Tech Informer

Sunday, April 24, 2011

White Iphone 4 released early in the U.K




Adding extra legitimacy to credible reports that the white version of the iPhone 4 would arrive within the next few weeks, the unit has already popped up at a Vodafone UK retail store, and has even been sold to a customer before stock was pulled.

Engadget has a photo from a reader who claims to have purchased the 16GB model of the yet-unreleased device from a Vodafone store in the U.K. Following the sale, the carrier is said to have sent a message to stores telling them to hold the stock until next week.

The white version of the iPhone 4 was supposed to launch alongside the black one in 2010, but manufacturing difficulties have pushed its release back nearly a year. Following the original iPhone, the iPhone 3G and 3GS were both available in black and white, though with the iPhone 4, Apple radically changed the manufacturing process and added color to the front of the device as well as the back.

According to Engadget, the model number on the white iPhone 4 the customer purchased (MC604B/A) is only slightly different than that on the currently available black version (MC603B/A). This suggests that any major differences between the two phones, other than color, are unlikely.

Reports emerged last week that Apple planned to get the long-delayed white iPhone in stores by the end of the month. Apple later confirmed it was nearing its targeted launch timeline of "spring."

Source: http://news.cnet.com/
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Sony's Playstation Network Still Down




Sony’s PlayStation and Qriocity network services went down over the long weekend, even as a hacker group it crossed paths with denied involvement in the incident.
PlayStation corporate communications and social media senior director Patrick Seybold said the outage stemmed from an “external intrusion."

“An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. In order to conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services going forward, we turned off PlayStation Network & Qriocity services on the evening of Wednesday, April 20th," he said in a blog post.

He did not give a definite timetable on when the services would be resumed, but said they are doing “all we can to resolve this situation quickly."
In an earlier blog post, he had said it may be “a full day or two" before they could get the service completely back up and running.

“Providing quality entertainment services to our customers and partners is our utmost priority. We are doing all we can to resolve this situation quickly, and we once again thank you for your patience. We will continue to update you promptly as we have additional information to share," he said.

But Anonymous, a group of hackers that crossed paths with Sony for suing “hacktivist" George Hotz, said it was not involved in this incident.
Hotz was slapped a lawsuit by Sony for making public the root keys of Sony’s PlayStation 3 console.

Still, in a post on the AnonNews site, Anonymous admitted the possibility its individual members may have acted on their own.

“While it could be the case that other Anons have acted by themselves, AnonOps was not related to this incident and does not take responsibility for whatever has happened. A more likely explanation is that Sony is taking advantage of Anonymous’ previous ill-will towards the company to distract users from the fact that the outage is actually an internal problem with the company’s servers," it said. — LBG, GMA News
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Sunday, April 17, 2011

Nintendo Wii 2, Real or Rumor?




Nintendo could be revealing a HD successor to the Wii console this summer, according to new reports.

There hasn’t been a new gaming console since the launch of the Wii and PlayStation 3 in November 2006. However, Microsoft has breathed new life into its console, the Xbox 360, thanks to the Kinect. The Wii, which has been best the best-selling console for years, is about to lose its first place position.

While Nintendo intends to respond to the Xbox threat by cutting the Wii’s price next month, it looks like the gaming company has another trick up its sleeve: a brand new HD console. According to Game Informer‘s sources, Nintendo plans to unveil a new console at the E3 conference in Los Angeles in June or potentially sooner.

Very little is known about the rumored console, not even the name (Wii 2? Wii HD? Wii 360?), but it’s likely to be more powerful than the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3, according to Kotaku. Nintendo has apparently been showing off the system to third-party developers so they can prepare titles for the console’s eventual launch in late 2012.

The Wii captured the hearts and minds of casual gamers with its innovative controller system and its lower price point, but the specs and visuals of its rival consoles are far stronger, giving them greater longevity. Microsoft has also mitigated the Wii’s advantage with causal gamers, thanks to Kinect. Perhaps that’s what is driving Nintendo’s rumored decision to be first on the market with a new console.
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Battle of the Browsers; IE9 vs Firefox4




Some people may have been surprised when Microsoft started to push Internet Explorer (IE) 9 out early. I wasn’t. Why not? Because Firefox 4 has been kicking the shit out of IE 9 in adoption rates.

According to both StatCounter and Net Applications, Firefox 4 is being picked up by users far, far faster than IE 9.

As Asa Dotzler, Mozilla Director of Community Development, recently wrote, “So what explains this disparity? It’s you all. It’s every one of you that downloaded Firefox 4, found it to be awesome, and told all of your friends and family about it. No ad campaign from Microsoft can top that. Keep spreading the word. Firefox answers to no one but you!”

There you have it. IE 9 is indeed a far better Web browser than IE 8, but there are also lots of reasons to consider skipping IE 9 for an alternative browser. Firefox 4 is a darn good replacement for IE and Chrome 10 is also a great Web browser. In short, there’s really no compelling reason to have to stick with Microsoft’s default Vista and Windows 7 Web browser.

There is one other reason though why IE 9 isn’t doing as well as Microsoft would like. IE 9 won’t run on Windows XP. Period. Full stop. End of statement. Microsoft may hate it, but the bottom line is that most Windows users are still using XP and that means they’ll never be running IE 9.

In the overall scheme of thing, IE is still the dominant, but declining, Web browser, while Firefox has been holding its own and Chrome has been picking up steam. I expect that sometime in 2012, Chrome will be the number two browser after IE.

I think it’s also possible though that Firefox and Chrome will be fighting it out for first place with IE lagging behind in 3rd place. Oh, on the Windows desktops, IE will probably still be number one for years still to come, but the world doesn’t work just on Windows desktops any more. Users are quickly moving to tablets, like the Apple iPad, and smartphones, powered by iOS or Android, to do their work. And, away from the desktop, IE has no presence at all to speak of.

Who can blame Microsoft for wanting to inflate their IE numbers while the Windows desktop is still the number one end-user platform? The way things are going, IE may not have a chance to gather users for much longer.
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