2008 January - Part 2

30 01 2008

John Oates Plays at DEMO

Posted by: in Network-Community-News

John Oates is in the house! As a surprise piece of iVideoSongs‘ DEMO demo, the team brought out John Oates to show how the service will work. Sorta. I mean, iVideoSongs won’t be able to deliver John Oates in person for guitar lessons, but the video lessons made available on iVideoSongs will come from directly from the musicians that made them famous.

The goal here is to teach you how to play music accurately, while still giving you the control over your music lessons. iVideoSongs is working with the content owners (i.e. record labels) to get DRM-free benefits that can be extended to the users. That means you can play lessons on your computer, your iPod, or wherever. Lessons can be purchased for about $4.99.

The overall setup of iVideoSongs appears to be quite similar to NowPlayIt, with less buying options and a more uniform approach to selling music lessons on the web, in video format. As we’ve seen with Guitar World and the development it’s been working on with its new Tabs feature, the shift is not only affecting the way in which users interact with the music they love, but how music education is experienced overall.

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30 01 2008

Nokia acquires Trolltech — the biggest little company you’ve never heard of

Posted by: in Mobile Phone

In a move meant to bolster its software development prowess, Nokia just announced the acquisition Trolltech. Who’s Trolltech? Well, its software can be found in some 10 million devices. In fact, Trolltech’s Qt is used by such familiar applications as Skype, Google Earth, and Photoshop Elements while their Qtopia was spotted on a hacked Archos 5 series earlier this month. By acquiring Trolltech’s software development frameworks and application platforms, Nokia hopes to help developers create Internet applications that work on PCs and across Nokia devices. Specifically, Nokia claims that the move will “further increase the competitiveness of S60 and Series 40.” The deal also grandfathers Nokia into the LiMo Foundation and its attempt to bring open-source to your handset. Hear that Android? The $153 million offer must still be processed through regulatory channels and approved by shareholders — all expected before June in out.

30 01 2008

German retailer discounting Sony BDP-S300 for HD DVD player trade-in

Posted by: in HDTV

We’re not exactly sure what German retailer Saturn plans to do with any HD DVD players that are surrendered as folks waltz in to take advantage of its latest offer, but we suppose the refurbished section could receive a boost in inventory if nothing else. Judging by a recent flier from the store, it’s offering consumers a €150 ($221) discount on Sony’s BDP-S300 — which is overpriced at €499 ($734) — if they trade their HD DVD player in at the time of purchase. Also of note, we can’t seem to find if there’s any fine print about what HD DVD players are acceptable, but it is certain that this deal is only available overseas at the moment. Not a bad idea to get customers to jump ship, though.

[Via Blu-ray, thanks Bhargav N.]

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30 01 2008

Palm to close all retail locations but one, for real

Posted by: in Mobile Phone

If our solemn word wasn’t enough to convince you of trouble in retail-ville for Palm, take this news as empirical. According to the smartphone-maker, it is officially shuttering all of its retail locations but one over the next five weeks. Originally, we thought that the airport locations would steer clear of the axe, but news today is that 34 stores total — 26 airport-based and eight branded stores — will be saying adios before long. Sure, this news doesn’t sound real hot, but Palm claims they want to cut costs and focus on its next-gen phones, which is what we’ve been asking them to do all along… so maybe this is a blessing in disguise?

30 01 2008

Blu-ray players grab 93 percent of market after Warner went Blu

Posted by: in Blu-ray

HD DVD and Blu-ray players sales pie charts

According to the latest NPD group report, during the month of December Blu-ray players held 60 percent of the HD media player market — despite the fact that HD DVD players were considerably cheaper. While that might’ve helped Warner in its decision to go Blu, the move has definitely had a dramatic effect on player sales since. According to the same study the week after the announcement, Blu-ray players were able to grab 93 percent of the market, which puts the year to date (short, we know) share for Blu-ray players at 70 percent. Granted, it’s hard to put too much stock in just a week or two of data, but if this and the recent media sales numbers (85 percent) becomes a trend, maybe this won’t be such a slow death for HD DVD after all.

[Via Blu-ray.com]

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30 01 2008

Garmin’s pricey nuvi 850 shows up fashionably late

Posted by: in GPS

Quite frankly, we were a touch overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of new nüvis announced for CES, but apparently, Garmin has managed to recuperate from its own outpouring and is dishing out yet another newcomer. On the docket today is the nüvi 850, a Bluetooth-less navigator that attempts to compensate for its lack of handsfree support by featuring a 4.3-inch 480 x 272 resolution touchscreen, a rechargeable Li-ion good for around four hours, a microSD slot, speech recognition, a 3D map view, support for MSN Direct and a built-in media player. Additionally, you’ll find an FM transmitter, audio out and an internal (read: non flip-up) antenna to ratchet the style factor up a notch. According to Garmin, this fairly potent device will be up for grabs in Q2 for upwards of $800.

[Via NaviGadget]

30 01 2008

Carl Freer: “I’m going to resurrect Gizmondo” — indeed he is

Posted by: in Gamespot

We’ve been in contact with Hans Sandberg, the Swedish journalist who quoted Carl Freer saying unequivocally, “I’m going to resurrect Gizmondo.” This, plus yesterday’s teaser, is the source of the Gizmondo mongering lighting up the Intertubes yesterday. Fortunately, all the important bits from Hans’ interview are now translated from Swedish into English for some good ol’ fashioned global scrutiny. As unthinkable as the proposition might sound, we bring you the highlights for your morning amusement and trepidation:

Carl believes there is a still a market for Gizmondo and is “ashamed” of his failure — he hopes the resurrection can pay back early investors
Florida-based Tiger Telematics will formally own the new Gizmondo
Gizmondo v2 could be up and running by May 2008 — by Christmas 2008 we’ll see “a more advanced version with widescreen“
35 titles will be available at launch, 6 are new, more on the way
An “easy to use program” will allow kids to create games, save them to SD, and play them on their Gizmondo
Price: $99, possibly free if Carl can work a deal with a cellular provider
Unfortunately, he doesn’t offer any explanation of the “exciting psychic worlds” in this interview snippet

Our personal favorite has to be this, though. Carl says he has a deal in place with a Chinese company in Shenzhen which will manufacture the device “on credit” on condition that they will be the sole reseller in China. Oh, that sounds like a deal alright.

Update: Plextek, the original Gizmondo device developer, have confirmed to Eurogamer that they will indeed be building the resurrected Gizmondo. Stefan Eriksson is currently not involved, Freer is. You know what this means… Gizmondo lives!

Continue reading HTC further responds to video driver issue, will improve future products

30 01 2008

HTC further responds to video driver issue, will improve future products

Posted by: in Mobile Phone

It’s pretty clear HTC customers and Engadget readers both are none too impressed with the manufacturer’s decision to omit the drivers necessary to enable hardware video acceleration on a number of their Qualcomm MSM 7xxx-based devices. We heard a little bit from HTC on the topic earlier this week, but we wanted to know more specifically: do they plan to meet consumers’ requests and release drivers for these devices? (And if not, why?) Finally, what’s going to be done about this video acceleration driver issue in the future? Here’s the response we got to these questions (and the reader poll we posted):

“HTC does plan to offer software upgrades that will increase feature functionality, over the air wireless speeds, and other enhancements for some of the phones being criticized, but we do not anticipate including any additional support for the video issues cited in customer complaints. It is important for customers to understand that bringing this functionality to market is not a trivial driver update and requires extensive software development and time.

HTC will utilize hardware video acceleration like the ATI Imageon in many upcoming products. Our users have made it clear that they expect our products to offer an improved visual experience, and we have included this feedback into planning and development of future products.”

More after the break.

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