Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

If you happen to be a Nokia fanboy, like I am, you will definitely be interested in the following update as to the exact date the Nokia 5800 (The “Nokia Tube") will be launched.

After being put on hold for quite some time (a year and a half, to be exact), some “unknown yet reliable” source has revealed its launching date will be October 2, 2008, just as Reuters had reported. It may or may not be true, but let’s just keep our fingers crossed! (Hey, it’s Reuters reporting it. We should be able to place a certain degree of trust on that information!). Nokia may not be the earliest to jump on the touchscreen-mobile-phones bandwagon, but it certainly isn’t late because there is still demand for touchscreen phones, as can be seen from the craze surrounding the Apple, LG, and Samsung touchscreen phones.

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Circuit City’s CEO, Philip J. Schoonover, announced his resignation as president and CEO and is leaving the company immediately.  Normally, when a company changes CEOs, there is a plan announced sometimes years in advance to keep the stock price afloat.  Schoonover’s departure was not part of any such plan.

New interim CEO James Marcum said what you expect a new CEO to say, “It is my mission to direct that energy towards improving our operations and strengthening our market position in order to accelerate our turnaround and deliver improved results for all of our key stakeholders.” What else is he going to say?  “I’m glad they gave me the keys to this dump?”

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“Pics show beauty topless, kissing married TV star”..
“Reality show couple calls it quits"…
“Star is skin and bones on red carpet”...or if you don’t like that anorexically-inclined headline, try “Skinny actress frumpy in white"…
“One busy, hot mama tells how to get in shape quickly"…

At 10:30 p.m. PST on July 15, 2008 - the end of a day that saw more stomach-churning stock market volatility, more violent death in Iraq and Afghanistan and closer poll results in the presidential race - the front page of AOL showed some, shall we say, interesting priorities among those who are making the news judgment calls and authorizing the headlines at this major portal.

Not that Yahoo! or MSN, viewed at the same time, were in danger of being confused with PBS’s “Newshour with Jim Lehrer.” It’s just that AOL seemed to be taking most of its news cues lately from its sister entertainment/celebrity gossip website TMZ.com. 

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Local television stations are shedding highly-paid, experienced journalists; the evening newscasts on broadcast networks keep on losing viewers; cable news continues erasing the line separating news and loud, crass opinion.

Such is the state of television journalism in 2008.

It’s all old news in the news business: digitally-empowered consumers choosing to customize their news, technology lowering the barriers of entry for those who want to call themselves journalists. YouTube’s new Citizen News channel will give more ammunition to those who claim traditional media is dying. The top website for user-generated video now wants to aggregate all its amateur news video and reporting onto one location, with a news manager, Olivia, supposedly vetting the content. “You YouTubers out there are changing the world of journalism,” she says in the channel’s opening video. “You’re using your voices not only to report the news as you see it, but to engage and dialogue with one another, to tell stories that might not otherwise be heard.”

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One week ago, we reported about how Google added new features to its translation service, like new languages and language detection, but back then it still had not even been announced by Google yet. The day for that has come, though, and that day is today.

Google now officially announces the addition of 10 new languages to its translation service, including Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish. Also, as noted in our earlier post, there is a new feature called “Detect Language” that saves you from having to figure out the language of origin of the text or web page you’re translating. Certainly adds convenience to the service, much more than anything else.

Head on over to the official Google Blog for the details.

Read [Official Google Blog]

The GBDisk RS1 series of Serial ATA (SATA)-compatible industrial silicon disks is the latest addition to TDK’s roster, which will be made available in June with up to 16GB capacities. High-speed, frequent data writing and maintaining data reliability come first with the GBDisk RS1 series. And because of that, it features single level cell (SLC) NAND Flash memory, and GBDriver RS1 SATA controllers for use in NAND Flash memory controller ICs.

It also offers complete power interruption tolerance, error correction, distributed data writing, and bad block management. Basically, these are new types of hard disks, coming in at the same size as current generation HDD’s (2.5-inches) that should offer fast start up, stringent shock resistance, and low power consumption. It’s been reported to be already Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL)-certified, and now if only they could bump up the storage a bit more than 16GB’s, then we’d all be happy. Or at least, those who need to use hard disks in industrial equipment.

As of now, pricing is unknown, but as earlier mentioned, production will start in June 2008.

Via [Tech On]

It looks like our earlier report pertaining to Nokia’s plans of working more closely with US operators is still under way. According to the Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat, Nokia’s chief designer, Alastair Curtis, said design cooperation with US operators are now close to bearing fruition. His exact words were, “In the next few months (U.S.) operators will carry a lot of new products from us.” This is then followed by a statement from a Nokia spokesman, who says the company will introduce a number of new handsets in the US this year, most likely CDMA phones that are tailored for the majority of U.S. carriers, as well as those across the world.

Read [Reuters]

Nokia’s taking a break from all those high-tech contraptions they’ve been churning out lately, and comes with a new low-end phone for the masses. It hasn’t been officially announced yet, but the leaked product shots over at Howard Forums seem pretty official to me. It will be called the Nokia 6205, and it will be an average-sized clamshell flip phone with a small external display and flash-equipped VGA camera. Verizon’s logo is stamped on top of the external flap, right above the external music controls. Which looks like very hard evidence of Nokia’s recent plan to cooperate with wireless carriers more now to gain US market share. Pricing hasn’t been confirmed to be anything but dirt cheap, and June could be the likely release date. Apple’s 3G iPhone will surely love crushing this.

Via [IntoMobile]

May 5 is a very crucial date for AT&T, as the company will begin offering their mobile TV service to 58 markets in the US, which include Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, Seattle and Washington, DC and more. To prepare for this new service, AT&T is also introducing two mobile handsets, the LG Vu and Samsung Access specifically to serve the purpose of providing AT&T customers a great experience when watching TV programs on their mobile phones. This service will be made available by AT&T in partnership with Qualcomm’s Media FLO subsidiary.

For its opening salvo on live mobile TV programming, AT&T will be offering TV programs produced by leading US news and entertainment brands including CBS Mobile, ESPN Mobile, Fox Mobile, NBC 2Go and more. What’s so interesting about these TV programs is that most of them are either news or entertainment programs.This was a result of an AT&T study which showed that these two genres are the most popular type of programs that users would want to watch on their mobile phones.

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Looking to keep its promise of delivering newer versions of its SlingPlayer Mobile software, Sling Media has made updates available for download on their web site today. And not only did they update three currently existing versions of their software client, but they also added support for a few new devices, namely the Nokia N95 8GB, the Treo 500v, and the Samsung i760. Streaming has also been optimized on select handsets, and one such is the Sprint Mogul. Interestingly enough, though, the SlingPlayer Mobile software client on the Palm OS has not been upgraded yet like the other clients.

To download the latest version of SlingPlayer Mobile, all you have to do is log on to Sling Media’s web site and click on the appropriate links. You won’t be needing to fork out any money because the download for the upgrades are free, unless of course if you’re not already an existing customer, at which case you’d have to pay $30 per handset. And don’t forget you also need a Slingbox set up in your home (or any place you stay) for all this to work. So unless you do and you’re willing to pay for the hardware (and software, for new customers), don’t be dreaming up about this right now, thinking that things will magically appear out of nowhere. More info available at the following links.

Download [Sling Media] Via [Crave]