Friday, October 16, 2009

Download GPU-Z 0.3.6 version

TechPowerUp, GPU-Z is a Windows utility that provides detailed information on the graphics computer. Among this information, the name and the fine engraving of the video processor, the type and amount of video memory onboard, BIOS version and driver version installed.

A new stamped version 0.3.6 GPU-Z has been put online on Wednesday. She announced the support, which remains preliminary, the ATI Radeon HD 5900 (Hemlock), HD 5600 (Cedar) and HD 5300 (Redwood). The media is full cons for HD 5850, HD 5770 and HD 5750.

Side of NVIDIA GPU-Z 0.3.6 supports GT mobile GPU 130, 9600 GE, G 220, GT 220, NVS 3100, GTS 160M, NVS 160M, NVS 150M, G105M, 240M GT, G105M, G210M , ION G310M and EA, and Tesla C1060. This version of GPU-Z also has a number of false detection for NVIDIA, being cited as an example an NV41 card sold as a 9800 GT.

Also several bug fixes and adding tooltips to clarify the sometimes obscure information displayed by GPU-Z.

Download GPU-Z 0.3.6 version 

Chrome OS outstanding

Several users have found on the Web that might be called the beginnings of the future OS chrome. In July, Google had actually announced an operating system specifically designed for netbooks and based on Linux. This week an unstable version of Google Chrome was accidentally distributed on the Internet before being removed from the download directory. This grinding (Unstable Google Chrome 4.0.222.6-r28902_i386.deb) dedicated to Linux, have small cosmetic changes and the first mention "Chrome OS.

Thus a button in the upper left of the first tab to switch to full screen. Note also a clock placed in the top right of the main browser window. Finally Google has also added some configuration options of the touchpad and network in a section called Chrome OS. These few limited information preclude however raise several issues on both sides of the canvas. For some, this first build unofficial and unstable mean neither more nor less than the system is embedded directly within the browser.

Free iPhone Apps Now Offer In App Purchases

The App Store, download the kiosk program for Apple's touchscreen terminals, evolves and changes its business model. Launched in July 2008, he knows a growing success with 85 000 applications already referenced and 2 billion downloads generated from an iPhone or iPod Touch.

In addition, Apple has attracted many developers, 125 000 of them having access to the interface to publish new programs, at a cost of about $ 100. And if the firm at the apple has recently offered to developers to use a function called "In App Purchase" to buy additional content (maps, levels, options, ...) from an application fee, it now becomes access to free applications.

Apple wants there to get rid of software demo? Although developers are often forced to publish two versions of their programs on the App Store, the first version of "Lite" to try a few minutes, the second version in full, and then pay. Apple has sent in the night to members of his "Dev Center" message stating that "In App Purchase rapidly adopted by developers in the application fee. Now, you can also use free applications to sell content, subscriptions, or digital services.

T-Mobile introduced the BlackBerry Bold 9700 Smartphone

Mobile operator T-Mobile has information on the smartphone BlackBerry Bold 9700 (Onyx), goes on sale which is scheduled for November.




The device is made in monoblock form factor and has the QWERTY-keyboard. BlackBerry Bold 9700 has a 2.6-inch TFT display with a resolution 480h360 points, 3.2 megapixel camera with LED flash, Wi-Fi, HSDPA, GPS, Bluetooth and a slot for memory cards microSD. Work smartphone will be running proprietary OS BlackBerry OS 5. Dimensions of the device are 109h60h14 mm. The battery capacity of 1500 mAh allows your phone to work in talk mode up to 5 hours standby mode up to 21 days.

Cost of BlackBerry Bold 9700 is still unknown. The smartphone will be offered in two colors black and silver.

Nokia N920 with Maemo OS 6

Nokia copied the iPhone . Rumors about the successor smartphone Nokia N900, which clearly recalls iPhone. The model will be called the Nokia N920 and running Maemo OS 6, which is expected to release next year. According to unofficial information, N920 will have a 4.13-inch capacitive touch multitouch display, a processor with a frequency of 600 MHz and 32 GB of internal memory. Other characteristics are likely to remain unchanged.



Announcement of Nokia N920 will be held next year, more exact dates are unknown.

Sony announced 250GB PlayStation 3 for $350

Sony announced today it'll offer a 250GB version of its slimline PS3 for $350 in North America, on sale November 3. The announcement comes as expected after leaks suggesting the model would arrive sometime in October. The new system will be otherwise identical to the existing $300 120GB model, but offer slightly more than twice as much storage space.

Sony also revealed its $300 slimline PS3 (PCW Score: 90%) had sold 1 million units worldwide in the three weeks since its launch on September 1. The announcement comes in advance of NPD Group's September video games retail sales data, which was expected later this evening, but per a last minute advisory, delayed until Monday, October 19.

"The PS3 platform is poised for a tremendous holiday season,” said Sony Computer Entertainment America's Scott A. Steinberg, vice president of product marketing. “We kicked things off early with the new price point and sleek form factor and have continued the momentum with this week’s launch of the universally acclaimed exclusive, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. The new 250GB PS3 provides consumers with another compelling hardware option and speaks to the growing consumer appetite for digital content from the PlayStation Network – particularly high-def content that showcases the power of the PS3 system.”

Sony says over 600 million pieces of content have been downloaded from the PlayStation Network as of September and points to upcoming exclusive game downloads like PixelJunk Shooter, Gravity Crash, and Hustle Kings as indications its expanding the Store's lineup in anticipation of the holidays.

The PlayStation Network's video delivery service, which Sony says offers 2,300 movies (one-third in high-def format) as well as 13,300 television episodes, will add recently released movies like Star Trek, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and Bruno.

Apple aims to sync movies among multiple devices

Apple filed a patent application entitled Synchronization of Media State Across Multiple Devices, which appears to combine local iPod and iPhone synchronization with MobileMe and cloud-computing services.

The patent, if implemented, would note where you had stopped watching a video on any connected device, and would automatically set that as the start time on a different device. Watch a movie over lunch, then pick up in the middle when you get home on your iMac or Apple TV, without spending the excruciating 30 seconds it takes now to find exactly where you left off.

The patent also includes various forms of distance tracking, allowing for various sync operations to occur when two devices come within wireless range of each other. Apple specifically describes (in legalese, but comprehensible with a cup of coffee and three aspirin) an Apple TV device detecting an iPhone coming within range, and then picking up the latest data from a central server.

Left somewhat unclear are the protocols being considered; Bluetooth is mentioned in an example, but this technique could easily apply to Wi-Fi discovery. Alternately, there’s no technical reason why Find My iPhone couldn’t allow your computers to find you instead, and start downloading a new movie when you’re still 15 minutes away from home.

Source : Macworld

Microsoft says it can restore wiped Sidekick data

There may be a happy ending after all for owners of Sidekick phones who thought they might have permanently lost contact numbers and other personal information they had put on the gadget.

Earlier this week, T-Mobile said information stored by many Sidekick owners was "almost certainly" gone for good following a failure of the computers that remotely stored the data.

But Microsoft Corp., whose Danger Inc. subsidiary makes the phones that are sold through T-Mobile USA, said Thursday it recovered "most, if not all" of the missing data and will restore it as soon as it validates the information. Microsoft also apologized for the glitch.

Sidekick service was intermittent last week after the data outage, and after that users began reporting that their personal information had been erased from their phones.

On Saturday, T-Mobile and Microsoft warned customers not to restart their phones, take out batteries or let the phones' batteries run out. The Sidekick's underlying data services were working by Monday, but T-Mobile still suggested then that customers refrain from resetting their phones.

T-Mobile issued customers a $20 refund to cover the cost of one month of data usage on the phone and said it would give customers who experienced a "significant and permanent" loss of personal data a $100 customer appreciation card they could use for T-Mobile products and services, or their phone bill. T-Mobile said it would contact those customers in the next 14 days.

In an open letter to Sidekick customers Thursday, Microsoft said it would "work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible." The company added that it believes a "minority" of Sidekick owners were hurt by the loss of data.

It isn't clear how many Sidekicks are currently used by customers; judging by T-Mobile's financial statements there could be nearly 1 million.

Microsoft said that a computer system failure caused the loss of data both in a core Sidekick database and in a backup database. The company said it made changes to improve the Sidekick service's stability and the backup process.

T-Mobile spokesman David Beigie said the company was pleased that Microsoft and Danger are making progress on recovering the data.

The data disappearance led several customers to file lawsuits, including Maureen Thompson, who claimed the data on her daughter's Sidekick had been lost. The Snellville, Ga., resident is asking for unspecified damages in her lawsuit, which seeks class-action status to cover all affected customers.

Jay Edelson, a Chicago-based lawyer who filed the suit on behalf of Thompson on Wednesday, called Microsoft's announcement "good news" for Sidekick users.

Still, he said, "what's been exposed is the whole system isn't working, and they've got to change their system so it doesn't happen again."

Google launching platform for selling books online

Google Inc. is launching a new online service that will let readers buy electronic versions of books and read them on such gadgets as cell phones, laptops and possibly e-book devices.

The company said Google Editions marks its first effort to earn revenue from its Google Books scanning project, which attempts to make millions of printed books available online. Although the scanning program has faced complaints from authors and publishers over copyright, Google Editions will cover only books submitted and approved by the copyright holders when it launches next year.

It's part of an ambitious plan that Google first publicly discussed several months ago at a book conference in New York.

By the time Google Editions makes its debut, the Internet search leader hopes to have an even larger selection of digital books available as part of a legal settlement with authors and publishers. The year-old settlement still requires U.S. court approval and is being revised to address the U.S. Justice Department's worries that the arrangement could be abused to drive up the prices for electronic books.

The books bought through Google Editions will be accessible on any device that has a Web browser, including smart phones, netbooks and personal computers and laptops, putting Google in competition with Amazon.com Inc. and its Kindle e-book reader.

Consumers can buy directly from Google or from any number of online booksellers and other retail partners using the Google Editions platform. Google will actually host the e-books and make them searchable.

"We expect the majority will go to retail partners, not to Google," Tom Turvey, head of Google Book Search's publisher partnership program, said Thursday at the 61st Frankfurt Book Fair. "We are a wholesaler, a book distributor."

Many publishers have been unhappy that Amazon and others have been charging just $10 for most e-books, a price that could hurt sales the more expensive hardcover. Google said publishers will get to set prices under its system.

Publishers will get nearly two-thirds of revenue for direct sales by Google. When a retail partner is involved, publishers will get 45 percent, with the retailer getting a "vast majority" of the rest.

Electronic books are gaining in popularity, led in part by devices like Amazon's Kindle and Sony Corp.'s new Reader Pocket Edition. Publishers estimate the size of the e-book market at anywhere from 1 percent to 5 percent of total sales, but it is growing quickly.

Sony's eBook Store includes more than 100,000 books, as well as a million free public-domain books available from Google. The Kindle Store currently has more than 330,000 available titles.

Turvey expects Google's program will start with 400,000 to 600,000 books in the first half of 2010. Google has made digital copies of 10 million books in the past five years, but can only show snippets from most of them because of copyright restrictions.

Books bought through Google Editions will be stored on the device and readable without a live Internet connection.

The new Google program comes as the Mountain View, Calif.-based company continues to fend off criticisms over its book-scanning program.

On Thursday, Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said criticism from the German government resulted from a "misunderstanding" regarding book copyrights.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her weekly video podcast last weekend that the Internet carries "significant dangers" for the rights of authors.

"For the (German) government, it is clear that copyright also must find its place on the Internet," she said. "That is why we reject books simply being scanned in without any copyright protection, as is being done by Google."

Drummond said Google Books is using the U.S. "fair use" principle as its guide in the United States.

A U.S. District Court judge in New York set a Nov. 9 deadline for Google and copyright holders to submit a new agreement to settle the dispute over Google's effort to attain digital rights to millions of out-of-print books. Google hopes to sell many of those books, too, with most of the revenue going to authors and publishers.

The Justice Department filed papers last month, saying the original agreement "raises significant legal concerns" and was likely to conclude that it breaks federal antitrust law.

Drummond said Google expects that lawsuit to be resolved by November, with a few changes to the deal it reached with U.S. publishing firms a year ago.

Sony will launch PlayStation with bigger hard drive

To give more room for game, movie and music downloads, Sony is launching a PlayStation 3 with a larger hard drive on Nov. 3.

The $350 gaming console will have a 250 gigabyte hard drive, more than twice as big as the recently launched slimmer, lighter PlayStation 3.

That one costs $300 and has a 120 gigabyte hard drive. Other than the hard drive size, the new PS3 will look and work the same as the 120 gigabyte system.

Sony's move comes as game companies gear up for the holiday season, when they reap most of their profit for the year.