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I grew up reading PC Magazine and I looked forward each couple weeks to picking up my copy of PC Magazine at the local grocery store. But today, Ziff Davis has announced that the legendary PC Magazine print publication is shutting down its print publication and focusing exclusively on online content. This is truly a sad day… Hold on while I grab some tissues…

PC Magazine started the whole in-depth comparative reviews of PCs and Microsoft software. They expanded later to including gadgets, MP3 players, mobile phones, GPS, and other technology. PC Magazine offered insightful tech tips and great columnists like John C. Dvorak. Back in the 80s and 90s the print publication was 400-500 pages, making for hours of tech- reading pleasure. Today, it’s down to 150 pages and soon to be 0 (January 2009).

Well, I guess it’s “greener” that way. But I for one will miss my print copy of PC Magazine.

Tags: John C. Dvorak, PC Magazine

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Original post by nafiz

Today, TMC announced the launch of NGN Magazine focused on next generation networks and how service providers and carriers can build these networks and what they will need to know to maximize savings and ARPU (average revenue per user).

“We’re in an interesting time,” says TMC President and Group Publisher, Rich Tehrani. No, he’s not referring to the American political scene or the chaotic American economy. Rich is referring to Next Generation Networks, which Rich believes will be critical to the future of service providers and carriers. Certainly, in these tough economic times, squeezing the most efficiency and most value-add services is critical. Verizon is probably the best example of that. They’ve been investing billions in their fiber-based FiOS service which supports high-speed Internet, voice, and TV/video/HDTV.  They are no doubt also looking to tie in their considerable wireless/cellular network with their FiOS network to offer customers a competitive advantage over competing solutions.

In his video interview with TMCnet Group Managing Editor Erik Linask, Rich discusses NGN Magazine. [click to visit video link]

The topics TMC’s NGN magazine will address, some of which Rich mentions in the video interview:

» How do you deploy new services and applications ?
» What technology should you consider ?
» How do you integrate new technologies with legacy elements?

Erik points out that a lot of publishing companies have been cutting down on staff and even folding print publications. Rich addresses this point by pointing out that 2-3 million executives visit tmcnet.com to read the content digitally. He also discusses how TMC offers digital (PDF) versions of the print magazines which greatly reduces costs. Thousands of people subscribe to the digital PDF format.

While all facets of the economy seem to be slowing down, TMC continues to grow — not only launching a new magazine, but recently adding new telecom/wireless industry talent such as Carl Ford, Scott Kargman, and more. Newspapers may die, print magazines may fold, but good information and news will always be needed. And where there is a need for good information, people will pay for it. Publishing companies which are nimble enough to adjust to the trend towards online news dissemination will survive, while those that can′t will die.

Case in point is the NY Times, which must deliver $400 million to lenders in May of 2009 or face bankruptcy. But if you′re a New York Times fan, don’t worry. I’m sure President-elect Barrack Obama will add them to the $700+ billion bailout. Can’t have the NY Times go bankrupt, can we? Don’t answer that question…

Tags: ARPU, Erik Linask, networks, next generation networks, NGN Magazine, NY Times, Rich Tehrani, service providers, voip

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Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Laptops

From what we can tell, Fujitsu’s spent the industrial design budget for the LifeBook P8020 on one thing and one thing only: trimming those sides. We really do love to see a laptop with a keyboard and screen flush with the edges, seemingly wasting zero space. The resulting product is a tad chubby (1.1- to 1.5-inches) and lacks a certain charm, but there’s all sorts of goodies under the hood, and the 2.9 pound weight is certainly passable. The 12.1-inch ultraportable packs a Centrino 2 processor, 320GB HDD (or a 64GB or 128GB SSD), 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, gigabit Ethernet, a fingerprint reader, DVD burner, gesture-friendly trackpad and a 1.3 megapixel webcam. There’s also a 6-cell battery and no 3G to drain it, so you should be able to expect some decent battery life when this hits in November, with a starting price of $1,799.

[Via SlashGear]

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Original post by Paul Miller

Filed under: Gaming

Are the blatant rockist tendencies of Guitar Hero and Rock Band ruining your enjoyment of those otherwise brilliant titles? Of course they are — we noted your b-boy flava from two blocks away. But don′t sweat it because Genius Products, 7 Studios and Quincy Jones III have your niche in their sights and will happily sell you Scratch: The Ultimate DJ when it hits the stores sometime in Spring 2009. With a game controller designed by Numark (known worldwide for its DJ controllers — there’s an example for you after the break), the game will be available for the Xbox 360 and PS3 and feature tracks by “many” (as yet unnamed) hip-hop artists. Trevor Drinkwater, President and CEO of Genius Products promises all and sundry “a cutting-edge game that captures the vital energy of hip-hop culture.” And here we thought they were cynically jumping on the Guitar Hero bandwagon! We stand corrected.

Continue reading Scratch offers Numark-controlled Guitar Hero for hip-hop heads

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Original post by Joseph L. Flatley

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Think that bundled Rock Band / High School Musical Sing It! mic is totally weak sauce? Ready to drop $79.99 in order to prove it? If so, have a gander at Logitech’s latest, the Cordless Vantage Microphone. Crafted to work with the Xbox 360, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 consoles, this AA (x2) powered device comes with a USB receiver and stand and supports a handful of titles including Boogie, American Idol Encore and the games we mentioned at the top. It’ll be available this December, just in time for you to succumb to high prices for the sake of having something to shove under the tree.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Didn′t see anything that particularly suited your fancy at CEDIA? Then feast your eyes on CEATEC. As the Japan-based trade show hastily approaches, out pops a mind-boggling new home theater package from Panasonic. The system will include one of its marvelous 103-inch plasma HDTVs, a Blu-ray player and at least one set of fancy 3D goggles. Hailed as a world’s first in some form or fashion, the Full HD 3D package utilizes an undisclosed format “employed by major Hollywood film studios” to “distribute full HD images of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels to each eye via synchronized shutter glasses.” Panny is hoping to promote the technology and possibly get a leg up on Samsung (our assumption) by impressing wealthy homeowners and members of the Blu-ray Disc Association. As expected, there’s no mention of a price, but rest assured — you’ll be stuck choosing between this and a new BMW.

[Via Impress]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops, Peripherals

Workaholics take note: HP just did the impossible, cramming 24 hours of battery into a laptop, and destroying Dell’s fresh 19 hour record in the process. The HP EliteBook 6930p combines advances such as an LED backlit display and Intel’s 80GB SSD, a new HP BIOS and Intel graphics driver, and of course an “Ultra Capacity Battery” — a 12-cell, $189 option, which weighs in at a hefty 1.77 pounds — for a net approximate 24 hours of work time. The standard 6930p only weighs 4.7 pounds, though, so you’re not looking at a backbreaker, and configurations start at $1,199 without SSD.

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Original post by Paul Miller

Filed under: Laptops, Peripherals

Workaholics take note: HP just did the impossible, cramming 24 hours of battery into a laptop, and destroying Dell’s fresh 19 hour record in the process. The HP EliteBook 6930p combines advances such as an LED backlit display and Intel’s 80GB SSD, a new HP BIOS and Intel graphics driver, and of course an “Ultra Capacity Battery″ — a 12-cell, $189 option, which weighs in at a hefty 1.77 pounds — for a net approximate 24 hours of work time. The standard 6930p only weighs 4.7 pounds, though, so you’re not looking at a backbreaker, and configurations start at $1,199 without SSD.

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Original post by Paul Miller

According to Reuters, Sony’s joint venture with cell phone maker Ericsson must do better.

Asked whether Sony is planning to end its Sony Ericsson joint venture, Sony head honcho Howard Stringer said: “It’s certainly been a difficult year but buying out a partner is never an easy thing.”

Sony lowered its group net profit forecast for the year to March by 17 percent, citing a slump at Sony Ericsson and weakening prospects for its electronics division amid tough price competition.

“We have to work together again as we did two years ago. Or the joint venture will have to find its own solution,” Stringer said.

He added that it was hard for a company to be as nimble as possible when it works in a joint venture.

Are the bells starting to toll?  And will that be the last ring tone from Sony Ericsson?

Lots more here.

Tags: ericsson, howard stringer, reuters, sony

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Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Displays

The world already knew of Toshiba and Matsushita‘s separate plans to barrel into the OLED realm, but Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology is all set to become the first in Japan to “mass produce organic electroluminescent, or OEL, display panels.” Reportedly, the two outfits will establish manufacturing lines in the Ishikawa Prefecture in fall of 2009, with plans to churn out one million 2.5-inch EL displays. Granted, the products will be rather minuscule in nature, with the idea being to fit them into cellphones, PMPs and other handheld gadgetry. Better hurry — Samsung’s pulling away over in South Korea.

[Via CNET]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Over in the USA, Mitsubishi has revealed the new X𐩳U DLP projector that features 2000 lumens of brightness and 2000:1 contrast ratio, and is able to produce 1080×768 resolution. This DLP projector, an entry-level projector, provides TI’s latest DDP 2230 DMD chip with BrilliantColor technology. The Mitsubishi X𐩳U DLP projector will go for $1595 in May 2008

Mitsubishi pic source

Tags: Mitsubishi XD211U DLP projector

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Original post by colbert low

I’ve been testing Movable Type 4.15 beta1 for a few weeks now with plans to migrate from Movable Type 3.33 to 4.15 when the product finally launches. According to the Movable Type roadmap wiki, the final non-beta version will launch in 6 days. Well, technically it says "Target Release Date: May 19ish" so they’re leaving some wiggle room. Regardless, I’m pretty excited about the pending launch. There are essentially three version of Movable Type as so eloquently explained by master Movable Type plugin developer Mark Carey from MT-Hacks.com.

In general, all MT versions include the same identical core, MTOS (Movable Type Open Source) . "Packs" are effectively plugins that add-on to the core. So we have:

1) MTOS = MTOS (Movable Type Open Source)
2) "Commercial" = MTOS + Professional Pack (Custom Fields, etc.)
3) "Enterprise" = MTOS + Pro Pack + Enterprise Pack

I was testing MT Commercial 4.15 Beta1 which allows me to add custom fields. I found several bugs in beta1, including a couple that required me to hand edit some Perl code to get M͌.15beta1 to successfully upgrade my M͋.33 database. Unlike the MTOS "nightlies", which have regular updates, the Commercial version has been stuck on beta1 for quite some time. However, I just happened to be viewing the Movable Type website’s file directories and looking at the MTOS nightlies when I decided to click "Parent Directory" to go up one level. I then clicked on the betas directory and saw a listing of all the available betas. Then I saw a file called MT-4.15b2-en.zip that was obviously the betό version I had been waiting for!

Looks like they have an English and Japanese version available, as seen here with both beta1 and beta2 files listed:

MT-4.15b1-en.tar.gz         24-Apr-2008 10:29 4.3M
MT-4.15b1-en.zip             24-Apr-2008 10:30 5.3M
MT-4.15b1-ja.tar.gz         24-Apr-2008 10:31 4.0M
MT-4.15b1-ja.zip              24-Apr-2008 10:32 5.0M
MT-4.15b2-en.tar.gz      12-May-2008 21:12 4.4M
MT-4.15b2-en.zip           12-May-2008 21:13 5.4M
MT-4.15ϖ-ja.tar.gz         12-May-2008 21:14 4.0M
MT-4.15b2-ja.zip             12-May-2008 21:14 5.0M

I didn’t see any news about MT 4.15beta2 launching. So I googled it and still didn’t see much. I checked Movable Type’s wiki and blog and no announcement there either. According to the filename dates above, they did just upload them yesterday, so perhaps they haven’t gotten around to announcing it. Of course, it looks like they’re launching the final code in 6 days anyway.

Actually, they do list the download link to Beta 2 here, but this page mentions all the betas and doesn’t point to this as being ‘big′ news. Usually MT will make an announcement somewhere. Anyway, the page says, "Professional Pack Betas: Beta 2 - corresponds to MTOS beta 5b". So it looks like Beta 2 finally has "parity" with MTOS beta 5b, which has been ahead of the commercial version for some time. It does indeed appear that Six Apart is close to launching the final code since the code bases are so close now.

Well, migrating to MT4.15 should be fun and with some cool new features.

Tags: Movable Type 4.15 beta, MT 4.15, MT4.15 Beta2, MTOS beta 5b

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Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

While attempts to bypass biometric security measures are certainly nothing new, a researcher from London-based Information Risk Management is now raising an alarm about a new area of biometric hacking, and he’s even gone so far as to release the source code for proof-of-concept tool to really drive the point home. As PC World reports, IRM’s Matthew Lewis has demonstrated what he describes as a “biologging″ system, which actually intercepts and captures biometric data as it passes between the biometric scanner and the processing server, during which time it apparently isn’t encrypted on many systems. That, Lewis says, opens up the possibility of so-called “man-in-the-middle″ attacks,” although there is the slight problem that the biologger needs to actually be inserted into the network in order to do its thing. Even so, Lewis says that such dangers do exist, and he’s hoping that the release of the tool will encourage manufacturers to beef up their security.

[Image courtesy IRM white paper]

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Portable Audio

Word on the street (and by street, we mean mostly British tabloids) is that Paul McCartney’s deal to sell the Beatles back-catalog is done, and the Greatest Works of Musical Art Ever Recorded will be appearing on the iTunes store “within months.” Of course, we’ve been hearing whispers about this for what seems like a million years, and since both Apple Corps and Apple are delivering “no comment” and “rumor and speculation” responses on the topic, we won’t get too excited. Still, there does seem to be some serious movement on this front, with everyone and their mother saying the lot is to be sold any day now for around $400 million — which is no small sum. We will, of course, keep you abreast of any developments which will lead to you stocking your music players with the Fab Four’s work.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Original post by Joshua Topolsky

Last May, I reported on Perfect Curve’s Socket Pocket, a wallplate that is placed over an electrical outlet to store and conveniently charge your cell phone, PDA, Ṃ player, or other small device. Since then, the company has sold over 300,000 units and just signed deals with the NCAA and MLB to license sports-branded Socket Pockets.

Pictured here is the Yankees cap-and-helmet Socket Pocket design. Expect the latest styles of the Socket Pocket to be available by May 2008 for $9.99.

Until then, the Socket Pocket is currently available in six colors (white, tan, black, blue, orange, and red) for $10.

Original post by Jen the Weird Hunter