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For years the computer industry has been pushing consumers on concept of the tablet PC. But save for a small percentage of professionals in specialized fields, the form factor has largely failed to catch on. While plenty of mobile phones have long since proven that consumers love touchscreens, on the whole, that love hasn’t translated to the PC market.

Recently, however, Hewlett-Packard took some interesting baby steps in that direction when it first launched the TouchSmart “kitchen” PC. Designed for family use, the PC proved its usefulness when it came to multimedia, letting users get more hands-on with things such as digital photos.

The company is now looking to expand the relative success of the TouchSmart IQ816 all-in-one with a new touchscreen notebook. Introduced today, the TouchSmart TX2 is the first multi-touch tablet for Windows.

Like its predecessor in the TouchSmart line, the TͲ’s touch capabilities are largely focused on multimedia–flipping and expanding digital pictures and things of that nature. Some of the touch functionality extends to other apps, but it’s fairly limited. We got some hands-on time with the computer earlier in the week, and the first thing HP showed us was the ability to launch HP MediaSmart by drawing an “M” with two fingers (even this simple gesture took some getting used to, however).

HP is also being a bit generous with the multi-touch classification: While it supports more fingers, the gestures at this point are still limited to two. An HP rep suggested that there were limited functions that might require more than two fingers, but Apple’s new trackpads for the Macbook certainly make a different case.

Otherwise, the tablet is a lot like its predecessor, the Tx2000z. it features a 12-inch widescreen, a stylus, a dual-layer DVD burner, three USB ports, and a multi-card reader. Inside the tablet has a 250GB, 5400-rpm hard drive, a 2.2-GHz AMD Turion Ͳ ZM-82 processor, and 4GB of memory. Pricing starts at $1,149.

The notebook is hardly revolutionary. If anything, HP’s primary objective with the computer seems to be testing the waters to see if the company can repeat what it did with the tablet’s older sibling, perhaps assuring that “tablet″ is no longer a dirty word in the notebook market. If that’s going to happen, however, it’s going to take a bit more functionality than the TX2 has to offer.

Original post by Brian Heater

Filed under: Portable Audio

If Lala.com has its way, the Web song will do to the MP3 file what the MP3 file did to the CD. The maverick music website, which began as a CD trading site and moved into Internet radio, announced an ambitious plan last year to license the catalogs of the four major music labels as well as those of many independents. It would provide unlimited listening to its members in the hopes of stimulating buying. Listeners would pay only when they wanted to transfer music to their iPods; Lala had even developed a way — since abandoned — to transfer music directly to Apple’s portable player from its website… circumventing iTunes.

Lala eventually got its licenses. But somewhere along the way, the promise of free unlimited listening proved too good to be true, How it now works is that any song you don’t have on your local PC but which Lala has made available online in its clean, ad-free user interface can be listened to for free, but only once, after which it must be purchased. One option for purchasing is the the “web song,” which is essentially access rights to a track that you can stream indefinitely, but cannot download.

The benefit, in addition to not having to manage a library of files, is the price — a mere 10 cents per song or even less when bought as part of an album. And in a nod toward its original philosophy of encouraging “try before you buy”, Lala will credit the price of the web song toward the purchase of the Ṃ file. Purchased Ṃ files are then added to your iTunes library just as they are when music is purchased from the Amazon Ṃ store. But even tough they can′t be downloaded, web songs will have plenty of company with your other tunes.

Continue reading Switched On: Lala sells access to a song for a song

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Original post by Ross Rubin

I just queried Flickr for pictures of the moon and got 1,110,995 hits. OK–some of those were probably pictures of mooning but the vast majority were the Earth’s favorite satellite. It’s a right-of-passage for new DSLR owners to go out at night, point their camera skyward and get a (usually not great) photo. Here are some ideas so you can impress friends and neighbors.

Obviously, it will help to know when the Moon is up and its current phase. The Moon is not in sync with our night. It’s often up while the Sun is and below the horizon when you’d expect it to be up. Some days have no moonrise, others no moonset. You can get a year’s worth of Moon times from the US Naval Observatory. Unlike sunrise and sunset charts, you’ll need a new one every year. You can find the Moon’s phase in picture form here.

Our mind is good at getting our eyes to concentrate on a small object like the Moon in the sky. Your camera–not so much. You’ll want to use as long a zoom lens as you can. As your lens gets bigger so will the Moon and so will shake! Long lenses need fast shutter speeds. A tripod is helpful but not mandatory. The rule of thumb is “1/focal length″ for hand held photography. If you’ve got a 300mm lens, you’ll have to shoot at 1/300 second or faster. If your lens has a 1.6 crop factor you’ll want something closer to 1/500 second with that same 300mm lens!

Luckily, the Moon is a point of bright light. I went back to Flickr and found a very nice handheld lunar image taken with a 400mm lens at 1/400 second, ISO 100, f/7.1. By the way, a quarter moon only has around 10% of the light and you’ll have to open up your lens or slow down your shutter speed to accommodate the change.

Over at Digital Photography School they recommend timing your moon shots so you get help from the Sun!

“The ideal time to capture the moon near the horizon is when you can still see the horizon. If you were to capture the moon long after the sun has set, say 3 hours, the foreground subject matter will not be illuminated and may not show well in the image. Or if the sky is already black, the moon will show as just a white blur if you attempt to brighten foreground objects.”

Like so many other subjects the Moon looks best when framed with other objects. It could be a nice clouds formation, trees or even a city’s skyline. Hey, it’s the digital age–shoot away and experiment. Bracket your shots using a variety of shutter, aperture and ISO settings. You’ll throw most away, but that won’t matter if there’s one keeper.

(Photo: Noche de luna llena - Full moon night by *L*U*Z*A* used under a Creative Commons license)

Original post by Geoff Fox

Filed under: Displays

To put Casio’s achievement into perspective, most 7-inch PMPs and UMPCs generally equipped with 800 x 480 LCDs can’t match the pixel density of Casio’s new 2-inch display. Using a proprietary Hyper Amorphous Silicon TFT (HAST) LCD, Casio achieves a 960 x 540 pixel resolution resulting in 546 pixels per inch supporting 16.8 million colors — hoozah! Although not announced, we’ll undoubtedly see these in future NTT DoCoMo superphones as soon as these displays hit mass production.

[Via Akihabara News]

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Peripherals

Yeah, so we might have forced Microsoft’s hand into announcing the fall Zune lineup a day early, but nothing can upstage the pure excitement of the Say Goodbye to Laser campaign — awww yeah, the BlueTrack mice are official today. The new tracking tech uses a (surprise!) blue beam and wide-angle “specular optics architecture” to work on a wider range of surfaces than traditional optical or laser mice, including granite, marble, and even carpet. The new tech will debut in two new mice: a revised wireless Microsoft Explorer Mouse and that Microsoft Explorer Mini Mouse that we’d already spotted. Both will be available at Best Buy in November for $99 and $79, respectively. Full PR after the break.

Continue reading Microsoft’s BlueTrack mice are here — laser bids a tearful goodbye

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Gaming

Fear not, UK friends, you will be getting the eye-pleasing, battery-draining PSP-3000 just like everyone else, but it seems you won’t be getting quite as many bundle options as others in Europe. According to GamesIndustry.biz, the silver PSP-3000 bundle with Ratchet &amp Clank: Size Matters and the black PSP-3000 bundle with a 4GB Memory Stick won’t be making it to the UK, at least initially, leaving you with only the Go! communication, FIFA, Harry Potter, and Buzz! Master Quiz bundles to choose from. That, as you may have noticed, doesn’t include a stand-alone PSP-3000 option, but Sony assures us that′ll be arriving as well sometime after the bundles are released.

[Via PSP Fanboy]

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds

Continue reading Unspectacular PSP-3001 outed by the FCC

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Gaming, GPS

Only John Koller knows how serious John Koller, Sony’s senior marketing manager for PSP, was when mentioning that GPS-enabled games could eventually hit the PSP, but he definitely threw it out there. Speaking about the forthcoming GPS add-on for the PlayStation Portable, Koller stated that said module “changes the dynamics of GPS but also changes the way developers think about games on PSP, because you can start integrating GPS into it.” He continued on by mentioning that Sony’s own first-party studios were “already looking at a number of things [involving GPS in games],” and concluded by asserting that a GPS game could land on the system as early as next year. Considering just how long we’ve been waiting for the add-on, we’re not holding our breath on the titles.

[Via PSP Fanboy]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Gaming

There may not have been any word of a new PSP out of ʵ as some had suspected, but it looks Sony may have a bit of a late surprise for us, at least if these tantalizing pics from PSPChina are to be believed. Apparently, this new PSP-3000 model remains mostly unchanged from the current PSP-2000, with the notable addition of a built-in microphone and a somewhat less notable PlayStation button in place of the usual Home button. As you can see in the picture after the break, the signature steel ring on the back of the PSP also appears to have been trimmed a bit (there’s a pic of the inside of the case as well, for the curious). Not exactly the DS Lite sort of upgrade that’d make everyone ditch their old PSPs to be sure but, as we’ve seen with the PSP-2000, it would be about par for the course for Sony.

[Via Joystiq, Khattab]

Continue reading Sony said to be prepping PSP-3000 with built-in mic

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Peripherals

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment.

With all the hoopla around the iPhone 3G, the finger has taken center stage as the input device of choice on the go. However, last week’s column on the prospects of the Livescribe Pulse was actually the penultimate one on the subject of smart pens — at least two alternatives have entered the market. Both are based heavily on reference designs from Israeli companies that have taken a different approach than Livescribe.

Rather than relying on a camera to read small dots on special paper, these pens work with practically any paper. And unlike the bulky Pulse with its ostentatious display, they are practically indistinguishable from normal pens and both come with software that can do a decent job of converting handwriting to text. The tradeoff is that some of the electronics have been offloaded to a small receiver that must be positioned on the paper, creating a two-piece solution.

IOGEAR’s Mobile Digital Scribe, powered by Pegasus Technology, is a follow-on from a similar earlier product that required that the receiver be tethered to the PC. The Scribe can still function this way. In fact, when connected to a PC, the pen can be used to scribble (presumably for quick doodles, otherwise why not just use the keyboard?) just as its tethered predecessor could. Writing appears on an on-screen note that appears as soon as the writer begins to write, and the software can have these pages “float” on the screen as sticky notes..

Continue reading Switched On: More options for getting from scribble to screen

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Original post by Ross Rubin

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Oh yeah, we’ve seen dedicated battery pack extenders for a plethora of the most popular gizmos, but IOGEAR’s looking out for the run-of-the-mill crowd with its GearJuice Rescue Charger. Essentially, the wee device accepts any ‘ole AA cell, and upon plugging it into your mini-USB-equipped PDA / mobile / DAP / fish tank, it provides an infinitesimally small boost of power. Okay, so it’s said to give you an extra 15 minutes of talk time, but we’d probably go in with even lower expectations just to be safe. It’s available now for $11.99 (battery not included).

[Via Gearlog]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Peripherals, Networking

We’re not exactly hurting for wireless, USB-sharing options right about now, but when it comes to devices that let us yank another cable from our desk, we’re all for a bit of excess. This latest one comes to us from IOGEAR, which opted for the sharing-over-network method with its new Net ShareStation. Like other similar devices, this one plugs straight into your router (wireless or otherwise) and, in this case, accommodates up to four USB devices of your choice, although you′ll need to provide your own AC-powered 4-port USB hub if you plan to use more than one device with it. If that last rather lame detail isn’t a deal-breaker for you, you can get your hands on this one now for $80.

[Via Blast]

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Original post by Donald Melanson

67 year old Illinois native, Bill Bramanti built his future coffin in the shape of a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer can because he just really loves the beer. Until he passes away, he′s using the coffin as a beer cooler, but admits that he has actually gotten inside the coffin to test the size. He even threw a party where he used the coffin to store beers for his friends. We just hope none of his friends became mentally unstable after they found out it was his final resting place.

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Original post by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

An anonymous reader writes “Tamir Khason from Israel has blogged about the direct connection between the amount of facial hair and the success of computer languages. Very funny, and it’s the truth.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by kdawson

I Don′t Believe in Imaginary Property writes “The authors of the Zeus malware have added an end-user license agreement to their product. The buyer is, of course, permitted to infect as many computers with Zeus as they please, but they have no right to distribute it for ‘any business or commercial purpose not connected with this sale,’ and they can′t examine the source, use it to control non-Zeus botnets, or send it to anti-virus companies. Oh, and they commit to paying for future upgrades, too — wouldn′t Microsoft love to be able to add that term to their EULA. While it seems silly to imagine Zeus’s authors going to the authorities for violations of this EULA, if they’re anything like the Russian Business Network, they probably have an extra-judicial means of contract enforcement named Ivan. That said, this is by no means the first EULA-encrusted malware.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by kdawson