When Michael Dell mentioned yesterday that he thinks telcos will subsidise netbooks to sell integrated 3G services, he wasn't quite talking out of his ass—an unmentioned feature of the Inspiron Mini 9 is an integrated 3G card. The first carrier to sell the Mini with 3G is Vodafone in the UK. No carrier announcements in the US yet, but since it's HSDPA (assumedly, because Vodafone UK is, and they aren't letting you pick your 3G card) AT&T would pretty much be your only option here. Pretty nice trick up your sleeve, Dell. [PC Mag, Pocket Lint]

Read More »

Tonight in Denver, Panasonic revealed its newest plasma technology, the 65" custom-install-only VX100 monitor, whose specs meet or beat Pioneer's hallowed Kuro. That means 60,000:1 contrast ratio with 7,160 shades of gradation for visible detail in the darker shadows. At 65 inches, you will pay US$10,000 a panel, but not to worry: Panasonic will roll out a 50 incher soon, which is sure to be (a teeny tiny tad) cheaper. We sat in a dark room and got to compare the VX100 with its predecessor, the 65PF. Though the results in the room were startlingly vivid, you can get a sense of what's going on here in our still shots:If you're really crazy about TV technology, jump for a second gallery of slides from the presentation—but, as they say on MythBusters, there's some "science content" ahead, so put the drink down and focus...

Read More »

Besides the slick and probably expensive editing designed to make Jerry Seinfeld look like the more awkward of the pair, there's not a whole lot of special effects in this clip. In fact, there's not really a whole lot of anything, including laughs, information or pimping of Vista. It's kinda like Seinfeld's really long, really rambling Superman ad for Amex he did a few years back. We hope the rest of the campaign is better.

Read More »

EA has announced that nine new titles are currently in development for the iPhone: Yahtzee Adventures, EA Mini Golf, Lemonade Tycoon, Mahjong, Monopoly: Here & Now The World Edition, SimCity, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09, Need for Speed Undercover, and The Sims 3. Many of these titles have been mentioned before, but I was pretty pumped to hear about SImCity and the Sims 3 being added to the list. EA has also revealed that they are shooting to release Spore Origins on September 7th—the same day it is released on the Mac and PC. Hit the jump for some new Spore screenshots and the official press release.

Read More »

It appears that at least one lucky shopper at a Fry's in Atlanta managed to get their hands on a 120GB Zune before its official release, and there are even unboxing pics (after the break) and a receipt to prove it. If you look closely, it rang up at US$250—backing up recent rumours about the price. [Thanks Joe!]

Read More »

IGN is claiming that Nintendo will debut a new Nintendo DS in April or May of 2009. According to their sources, the new DS model's features will be similar to the next-generation DS wishlist we published last year.

Read More »

Logically speaking, it shouldn't be a huge surprise. But a friend in the industry told us that they've seen H.264 1080P video playing on the iPhone, quite a few times, with no problems at all. Of course, the resolution is absurd overkill for the system's screen, but what's this mean in light of the purported iTunes 8 HD? Potentially a lot.

Read More »

If you have been wondering when you will finally be able to get your hands on the BlackBerry Storm / Thunder, sources at BGR claim that it has just gone into technical acceptance and it has been delayed internally while the kinks are worked out. All-in-all we are looking at around 6-8 weeks here to get everything wrapped up, which should put a release sometime in November. This information is not a guarantee, but I'm sure they are dedicated to shipping before Christmas no matter what the circumstances. [BGR]

Read More »

Apple has been working in new multi-touch technology that combines touch interfaces with input from the camera and the microphone. For example: this will allow you to select text in the iPhone, say "copy," go to another application and say "paste" to make this task really easy. The most intriguing part, however, is the use of a camera in laptops and desktops.

Read More »

We've posted our first impressions of Google Chrome, and after extended use most of them have held up. Chrome is fast, feature-rich and stable, not to mention highly usable. But Google's in-house innovations (the multi-threaded engine, Javascript handling and task manager, mainly) make up a tiny portion of the user experience. The rest of the interface features, usage mechanics and touted features have clear and very public parentage—in one of Chrome's four largest competitors.

Now, that's not to say that Google has explicitly "stolen" anything from IE, Firefox, Opera or Safari. They have, as of now, acknowledged that they owe a great debt to some of the other large players in the browser market. After all, they're using Safari's WebKit engine, receive billions of revenue-pumping referrals from Firefox's Google search bar, and have open-sourced much of Chrome. For most users, though, these gestures and acknowledgments will go unnoticed, and features previously incorporated into other popular browsers will be seen first on Google's. I've put together a list of some of Chrome's most interesting features, including the mainstream browsers that "inspired" them.

Read More »