Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: Cellphones

LG’s cover was blown late last month with the early unveiling of the KC910, but it’s hard to ignore that warm, fuzzy feeling one gets when any outfit doles out the official verbiage as confirmation. The self-proclaimed Viewty successor (formally dubbed the LG-KC910) looks mighty fine on paper, with a 3-inch WQVGA touchscreen, 8-megapixel camera (with Schneider-Kreuznach certified optics and a Xenon flash), geotagging support, Dolby Mobile, video recording, A-GPS, 7.2Mbps HSDPA and integrated WiFi. Regrettably, LG failed to pass along the most pressing morsel of news (read: the price), but at least we know it’ll be available somewhere in the world this October.

[Via MobileBurn]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Home Entertainment

You know how it goes with Sony — proprietary just seems to rule the roost. Thankfully, the outfit is at least recognizing a trend in the market by trotting out an iPod-friendly version of its S-AIR wireless audio technology. The new S-AIRPLAY system (formally known as AIR-SA20PK) comes with one iPod docking station and a pair of S-AIR wireless speakers, though there is an AM / FM tuner built in should your stored jams get stale. Sony suggests that music can be beamed some 164-feet away from the dock sans cabling, and so long as your S-AIR speaker is plugged into a power outlet (and within the aforementioned range), it’ll pick up the signal and start talkin’. Look for the kit to land next month for around $400, while additional S-AIR wireless speakers will set you back $130 apiece. Full release after the break.

Continue reading Sony intros iPod-friendly S-AIRPLAY multi-room audio system

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Not that we weren’t already aware of the FinePix F60fd, but it — alongside the S2000HD, J150w, J120, J110w and J100 — was just made official courtesy of Fujifilm. As for the aforementioned F60fd, it’s packin’ a 12-megapixel CCD sensor, 25MB of internal memory, an xD / SD / SDHC card slot, VGA movie mode, 3x optical zoom, 3-inch LCD monitor and USB 2.0 connectivity. If you’re looking for technical pizazz, the 10-megapixel S2000HD is the one to eye, sporting a 15x optical zoom and a video out port. You can take a peek at the rest of the ho hum crowd in the links below.

Read - S2000HD
Read - F60fd
Read - J150w
Read - J120
Read - J110w
Read - J100

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Peripherals

Yeah, we’ve seen the cart come before the horse before, and such is the case with NZXT’s Avatar gaming mouse. Shortly after being previewed, the outfit has done its duty and made things official. Specs wise, we’re looking at 7 customizable buttons, a 2,600DPI optical sensor, 4-speed DPI switch, ambidextrous design and a rubber grip to keep your palm secure even when the sweat really gets to pourin’. It’s available now to challenge your Razer for $59.99.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

MSI has clearly been busy with its Wind here lately, but that doesn’t mean it has forgotten entirely about the gaming crowd. The 15.4-inch GX620 and 17-inch GX720 were both made official today, even though they made their debut at CeBIT. Now that the specifications are nailed down, here’s what you’re looking at: an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, NVIDIA’s 512MB GeForce 9600M GT, up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM, a 2-megapixel webcam, gigabit Ethernet, WiFi, a 320GB SATA drive, an optional Blu-ray drive, 6-cell battery and the usual assortment of ports. Sadly, there’s no mention of prices just yet, but click on past the break for the full release.

Continue reading MSI gets official with Centrino 2-based GX620 / GX720 gaming laptops

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Handhelds

While we haven’t found an official press release on the subject, AVING is reporting a June 2008 release for a Samsung Snapdragon MID. This according to a Qualcomm official. It’s unclear to what extent Sammy’s device will make good on Snapdragon’s list of “supported” features like 12 megapixel camera, GPS, HD video playback, WiFi, Bluetooth, all day battery life, digital broadcast television (MediaFLO, DVB-H, and/or USDB-T) and dual-mode EV-DO Rev. B and UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA riding atop a 1GHz processor and Qualcomm’s 600MHz always-on DSP. All we’ve got is this picture of an engineering prototype (actually based on Snapdragon this time) on display right now at the World IT Show.

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

HTC’s hit us with some sexy new handsets lately, but a new report from DigiTimes says that the juggernaut ODM is getting ready to make some MID waves, and soon. Apparently inspired by the success of the Eee (who hasn’t been?), HTC is rumored to be prepping devices based on Intel’s Atom and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platforms, as well as up to 10 new phones in the second quarter of the year — which, conveniently enough, is this quarter. There’s no word on what we might be seeing apart from some new Diamond and Touch Pro handsets, but hopefully we’ll see soon enough — or just be left broken-hearted by yet another unsourced DigiTimes rumor.

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Laptops

As if things weren’t confusing enough in the world of tiny computers, Qualcomm went and blurted off news about a $299 machine that will run Windows Mobile 7 on its Snapdragon mobile chip set. We’re not sure if this is a completely new machine or just an iteration of their Anchorage device (pictured above), but Qualcomm’s senior veep Luis Pineda boasted that the machine will run WinMo7 and is more efficient than its competitors from the likes of Intel, AMD, and Via. When pressed, he wouldn’t give up any additional hardware specs, but he promises a “big presence in Snapdragon-based devices at CES 2009″. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen mention of Windows Mobile 7, but it’s quite possibly the first tie-in with a specific product group. We look forward to the Snapdragon-Intel-AMD-Via mobile computing war in the coming year, indeed.

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Original post by Joshua Fruhlinger

Filed under: Desktops

Not too many people go to science museums and place orders, but former Microsoft CTO Nathan Mhyrvold was apparently so impressed with the London Science Museum’s replica of Charles Babbage’s difference engine he commissioned a $1M duplicate, which was just recently delivered to California’s Computer History Museum for a six-month stay. The nine-foot-tall machine has nearly 8,000 parts, many of which were hand-filed, and suffered months of delays while under construction due to the tight tolerances required to make it work — but it’s here now, and it’s ready to start cranking out polynomials at the rate of one per six seconds. Bring it on, IBM. Check the read link for way more pics of the unboxing, which took hours and ended in applause.

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Portable Audio

Those darn kids — they just don’t listen! And soon, according to a report, they won’t physically be able to listen. It seems that modern teens, with their cloaking jackets, space telephones, and telepathic headsets fail to obey the simplest tenet of leisure-time music enjoyment: keeping their iPod and Zune volumes at a semi-natural level. In focus-group discussions, researchers found that high school students in the Netherlands were aware of the potential hearing loss which can be caused by high volume listening, yet had no immediate plans to crank their jams at anything but 11. Typical of our misguided youth, the teens feel that they have a “low personal vulnerability” to hearing loss — researchers also noted that they believed they were bulletproof, could fly, and would never, ever lose touch with people who signed their yearbook. The study’s findings suggest that the answer to this problem may lie with manufacturers of hardware and solutions like volume caps or warning lights, rather than with the self-control of the end user.

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Original post by Joshua Topolsky

Filed under: Desktops

If Stealth Computer’s LPC-450 was just a bit too diminutive for your tastes, you’ll be thrilled to know that the latest flavor has been opened up a bit to make room for a PCI card of your choosing. As was the case with the LPC-350PCI Little PC, this iteration includes PCI expansion slot capability along with a Core 2 Duo processor and an anodized aluminum chassis that could probably be dropped from the rear of a moving truck sans issue. Additionally, you’ll find Ethernet, USB (x3), FireWire, PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors, a 160GB hard drive (or an SSD, if you choose) and an optional DVD burner to boot. Seems as if these are made to be customized, so feel free to give Stealth a ring if you’re interested in claiming one as your own.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Hey, you — about to pull the trigger on a svelte new 1080p Play Big IN82? Hold your horses young buck, as it seems that the aforementioned unit’s successor is just around the bend. Reportedly, the InFocus Play Big IN83 will house Texas Instrument’s DarkChip 4 DLP chip and will feature a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, 5,000:1 native contrast ratio, 10-bit video processing, an HDMI 1.3 input, automatic black level calibration, 1,600 lumens and a three-year warranty. Unfortunately, word on the street pegs this beauty at £3,500 ($6,948), so maybe that soon-to-be-discounted IN82 doesn’t look like such a slouch after all.

[Via AboutProjectors]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

It looks like those in need of something a little more serious than a DIY microscope will soon have a new option to consider from Celestron, which is set to debut its new LCD digital microscope at CES. Up front and center on this one, as you can see, is a relatively large 3.5-inch LCD, which gets paired with a 2 megapixel digital camera and, of course, a microscope that’ll let you take a peek at things at magnification levels up to 40x. You’ll also get 128MB of internal memory to store those extreme close-ups for posterity and, thankfully, an SD card slot for further expansion. No word on a price just yet, but you’ll apparently be able to get your hands on one sometime in February.

[Via I4U News]

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Original post by Donald Melanson