Nokia, Samsung and others work on Universal Flash Storage :
The eternal nightmare of proprietary memory cards seems to be coming to an end in 2009.

Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, Spansion, STMicroelectronics, Micro and Texas Instruments today announced that they support the creation of a far-ranging industry specification for removable memory cards and embedded memory solutions, being standardized by JEDEC.

Removes the need for conversion adaptors

The new specification, dubbed Universal Flash Storage (UFS), reflects the industry's need for a universal memory solution that removes the need for adaptors to accommodate different removable memory card sizes.

Widespread demand for higher densities and higher performance, plus the surging popularity of multimedia content, is accelerating the need for advanced memory solutions as removable card or embedded formats.

Few seconds access time as opposed to minutes now

UFS will provide a leap towards supporting very low access times required for memories, as well as enabling high-speed access to large multimedia files, while reducing power-consumption in consumer electronic devices.

The target performance level is expected to be a significant advancement beyond that of the varied flash cards popular today. Today, users experience a three-minute access time for a 90-minute (4GB) HD movie; with the new standard, this would be reduced to a few seconds.

UFS standard expected to be finalized in 2009

Major applications such as mobile handsets, digital still cameras and other CE devices will benefit from the convenience of a universal open standard based specification that is intended to reduce the time-consuming process of enabling interoperability among the various types of removable and embedded memory solutions at the system level.

UFS is planned to provide consumers in the future with the convenience of a unified removable memory card that can be shared among various mobile, portable and other CE devices without the need for any adaptors. The UFS standard is expected to be finalized in 2009.
Posted by Manohar at 5:50 AM 0 comments
Nikon pairs Coolpix S51c Wi-Fi camera with T-Mobile
With their new 8.1-megapixel Wi-Fi camera and a T-Mobile subscription, Nikon gives users the power to…send pictures of their friends ordering a soy chai latte at Starbucks.

Nikon's has announced the release of their Coolpix S51c camera, paired with their my Picturetown service and a free six-month subscription to T-Mobile’s HotSpot service.

My Picturetown, Nikon's new photo sharing and storage service, allows users to email pictures to friends and family, send their pictures to a Blackberry device for viewing, or post them to a blog or social networking site. Their partnership with T-Mobile provides Coolpix S51c customers with a complimentary six-month subscription to T-Mobile's HotSpot Wi-Fi service for digital cameras, allowing users to send images and videos to friends and family from the nearly 8,500 T-Mobile HotSpot locations nationwide.

The T-Mobile HotSpot service is available at Starbucks, Borders Books, FedEx Kinko's, airports, and the airline clubs of American, Delta, United and US Airways.

The Coolpix S51c is an 8.1 megapixel, 3x optical zoom camera, and will be available in September 2007 with an MSRP of $330. The free HotSpot service offer expires on August 31, 2008.
Posted by Manohar at 5:39 AM 0 comments
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Vodafone picks up Palm Treo 500v, Samsung F700 smartphones
Hitting shelves later this year, Vodafone will offer Palm Treo 500v and Samsung F700 multimedia smartphones.
Vodafone and Palm today announced the Palm Treo 500v smartphone which combines multiple forms of communication and multimedia capabilities with high speed 3G/UMTS mobile internet access, allowing users to access popular websites such as MySpace, YouTube and eBay whilst on the move.

The Palm Treo 500v runs on Windows Mobile 6 and has a full keyboard, screen without a touch interface, video streaming capability and a comprehensive multi-messaging functionality covering Instant Messaging, SMS, e-mail and scheduling. Furthermore, the Palm Treo 500v features a 2 Megapixel camera, Bluetooth and a 150MB internal memory (expandable with microSD cards).

To be available in glacier white and charcoal grey, the Palm Treo 500v will ship exclusively on Vodafone in October 2007. It will initially be available to Vodafone customers in Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, the UK and Vodacom customers in South Africa.

It also seems like Samsung's highly anticipated F700 is in its final stage of development, as Vodafone recently announced that they'll start selling it this holiday season. Featuring a touch screen, QWERTY keyboard, 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and a 5-megapixel camera, the F700 is the most fully-featured multimedia smartphone to date.
Palm Treo 500v


Sony AR50 - FZ220 with Blu-ray Writers
Sony Vaio has come out with two new laptops with Blu-ray writers. The Sony Vaio AR40 which comes with a 17-inch WUXGA screen with a 2.4 GHZ Core 2 Duo T7700 processor. The laptop comes with a maximum of 4GB of RAM and with a 500 GB hard drive. The Graphics card in this laptop is a powerful NVidia GeForce 8600 HT. The VAIO FZ20 has a 15.4-inch display with a 1280 x 800 resolution, which comes with a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo T7500 processor, 2GB RAM, a 300 GB HDD, and a GeForce 8600M GS graphics card.

The Sony Vaio LT HD PC also comes with the similar Blu-ray writer but along with these are are many more goodies attached. The Vaio LT PC comes with a 22inch WSXGA+ LCD with a 1.3 megapixel camera. The processor in this powerhouse is also a Core2 DUO. This will cost as much as $2900 and will retail in October.
Posted by Manohar at 8:56 PM 0 comments
Dell Precision M6300 17-inch Laptop
This one has kept us waiting for a long time, but its out now for sure. The Dell Precision M6300 is the latest laptop to the 17inch Dell precision series. The laptop comes wit an Intel Core 2 Duo X7900 CPU ( which runs at a powerful 2.8 Ghz and a 800 Mhz front side bus).

The Dell M6300 comes with a NVidia Quadro FX 1600M graphic card, with upto 4GB RAM and 200 GB hard drive. Ofcourse the usual DVD-RW or Blu-ray option available with the Dell Notebook. It comes with 802.11 ag/b Wifi, Bluetooth 2.0, Dvi and Firewire port. The laptop is also offered with a AT&T HSDPA data card for internet anywhere with a AT&T network.

The Laptop could also feature a 32GB SSD in the future, but we are not sure if its coming too soon.

Along with these goodies there is also an option to pick your favorite open source operating sytem instead of Windows - Red Hat Linux.


Tata Indiva - 1 Lakh Car ?
This news has been flying around for quite some time now. The Tata Indiva is NOT the 1 lakh ruppee car which is due to come out in 2008. This is just a concept car which was designed by TATA in 2003 by the Italian company - I.D.E.A. The design and prototype was entirely done by this company.

The TATA Indiva was made specifically for the Geneva Motor show to demonstrate good manufacturing ability of TATA.

The Indiva concept will take at least 3-4 years for it to become a reality but we will wait and see whats going to happen here.

The Vehical specs are as follows:

Engine Configuration - S
Cylinders - 4
Aspiration/Induction - Normal
Displacement - 1405.00 cc
Horsepower - 53.00 BHP
Weight 2161 lbs


AMD also enters the quad-core CPU market :
In what’s shaping up as a two-week burst of fast and furious chip news, Intel this week released its new quad-core Xeon 7300 server CPU, codenamed “Tigerton,” adding some competitive spice to this Monday’s highly anticipated launch of “Barcelona,” Advanced Micro Device’s first entry in the quad-core server chip market. And as if that’s not excitement enough for followers of the chip market, Intel is also expected to give the world a first look at its 45nm chip design “Penryn” very close on the heels of AMD’s quad-core launch, perhaps as soon as at the Intel Developers Forum on Sept. 18. The chip giant sent out invites Thursday for what it describes as “a BIG celebration for our tiny chips.”
Tigerton enters the server space as Intel’s top of the line Xeon offering. But some analysts speculate that next year’s planned overhaul of its entire server line means Intel’s Tigerton product is more of a fill-in than a major new addition. For high-performance system builders like Velocity Micro, the Barcelona launch is just a taste of things to come later in the year, when AMD will release “Phenom,” its quad-core processor for desktops, said Randall Copeland, president and CEO of the Richmond, Virg.-based company. Copeland expects that AMD’s quad-core family of processors will put them right back in the running with Intel, which has had the quad-core market to itself for several quarters due to reported delays in AMD’s Barcelona rollout.