By Steve Seguin - Source : Tom's Guide

Canon unveils four new PowerShot cameras, alongside their high anticipated EOS 50D DSLR camera

Expanding on their very capable entry-line PowerShot A-series, Canon has announced the PowerShot A1000 IS and PowerShot A2000 IS digital cameras. The familiar body design on both cameras house a 10-megapixel sensor, DIGIC III Image Processor, optical Image Stabilization, Face Detection, and an Easy Mode setting. The PowerShot A1000 IS differentiates itself by offering a 2.5-inch LCD, 4x optical zoom, and a choice of four different two-tone color schemes, while the PowerShot A2000 IS features a 3.0-inch LCD and 6x optical zoom. Available in September, the suggested selling prices will be $199.99 and $249.99, respectively.

For those looking for a more youthful look, the newly announced PowerShot E1 digital camera looks to appeal to the teen and tween segment. With a few more curves, and a choice of more feminine colors available, the PowerShot E1 offers much the same as the PowerShot A1000 IS, such as a 2.5-inch LCD, 4x optical zoom, optical Image Stabilization, and 10-megapixel resolution. The light blue and light pink versions probably will not appeal to most guys, but the white version of the PowerShot E1 comes close, offering a fun simple look. Coming in September, the suggested selling price will be $199.99.

Catering to those wishing for a more sophisticated camera without entering SLR territory, Canon announces the versatile PowerShot SX110 IS Digital Camera. With a 10x optical ultra-zoom, 9-megapixel resolution, 3.0-inch LCD, DIGIC III processor, raised flash, optical Image Stabilization, and an Easy Mode option, the camera seems an ideal match for the soccer mom needing that extra zoom or for the photography enthusiastic looking for a compact design. Available at the end of August, the PowerShot SX110 IS will have a suggested selling price of $299.99.

Serious photographers will no doubt be interested in Canon’s other announcement today, the unveiling of the much anticipated EOS 50D, an upgraded version of the EOS 40D. This DSLR features a 15-megapixel CMOS sensor, DIGIC 4 image processor, 3.0-inch VGA LCD, Live View mode, ISO sensitivity up to a whopping ISO 12800, 6.3 frames per second shooting, and an HDMI connection. An interesting addition to the RAW mode is the inclusion of a smaller and more manageable 3.8-megapixel sRAW file option. The EOS 50D is compatible with all the Canon EF and EF-S lenses, with the body and lens kit option including the Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM zoom lens. Scheduled for October, the estimated selling price will be $1,599.00 and $1,399.00, with and without the lens kit, respectively.

Despite having a fairly large pixel count, the 50D still does not have a large full frame sensor. This means that the pixel pitch for it’s APS sized frame will be ultra small, making noise a problem. However, with the new DIGIC 4 processor, Canon may be bringing along more aggressive noise reduction algorithms or it may have even used a new manufacturing process for its sensors.

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By Jane McEntegart - Source : Tom's Guide

IDF is over but we’re still talking about what went on in San Fransisco last week. One of the companies we never got the chance to discuss was Gigabyte, however that’s not to say it didn’t have anything interesting to say at the Intel Developers Forum. It seems as though Intel and Gigabyte are hell bent on muscling in on Apple’s digital entertainment territory.

AppleTV has been around for a little over a year and up until now there has been little competition for the digital media player from the Cupertino-based company. AppleTV is a box that allows users to view movie rentals, TV shows, music, photos, podcasts, and YouTube videos on their television set and the Intel Canmore Digital Video Player is pretty much the same deal. The Canmore allows users to view photos (including support for Flickr, Photobucket and Picasa), watch videos, listen to music and watch YouTube videos on their TV.

The DVR was revealed at this years San Fransisco IDF and while Gigabyte seems to think the introduction of this product will be instrumental in the company’s break into the digital home entertainment market. Unfortunately AppleTV hasn’t exactly been a roaring success and the company hasn’t sold all that many of the boxes since it launched in March of last year, so it’s really a matter of opinion as to whether or not Intel and Gigabyte are flogging a dead pony with this product.

However, unlike the Apple TV, Intel’s Canmore platform will be available to other ODMs who will build their user interface off of Gigabyte’s hardware. Users won’t be able to go out and directly purchase a Canmore box, and instead, will receive the hardware and associated services through their TV providers.

While Canmore could be another product similar to Apple’s Mac Mini or Apple TV, the demand for nettops and netbooks has been climbing steadily over the last few months and the market has seen a boom in smaller and more portable machines. The Mac Mini came out in 2005 but the demand for smaller PCs didn’t come about Q3/Q4 of 2007. The Mac Mini still isn’t all that popular but it was certainly ahead of it’s time. Who knows, maybe AppleTV and competing DVRs is just a case of history repeating itself.

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By Theo Valich - Source : Tom's Hardware US

San Jose (CA) - Believe it or not, NVISION 08 is not just about Nvidia. Earlier today we met with Gigabyte to see what we can expect from the Taiwanese manufacturer - and got a glimpse at an upcoming motherboard for Intel’s Core i7 processors with Nehalem core. The board, called Extreme Edition, sets several highlights, including the ability to transform your PC in a true deskside supercomputer that offers the processing horsepower of thousands of processors ten years ago.

The prototype board on display was based on Intel’s X58 chipset and supports up to six graphics cards, four PCIe Gen2 x16 slots and two wide-open Gen 2 x4 slots. Due to space constraints there is only Crossfire and no SLI support. So, what can you do with six graphics cards - for example six Radeon 4850 or six Nvidia 9800 GT models?

You could run up to 12 monitors, which should be a dream for any flight simulator enthusiast. While you can run up to four cards in Crossfire (graphics) mode, you can employ all six cards for GPGPU applications and floating point acceleration. The theoretical performance potential of such an environment would be in the 6 TFlops neighborhood for single-precision applications (double precision will cause the performance to drop by 80 to 90 percent.) To put this performance into perspective, consider the fact that Intel’s 1997 Pentium Pro supercomputer with 10,000 CPUs was rated at 1 TFlops.

The actual performance advantage of supercomputers is not entirely based on pure processing horsepower, but also memory capacity, which GPUs cannot match. But the simple thought that you can add six graphics cards with 4,800 processors for about $1,200 to rival the performance of supercomputers that cost billions of dollars a decade ago (at least in some applications) is stunning.

On the power side, Gigabyte’s engineers developed a separated 12-phase power supply for the CPU; a 2-Phase structure is in place for the memory and a separate 2-Phase regulation for the PCI Express slots. The company indicated that there will be room for overclocking and special attention was paid to ensure "workstation-class stability under any conditions."

The board can support up to 24 GB DDR3-1333, or 6 GB of DDR3-1900/2000 memory (using overclocked 2 GB DIMMs). Thanks to the 2-Phase regulation, there should be enough juice to hold future 4 GB DDR3-1333 modules.

The board is still being worked on and the prototype will undergo significant modifications in the storage and cooling department, we were told. The combined air/water-cooling block will be modified so that the six graphics cards can fit. All six SATA ports will be rotated to support extend-length PCIe cards.

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By Steve Seguin - Source : Tom's Hardware

Nvidia silently launched their low entry-level GeForce 9400 GT graphics card Tuesday, priced competitively at $59.

Nvidia has updated its entry offerings in the consumer graphics market Tuesday with the new GeForce 9400 GT, which should replace last generation’s GeForce 8500 GT

With the 16 processor cores clocked at 1400 MHz, a graphics clock of 550 MHz, 512 MB of memory clocked at 400 MHz, and with a 128-bit Memory Interface Width, Nvidia claims its new GeForce 9400 GT to be twice as fast as the comparable 8 series graphics card. Manufacturing partners may of course deviate from the these reference specifications with their own offerings, including alternative cooling solutions.

While the new GeForce 9400 GT may not appeal to those looking for a serious gaming solution, considering the suggested retail price of $59, it does bring good value to those looking for an alternative to integrated graphics. The graphics card does support DirectX 10, OpenGL 2.1, CUDA general-purpose parallel computing, and hardware HD video acceleration, making it a great solution for speeding up the Windows Aero interface, Folding@Home computing, watching HD movies and more.

Early reviews of the GeForce 9400 GT online show it to be an excellent overclocker, yet not an ideal solution for dedicated gaming. With gaming performance of about half that of the GeForce 9500 GT, the GeForce 9400 GT struggles with modern graphically intensive games. Versions offering a passive cooling solutions could make for an excellent choice in a spacious HTPC, however.

Current competition based on similar prices for the GeForce 9400 GT will include the ATI Radeon HD 3650, Radeon HD 2600XT, Radeon X1650PRO and GeForce 8600 GT.

The GeForce 9400 GT is now filling retail channels.

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By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Guide US

San Jose (CA) - Adobe today launched Photoshop Elements 7 and Premiere Elements 7 for Windows as two new more affordable ways to edit pictures and videos with a touch of Photoshop and Premiere. But the real news is that Adobe is ready to get consumers used to the fact that buying a software is only half the story. What you really want is to buy a service and renew it every year. The question is: Will you bite?

We have to admit it, the news of Photoshop Elements 7 and Premiere Elements 7 passed us by as being insignificant this morning. Yes, there are new features here and there: Photoshop for example now includes a "Scene Cleaner" to brush away unwanted subjects in a vacation shot who may be impacting the main subject of the photo. There is a new Smart Brush and new tools that combine multiple editing steps into one. Premiere Elements now supports AVCHD (for those HD video camcorders), Smart Tags to identify the video quality, number of faces and sounds as well as a more advanced Videomerge option that can automatically place a person into any scene.

Both applications are available for $100 if you buy them separate, or $150 in a bundle. But what Adobe wants you really to buy is a Photoshop.com Plus membership that will be available for $50 per year, while a basic membership will be offered free of charge. The basic membership will provide 5 GB of storage space, tutorials, seasonal artwork and themed templates. For $50 per year, you will get 20 GB of storage, which is, according to Adobe, enough for 15,000 photos, four hours of DVD-quality videos or a combination of both. The reason why you would want to upgrade? The pitch is the general online back-up, which will "keep memories safe from computer failure or natural disaster, with access from anywhere."

There is no doubt that the trend in the industry points to services that will guarantee ongoing revenue sources. Slowly but surely we may be turning much more into a subscription than we already are. Besides subscribing to your basic utilities, cellphone, Internet, Tivo and perhaps magazines, you will soon be paying for your Microsoft Office software, image and video editing and other IT services on a per-month or per-year basis.

Adobe’s story isn’t quite as compelling as we would think such a service needs to be. At least for now, we are much more excited about Adobe’s soon-to-be-released Photoshop CS4, which is likely to include GPGPU acceleration.

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By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Guide US

Dallas (TX) - AT&T said that it has "diligently" worked to provide "affordable options" for international roaming because the company found that the feature-rich mobile experience of iPhone "is indispensable to users." However, AT&T not necessarily made those plans cheaper, but increased the monthly data volume with a corresponding price increase. There is still no unlimited data plan and 200 MB of international data volume is more than twice as expensive as most iPhone service plans.

By now we are used to those stories about horrific AT&T bills sent to users who forget to think about the fact that iPhone data roaming can be very expensive outside the U.S. Without any special roaming plan, AT&T charges $0.0195/KB, which translates into $19.968/MB and $20,447/GB. These costs are prohibitive especially for business users, who could add an unlimited email plan to their Blackberry for $70 per month, but were left with 20 MB ($25 per month) and 50 MB ($60 per month) options with the iPhone 3G and a cost of $0.0195/KB thereafter.

AT&T now offers a 100 MB plan for $120 per month and a 200 MB plan for $200. Only the 200 MB plan offers a slight discount and may get most users through a business trip and short vacation, unless you are not downloading TV episodes, high resolution pictures and iTunes songs in the 67 countries for which these roaming packages are available (outside these countries, AT&T charges an extra $0.010/KB, with the exception of 21 countries where the $0.0195/KB still applies. 3G coverage is available in a total of 60 countries.)

The good news is that these plans can be added on a as-needed-basis, meaning that there is now 1- or 2-year agreement necessary. However, $200 on top of an already pricey service plan that will cost, depending on your home service area, close to $100 per month including local taxes, is significant by any measure. We noted more than one year ago that the usage model of the iPhone is well ahead of the clocks at telecommunications companies and, as far as we can see, that has not changed.

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By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Guide US

Chicago (IL) - DivX is joining the high-definition era: Following its first H.264 decoder, the company today announced the alpha version of its first H.264 encoder. The software is part of what eventually will become Divx 7 and beta testers are invited to try out what the company has come up with so far.

According to Divx, the command line-based alpha 1 version is the second software to come out of its Project Rémoulade, is already multithreaded and will create H.264 video bitstreams that are compatible with the draft profile for DivX 7 H.264 HD video. Beta testers can use AVI files as well as the AVISynth frameserver as input.

Divx has posted detailed instructions how to install and use the encoder, including all of the software’s current limitations - for example that video output is not compatible with Apple’s iPod and iPhone.

Video enthusiasts interested in testing the software will need additional software to transform the raw H.264 bitstreams provided by the encoder into an MKV container. Divx also recommends additional software to serve video into the encoder.

Also worth noting is that Divx 7 will have sharp constraints on video format sizes in order to support "a wide range of consumer electronics." The picture dimensions have to be at least 320 x 240 pixels. The dimensions cannot exceed 1280 x 720 pixels if the frame rate is greater than 30 Hz.

The software can be downloaded from the DivX website.

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By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Guide US

Pittsburg (PA) - A new software released as a browser plug-in by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science and College of Engineering provides an additional layer of security to warn users of potential eavesdropping when connections to secure websites are established.

While the tool quietly resides in the corner of browser windows and may not be noticed most of the time, it may become an important tool that can verify that a secure connection, for example when visiting a bank website, in fact is free from an attack.

There is this uncomfortable feeling when visiting websites that list critical data that someone could be listening in. That is especially the case when you are using a wireless connection and given how easily Wi-Fi connections can be attacked, it has become a common sense rule that you just do not access your bank account or other critical information over a Wi-Fi network you are not familiar with. But what if you have no choice? How do you know that you are connecting your computer directly through a trustworthy Wi-Fi net to your bank and not through another PC of an attacker? How do you know youa re not exposed to a man-in-the-middle attack?

A very simple and lightweight solution could be a software developed by researchers developed at Carnegie Mellon and provide as a plug-in for the Firefox 3.0 browser (IE and Firefox 1.x and 2.x are not supported at thsi time.) Called Perspective, the software uses a set of friendly sites, or "notaries," to authenticate financial services, online retailers and other transactions requiring secure communications.

The researchers believe that Perspectives will be very efficient because they believe that "most of the time the Internet works correctly." Since attacks are typically limited in scope or time, periodic network probing from "many vantage points across the Internet" are believed to be sufficient to authenticate a legitimate source and expose an attack that may be focused on a limited number of PCs: Whenever a key of a website needs to be authenticated, the software asks each of network notary for the keys they have monitored the server using over time and verify that these records are consistent with the key they received.

To fool a browser into accepting a compromised a key, an attacker would have to cover all notaries of the network over an expanded period of time, which would be nearly impossible. Users can adjust the settings of their Perspective software and change the number of consistent keys required to be received and the time frame a key remained the same. "These threshold values let you decide how paranoid you want to be about accepting keys," the help file of the software reads. "In both cases, higher values are more secure, but also run the risk of incorrectly determining that a key is invalid."

Carnegie Mellon’s software especially addresses an issue that has become more prevalent with the popularity of self-signed certificates, which is substantially cheaper to employ for companies than using use certificate authorities. "When Firefox users click on a Web site that uses a self-signed certificate, they get a security error message that leaves many people bewildered," David Andersen, assistant professor of computer science, said. Once Perspectives has been installed in the browser, however, it can automatically override the security error page without disturbing the user if the site appears legitimate.

Most Internet communications, such as to standard hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) sites, are unsecured, but those involving encryption over a secured socket layer (SSL) and those using secure shell (SSH) protocol, which involves the use of a login and password, require that sites authenticate themselves with a digital certificate containing a so-called public key, which is used for encryption. The researchers explained that the exchange of this security information typically occurs without the computer user being aware of it, but if there are inconsistencies, a dialogue box with a warning "Unable to verify the identity of XYZ.com as a trusted site" is displayed and may confuse users what to do.

"It’s very, very, very easy for someone to convince you to go through their computer" when making connections through public Wi-Fi, Andersen said. A user who thinks he is linked to an airport or coffee shop "hot spot," for instance, might actually be linked to a laptop of someone just a few seats away. "A lot of people wouldn’t even know they’ve been attacked," he said.

The researchers said that the system can also detect if one of the certificate authorities may have been tricked into authenticating a bogus Web site and warn the Firefox user that the site is suspicious.

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By Jane McEntegart - Source : Tom's Guide

Microsoft announced that it is currently working to incorporate private browsing into Internet Explorer 8, while reports suggest Mozilla could have similar functions in store for Firefox.

Users have already dubbed the new privacy functions to be added to Internet Explorer 8 “porn mode” because of the obvious advantages of being able to surf the web and not have your searches recorded in your browser history or have cookies stored in your system.

The browser history has long been a bone of contention among those who believe users should be in control of how much of their information is being stored. A lot of people don’t like the fact that the next person to use the machine can see exactly where they’ve been or what they’ve been doing on the net and this is particularly a problem with family PCs or shared computers.

Whether it comes down to watching porn or doing your Christmas shopping online, private browsing is definitely going to make IE8 a popular choice among users so it’s no surprise to see that Mozilla is planning a ’me too’ feature for Firefox.

IE8’s InPrivate offers four different settings to allow users to control what information is stored and even the information exchanged with third parties.

InPrivate Browsing lets you control whether or not Internet Explorer saves your browsing history, cookies, and other data related to what you’ve been looking at on the web.

Delete Browsing History (introduced in IE7) helps you control your browsing history after you’ve visited websites.

InPrivate Blocking informs you about content that is in a position to observe your browsing history and allows you to block it.

InPrivate Subscriptions allows the user to get more out of InPrivate Blocking by subscribing to and maintaining lists containing specific websites they want blocked or allowed.

It is easy to see that InPrivate does not simplify the general browsing experience, but makes security decisions more complex and requires from users a deeper understanding what potential security exist on the Internet, which ones have to be taken serious and which ones can be handled in a more casual way. Microsoft appears to be reacting to a scenario in which security gets too complex with InPrivate Subscriptions, to which users can subscribe in the same way they add an Accelerator, Web Slice, or search provider to IE.

In this way, granular decisions about what content to allow and which one to block can be avoided: "Under the covers, InPrivate Subscriptions are simply RSS feeds of Regular Expressions that specify sub-downloads to block or allow. Anyone can publish an InPrivate Subscription on their website, just as they can offer an Accelerator or Web Slice on their website," Microsoft said.

The Beta 2 of IE8 is expected to be released before the end of the month.

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By Jane McEntegart - Source : Tom's Guide

Apple’s iTunes is apparently back up and running in China following complaints from users and speculation that the site had ben blocked because of the increasingly popular Songs for Tibet album.

Chinese iTunes customers began complaining last Monday that they were unable to access the iTunes store. Shortly before users began experiencing difficulties, the Art of Peace Foundation released a statement claiming forty American Olympians had bought the album and head of the Foundation told the AP that he suspected the iTunes outage was because of the popularity of the album.

iTunes is reportedly back up and running, however the Songs for Tibet page is still down, remaining unavailable to users. The New York Times yesterday reported that the Songs for Tibet page on Amazon.com and links for the album on YouTube were also unavailable to users inside China although it’s not clear as to whether or not this is still the case.

Currently there is no iTunes for residents living inside China, with users instead accessing the .com version of the service or versions of iTunes for users in various other countries.

The day after Songs for Tibet was released, the Art of Peace Foundation announced that the album was number one on iTunes across the world. We contacted the foundation for a comment on the iTunes and Songs for Tibet situation in China and will update the article when they get back to us.

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By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Guide US

Olympus on Monday launched five new cameras, including one that features a special touch-sensitive body to control the camera, which could reduce camera shake.

Read the complete story here.

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By Humphrey Cheung - Source : Tom's Hardware US

San Jose (CA) - Ok, so Jen-Hsun Huang’s keynote speech at NVISION wasn’t very technical, but it sure had a bunch of eye candy. Nvidia’s CEO and co-founder showed off everything from virtual super cars to the very real and gorgeous Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica’s Cylon vixen). "Welcome to the era of visual computing," Huang proclaimed and there’s no doubt that over the next few days in San Jose Nvidia is pulling out all the stops in convincing attendees that its cards are best.

While many people in the press had been expecting Huang to talk more about CUDA and supercomputing applications of modern graphics cards, there was actually nothing new mentioned. Huang touted GPU supremacy in Folding@Home computations and said latest figures show 24386 GPUs are being used in the protein folding simulator and this is generating 1.4 petaflops worth of computing power.

What if you could render objects so photorealistic that you couldn’t tell them apart from a clay model or prototype? This is what Peter Stevenson of RTT showed when he was introduced by Huang on the stage. His company helped Lamborghini virtually prototype an upcoming car. Only 20 units of this 1.5 million Euro car will be built and already they have sold out thanks to the prototyping technology.

Stevenson explained that such a limited production car cannot be shown off at Lamborghini dealerships, so customers could view the 3D prototype online and at the nearest Lamborghini location. The CAD data is rendered in real-time and shows amazing detail - everything down to the leather and suede can be seen. There’s even the distinctive cross-web pattern and sheen of carbon fiber panels.

Taehoon Kim, President and founder of Nurien Software demonstrated his company’s virtual avatar technology which plants your alter-ego (in this case a much taller and fit version of Jen-Hsun) into a customizable room. Unlike the United States, games in Asia rely on micro-payments and the initial game is free while improvements like new clothes, actions and even furniture are purchased for a few cents to dollars each. Kim showed off the virtual Jen-Hsun sporting some very nice pimping threads and a virtual girl friend. Huang joked, "So I pay for that right?"

Just walking around a virtual room is one thing, but how do you have fun in such an environment. Kim made his avatar dance and doing the correct moves earns currency that can then be used to buy further customizations. He even made the virtual Jen-Hsun break dance on a virtual dance floor.

While this is all good, the overwhelmingly male audience was waiting for Battlestar Galactica star Tricia Helfer who played Cylon number 6. She explained how tough it is to act in modern shows which use heavy compositing to add in effects and characters in post production. Many of the other Cylons and Centurions are represented by cardboard cutouts and hanging tennis balls during the live shot. These of course are replaced by special effects afterwards.

Helfer thanked the audience for providing all the technology that makes Battlestar Galactica possible, but wagged her finger at us and joked that we shouldn’t go overboard on artificial intelligence - it has a nasty way of biting us back.

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By Steve Seguin - Source : Tom's Hardware

IOGEAR’s upcoming wireless USB-to-VGA kit brings in-room wireless video streaming to the masses

One might need to ask why it has never been done before, but IOGEAR is coming out with the industry’s first wireless USB-to-VGA kit. The setup should allow a person to stream up to 720p video from their Windows PC to a remote display, but not without some expected limitations. It is restricted to a 30-foot range, which is enough for in-room use, and a person shouldn’t be expecting it to be capable of streaming HD movies. According to IOGEAR, it should work fine while working with documents, web browsing, and viewing photos.

It is likely that some form of software compression will be used to maximize the performance. In past USB-based displays from other companies, the software compression used by those devices did eat up some CPU cycles, but that wasn’t a problem when using a modern computer.

The kit can be used to either extend or clone a desktop, for multitasking or presentations, and would work well with a TV’s picture-in-picture functionality. For example, one could be watching a football game while also viewing a Fantasy Football grid on the same TV screen. The solution is clearly ideal when cabling isn’t possible, but it is also a good solution for reducing clutter, adding a second or third display to a laptop, or for giving PowerPoint presentations where the available cables aren’t long enough.

Currently, the device is for Windows XP SP2 32-bit and Windows Vista 32-/64-bit only. Expect the kit to be available in September with a MSRP of $229.95. IOGEAR is still waiting on USB-IP approval for the device.

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By Humphrey Cheung - Source : Tom's Guide US

San Jose (CA) - It’s supposed to be Nvidia’s big week in San Jose, but the people from "Unite Here" are crashing the company’s big party. As people streamed into the city’s convention center and the Performing Arts Center for Nvidia’s keynote to be held by CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, a fluorescent green flyer was not-so-sneakily handed out to Nvision attendees on the sidewalks outside.

Boldly printed on the front of the paper was "Find the flawed chip ... and you could get NVIDIA FAIL!" The back of the flyer has an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article about Nvidia’s recent notebook chip failures.

Of course the organization handing out the flyers probably hasn’t contacted Nvision management about their activities and the bottom of the flyers clearly states that it has "No affiliation with Nvidia."

In a prepared statement, Unite Here vice president Jim Dupont accused Nvidia of "putting the burden of Nvidia’s chip failure on consumers and said that Nvidia wll have to "recall their defective chips."

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By Reuters - Source : Tom's Guide US

Deutsche Telekom’s wireless business T-Mobile has sold more than 120,000 new 3G iPhones since its sales launch on July 11 despite distribution problems, its chief executive told a German weekly magazine. Hamid Akhavan told Focus, delivery problems that left customers waiting for weeks to get their hands on the new, faster version of the iPhone had been solved and that the backlog would be cleared by the end of the month.

Read the complete story here.

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By UPI - Source : Tom's Guide

The U.S. space agency and Alliant Tech Systems Inc. said they have started an investigation into the failed launch of a suborbital rocket. The rocket, which lifted off from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, was carrying two NASA hypersonic experiments.

Read the complete story here.

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By Computerworld - Source : Tom's Guide US

A Macintosh clone maker that said it would soon start selling Intel-based computers able to run Apple Inc.’s Mac OS X is itself now for sale, according to the company’s vice president. In an e-mail sent to Computerworld and several other technology publications, Elijah Samaroo, the vice president of online sales at Open Tech, announced that the firm is on the block.

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By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Hardware US

Chicago (IL) - When Nvidia announced in early July that it has noticed a higher than normal failure rate in some of its notebook chips, investors reacted concerned, sending the company stock down 22%. The stock recovered after Nvidia apparently demonstrated good control of the issue and a one-time charge of almost $200 million. But what seems to be a closed chapter and a black eye for the company could be a much more serious problem that is just taking off: Several industry sources confirmed to TG Daily what has been reported by some publications for some time: In contrast to Nvidia’s claims that only a limited number of GPUs are affected, sources indicated that "most" recent Nvidia GPUs carry the problem and a chance of failure, pushing the potential damage into stratospheric regions.

We have been chasing the Nvidia GPU problem for quite some time, trying to shed more light on an issue Nvidia refuses to release any meaningful information on other than the statement that a limited number of notebook GPUs is affected. Charlie Demerjian from The Inquirer has been reporting for some time that Nvidia’s problem may be much larger than the company admits. Demerjian wrote that, in addition to currently repaired notebooks, G84/6 GPUs may show failures and even G92 and G94 chips could be affected. After several weeks of digging, it seems that Demerjian’s claims may not be as far from the truth as some have claimed. There is a lot of speculation in the market, fueled by Nvidia’s decision not to reveal any details what the source of the problem is. But the general consensus across industry sources we talked to is that a material problem may be the reason for the trouble and depending on whom you believe, between 15 and 75 million GPUs could be affected.

According to our sources, the failures are caused by a solder bump that connects the I/O termination of the silicon chip to the pad on the substrate. In Nvidia’s GPUs, this solder bump is created using high-lead. A thermal mismatch between the chip and the substrate has substantially grown in recent chip generations, apparently leading to fatigue cracking. Add into the equation a growing chip size (double the chip dimension, quadruple the stress on the bump) as well as generally hotter chips and you may have the perfect storm to take high lead beyond its limits. Apparently, problems arise at what Nvidia claims to be "extreme temperatures" and what we hear may be temperatures not too much above 70 degrees Celsius.

What supports the theory that a high-lead solder bump in fact is at fault is the fact that Nvidia ordered an immediate switch to use eutectic solders instead of high-lead versions in the last week of July. Eutectic solders are believed to solve the problem of fatigue cracking. This material is often chosen in such cases as chip designers already have experience with this material. Further out in the future, chip designers will have to consider ROHS exclusions and a transition to lead free bumps using materials such as Tin-Silver. We are speculating here, but a sudden switch of the material could bring additional problems for Nvidia, as such a material switch involving electro-migration requires substantial design work and testing. As a minimum, Nvidia would have to review its power delivery to the chip to avoid high current bumps. We were not able to receive any information whether this has been done or not.

As far as we are told, ATI has been using eutectic solders for some time and appears not to be experiencing a similar problem. However, Nvidia’s sudden switch to eutectic solders may have limited the availability of the material, impacting AMD production and putting actual chip fabs in the middle. There are questions why Nvidia may have missed potential high-lead issues - and may have missed them for quite some time. There is no doubt that all Nvidia chips were tested according to JEDEC rules. Only Nvidia knows why this issue, if high-lead is actually the problem, slipped through.

If we assume for a moment that high-lead is the cause, then there is this question: Which chips are affected and are only notebook GPUs affected? According to our sources, both desktop chips and notebook chips are affected, but the issue is most likely to pop up in notebook chips due to the increased material constraints amplified by the turning on-and-off procedures. We heard that G84, G86 and G92 GPUs could show failures, but we were not able to confirm G94s. Technically, Nvidia would have to replace all those GPUs and the total number is somewhere north of 70 million. But since the issue tends to show up only in notebooks, it is unlikely that there will be any desktop replacements and therefore we are looking at a number closer to 15 million (notebook) GPUs. Take into account that the repair of such a notebook will cost Nvidia at least $150-$250 and you have a damage that could easily be in the billions of dollars.

At this time we only know that Nvidia has made a switch from high-lead to eutectic, everything else is speculation as long as it is not confirmed by Nvidia. However, the detail of information relating to the material switch is surprising and lends a certain credibility to these sources.

The other question, of course, is how often and in which cases those GPUs actually fail. If Nvidia is right and there are in fact low failure rates, then the $200 million that were allocated to repair affected notebooks should be appropriate. If we assume that Nvidia pays about $200 per repair and that 100% of the potential damage is in the neighborhood of $3 billion, then Nvidia’s $200 million allocation suggest that substantially less than 10% of (notebook) GPUs are showing failures.

A big problem would be if failure rates are in fact higher than expected and Nvidia is trying to contain the problem by playing it down and avoid a massive recall that could inflict a lot of damage to the company’s finances: $3 billion is almost twice of what Nvidia currently has in the bank.

So, what does this mean to you? Obviously, only Nvidia knows how serious the problem really is and there is virtually no way of telling whether your Nvidia-based notebook with an affected GPU will show failures or not, as this will depend on the temperatures the GPU will reach. If it shows failures, however, you should contact your vendor and ask for a replacement, provided you are still covered by a warranty.

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By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Guide

Chicago (IL) - Digg’s Kevin Rose receives the honor for jumpstarting this year’s iPod update rumors with a picture and rather vague and strange information from his sources what this new update may bring. According to Rose, Apple will shelve the current iPod Nano design, cut prices and add features. Also, Mac OS X might finally see Blu-ray support. But Rose could have missed the most important update of all: An iTunes all-you-can-eat subscription service.

Yes, it is the time of the year again. Apple has always updated its iPod lineup within the first two weeks of September in recent years and it would be a big surprise if there was no update this year. We are well within three weeks of a possible update time frame, which means that you should expect lots of rumors what those next iPods will bring and what they may not bring. Kevin Rose’s Digg is the rumor launch pad for this year.

Here are the latest rumors, according to Rose:

"- Revamp of entire iPod line.
- Small cosmetic changes to Touch, Nano to see significant redesign.
- iPods to see fairly large price drops to distance itself from the $199 iPhone.
- iPod touch 2.1 software, iPhone to get update very soon after.
- iTunes 8.0 ("it’s a big update w/new features").
- All of this coming in the next 2-3 weeks."

Needless to say, all of these bullet points may be pure speculation, as there is really now detailed information that would let anyone conclude that this information in fact is accurate. Rose posted a picture of what is claimed to be the next Nano. Is it the actual Nano? Perhaps. Could it be fake? Sure. No one knows. And since the somewhat ugly current Nano was received with praise last year, we are sure that the new one will be welcomed with joy as well. Unfortunately, whenever Rose’s information could be interesting, such as a more functional iTunes 8.0, he notes that he cannot reveal more details.

It is likely that there will be a "revamp of the entire iPod line" and that it will be coming "in the next 2-3 weeks". At least the Classic, Shuffle and Nano models have lost much of their appeal during the hype surrounding the iPhone and iPod Touch. The Classic may be heading into retirement as the form factor gets a bit old, the weight is out of place and flash capacities could soon be competing with this 80-160 GB iPod. 1.8" hard drives are under attack by solid state disk drives and it is just a matter of time until this hard drive form factor will disappear.

What we do not see coming are the large price drops Rose predicts. While he claims that such a move is necessary to differentiate the Nanos and Shuffles in a more efficient way from the Touch, we do not think that big price drops are likely. There are signs that iPod sales are not scaling as well anymore as they did in previous years and Apple may only be able to meet revenue growth expectations by increasing the average selling price (ASP) of iPods. That has worked in previous quarters as the more expensive Touch has sold well (the ASP of iPod is currently somewhere between $180 and $185), but the Nano remains the best selling iPod and dramatic price drops could have a devastating effect on Apple’s ASPs.

While price drops could be used to increase unit sales, we believe it is unlikely that there will be significant adjustments. However, dropping flash prices should allow Apple to at least double the Flash capacity to 16 GB for the Nano and keep a price range of $149 - $199. The Touch would grow from 8-32 GB to 16 GB to 64 GB and maintain a range of $299 to $499, while we have to admit that the $499 price tag looks out of place next to a 16 GB $199 iPhone. Similar to what car manufacturers do, it would make sense for if Apple price the high-end model of the Nano line declined into the low-end of the Touch line, which would mean that Apple could drop the Touch into a price range of $199 to $399. However, that is pure speculation, of course.

iTunes music subscription at the finish line?

The idea that Apple should introduce subscription-based music consumption through iTunes has been repeatedly suggested by media and analysts ever since Apple launched its online music store. Steve Jobs dismissed such a feature on several occasions, arguing that people want to own their music, not rent it.

However, the Financial Times reported in March of this year that Apple had been in talks with major labels about an all-you-can-eat iTunes subscription model. The business model would mimic that of Nokia’s "Comes with Music" and would give customers free access to the entire iTunes music library in exchange for a premium on the iPhone price, the paper said. The report cited an executive who claimed that talks stalled because Apple wouldn’t offer labels more than $20 per device, unlike Nokia who reportedly was ready to pay almost $80 per handset. "It’s who blinks first, and whether or not anyone does blink," an executive said. It remains to be seen, if customers are really willing to pay a premium on a device to gain access to a vast music catalogue. Music labels claim that their own surveys had shown that people would pay up to $100 premium to gain unlimited music access for the lifetime of the device. Such business model sounds reasonable for handsets, but industry watchers are wondering if Apple is serious about music subscription.

The Industry Standard reported recently that Apple in fact is in the final stages of introducing such a service, with over half of the iTunes catalogue already prepped for a subscription-based model. The service may be called iTunes Unlimited and will cost $129.99 for a year’s worth of unlimited access to the iTunes catalogue. You will be able to download any track you want and there will be an option to buy a track if you want. According to people familiar with the matter, Apple will offer the service through iTunes and as a retail box. It will also be available to MobileMe subscribers at a reduced $99.99 price or $179.99 for a combined one year MobileMe and iTunes Unlimited subscription. MacDailyNews speculated that Apple will announce iTunes Unlimited in September and introduce it in late October. According to the website, Apple will offer music encoded in 256 Kb/s.

In our view, iTunes Unlimited could be the most important announcement in September. iTunes has always been the sales driver for the iPod and such a new service could bring in many new customers. At $129.99 per year, or about $11 per month, the service seems to be priced in line with general expectations. But since actual downloads will cost extra, this may be a pricey feature, especially, if you add it to an iPhone, where it would make most sense. Also, it is interesting to see that this price is more than three times above the price that the music labels found is acceptable to consumers, if we consider the average life time of an iPod of about three years.

If Rose’s prediction that there will be an iTunes 8.0 with substantial feature enhancements is correct, then this would certainly be a sign that a rental service is going to be integrated into the software.

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By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Guide US

Chicago (IL) - The iPhone is all about one big Apple smile: Until now, positive news have outweighed occasional negative headlines by far. But the hype surrounding the smartphone had a hiccup last weekend, as the launch in 21 new markets was apparently slow.

A generally fragmented market, limited availability slowing economies, a lack of wide-scale 3G infrastructure and pricey service plans that an average consumer can’t afford may be a first indication that there are problems Apple will have to solve, if the company wants to meet its recently adjusted shipment goals. The good news is that Apple is said to have expected slow launches and the company should have no problems selling 10 million units by the end of the year. However, there are analysts who now believe that the 45 million unit target for 2009 may be overly optimistic.

The second wave of the iPhone 3G rollout brought the device to Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Checz Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, India, Latvia, Lithuania, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia and Uruguay, bringing the bottom line to 42 countries in which the device is now available. It was expected that most of these countries will not hit the rate of success the phone has seen in the first-wave countries, but analysts have noted that Apple will need to successfully expand into 70 countries by the end of the year to reach set goals and secure the device’s mid-term future and growth path.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster estimated that the addition of 21 new markets now increases the addressable iPhone market to 660 million subscribers, up from 370.5 million when the iPhone 3G rolled into its most promising markets on July 11. However, Apple can currently sell the iPhone only to a small portion of addressable customer base, due to its lofty price tag: Munster came up with 660 million by adding up number of subscribers that each iPhone carrier has in all markets where the handset is sold. The top five countries that contributed to the 660 million number are India (105.2 million), Colombia (34 million), Poland (26.9 million), Argentina (25.5 million) and Peru (15.1 million).

There are no launch weekend sales figures, but there are clues that point to a slow start. On one side we noticed that Net Applications web usage data shows a sharp rise of iPhone’s share of the browsing market since Friday: The iPhone hit a browser market share of 0.48 percent on Saturday, up from 0.29 percent on Thursday. On the other side, there were no people standing in line for the device and the general excitement was subdued. Some blame this scenario on fragmented markets with vast cultural differences, weak economies, low consumer buying power, and pricey service plans (especially 3G data): In fact, in many of the new iPhone countries, the device is well beyond the reach of most middle-class workers.

Read on the next page: Phony lines in Poland, skyhigh prices in India

Telekomunikacja Polska (TP), a carrier controlled by France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom-owned Era launched the iPhone 3G in Poland Thursday evening. TP shocked local media when it acknowledged that it hired people to form "fake" lines in 20 of its retail stores in order to "drum up the interest in the iPhone." These people even tried to sell their slot to others for up to 300 zlotys (about $135). "The aim was to attract attention. The people in the queues told passers-by about the iPhone," spokesman Wojciech Jabczynski told Agence France-Presse (AFP). "It was a marketing move. We thought it was a pretty interesting strategy."

With a population of 1.13 billion people, 260 million cellphone subscribers and its rising upper class willing to spend, India has turned into one of the world’s fastest-growing mobile phone market. Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar carry iPhone 3G in India, reaching 105.2 million subscribers. But the two carriers don’t have a 3G network in place and they priced the 8 GB model and the bundled service at 31,000 rupies - $712. Three iPhone 3Gs will almost buy you a brand new car - the $2300 Tata Nano - in India.

India’s Economic Times said that "hefty price tag keeps queues away." Airtel’s president defended his company with claims that Apple is to blame for setting the handset price steep, not the carrier. According to the executive, 200,000 iPhones have been pre-ordered, but it seems that only the upper class is interested enough to sign a contract. It was estimated that 30,000 unlocked original iPhones were running on Bharti’s network prior to the arrival of the iPhone 3G.

Apple is already planning to roll-out the iPhone in 28 more countries in October. These markets are mostly under-developed nations with even weaker economies and a smaller addressable subscriber base (excluding Russia and China, which are the two key targets for the third wave.) This final expansion will introduce more unknowns to the iPhone equation and analysts will then have the complete picture top determine whether the iPhone is as successful as Apple claims.

Most analysts warn that Apple needs all 70 countries, not just US, to meet its self-imposed 10 million units target by the end of this year. Ten million is a minimum user base to keep the iPhone afloat and enable Apple to move to 45 million units planned for 2009. A slow start in 21 new countries may not have hurt Apple’s ability to meet its target, but it may have affected the 2009 goal. Some analysts are now saying that Apple should reconsider the 45 million target for 2009 because of the less than stellar launch in its new markets.

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By Jane McEntegart - Source : Tom's Guide

Chinese Internet users began complaining late last week that iTunes was inaccessible, and according to the Associated Press, the popularity of a “Songs for Tibet” album may be the reason why access to the site has been blocked.

According to the AP, Michael Wohl, leader of the Art of Peace foundation believes a compilation album featuring artists like Alanis Morissette, Sting and Damien Rice released by the Foundation has triggered what seems to nationwide blockage of Apple’s iTunes.

Mr. Wohl conceded that the foundation had no proof that the Chinese government had blocked the site because of the album (which also includes a 15 minute speech from the Dalai Lama). "We issued a release saying that over 40 (Olympic) athletes downloaded the album in an act of solidarity, and that’s what triggered it. Then everything got blocked," Wohl told the AP over the phone.

The New York Times also reports that the “Songs for Tibet” page on Amazon.com and links for the album on video sharing site YouTube are also unavailable from China. An Apple spokesperson said that the Cupertino-based company was aware of the problem and was investigating the matter.

According to B67BC453-47BD-4E6A-961E-0A2B66227E5B&dist=hppr">MarketWatch, shortly after it’s release the album was ranked as the top selling rock download on iTunes across the world.

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By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Guide US

Chicago (IL) - Rockville, Maryland-based Hillcrest Laboratories has filed a patent infringement suit against Nintendo and its Wiimote controller. What makes this suit especially interesting is the fact that the patent at the core of this suit was filed seven months after the Wii was introduced and legal action was filed one day after this patent was confirmed.

There are patent infringement suits that, under a common sense impression outside legal office, make perfect sense. Take, for example, Immersion’s suit against Sony and its vibration feature in its Dualshock controllers. Immersion had worked on this technology for a long time and it just appeared natural that it would protect the core of the technology the company’s future relies on.

But then there are suits that just leave you scratching your head. While Nintendo already had to pay $21 million earlier this in a patent suit that involved its Wii Classic controller, this time it is the Wiimote that is in question and attacked by Hillcrest, which claims that it has the patent rights to "three-dimensional pointing devices and techniques for tilt compensation and improved usability associated therewith."

Could it really be possible that Nintendo came to market with a controller, for which it did not have sufficient technology licenses?

It turns out that Hillcrest believes that Nintendo infringes four of its patents (7,158,118, 7,262,760, and 7,414,611, which relate to a handheld three-dimensional pointing device, 7,139,983, which relates to a navigation interface display system that graphically organizes content for display on a television)

Only two of Hillcrest’s patent’s however, were filed before the release of the Nintendo Wii on November 19, 2006 - number 7,139,983 (April 9, 2001: "Interactive content guide for television programming"), which seems to be rather minor in this case and 7,158,118 (May 2, 2005). However the latter seems to have been effectively replaced with patent 7,262,760 (Filed December 18, 2006) which carries the same title ("3D pointing devices with orientation compensation and improved usability"), but interestingly adds one major claim to the patent - "an accelerometer for detecting acceleration of said handheld device."

If we exclude the patent covering the interactive content guide, that leaves two patents aiming exactly for the Wiimote functionality and both patents were filed by Hillcrest after the release of the Wii. Patent 7,262,760 was filed on December 18, 2006 (approved on August 28, 2007) and patent 7,414,611 (which also carries the title "3D pointing devices with orientation compensation and improved usability" and enhances the previous version) was filed on June 20, 2007 (approved August 19, 2008).

This leaves us with the impression that unless Nintendo infringes on the initial patent filed in 2005 and 2001, there are at least questions about Hillcrest’s claims. We are wondering, however, why Hillcrest waited to file the suit until the most recent version of its "3D pointing devices with orientation compensation and improved usability" patent was approved. This patent adds multiple claims to the preceding version, claiming, for example, a "processing" capability for the "transformation of detected rotational motion of said hand held device." To us, it just looks a bit strange that the legal action was filed only one day after this patent was listed as approved by the USPTO.

We aren’t lawyers, but Hillcrest’s claims appear to be sitting on thin ice, at least if Nintendo isn’t infringing on the two patents that were filed before the release of the Wii - and if the company did not simply forget to patent its Wii system properly.

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By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Hardware US

Sunnyvale (CA) - You can already envision the marketing frenzy that will surround Michael Phelps, who won eight Olympic Gold medals in eight days at Beijing 2008 Olympic Games that ended yesterday. And there will be many who will want to jump onto that marketing train. SGI and Intel are already on board.

The fact that Phelps won eight Gold medals and so many world records have been broken have been explained through numerous reports, mentioning for example new swimsuits and special devices installed to calm the water, but many nations still doubt whether the competition was a clean as it was presented to be. But if we believe Speedo and SGI, then those world records were clearly supported by Speedo Fastskin LZR Racer swimwear (offered soon in a sports store in your neighborhood), designed on SGI Altix supercomputers that were based on Intel Itanium processors.

At least SGI believes that 2008 may be remembered "as the year swimming and supercomputing became one." We leave it up to you decide how appropriate that pitch is.

SGI said that Speedo’s Aqualab research and development facility began working on these swimsuits on SGI systems more than two years ago computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses to better understand how to optimize the flow of water around a swimmer and to create the designs and materials that would give athletes a winning edge. The results delivered swimsuits that are said to create 5 percent less drag that Speedo’s Fastskin FS-Pro suits.

Speedo has begun pre-selling its new swimsuits for prices between $260 and $590.

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