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Samsung released some new additions to their Series 6 lineup of LCD HDTVs. Last week, the company went official with the release of their 2008 Holiday Showcase. Now, counting the latest three models, plus their previously announced Series 9, Series 8 and Series 7 units, Samsung has a total of twelve new HDTV offerings for the holiday season.

Samsung’s Series 6 consists of the 52-inch LN52A630, 46-inch LN46A630, and 40-inch LN40A630. These models have a Touch of Color bezel design, 1080p panel, 120Hz technology, three HDMI 1.3 ports, and a USB socket used for uploading photos. The Series 6 lineup is meant to cater to the price-conscious, while delivering to expectations on picture performance, and style. It is predicted that the models will be priced at $2,699.99, $2,099.99, and $1,699.99 respectively, and be available sometime next month.

Via [Yahoo! News]

• Samsung has a new Blu-ray player: What’s the point?
• Panasonic’s iPod compatible HDTV, the VIERA X1 (with video)
• New displays to boost battery life of lots of gadgets

Mobile phones and laptops will no longer have to run empty while people are on the go and outside of the house. These modern gadgets can now tap solar energy through the use of a 20000 ma/H solar battery and charger for recharging anywhere. The battery charger can be plugged in the car, or in any ordinary wall plug to quickly recharge its power to be used as a backup battery for your device, and it can also fully tap the suns power by using the built-in solar panels to power your device.

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A decision by US District Judge Richard Sullivan has spared eBay of the damages of a trademark lawsuit filed by Tiffany, a popular luxury jewelry brand. The court has recognized the appropriate actions taken by eBay in removing the listings and suspending the service for sellers who offer counterfeit goods. It was also discovered that some of the goods thought to be “counterfeit” were actually legitimate, second-hand items.

The judge’s ruling also points out that company that carries the brand should be the one responsible for protecting their brand from counterfeiting. Therefore, Tiffany is expected to be the party responsible for policing the sale of their goods. The court ruling expressed the over controlling action of Tiffany over online sales at eBay.

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A semiconductor plant producing precious IBM chips is set for business expansion. This chip plant is located in East Fishkill in New York, USA. IBM or the International Business Machines Corporation has spoke of its plans of investing $1 billion over the next three years. This is for the expansion of the said chip plant. IBM aims to maintain its mission to live for the chip-making business. The billions-worth of investment will be divided among the three projects related to chip nanotechnologies.

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It’s official, in addition to the already announced VAIO BZ, Sony has also confirmed the release of its new VAIO Z, FW and SR notebooks, which are all expected to be available in the July-August time period.

The complete range of models are powered by the new Intel Centrino 2 processors. The VAIO Z is packed with a Blu-ray drive, HDMI and a full size hard drive bay. It even has an option for dual SSD in a RAID configuration. The notebook is 1-inch thick, and weighs just 3.4 pounds. The Z is priced at $1,800, or with the SSD option for $2,300.

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Walt Disney is set to release one of its popular animated creations, “Sleeping Beauty” as a Blu-ray DVD. Apart from this modern-day feature, the classic Disney movie will allow youngsters to watch it along with friends in other locations via chat. They can watch the movie while toying with their laptops, PDA’s, and cellphones, which will allow for greater interaction among the young audience. Parents too, can participate by recording video messages that are set to appear on the screen at particular scenes, the child can virtually watch the movie with their parents.

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Fujitsu is soon to launch the FLEPia e-ink e-book this coming fall. The latest gadget by Fujitsu is rumored to cost $941. This A4-sized e-ink reader has advanced features like Wi-Fi capability, 50 hours of continued use, and six control buttons plus a scroll key for scrolling. This allows users to have a better view of visual alignment. The FLEPia contains a 4GB SD flash card for memory space, and is 320-grams in weight, and about 12-millimeters in thickness.

The FLEPia e-ink e-book was once rumored to be having an integrated backlight, but that was pushed aside by Nikkei. These new, set-to-be-released-e-readers are an improvement from Fujitsu’s color e-ink prototypes. Those are capable of having a whole VGA display into a 4.7-inch x 6.3-inch handheld tablet units.

The FLEPia units will be available in three color motifs, namely white pearl, silver, and the usual pink pearl colors.

Read [nikkei] Via [Engadget]

• Samsung has a new Blu-ray player: What’s the point?
• Panasonic’s iPod compatible HDTV, the VIERA X1 (with video)
• New displays to boost battery life of lots of gadgets

Internet users usually hit a brick wall when trying to search for content that is embedded in Adobe Flash media. Content of this type, whether in SWF or the more common FLV format, are never really available for web-crawling search engines to access. Well, not anymore.

Adobe is teaming up with search giants Google and Yahoo start indexing Flash content and run the Adobe Flash Player on their servers at runtime. Initially, this will mean not only the ability to search Flash content but better search returns for your queries.

The jury is still out whether this move will have huge or limited impact, initial signs bode well, especially when one realizes that there is a wealth of training, e-learning, and marketing content all on the Flash medium.

Google will begin offering Flash search capabilities within the week while Yahoo plans to do so in a future update to Yahoo Search.
Read [InfoWorld]

• Samsung has a new Blu-ray player: What’s the point?
• Panasonic’s iPod compatible HDTV, the VIERA X1 (with video)
• New displays to boost battery life of lots of gadgets

Movie-rental chain giant Blockbuster announced recently that it was withdrawing its $1 billion bid for consumer electronics chain Circuit City. Blockbuster initially made the proposal on February 17, with due diligence and the announcement being made public last month on April 14.

Chief Executive James Keyes blamed “market conditions” for the demise of the proposed deal, once valued at more than $1.3 billion.

“Based on market conditions and the completion of our initial due diligence process, we have determined that it is not in the best interest of Blockbuster’s shareholders to proceed with an acquisition of Circuit City,” Keyes said in a statement.

A combination of the two companies would have added up to an $18 billion business, according to Blockbuster’s calculations, but both companies have struggled in the past year. Circuit City posted losses amounting to $200 million at the end of 2008, and Blockbuster has been struggling against Netflix’s huge success in online video rentals.

Read [InfoWorld]

• Samsung has a new Blu-ray player: What’s the point?
• Panasonic’s iPod compatible HDTV, the VIERA X1 (with video)
• New displays to boost battery life of lots of gadgets

While not confirmed, news has been trickling out from Facebook users in China that they were not able to access their data.

A clear picture has yet to be painted but Facebook is close to confirming the phenomenon. “We are disappointed to learn of reports that users in China are having difficulty getting access to Facebook,”

Representatives from the social network reportedly told CIO News. “We have not made any changes to our site that would create access problems and are looking into the situation.”

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