Finally, a partnership that works. And a partnership that really gets at the core of what has been bothering drivers for years now. By and large, factory GPS/navigation systems are subpar. Automakers charge a bundle for them, and while they look nicely integrated, the feature set is generally lacking even compared to $100 standalone GPS systems from TomTom or Garmin. But now, Sony is realizing that people want legitimate navigation systems, and if you're looking to upgrade your vehicle's head unit, the new Xplod

"When activities were introduced into KDE 4, they did not make much sense in isolation. In addition to having virtual desktops, there were activities, which the user could create and configure to have different wallpapers and different widgets. Much of the virtual desktop functionality of KDE 3 was absent and not directly connected to Plasma activities. With the release of KDE 4.5, Plasma has reached a much higher level of maturity, and activities can now be integrated with virtual desktops, dual monitor screens, and with the Dashboard feature."

Silverlight will offer a richer Web experience than HTML5, Microsoft says -- besides, the HTML5 spec isn't stable yet.



Microsoft - HTML5 - Multimedia - Silverlight - HTML

Former HP boss Mark Hurd is in talks to take a job at Oracle, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, citing unnamed sources.



Mark Hurd - Wall Street Journal - Hewlett-Packard - Oracle - Larry Ellison

Samsung's Galaxy Tab tablet is an interesting piece of hardware crippled by the fact it mostly runs blown-out smartphone applications.



Samsung Group - Smartphone - tablet - Android - Samsung i7500

Manufacturing plants have doubled iPad production since its launch, and Apple wants to push volume to 3 million a month during the holiday shopping season.



Apple - IPad - Morgan Stanley - Macintosh - Apple II

Hurd and Oracle are in negotiations to have the former HP chief join Oracle as a senior executive, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Remote-controlled helicopters are not new, but Parrot's AR.Drone Quadricopter is set to make a splash when it goes on sale on Sept. 9th. It will use an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad as a controller, and give a live video feed from two different cameras to the "pilot." Indeed, the AR part of the AR.Drone Quadricopter's name comes from the use of "augmented reality." Meanwhile, quadricopter means what it sounds like: the Parrot AR.Drone Quadricopter (Amazon.com) will have four rotors. The AR.Drone only lasts 12

Now this is impressive. In fact, it's hardly believable. SanDisk's CEO was quoted a few years ago as saying that no one could "out iPod the iPod," and over the years, that has been proven true. Even mighty Microsoft couldn't put a dent in the iPod's market share with the now-forgotten Zune, and one could argue that Sony never really tried. But that's in America. Over in Japan, it's another story. Sony has a huge, huge following in Japan, while Apple is still trying to break fully into that market. A new survey

If you've been watching television lately, you've probably heard some buzz about "Quattron." It's a new technology from Sharp that they seem really quite proud of, and now they're finally delivering it on a new range of HDTVs. The general concept is that Quattron adds a fourth sub-pixel of color (yellow) to go along with red, green and blue; in theory, this makes colors more vivid. Now, consumers can expect all AQUOS LCD HDTVs for years to come to be based around this tech. At this year's IFA show in Berlin,

The telecommunications infrastructure company gives ZDNet UK a tour of its cable gear factory and the ship Ile de Batz, offering a look at a vital part of the global Internet that's normally hidden by miles of water.

Eight is Enough Techdirt reports huge push in Brazil to legalize file sharing VR-Zone shares rumor: "Blackcomb" is AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6000 series flagship Engadget reports Sony shows off Google TV (or a video of it, anyway) at IFA 2010 and iOS 4.1 confirmed for September...

"It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum... and I'm all outta gum."

Eight is Enough Evolving the AMD brand portfolio (on dropping the ATI brand name) [H]ard|OCP reports BFG Tech goes the way of Diamond and Best Data AMD developing 8-core Bulldozer-based CPU for 2011 release Hardware-Infos has AMD Zacate (APU) specs, pics, and many more (in German) VR-Zone: AMD...

A Liquid Paper-like product's ad, created specifically to run on YouTube, shows the possibility of creating something remarkable on a site for which display advertising is becoming a key profit-making component.

I pay the cab driver, pick up my suitcase, and step outside. The background's filled with the notes from Dean Martin's rendition of "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!", and as I walk away from the cab the sounds of the city drive away the memories from the war, back in Sicily. It's February 8, 1945, Empire Bay, and the war is drawing to a close. Welcome to Mafia II. Read more on this exclusive OSNews article...

In a remarkable twist to the battle over Craigslist's Adult Services area, the site removes the section and replaces the home-page link to it with a "censored" tag.

The NVIDIA GTX 460 is quickly establishing itself as the graphics card to beat in its price segment. The reconfigured Fermi architecture gives the card a real edge in gaming performance. With 1/3 fewer transistors to feed, it uses less power, runs cooler, and overclocks extremely well on air. With that kind of capability baked into the design, it didn't take long for NVIDIA's partners to start releasing overclocked editions. EVGA is one of the top AIC vendors for NVIDIA products, with a well established and loyal customer base. Their latest GTX460 video card is an SC (Superclocked) model that takes the reference design and pumps it up to 763 MHz. Benchmark Reviews takes a comprehensive look inside the EVGA GeForce GTX460 SC 01G-P3-1372-TR and then runs it through a full test suite. Read on if you want to see how this EVGA Superclocked edition performs and then watch as we push it even further with EVGA Precision and OC Scanner software.

This time, we're looking at steel computer cases instead of the Iron Curtain. A few of the case mods are really hot (in the truest sense of the word). Others are much more inventive-looking. Either way, it's good to know modding is international.



Case modding - Steel - Modding - Business - Hardware

After Ditching "ATI Radeon", AMD Considers Canning "AMD Vision"

The pricetag of Lenovo's ThinkPad X100e has come down a couple of hundred dollars from its lofty perch when it entered the market more than six months ago, but it still remains a pricy alternative to CULV and Atom-based ultraportables. The X100e is saddled with AMD's outdated Congo platform, but is there more to a notebook than just the hardware under the hood? We think so, and we took the ThinkPad X100e for a spin to prove that the platform isn't always what counts.

Clemens Zeidler, one of the spearheads for the Stack & Tile implementation on Haiku, has let the Haiku development mailing list know that a new and improved (and refactored) version of the feature has been committed to the Haiku source tree. This new version is no longer a hack into Haiku's app server itself, but is it's own decorator, in Haiku/Be parlance.

Apple Installs A4 Chip into Apple TV, Drops Price

We don't do a whole lot of gaming news (a few reviews every now and then, just for my own personal fun), but in this case, I'd like to make an exception. Iconic and legendary, Duke Nukem is going to really really really return to the main stage of gaming. Borderlands developer Gearbox has announced that Duke Nukem Forever will be released early next year, for both consoles and PC. A playable demo is now being trotted around PAX. Instant update: VIDEO! VIDEO!

Google announced yesterday that its latest Chrome release, version 6.0, is now available. Hard to believe only two years have passed since Google first launched the browser. This latest release purportedly boasts 3x better JavaScript performance than the original version of Chrome, though Google is less forthcoming about comparisons...

We've got a trio of deals for you this week. First, while scouting for parts for the next edition of our TR system guide, we stumbled upon a Zotac GeForce GTX 460 768MB graphics card currently on sale at Newegg for $189.99 with free shipping.

Ray Tracing and Other Methods Still Not Viable for Real Time Graphics

2K Games has, at the Penny Arcade Expo, confirmed that DNF will see a 2011 release.

We catch up with Ford on how it intends to make electric vehicles a smart buy for consumers

DailyTech's roundup of hardware reviews from around the web for Friday

Problem affects AC-in on some T-Series notebooks

International cyberwar should be averted by a global cybersecurity peace treaty, according to the head of the International Telecommunications Union.

Ubisoft and Outerlight have announced a new multiplayer shooter, Bloody Good Time.

Both Toshiba and Panasonic have announced new ultra-fast SD cards, but which is fastest?

Toshiba has issued a warning to owners of certain laptop models, as they could overheat.

Head of Compal Expresses Optimism About Apple iPad Performance in 2011

How are Intel, AMD, and Nvidia shaping up for Q4'10 and 2011? Fourteen R&D insiders talk to us about future of discrete graphics. If you’re curious about the business side of things, we have their thoughts on Sandy Bridge, Llano, and the upcoming Fermis.



Nvidia - Advanced Micro Devices - Intel Corporation - Intel Sandy Bridge - Graphics processing unit

Toshiba announced the launch of 8GB, 16GB and 32GB SDHC UHS-I cards, all compliant with the SD Memory Card Standard Ver. 3.0 (SD 3.0), UHS 104, that deliver the fastest data read and write speeds. Toshiba also unveiled its first microSDHC UHS-I Cards with 4GB, 8GB and16GB capacities.

When Fermi first launched on the desktop, we wondered how long it would take to trickle down to the lower end markets—and the mobile team also wondered if we'd ever see Fermi make it into notebooks. NVIDIA managed the latter with the GTX 480M, a lower clocked chip harvested from the full GF100. Now they're ready to launch the rest of their mobile lineup, with product schedule to start shipping later this month. Want to see what NVIDIA's brining to the table? We've got the official specs, though we do have to note that there are a few areas NVIDIA isn't discussing just yet. Regardless, we'll see plenty more Optimus Technology laptops and notebooks, and mobile GPUs may actually get the kick in the shorts we've been longing for!

If you are a gamer, then chances are you enjoy the sounds and music of your favorite games. A good set of headphones is a great addition to any gamer's equipment, especially if you play in a common area such as a dorm room, living room, or just like to become fully immersed in the sounds. Additionally, if you play a game that uses voice chat, an attached microphone is essential for hassle-free communication with your friends or foes. Genius has provided Benchmark Reviews their USB Circumaural Headset, model HS-03U. This headset boasts features such as noise-cancellation, in-line volume control, and vibration. Stay tuned as Benchmark Reviews tests out these features, and many more on the Genius HS-03U Headset.

Our Ask the Experts series continues with another round of questions.

A couple of months ago we ran a webcast with Intel Fellow, Rich Uhlig, VMware Chief Platform Architect, Rich Brunner and myself. The goal was to talk about the past, present and future of virtualization. In preparation for the webcast we solicited questions from all of you, unfortunately we only had an hour during the webcast to address them. Rich Uhlig from Intel, Rich Brunner from VMware and our own Johan de Gelas all agreed to answer some of your questions in a 6 part series we're calling Ask the Experts. Each week we'll showcase three questions you guys asked about virtualization and provide answers from our panel of three experts. These responses haven't been edited and come straight from the experts.

If you'd like to see your question answered here leave it in the comments. While we can't guarantee we'll get to everything, we'll try to pick a few from the comments to answer as the weeks go on.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a recall after reports of some overheating and even melting.

After its recent conflict with Research In Motion over access to customer data, India is expanding its reach to include Google and Skype.

Researchers claim to have successfully cracked the quantum cryptography equipment used to cloak high-sensitive communications by banks and defense agencies.

Our readership is composed largely of people who prefer to roll their own, but recently we've had the opportunity to take a look at some interesting desktop machines from big name manufacturers. Now we tread on much more challenging terrain: can a hardware boutique like iBUYPOWER make a convincing case for buying a custom built machine instead of learning to build one yourself? That's what we aim to find out in our review of iBUYPOWER's new flagship, the Paladin XLC.

ASRock delivers a Wii-sized home theater PC (HTPC) with a powerful Core i3 CPU, Intel HD Graphics, and a Blu-ray drive. We put the Core 100HT-BD system through a number of tasks to see how its performance compares to a desktop-based home theater PC.



Home Theater - Blu-ray Disc - Intel Core - ASRock - HTPC

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 460 graphics solution has convincingly dominated the mid-range price point, and its GF104 Fermi architecture threatens several competing high-performance products. Our benchmark tests have concluded that both the 768MB and 1GB version can offer great gaming performance, along with outstanding overclocking headroom. Combined into a SLI set, two stock-speed GeForce GTX 460's compete with the Radeon HD 5870 in terms of frame rate performance. In this article, Benchmark Reviews takes the highly overclocked PNY 'XLR8 Black Box' video card (model VCGGTX4601XPB-OC) and compares it against a field of DirectX-11 graphics solutions. If you're shopping for a powerful middle-market video card, this externally-exhausting 1GB GeForce GTX 460 product could be the perfect fit.

Sometimes I find that playing games with a keyboard just does not cut it. Games that require quick action such as platform games or puzzle games don't always work as well using a computer keyboard. Game pads feel much more natural when you are trying to defeat your opponent in a fighting game, or get to the next grueling level on a fast paced puzzle game. There are a variety of game pads, and Benchmark Reviews has tested many of these game pads over the years. Genius has provided Benchmark Reviews the Mini USB Maxfire Pandora Pro. This is a type of game pad that is often overlooked in this segment, a small and portable game pad. With features such as the ability to fold into a small package and turbo buttons, the Pandora Pro promises features from the larger types of game pads, but in a might more portable package. Read the full article on Benchmark Reviews to see if they can deliver.

As it was expected, AMD presented two cores: Bulldozer and Bobcat. The former utilizes an innovative approach to high-performance multi-way computation, the latter is focused on reducing power consumption.

Compro Technology presented VideoMate C200 Plus, a new USB 2.0 analog video/audio input device based on an all-new 10-bit video processor.

Buffalo Technology today announced the newest additions to its wireless line-up, providing consumers cost-effective networking solutions that are easy-to-use and simple to install.

The first bomb dropped. Here come the aftershocks.

The new series of chips are aimed at the cloud computing market and come with software support most new chips don't have.

Intel compiler and libraries often work suspiciously slow on processors from other vendors. The matter is that generated code has multiple versions of the most critical parts optimized for specific architectures and instruction sets. There's also a dispatcher that selects the needed code path. Thanks to Agner Fog, who has found out how to change the CPUID data of the VIA Nano processor, we now can conduct an independent "fairness" test and see what's going on.

The BlackBerry maker is betting on the Bold 9700 and Storm2 to reassert its leadership in smartphones.

Today we'll review three graphics cards with ATI Radeon GPUs. The reason for the selection is simple: all three simply happened to be in our lab at the same time. All three cards have custom design and original coolers, so reviewing them promises to be interesting.

The Toshiba Libretto W105 is no threat to any existing computing device, thanks its full plate of flaws.

The i3DSpeed informs you about performance of popular graphics cards and the best price/performance deals in the market. This time we replaced GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 with GeForce GT 240 GDDR3, because the latter is much more widespread.

The collective image of an AMD 890GX-based motherboard is quite attractive. It's a mid-end feature-rich full-size ATX model with two graphics slots, SATA 6Gbps support and an optional but nevertheless provided USB 3.0 controller. Besides, MSI demonstrated that the same functionality could be compacted into the mATX form factor as well.

Spurred on by the EC findings and fine, US investigators now may issue their own complaint against Intel.

The Samsung Rugby II SGH-A847 is an excellent voice phone for AT&T that one-ups Nextel with 3G speeds and push-to-talk capabilities.

Essentially a browser-based version of Flipboard, this new application culls stories posted to Twitter into a newspaper-like interface, but infrequent updates keep it from reaching its potential.

Netgear's WMS105 wireless management is a good, affordable way to manage up to five Netgear access points, and it's easy enough to use that anyone who has set up a home wireless router can probably handle it.