Archives for April 2008
Iomega unveils 500GB HD multimedia drive
Mike Yamamoto | Apr 25, 2008
Iomega is releasing its "ScreenPlay HD Multimedia Drive" at that half-terabyte mark, a considerable leap from the 60GB capacity of its last generation. As storage technologies continue to drop in price--the new ScreenPlay is selling for around US$200--it's positioned to compete with a growing number of products such as LaCie's LaCinema Premier, which was described in CNET's 2006 review as "essentially a big hard drive with audio and video outputs and a remote control" that can work with the TV while bypassing a computer or the Internet.
The new ScreenPlay drive works much the same way but, like many other devices in this age of high definition, also includes an HD "upscaling" feature to provide higher video quality where possible. As fellow Craver David Carnoy cautioned recently, however, it behooves consumers to do their homework on this technology because it can be a dubious distinction depending on how well the TV processes video.
Via Crave CNET
New iMacs arriving next week?
Tom Krazit | Apr 25, 2008
So says GeekSugar, which has a post up Thursday claiming Apple's about to tweak the all-in-one iMac desktop. It doesn't sound like much of an overhaul, just a speed bump to Intel's latest Penryn processors used by the MacBook and MacBook Pro and a larger hard drive, with no major design changes expected. Apple hasn't updated the iMac since introducing a new design for the lineup last August.
The current quarter is a prime buying period for K-12 school systems, said Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer on Wednesday's earnings call. A slightly faster and larger system--at around the current price point, according to GeekSugar--might induce some to take the plunge.
Tuesday tends to be New Apple Product Introduction Day, so we'll probably know if new iMacs will soon grace Apple's store shelves by then.
Via Crave CNET
Pioneer picks Panasonic to make plasmas
Erica Ogg | Apr 25, 2008
The two television makers said Wednesday they had come to an agreement in which Panasonic will produce the panels for Pioneer's plasma televisions.
The news comes a month after reports surfaced that Pioneer was pulling out of the plasma business. When Pioneer confirmed it would be finding someone who could make the panels more inexpensively than it could, there was a sense of dismay and disappointment among fans of its Kuro technology. Pioneer plasma TVs are generally regarded by experts--including CNET Asia's own Philip Wong--as having the blackest black levels of any TV on the market.
In a joint statement, the two companies said they will build a new type of panel that integrates Pioneer's Kuro technology and Panasonic's NeoPDP, which it currently uses in its Viera TVs. Panasonic will have the panels sporting the new, combined technology ready for Pioneer by the second half of 2009.
Panasonic is the largest producer of plasma TVs, so the panels should be more affordable for Pioneer, which is trying to cut costs. Neither has said how much the panels will cost.
Via Crave CNET
Hands-on with the Lucky phone
John Chan | Apr 24, 2008
(Update: New pictures added!) So we finally got ourselves a set of M1's Lillian Too Lucky Dragon phone. For the uninitiated, Too is a bestselling author on the topic of Feng Shui. She hails from Malaysia and is a well-known practitioner of the ancient Chinese practice enhancing luck and is an astute businesswoman. It therefore makes a lot of sense that she conceived this idea. It's one of those things we carry around with us all the time, so having it as your lucky charm, too, is a logical step.
Just looking at pictures of this mobile phone doesn't quite prepare you to handle it for real. When we opened the box, it looked pretty standard. Screen, keypad and shortcut buttons, all in an unexciting candybar form factor. Though we know about the dragon at the back, turning it around still amused us in the office greatly. That's actually an understatement--we really burst out laughing. It doesn't help that the startup tone when you first switch on the device, with clanging cymbals and an overly enthusiastic rhythm, gives you the feeling that you are in Chinatown during Chinese New Year.
Read more »
Google Hot Trends now in Singapore
John Chan | Apr 24, 2008
Google Trends is one of the many products from the search giant meant to analyze the Internet, giving you an idea of what people are searching for. A subset of this is Hot Trends, which narrows down the results to a specific country. This started with the US and then India, and now, Singapore is the third country to have the Hot Trends feature.
Hot Trends Singapore lists the fastest rising queries on Google Singapore. This is not based on volume alone, but on the rate of increase of the search term. This makes perfect sense as top searches rarely ever change, with common queries like "weather" and "sex" taking up top spots all the time. We had a look at the trends from today and found queries like "waste paper" and "raffles place ghost" taking up positions in the top five. Unsurprisingly, searches for results of the American Idol singing contest aired in Singapore on Wednesday night also featured prominently.
For those living in Singapore, we know how people here love to queue up for food just because they see a long line at a stall. With Hot Trends Singapore, well, you can apply the same thinking to surfing the Internet: "I’ll look at what he's looking at!"
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