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Impressed with the thin factor on most new plasma/LCD HDTVs? Well, Sony’s going to make you even more amazed with their latest products, five BRAVIA SXRD (Silicon X-tal (Crystal) Reflective Display) micro-display HDTVs featuring “Motionflow 120Hz high frame rate technology” in even thinner bodies. The new A3000 line is around 20 percent slimmer than their predecessors, while the XBR models are about 40 percent thinner; all this with no increased height and/or reduced features.

Features of the new products include: Sony’s Motionflow 120 Hz high frame rate technology which allows doubling the amount of frames, the adoption of industry standard x.v.Color technology, compatibility with Sony’s DMex (Digital Media Extender) module which allows connection to the internet and many other features such as Photo HDTV, Theatre Mode, Xross Media Bar (XMB) interface and interchangeable speaker grilles for personalization.

The new models and expected release price are as follows: The KDS-50A3000, KDS-55A3000 and KDS-60A3000 models debut in August for about $3,000, $3,300 and $3,500, respectively. The KDS-Z60XBR5 and KDS-Z70XBR5 ship this fall for about $5,000 and $6,000 respectively.

Read [Sony]

Being environmentally friendly and electronic gadgets seldom go hand in hand. Waste from these items such as batteries and electrical components have to be recycled in a certain way in order to prevent damage from happening to the environment.

Sony’s “Odo” line of products was introduced lately, showing off concepts of products that will be environmentally friendly. These items are powered by kinetic or solar energy and to reduce power use and industrial waste.

Among the products introduced and their power generation methods were:

• The “Spin N Snap” digital still camera, a rectangular shaped gadget with 2 holes to act as viewfinder and charger. You simply spin the thing around using your fingers in the 2 holes to charge it.
• The “Push Power Play” display, with a roller on its base, such that you move it back and forth, round and round to charge.
• The “Crank and Capture” digital video camera, with a crank you have to operate to generate power.
• The “Pull and Play” headphones, containing a retractable cord to simply be pulled out it seems.
• The “Juice Box”, a foldable solar array which can be used as a power supply for the “Spin N Snap” or “Push Power Play” gadgets.

It’s great to see big companies such as Sony taking an active role in saving our planet’s environment, and this range of items will sure be a hit with environmental activists, if not almost everybody concerned with the future of the earth.

Via [Engadget]

Solid State Disks (SSDs) have become the popular talk of town lately, considering that they have a significant edge on power consumption and no moving parts compared against traditional hard drives. Still not a mainstream item due to their still expensive prices, yet some advances are making their way through to hopefully lower price soon enough.

One of these is PQI’s announcement that they are beginning production of 256 GB high speed SSDs. Allowing transfer rates of up to 60 MB/s, these drives are expected to be a competitive alternative to regular hard drives in the future; although you can bet the price for these disks will still be quite high for now.

With prices dropping quickly (Sandisk’s 32GB SSD is sold to manufacturers for $350) and higher capacities showing up on the market from others companies such as SimpleTech (256 and 512GB), A-Data (128GB), and Adtron (160GB) among a few , it might be just a year or two before SSDs become a regular on the hardware market.

Via [OhGizmo]

The world just got bigger, or so it seems. With ASUS and Intel’s demonstration of their $199 and $299 low cost ultra mobile platform, called the “Eee” (Easy to learn, work, play; Excellent Internet experience; and Excellent mobile computing experience), becoming connected globally just became easier for people in parts of the world who previously couldn’t afford items such as PCs and notebooks.

The “Eee” has a 7” display, weight about 0.89 kg, and features Intel’s mobile CPU & chipset, flash based storage (solid state, no moving parts), WiFi (802.11b/g) capability, a 300K pixel camera, Windows and Linux OS compatibility and quite a few goodies you wouldn’t expect to get for such a low price.

Intel is calling this its “World Ahead” market initiative, with the intent of giving everybody around the world the chance to own their own PC. These should sell really well once they hit the market considering its price point and features.

Read [PcMag] Read [EHomeUpgrade]

Anybody think that the pen and paper is obsolete and that we’re quickly becoming a paperless based society? A lot of people would likely think so, with more and more computers, mobile gadgets and smart electronics, we spend less and less time writing on paper.

Enter the Livescribe platform, a set of tools allowing traditional scribbling and writing on paper, and more. With the SmartPen as its main tool, people can use DotPaper (plain paper printed with micro-dots, allowing it to interact with the SmartPen) to take notes, while SmartPen records any audio, digitizes handwriting and synchronizes both. Later on, when you tap on certain places on the DotPaper, the SmartPen can playback the audio that was taken at the time. This is Livescribe’s first key application called the “Paper Relay”, very useful for meetings, lectures and discussions.

The Livescribe platform also features other applications such as math recognition (allowing it to actually calculate the answer and either speak it out or display it on the OLED screen), word definition and translation, internet connectivity, emailing of pictures/handwriting, uploading to PC, and collaboration, all the while providing tools that allow developers to easily create and distribute new applications. [Side note: How useful would this be for students in a math/foreign language exam?]

Availability is set at the beginning of Q4 2007 with a price of $200 for the SmartPen.

Gizmodo]

Those of you expecting a Blu-ray player for under $500 have just got your wish granted. Sony has announced that its BDP-S300 will be released for $499, making it the first Blu-ray player cheaper than the 60 GB Playstation 3 which is priced at $599.

Fully capable of supporting 1080p signals, HDMI 1.3 as well as Dolby Digital Plus and 5.1 surround audio, the BDP-S300 seems quite a reasonable alternative for those who don’t want to spend an extra $100 for the gaming and multimedia capability of the PS3. This will probably mean fewer kids will be able to persuade their parents to get a PS3 as their Blu-ray player, because it’s not the cheapest one anymore. I wonder how many complaints and protests Sony received from teenagers begging them to rethink this matter after this latest announcement.

In related news, Sony has also cut the price of its larger BDP-S1 player by $200, effective immediately. I’m still confused about the S1’s purpose, since the S300 seems to have all the same features plus audio CD playing capability, in a smaller size. Maybe some readers can enlighten me on this?

Whoa, check out the major specs on this upcoming Dell XPS m1330:

• 13.3” WXGA with LED backlight display option
• Santa Rosa chipset, Core 2 Duo processor
• Up to 4 GB DDR2 RAM
• 32 GB SSD or regular HD’s up to 250 GB
• Optional NVidia GeForce 8400 GS / 128 MB
• WWAN option for Sprint/Verizon/AT&T
• 802.11n option

That’s one heck of a beast, with some of the latest technologies stuffed in there. Things like Core2Duo, LED backlight display, SSD, WWAN (not sure if both HSDPA/EVDO are supported), 802.11n (Draft 2.0 I presume), HDMI, fingerprint reader and the 8400 graphics card are quite impressively put in a 13.3” form factor weighing from 4 lbs.

With a display consuming less power, no moving parts in the storage media and power efficient processor, it looks like this notebook will have superb battery life. I’m guessing that with full configuration and all the highest options, this baby will come near or over the $3,500 mark, but that remains to be seen as pricing has not been announced yet.

Read [Engadget] Read [CrunchGear]

The MacBook Pros are getting a bit of a makeover it seems. Both the 15.4” and 17” versions have some modification to their specs, with these major items looking like the biggest:

• Santa Rosa chipset, with 800 MHz FSB, Core 2 Duo CPUs
• NVidia GeForce 8600M GT 128/256 MB GDDR3 RAM dedicated graphics card with dual-link DVI
• LED backlit display (15.4” version only it seems)
• WUXGA (1920x1200) option for the 17” model (+$100)

Of course there are some other changes too like the 8x slot loading super drive, AirPort Extreme 802.11n (based on Draft specification) support, up to 250GB hard drive, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR,  and lighter weight. The memory comes standard at 2 GB, with the option to max it out at 4 GB for a whopping $750 extra.

For $1,999 you’d be able to get the entry level 15.4” version with the 2.2 GHz CPU, 120GB hard drive and 128MB version of the GeForce 8600M, while the 17” version has a starting price of $2,799 including the 2.4 GHz CPU, 160 GB hard drive and 256MB version of the graphics card.

Read [Appletell] via [Engadget]

When the newest generation iPod Nano’s were released in brushed metal form, I was silently disappointed. Not at the Nano’s off course because they looked awesome, but at Apple’s timing of it, since I just received a black, previous generation Nano (the non brushed metal version) as a gift a week or two before they hit the market.

If you’re planning on getting an iMac anytime soon, you might want to wait a bit to avoid what happened to me. There are rumors that a re-designed iMac might soon surface, implementing the Santa Rosa chipset, with sizes ranging from 20” (the 17” version will be cut off) to ones larger than 24”, with a brushed metal exterior case to boot.

The new iMacs are said to be similarly priced to the current lineup and will be revealed after Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference. Of course these are just rumors at this moment, and if you can wait until after WWDC to see if these are indeed true, then I’d suggest some patience.

Read [BoyGeniusReport] Read [9to5Mac]

Toshiba’s first notebook HD-DVD re-writer will soon be available on the market. On Monday, Toshiba showed off the SD-L912A; its 1x speed re-writer, supporting HD-DVDs as well as most regular format DVDs and CD ROMs.

Being able to store massive amounts of data on optical disc is one pretty huge advantage of these next generation optical discs, while allowing re-writing, probably just made this one of the most economical ways of backing up and storing data in the future.  You should expect re-writing to take some time though, as it’s estimated that a dual layer 30 GB disc will take approximately 2 hours of recording, and about 1 hour for a 15 GB disc.

The L912A features a 12.7mm high body which will allow it to fit in regular notebooks, and is expected to sample for Toshiba’s partners sometime in July. Pricing is undisclosed at the moment.

Read [Electronista]