New Facebook Layout
New Facebook picture: http://freelancefolder.com/facebook-vs-twitter/
Thursday, March 12, 2009 | 0 Comments
Samsung Q2 PMP, Kogan Agora Netbook, Citroen's PSP-Themed Car, Blogger's New Features
The Samsung Q2 PMP (not to be confused with the Samsung Q2 UMPC) has busted its way onto the scene. It was announced quietly and is pretty decent. The Q2 has 50 hours of audio playback, a 2.4 QVGA screen, a built-in microphone, FM radio, and has your choice of either 8GB or 16GB of storage. Unfortunately, it's lacking WiFi and Bluetooth, so the iPod Touch is clearly going to be the favourite here. Sorry Samsung, maybe next time.
Ruslan Kogan, maker of the Kogan Agora, has just shown a prototype of his new and functioning netbook. It clearly is running the gOS (Google OS) Android and is also called the Agora (same as the handset, confusing huh?). The 10-inch netbook sports the N270 Atom, 1GB of RAM, 160GB HDD and a 3-cell battery. The upgraded model, called the "Agora Pro" will have 2GB of RAM and will even throw in a 6-cell battery, which is much better. The Agora netbook will run Android, as well as Windows 7 when it is released. The netbook to me looks fairly plain, but the attractive point is definitely the price. The Agora and Agora Pro will be released for just $499 AUD ($320 USD) and $549 AUD ($355 USD), respectively. This is cheap. Both models are expected to be available next month, so this will be the first running netbook with the Google OS. Celebrate good times!
Citroen is teaming up with Sony to make an SUV-like vehicle that will be PSP-themed. "The Citroen C-Crosser Exclusive PSP will of course, come with a PSP - a Slim, as it turns out. It will also come with two games, a Pro Duo, and a 4GB memory card. It will also come with a hefty price tag of EUR 33,930 (US$ 43,340)." This is kind of stupid and will be obsolete soon, since there are already rumours of the next update to the PSP. Y'know, the one without the UMD. Too little, too late Citroen. Sorry.
On a side note, I have noticed that Blogger has 2 new features: e-mail and mobile posting. This won't be of use to me because what's the point of e-mail posting if I can just go directly to the Blogger website? I don't know the point, but I'm sure Blogger does. E-mail posting will be pointless to me, but I've decided to add it just in case. Luckily, I have the option to save the e-mail post as a draft, so that i can edit it later. Mobile posting, on the other hand, will be of no use to me, since it costs me $0.15 CAD to send a damn text.
Kogan Agora Netbook (and picture): http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/12/320-kogan-agora-netbook-gets-the-hands-on-treatment-aussie-sty/
Citroen's PSP-Themed Car (and picture): http://ps3.qj.net/Citroen-making-PSP-themed-car/pg/49/aid/129427
Blogger picture: http://www.vwnw.co.uk/
Thursday, March 12, 2009 | 0 Comments
Warcraft III Player Gets A $500,000 Contract, Sackboy In Hot Shots Golf, Sony Canada Pulls Killzone 2 Ads, Firefox 3.1 Beta 3
See! Gaming can get you places! The famous Korean gamer, Jae Ho "Moon" Jang, has just signed a 3-year 700,000,000 won ($473,037 USD) contract to play Warcraft III professionally. If you thought this was shocking, this is actually not the biggest signed deal for playing an e-sport professionally. In 2007, another Korean gamer, Yoon Yeol "NaDa" Lee, signed a contract that was worth 750,000,000 won for playing Starcraft professionally. Lee is the highest paid Korean gamer and both players signed contracts presented to them by WeMade FOX.
If you play Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds you should be considered lucky because I don't have it. Another reason to feel lucky is because Sackboy from LittleBigPlanet will be making his way to the game tomorrow. He will be playable and the catch is that you'll have to pay to unlock him which sucks. The price is still unknown, so i can tell you tomorrow, if you really want to know.
Canada sucks and here's another reason why. Killzone 2 ads were pulled from bus stops in Toronto because Davis Mirza, a teacher, complained about them. He said that his kids "come from a lot of different countries, who have to experience violence" and he continued to mention that the ads are "stuff they don't need to see." Apparently, the soldier's eyes are scary and the background of the advertisement showed a scenery similar to Iraq. Kind of lame, since these are bad-ass ads.
Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 is now available for download and is faster than IE8, so take that Microsoft. The next beta that comes out will be marked under the Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 name because of the many, significant changes. I haven't got a chance to try it out yet, so i'm not exactly sure how fast it is.
Warcraft III Player Gets A $500,000 Contract (and picture): http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/22880-FOX_officially_unveils_record_signing_Moon
Sackboy In Hot Shots Golf (and picture): http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/03/sackboy-comes-to-hot-shots-golf-a-dozen-people-are-excited.ars
Sony Canada Pulls Killzone 2 Ads (and picture): http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3173239
Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 (and picture): http://lifehacker.com/5169127/firefox-31-beta-3-available-for-download
Thursday, March 12, 2009 | 0 Comments
Dell Studio One 19, Google Voice, IE8 Release Date, Windows 7 RC1 Leaked
Dell's all-in-one PC attempts are on their way and what better way to reveal them by listing a maxed out spec sheet for all you? This is, i guess, a shot at the new Apple iMacs. Well the all-in-one PC from Dell, dubbed the Studio One 19 PC has a Core 2 Quad processor, a 750GB HDD, 4GB of RAM, 6 USB ports, a 1.3MP integrated webcam, a NVIDIA GeForce 9400 graphics card and a Blu-ray player when you tune up the PC to the max settings. The 18.5-inch all-in-one PC will have a 1,366 x 768 resolution and is even capable of having a touchscreen, but whether it is capacitive or resistive is unknown for now. If you want the max settings it will cost you around $1,500 USD - $1,600 USD. On the other hand, it starts out at a base price of $699 and will be available in the US this Spring.
Google Grandcentral was finally put to good use today. Google has announced a new service called Google Voice and is available "as a preview" to Grandcentral users and to a couple of others via invitation. "The service looks a lot like Gmail for voicemail, although you don't have to be a Gmail user to use it. It lets you retrieve transcripts of your voicemail, archive and search all your sent and received SMS messages, and you can make calls directly from Google Voice's interface. The calls are free in the US, and cost a small free internationally." If you want additional information regarding Google Voice you can click on this link, for Mashable's explanation. Update on July 17th: I just got an e-mail from Google inviting me to try out Google Voice, but since I'm living in Canada I was unable to accept it. A sad, sad day for me. I hope you guys are luckier than I am!
On a side note, Internet Explorer 8 may be available on March 19 or March 20 next week. If you want to see how fast IE8 is (according to Microsoft), then click here for their [Microsoft's] PDF file report. They claim that IE8 is basically faster than Firefox and, more importantly, Google Chrome. Their tests disprove just about every other speed test out there, so i don't really know how well these so-called tests were done... Judging on my experience, I can say that Chrome is much faster than IE, but maybe that's just me. I'll give Internet Explorer 8 a try though, then a quick uninstall afterwards (most likely).
Dell Studio One 19 (and picture): http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/12/dells-multi-touch-studio-one-19-pc/
Google Voice (and picture): http://mashable.com/2009/03/12/google-voice/
IE8 Release Date: http://techreport.com/discussions.x/16569
IE8 Is Fast?: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/12/ie_8_speed_test/
Windows 7 RC1 Leaked (and picture): http://lifehacker.com/5168796/new-windows-7-build-7057-hits-bittorrent
Thursday, March 12, 2009 | 0 Comments
Palm Pre News, Apple News: iTunes 8.1, iPhone OS 3.0, Bill Gates
Palm Pre fans, don't be scared because Sprint and Palm have confirmed that the Pre will still be available in the first half of this year, so that means that it is still on schedule. The plans and pricing was also confirmed by Sprint. I'll just copy and paste it, since there's no point of putting it into my own words, keep in mind that these are all in USD. "Individuals can choose from 450 minute ($69.99), 900 minute ($89.99) or unlimited plans ($99.99). Families can choose from 1500 minutes ($129.99), 3000 minutes ($169.99) or unlimited plans (189.99). Business customers will also be able to pool their minutes together using about 5 different plans." Unfortunately, the Touchstone wireless charger will be an additional cost and won't be included in the package.
Let's head over to Apple, Palm's favourite brand right now. So, with the release of the new iPod Shuffle yesterday, Apple has released a new version (8.1) of iTunes that supports it. It is reportedly faster than the old iTunes, but i don't really see a difference when running a Windows PC. I haven't had the ability to test it out too thoroughly, but i do know that i spotted a new feature called iTunes DJ. If you want the full list go to this link, Gizmodo will tell you all you need to know.
![](http://static.arstechnica.com/bill_gates_small.png)
Palm Pre News (and picture): http://i.gizmodo.com/5168926/pre-available-first-half-of-2009-pricing-plans-confirmed
Apple iTunes 8.1: http://i.gizmodo.com/5168529/itunes-81-now-available
Apple iPhone OS 3.0 (and picture): http://www.gsmarena.com/iphone_os_30_is_knocking_on_the_door_launch_set_for_17_march-news-830.php
Apple iPhone OS 3.0 Rumours: http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/03/12/iphone.os.rumors/
Bill Gates (and picture): http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/03/bill-gates-is-worlds-richest-man-again.ars
Thursday, March 12, 2009 | 0 Comments