Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: Handhelds, Laptops

Fujitsu’s cute-as-a-button U2010 (or U820, for you USers) was shown off over in Japan at a company event, and while most of the specifications were already hammered out, one particular tidbit at AkihabaraNews took us by surprise. With seemingly every other netbook out there getting blasted for lackluster battery life, the U2010 will reportedly support an extended cell that offers up 11.1 hours of run time. We’ve no idea if that’s a “maximum” number based on “optimal” usage, but no matter how you dice it, it sure beats the (also respectable) 5.3 hour rating given to the standard battery.

[Via BoingBoing]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

Sure, we’re getting Fujitsu’s U2010 convertible UMPC Stateside pretty soon as the LifeBook U820, but we’re crazy jealous that our friends in Japan are getting this hot tokidoki version, labeled as the LOOX U / B50N. Same kit underneath, but we’d bet that exclusive limited-edition skin will command a premium — now if we only had pricing info, we’d know whether or not to get our clandestine grey-market importers on the case. Anytime, Fujitsu.

[Via Pocketables and tokidoki]

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Laptops

Fujitsu has been showing off its LifeBook U2010 netbook / convertible laptop for some time now, but it’s just now getting completely official with it, and it’s taken the opportunity to reveal all five colors we can expect to see the laptop available in. That includes the basic black option we’ve been seeing all along (now called Ocean Black), as well as Pink Gold, Cool Silver, Fuschia Red, and Luminous Blue. Otherwise, the laptop’s specs look to be in line with what we’ve been expecting, including a 1.6GHz Atom processor, a 5.6-inch WXGA display, an optional 64GB SSD drive (or a standard 60GB hard drive), a promised 8 hours of battery life from the extended battery, and the usual built-in 1.3-megapixel webcam. Still no final word on a price though, or any indication of a release date for the US-centric U820 model, which the FCC has already kindly let out of the bag.

[Via Pocketables]

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Laptops

If you’ve been squirming around like you’ve got ants in your pants wondering if Fujitsu’s tiny Lifebook U2010 was going to make its way Stateside — feel free to relax. Word on the street — and from the FCC — is that the diminutive and convertible laptop will come to our fair shores as the U820. The device actually gets a bump in the screen department, featuring a 1280 x 800 display as opposed to the previous specs we had detailing a 1024 x 600 touchscreen. Hit the read link to learn pretty much everything you could ever hope to know about the laptop… and then some.

[Thanks, Will O.]

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Original post by Joshua Topolsky

Filed under: Laptops

We’ve caught a few glimpses of Fujitsu’s Lifebook U2010 in the past, but now we’ve got a whole handful of new shots of the crazy-versatile device, plus some fresh video and actual, honest-to-goodness specs. According to a Vietnamese forum, the miniature laptop / tablet will feature an Intel Atom CPU (at 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz), a 5.6-inch 1024 x 768 display, an 80GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, a 3G radio, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and will weigh 680 grams (about 1.5 lbs). No word on a street date or regions for the device right now, but the price is said to clock in around a hefty $1300.

[Thanks, Aki]

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Original post by Joshua Topolsky

Filed under: Desktops, Peripherals, Networking

In Apple-loving households, there’s a decent chance the Power Mac G4 Cube will never lose its luster. Case in point: one particular fanboy (yeah, we said it) took a gutted Cube housing and neatly fitted his Mac mini, Airport Extreme and “accessory HDD case” inside. Of course, he did have to exercise quite a bit of patience and showcase his cutting skills in order to make the optical drive accessible, but the end result is certainly something to be proud of. Hit the read link for the gallery of shots taking you from start to finish.

[Via Nowhere Else]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Microsoft is still toiling away at the Zune, but there isn’t a whole terrible much to show for it so far in regards to market impact. They just broke the 2 million mark, almost a year after they hit 1 million in May 2007. That means growth has hardly accelerated since the second-gen players hit the scene. Zune’s overall market share has grown from three to four percent, but that’s most likely a steal from Creative (which sunk from four to two percent) than a steal from Apple or second-place SanDisk (with a billionty and 11 percent, respectively). But don’t worry, we’re sure that 2.5 update is going to change everything.

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Original post by Paul Miller

Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

Kohjinsha’s UMPCs have remained largely unchanged over the years — an SSD here, Intel CPU boost here — but the firm’s latest has managed to accomplish something few UMPCs would even dream of. That’s right, this 7-incher includes a full-fledged dual-layer DVD writer, which tags along nicely with the 1,024 x 600 resolution LED-backlit panel, 1.3-megapixel camera, 60GB hard drive, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth and 800MHz A110 processor. It’s also filled with 1GB of DDR2 RAM, Ethernet, a duo of USB 2.0 ports, VGA output, audio in / out, 3-in-1 multicard reader and a pair of battery options promising 3.5 / 7.2 hours of life. The 2.4-pound machine looks to be available at the end of this month (albeit rebadged as a Vye Mini-V S37) for around $1,500.

[Via Ubergizmo]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

Upon initial inspection, we had a hunch the ECS G10IL would emerge as one of the most desirable of the low-cost lappies. Now that ECS has filled us all in on a few more pertinent details, we’re feeling all the more sure of that assertion. According to new specifications loosed on the outfit’s own website, we can look forward to a Diamondville, er, Atom CPU, Windows XP or Linux under the hood, a single RAM slot (up to 2GB), an HDD or SSD, 1.3-megapixel webcam, 4-in-1 multicard reader, a 8.2- / 10.2-inch glossy display and a 4- / 6-cell battery for good measure. Oh, and if you were wondering if Bluetooth and WiFi would tag along with the built-in HSDPA / HSUPA, the answer’s yes (at least on the big fellow). So, does the G10IL have your attention now, or what?

[Via DailyTech]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

We’re not exactly sure what to make of this one just yet, but the photo above seems to indicate that Intel may be hopping on the quickly growing sub-$400 laptop bandwagon. Reportedly spotted at an undisclosed OEM facility, the so-called Netbook would weigh less than three pounds, arrive in June and feature a 900MHz Celeron processor, 512MB of RAM, a 40GB hard drive, 9-inch display, built-in WiFi / Ethernet and a convenient carry handle à la Eduwise. We know, you’ve no idea how you’re going to contain your excitement over another budget priced lappie, but feel free to tap the read link for a couple more snapshots.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

Sheesh — as if the Eee PC, ONE, Cloudbook, G10IL and countless others weren’t enough, now we’ve got one more low-cost laptop to keep track of. Aiming to arrive just a hair below that magical $300 price point, NorhTec is reportedly gearing up to introduce its Gecko laptop to the world, but the machine itself will be designed / built by Quanta. So far, we’re hearing that it’ll tout a 1GHz Via C7M ULV processor, an optional PATA hard drive, integrated graphics, a 7-inch display and the Linpus Linux Lite operating system. According to NorhTech’s president Michael Barnes, “Linpus Lite is very similar to gOS,” which we aren’t exactly sure is something you’d really want to trumpet. Nevertheless, said bigwig also implied that the formal announcement of this here lappie would be happening soon — let’s just hope it actually stays under three bills.

[Via Eee Site]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: GPS, Wearables

It looks like the US Marines will soon be adding yet another bit of gear to their already well-equipped high-tech arsenal, with Rockwell Collins announcing that it’s set to provide ‘em with 3,000 of its head-mounted ParaNav GPS units, which will be used to give parachutists a bit of guidance assistance. As you can see at the right, the system makes use of a heads-up display for maximum convenience and added sci-fi effect, which is apparently full-color and able to attach directly to parachutist’s goggle’s or helmet shield. As if that wasn’t enough, the rig also sports built-in WiFi to stay connected with the so-called Joint Precision Airdrop System, and it includes some custom circuitry to allow for “dead reckoning calculations” in the event the GPS decides not to cooperate. No PMP functions though, it seems — or at least none that they’re telling us about.

[Thanks, SK]

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Gaming

Finally, you can relive your really good youthful memories via the Wii and its latest Virtual Console addition: the Sega Master System. That’s right, if you happen to be nostalgic for a certain Z80A kind of action — and you live in Japan — you need only look to Nintendo’s cash-cow for help. Starting this February, you can play Fist of the North Star and the hallucination-inducing Fantasy Zone to your heart’s content, though just like other VC offerings we expect to see more games and more territories included later on. What’s important for Nintendo to know is this: the sooner we’re deep in a game of Wonder Boy in Monster Land, the happier everyone will be… so step on it.

[Via Digg]

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Original post by Joshua Topolsky

Who says T.38 real-time fax is dead? According to Google quite a few. Well, according to AudioCodes’ Alan Percy, you people are wrong! Wrong I say! Not that T.38 doesn’t have its share of issues of course. I just read Rich Tehrani’s post where he quoted Alan Percy’s shock at how many people attended his Fax - SIP+T.38 to the Rescue webinar hosted by TMC. It was 160 people! I’ve attended a few webinars in my day and never ever have I seen 160 attendees. What gives?

Alan emailed TMC the following:

After yesterday’s webinar on fax, I’m overwhelmed. 

When we were developing the plans and presentation materials for yesterdays webinar titled "Fax - SIP+T.38 to the Rescue", our expectations were that a few "fax gurus" would join in and we would have a small very focused 20 - 30 person session on a rather deep dark secret of the industry.  Can you imagine my surprise when during the first few minutes of the session the participant count kept climbing and climbing to over 160 people!  Talk about standing room only. 

After 45 minutes of presentation and another almost 30 minutes of Q/A, I was toast.  There were some fantastic questions that I was able to address, but because of time limitations, we were unable to get to dozens more great questions.

The session moderator, Erik Linask published a great summary of the webinar.

What does this mean?  It can mean only one thing - there is serious pain in the VoIP industry when it comes to delivering reliable fax services and people are looking for solutions

According to Rich, on the webinar, Percy discussed reliability concerns with the G.711 standard, and more specifically, how SIP and T.38 can improve fax reliability, as well as how to eliminate expensive dedicated fax boards from communications system. Another area of focus was sending legacy TDM fax over SIP trunks.

Rich provides some analysis on "what" this whopping 160 attendance webinar "means" that is worth checking out. I’ll just add that there is indeed a need for education on T.38 needed in the industry. Fortunately, TMC has been doing education in telephony for over 25 years so we not only know how to bring the greatest minds together to ‘teach’ but we also have built and maintained our contact "leads" database over the years. Without that database of relevant attendees, Alan wouldn’t have had such great attendance.

Just as importantly, TMC’s marketing team does a great job promoting TMC’s webinars to bring people to these hosted educational events. So I tip my hat to my fellow mates down the hall!

Tags: Alan Percy, AudioCodes, fax, real-time fax, SIP, T.38, TDM, VoIP

Original post by Eric

Filed under: Gaming

That new PS3 firmware that just dropped has a little more going for it than just DivX and WMV support — Sony’s enabled PSP Remote Play of PS1 games from a PS3, no matter whether they’re downloaded from the PSN Store or the actual physical games inserted in the PS3’s drive. Our peeps at PSP Fanboy tested it out and found it worked great with both a downloaded copy of Wild Arms and the disc of Metal Gear Solid. This means you could theoretically leave all those pesky UMDs at home and play games from anywhere in the world with a net connection — as soon as Sony gets some more PS1 games online.

[Via Joystiq]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Nilay Patel