research from HP Labs, the company’s central research arm.

Reinventing the traditional approach to data center infrastructure by using Converged Infrastructure as its foundation, project Moonshot unlocks the promise of emerging extreme low-energy servers by pooling resources in a highly federated environment to radically reduce space requirements, management complexness and energy consumption. It includes three essential elements to support the industry’s evolution to hyperscale computing:

    * The HP Redstone server development platform is the first in a line of HP server development platforms that feature extreme low-energy server C.P.U.s. Initially incorporating Calxeda EnergyCore ARM Cortex processors, future Redstone versions will include Intel Atom-based processors as well as others. HP Redstone is designed for testing and proof of concept. It incorporates more than 2800 servers in a single rack, reducing cabling, switching and the need for peripheral devices, and delivering a ninety-seven% reduction in complexity. The initial HP Redstone platform is expected to be available in limited volumes to select customers in the first half of next year.
    * The HP Discovery Lab enables clients to experiment, test and benchmark applications on the HP Redstone, and another extreme low-energy platforms, as well as on traditional servers. The first lab is scheduled to open in Houston in January, with additional sites planned to open in Europe and Asia. With remote or onsite access, clients can work directly with HP engineers and industry peers to learn about the benefits of extreme low-energy servers for their specific application needs.
    * The HP Pathfinder program, part of the HP AllianceONE partner program, is dedicated to client discovery efforts across the data center. It also encourages development of elements of the project Moonshot program within open industry standards. The program includes independent software vendors – compute, computer memory and networking partners who contribute hardware, software and technical expertise. Initial participants are expected to include AMD, ARM Holdings, Calxeda, Canonical and Red Hat, with additional partners to be announced as the program develops.

For companies with thousands of servers delivering web services, social media and simple content deliverance applications, project Moonshot is designed to deliver improved simplicity while achieving energy and cost savings never before possible.

Project Moonshot is based on experience gained through HP’s ahead low-energy innovations such as HP Data Center Smart Grid, which enables customers to double or triple their data center capacity, as well as the recently announced HP EcoPOD, the one of the most efficient data centers. The Project Moonshot substructure is an extension of the HP ProLiant brand of servers, which incorporates traditional x86 processors from Intel and AMD.

“Companies with hyperscale environments are facing a crisis in capacity that requires a fundamental modify at the architectural level. HP has a strong track record of leading market transitions that enable our clients to stay ahead of the technology curve, maximize their ability to introduce and speed their time to market of new services while reducing costs and energy use,” said Paul Santeler, vice president and general manager of hyperscale business unit at industry standard servers and software unit at HP. xbitlabs.com

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New Nook Color could beat Kindle Fire's sub-$200 price

Barnes & Noble has called for the news media to a New York event on Monday, sparking speculation that the bookseller will announce a lower-cost Nook Color tab computer that matches or beats the $199 price of the upcoming Amazon Fire.

Three analysts agreed that Barnes & Noble won't want to be beat by Amazon.com on price, since it already sells a 7-in. Color Nook for $249 that was first announced Nov. 19, 2010, and was updated to Android 2.2 in April. The 7-in. Amazon Fire tablet, annunciated September. 28, will be available November. 15, eight days after the Barnes & Noble event.

"The issue [facing Barnes & Noble] is price and availability of content, which is the key issue for all tablets going forward," said Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates.

In addition to potentially lowering its Nook Color price, Barnes & Noble could annunciate a sub-$100 black and white e-reader to compete with low-cost Kindle e-readers from Amazon, analysts said.

The most far-reaching idea has Barnes & Noble announcing a new example of the Nook Color that runs a quad-core processor, up from the single core and dual-core processor from various tablet makers.

Rob Enderle, an analyst at Enderle Group, said Nvidia's quad-core chip, code-named Kal-El, could be incorporated into the next Nook Color, giving it matchless speed for browsing and playing Flash content. "If it's Kal-El, it could be really interesting," Enderle said.

However, Bob O'Donnell, an analyst at research firm IDC, said it isn't clear that any tablet running less than Android edition 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich, can take advantage of the fast speed of a quad-core chip. "Any pre-ICS tablet would make a multicore chip useless," he said. Samsung is unlikely to announce a different tablet this fall, after recently announcing the Android-based Galaxy Tab 7.7 in September, the analysts said.

However, they disagreed on the impact the Barnes & Noble announcement and the Kindle Fire leave have on Apple, which has the runaway tablet leaders with the iPad and the iPad 2 commanding more than 70% of the tablet market. The lowest-priced iPad 2, with its 9.7-in. screen, is priced at $499, but competitive pressures could change that price, analysts said.

O'Donnell said he does not expect an iPad 3 until 2012. Enderle said Apple will probably closely monitor how the Kindle Fire performs, and that there's a slim chance that CEO Tim Cook could announce by year's end a "downscale iPad" to compete on the lower prices of the Nook Color and Kindle Fire.

"We'll see what happens now that Cook is in charge, since Cook wanted to do a lot of things that Jobs didn't agree with," Enderle said. "Cook could pull a surprise with iPad if he sees Fire doing too much [in sales]."

O'Donnell said Apple's strategy will probably be to follow what the company has done with successive generations of its iPhone -- substantially lowering the price for the previous generation devices. "Apple will probably announce an iPad 3 next year, although lowering the iPad 2 to $399 or even $349, from $499," O'Donnell said.

The key for all the platforms could well come down to the number of available of apps, an area where Apple clearly reigns. But O'Donnell said a sub-$200 price for a new Barnes & Noble tablet that emphasizes fast browsing could make up for having fewer available apps. "Barnes & Noble still will have a few apps," he said. computerworld.com

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Best Buy selling 32GB TouchPad for $450 below launch price

thetechherald.com

Though we here at Tech Herald Towers thought the defunct TouchPad tab comprised no more, it would come along finest Buy is still flogging HP’s purportedly dead technology horse.

Moreover, the leading U.S. retail outlet is bidding the TouchPad tablet at a bargain price to any customer in the market for a new PC purchase. Evidently, the nag’s legs are still a-twitchin’.

So, if you wander into a Best Buy this week and a HP or Compaq notebook or All-in-One computer system allures your eye—and your pocketbook—then you can also snaffle the upper-tier 32GB model of the TouchPad for a mere $149.99 USD.

For those with their ears suitably pricked (and they should be), that’s a banging ticket price reduction of $450 USD to secure a thoroughly decent webOS-powered tablet computer in its death throes simply because consumers didn’t buy it at launch.

But, as with any such offer, prospective customers will need to be quick off the mark—not least because HP has said that its final TouchPad production run includes only a limited amount of the 32GB model.

In terms of internal standards, the TouchPad comes equipped with a nimble dual-core 1.2GHz C.P.U., a full 1GB of RAM, and the critically applauded Palm webOS operating system.

Of course, if you don’t need such a hefty amount of gigabyte data storage, there’s all of the time the 16GB model, which—if you can still find one—sells for just $99 USD, down $400 USD on its initial launch price.

HP officially dropped the TouchPad around a month after its summer launching, shortly after Best Buy revealed that it had only been able to sell around 10 percent of the 270,000 TouchPad units it had stocked across its stores. thetechherald.com

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Finally Windows 7 overtakes Windows XP use

REDMOND software package firm Microsoft has finally seen apply of its Windows 7 operating system (OS) overtake that of its ten year old brother, Windows XP.

Web analytics firm Statcounter revealed the change in usage and explicated that globally Windows 7 has a 40.5 per cent market share, Windows XP has 38.5 per cent, and Windows Vista has 11.2 per cent.

"Vista was like the ugly sister that few wanted to dance with," said Aodhan Cullen, CEO, Statcounter, as he announced the changes.

"Despite Microsoft trying to keep it back in the kitchen, [Windows] XP has continued tremendous loyalty over the last decade. However, it looks like the younger Windows 7 is now emerging in the Cinderella role."

The usage charts are not the same across the planet and while Windows 7 has overtaken Windows XP in the America and Europe, the latter is still dominant in Asia, where it has a 55 per cent market share. Windows 7, by comparison, has 36 per cent.

It is ten years since Microsoft brought out the Windows XP operating system, and in those years Microsoft has tried to tempt users away with not just one, but two major OS releases, neither of which seemed to be capable to pull entrenched, and mostly business, users aside from its veteran OS.

Microsoft has committed to support the Windows XP OS until 2014. but perhaps just begrudgingly. As recently as this Spring analyst group Forrester reckoned that 60 per cent of PCs were running it, although it remains a choice target for rootkit infections. theinquirer.net

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AT&T (NYSE:T) Opens 4G LTE Doors

AT&T (NYSE:T) has announced it will be releasing its 1st 4G LTE Smartphone, the HTC Vivid, and the Samsung Galaxy S II for buyers crossed the United States in a week.

The phones feature 4G LTE, which anticipates data speeds up to 10 times that of 3G.

The HTC Vivid is a 1.2-GHz dual-core phone running the gingerbread edition of Android, with a 4.5-inch q HD (540-pixel-by-960-pixel) display. The Samsung device has a slightly beefier dual-core processor 1.5 GHz albeit a smaller displays (800 pixels by four hundred pixels).

Both phones sport 8MP cameras capable of shooting 1080p HD video, and come with 16GB of aboard memory expandable to 32GB.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) stocks were at 29.31 at the end of the last day’s trading. There is comprised a 1.6% movement in the stock price over the past 3 months. emoneydaily.com

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LCD panel firms in South Korea fined a total of $176M

slashgear.com

South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission have fined 10 LCD panel makers controlling inside the country a total of $176 million or 195 billion won. The fines were for allegedly holding meetings with the goal of keeping the prices of LCD screens artificially high. This is not the first time the LCD industry has been broke holding meetings over price fixing in the industry.

Together the ten firms that were fined hold 80% of the market contribution for LCD screens. According to reports, the firms held more than 200 secret meetings dubbed “crystal meetings” between 2001 and 2006 according to an investigator for the commission. Samsung comprised the firm hardest hit in the investigation with its fine alone totaling 97.2 billion won.

LG was the next biggest loser with a fine for three of its units totaling 65.5 billion won. AU Optronics was fined 28.5 billion won. The European Commission also penalized some of these same firms in a similar case last year for price fixing occurring between 2002 and 2006. That EU case also mentioned the “crystal meetings.” I wonder whenever this has anything to do with Sony looking to pull out of the Samsung joint LCD venture. slashgear.com

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October auto sales rate seen at 8-month high

41 economists polled by Reuters expect Oct seasonally adjusted annualized rate to be around 13.2 million vehicles, up about 9 percent from the year earlier. In September, the sales rate was 13.1 million.

Analysts said October's likely stronger sales comprised also driven by the greater availability of vehicles arrived at by Honda Motor Co (7267.T) and Toyota Motor Co (7203.T), after the industry recovered from Japan's March earthquake which triggered a shortage of auto parts.

"We think there was some pent-up ask held over from Honda and Toyota die-hards who waited to buy those and in October there was growing armory," Edmunds.com analyst Michelle Krebs said. Auto sales are an early indicator each month of U.S. consumer demand.

But Krebs added that Honda's rebound could be short-lived after severe flooding in Thailand activated a shortage of crucial electronic parts.

The flooding will not hit October sales, but it may affect Nov and Dec U.S. auto sales, particularly at Honda, analysts said.

Honda withdrew its 2011 financial outlook and cut North American output by half from November 2 to November 10. Honda also pushed back the sales date for its 2012 CR-V crossover, the company's entry in the hot-selling compact SUV market.

"It does seem more severe than we initially believed," Jesse Toprak, Truecar.com analyst, said of the impact of the floods. "Honda has a lot riding on the CR-V and it is a potential constraint in Honda sales for the next several months."

Last week, Ford Motor Co (F.N) said it expected its product to fall by 30,000 vehicles due to supply shortages linked to the floods.

Still, overall U.S. sales over the remainder of the year will benefit from both rising applied car prices and the increased need to replace aging vehicles, analysts said.

U.S. auto sales have been trending higher since June when the annualized sales rate dipped to eleven.6 million vehicles. Better offerings from the likes of General Motors Co (GM.N), Chrysler Group LLC (FIA.MI) and Ford are also boosting sales.

The average vehicle on U.S. roads is almost 11 years old, two years older today than the average in 2007, and at a few point those cars will break down and spur new car sales, analysts said.

Used car prices in September were also at their highest level in more than 5 years, according to a J.P. Morgan October 25 research note.

The fourth quarter of the year is also typically the hardest for pickup truck sales, because of purchases by businesses, Krebs said.

"Everyone's trying to extend the life (of their vehicles), but you can just extend it so far," said Mirko Mikelic, senior portfolio manager with Fifth Third Asset Management. "People are almost forced to swap in for a new vehicle." reuters.com

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Novatel ships three millionth MiFi hotspot

slashgear.com

Novatel Wireless has annunciated that it is celebrating a milestone this week. Novatel is celebrating the fact that it has shipped three million of the MiFi portable intelligent hotspots so far. The device was introduced in 2009. It is a small box that allows the 3G or 4G connection it has to be shared among double devices using WiFi connectivity.

The MiFi was the first of that sort of product and there are others on the commercialise nowadays that jumped on the mobile hotspot train. Novatel does hold some important patents that have to do with the tech needed for the MiFi to operate. The MiFi is in use on 25 another carrier networks around the world.

In June of this year, Novatel added DLNA to the MiFi to give the hotspot even more capability. Before that DLNA feature, the MiFi also offered the ability to share storage on a microSD card placed into the memory card slot on some models. We can expect to see more features added over time since Novatel is known to update the devices regularly.

    “Three years ago we introduced the MiFi Intelligent Mobile Hotspot and revolutionised the way people accession the Internet, fro

m anywhere, anytime,” says Peter Leparulo, chief executive officer of Novatel Wireless. “The MiFi system architecture brought a new user-experience to mobile broadband consumers, with one click connect and no software to install. It also allows carriers to accomplish a wider, more diverse subscriber base with advanced service opportunities. We are very pleased to have achieved this milestone — illustrating our significant market and product leaders for mobile hotspots.”  slashgear.com

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Ubuntu 14.04 to Run on Smartphones, Tablets and TVs

maximumpc.com

"Now it is no longer just about the desktop but really a broader vision.” This remark was part of Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer’s CES 2009 keynote address, in which he talked about the impending transformation of Windows into “an experience that spans the PC, the phone, the TV and the cloud." Fast forward to the present and Canonical is ready with a similar strategy for Ubuntu.

Canonical is describing this new strategy at the ongoing Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando and hopes to realize its vision for the future of popular Linux distro, which spans multiple screen, in a couple of years time.

“By 14.04 LTS Ubuntu will power tablets, phones, TVs and smart screens from the car to the agency kitchen, and it will connect those devices cleanly and seamlessly to the desktop, the server and the cloud,” wrote Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth in a blog post Monday.

Can you guess what is going be the key to this whole scheme? The answer is Unity. Yes, the oft-maligned Unity graphical user interface (GUI) that was introduced as the default GUI with release of Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) earlier this year.

“Unity, the desktop interface in today’s Ubuntu 11.10, was designed with this specific vision in mind. Although the interface for each form factor is shaped appropriately, Unity’s core elements are arranged in exactly the way we need to create coherence crossed all of those devices. This was the origin of the name Unity – a single core interface framework, that scales across all screens, and supports all toolkits.”

In his blog, Shuttleworth underlined the importance of the company’s partnerships with major “silicon vendors that are drive this converging market are critical.” Earlier this month, Canonical rolled out support for chips based on Arm’s architecture inside Ubuntu 11.10. This is, of course, an important development, as support for Arm chips is like a passport to the mobile world.

Further Shuttleworth believes, Ubuntu One and the Ubuntu Software Centre leave do a great job across a different hardware environments: “They deliver the required storage, syncing and sharing capabilities that are not just a convenience but a requirement as we act to a world where content is increasingly shared but the devices that accession them become more diverse. Ubuntu One’s support for other OSes show the ability of Ubuntu to play nice with others, recognising that the divergence is strength.  It admits users to choose the devices they choose but still delivering the benefits of Ubuntu-centred strategy.” maximumpc.com

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Cut price Touchpads appear at Best Buy USA

MORE CUT PRICE Touchpads are going on sale at Best Buy in the US this week, but this time you have to buy a PC to get a cheap one.

Best Buy's bundle allows consumers to get a 32GB HP Touchpad for $149.99 when they buy a PC, but the 16BG version is not available. The deal starts today for online purchases and will launch in stores on 4 November.

The option to buy a discount priced Touchpad is accessible to anybody who buys a Compaq laptop, desktop or all-in-one computer, but the offer excludes netbooks.

HP and Best Buy have already planned for those trying to be canny, also. Although the retailer will accept Touchpad returns for up to 14 days after purchase, if you return the computer and not the Touchpad, Best Buy will charge you $599.99, the full price of the tablet.

HP has said that it is out of stock of Touchpads and it is online inventory is "depleted".

"At HP, we try very hard to provide a positive experience to every client who purchases an HP product. In some cases, like the HP TouchPad where supply has been extremely limited from the start, we simply cannot meet demand," HP said in a statement.

"We are now announcing that while some retailers will have determined stock available, HP's online inventory is depleted."

HP's Touchpad firesale attracted a purchasing frenzy when the devices were reduced to as little as $100 during August. Then at the end of August, the company announced that it would release more of the sold out devices to meet demand.

The INQUIRER has contacted Best Buy in the Britain to see if the deal will be available here, but we're still waiting to hear back.

So if you really, really want a cut price Touchpad and live in the America, you'll need to fork out for a computer too. Surely a small price to pay. theinquirer.net

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