Category: News

Philips just announced three new eco-friendly TVs, called the 4000, 5000 and 7000 Eco TV. The “green” part comes with the 40% energy reduction thanks to the LEDs, as well as some safer hardware materials (lead-free, mercury-free, that kind of thing). Oddly enough, none of the materials are recycled, which is kind of the standard for “green” stuff here at CES, but I guess power reduction is always a good thing. The TVs are also packing Netflix, Blockbuster On Demand, and some kind of internet radio. We don’t have pricing details or availability, but you can expect to see release this year. [Engadget]

If you followed the financial collapse of Iceland at all, you’ll know that before the crash, Icelandic bank accounts became quite popular in Europe, particularly in Britain.  By virtue of paying extremely attractive interest rates, Icelandic banks enticed foreign savers to put billions of dollars into their savings account.

When the crash came, unfortunately, Iceland didn’t have a depository insurer capable of covering the losses.  The governments of Great Britain and the Netherlands decided to bail out their own citizens . . . and then, in a nice touch, to strongarm the Icelandic government to pay them back.  This is beyond shameful, as if America decided to send Mexico a bill for its border enforcement.  The Icelandic government is not responsible for the financial committments of larger (and at this point, better heeled) states.

Clive Crook is as disgusted as I am:

Iceland, a country of  300,000 people, is being asked to assume a debt of $6bn (that’s $20,000 apiece). It is an outrageous imposition. Iceland’s president is right to repudiate the deal.

Britain and the Netherlands were wrong in the first place to reimburse depositors beyond the capacity of the Icelandic insurance fund. Since they did, British and Dutch taxpayers should be on the hook for this, not Icelandic taxpayers. And regardless of that, the means by which pressure has been applied to Iceland–including, believe it or not, the UK’s briefly designating it a terrorist state–are an outrage. If Iceland is wondering whether it still wants to be a member of European Union after this, who can blame it?

More to the point, shouldn’t other countries be wondering if it isn’t time to block capital coming from Britain and the Netherlands?  After all, their governments seem to believe that accepting foreign investment creates some sort of unlimited taxpayer liability for the recipient country.  Iceland, sadly, is not in a very good position to resist this bullying.  But other countries are, and should make it clear that there are even bigger potential bullies on the block.

Update:  Daniel Davies makes a reasonably persuasive case for the defense.  The problem is, I think, that comparisons between countries and companies never stand up very well.

Sick of CES news? In Washington DC tonight? Feel like some ambitious party-crashing? Here’s a dinner to get yourself into: The one that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is hosting for Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt and a group of digital doers and thinkers.

Other luminaries on the guest list:

• Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey
• Howcast CEO and co-founder Jason Liebman
• Clay Shirky, author and NYU professor
• Jared Cohen, Member of Secretary Clinton’s Policy Planning Staff
• Andrew Rasiej, founder Personal Democracy Forum
• Shervin Pishevar, founder Social Gaming Network
• Tiffany Shlain, founder of the Webbys
• Luis Ubiñas, President of the Ford Foundation
• James Eberhard, pioneer of mobile content and services

What’s on the agenda? Dunno. But I imagine we’ll see a lot of chatter about it during and after the fact. Here’s Dorsey’s self-portrait, taken while en route to the event today:

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By Marisa Taylor, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

For parents who want to keep their kids from sexting — or just texting at the dinner table — new cellphone software called Protector keeps them in the loop.

Protector, which debuts Thursday at CES, is made by Taser International, a company that’s best known for its series of electronic stun guns (watch the video below, from CES 2009, to see The Journal’s Andy Jordan test one out for himself).

Protector uses GPS so that a child’s calls, texts, emails and photos are first routed to the parent’s phone, where they can be screened and blocked if desired. It also monitors a child’s location and can even track driving habits, Taser said. (In case you’re wondering, it emphasized that Protector is not a stun gun.)

Parents can dial up restrictions by, say, blocking all calls from outside a local area code, or ease up by allowing all text messages to be received. “It grows with the child,” a Taser spokesman said, in that the special needs of each age group can be addressed.

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Palm is expected to announce that its Pre and Pixi smartphones will be available on Verizon (VZ) Wireless today. What else does it have in store? This would normally be Palm (PALM) bete noire John Paczkowski’s territory, but John’s en route to Las Vegas from the Bay Area, so I’ll be tapping away.

• Some totally unverified gossip from my fellow scribes here at the Venetian: Expect an AT&T (T) announcement as well. [UPDATE: Make that sort of verified – AT&T already indicated they’d support the Palm OS yesterday, as Business Insider‘s Dan Frommer notes]
• Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein on stage: Our platform is a deliberate bet on the Web. “At the heart of everything we do at Palm”.
• 85,000 downloads of WebOS SDK since launch in July. 20,000 registrations for new online developer program. Clear indicators in interest in our platform. [Translation: We’re going to start catching up to Apple (AAPL) and its gazillions of apps. Promise.]
• Pixi is “perfect choice for consumers looking to purchase first smartphone”. That’s why we have these super-cool back covers available. Check ‘em out!. And now a video of people talking about our stuff. A talking head mentions “the death of the PC”. Ominous!
• New partner: French carrier SFR, co-owned by Vivendi and Vodafone. SVP Jean-Marc Tassetto says his company reaches half of the country’s population. Apple dig, and praise for Palm: “We started negotiating in Cupertino, we ended up in Sunnyvale”.
• Product talk: here’s Palm SVP of Product Marketing Katie Mitic. Update on Palm developer program. After 6 months in closed beta, formally opening up. Any developer can submit WebOS app. Why work with Palm? More coded Apple digs: Promises “fast and easy development” cycle and “freedom and choice” in how developers take apps to market. 1,000 apps, and expect much faster growth now.
• Promises “new approach to app distribution” — ie you won’t have to get them exclusively through Palm’s equivalent of iTunes. Can get them anywhere on the Web, or via mobile. Shows off Projectappetite.com as an example.
• A “Hot Apps” bonus program this spring: $1k to developers with best distribution (both free and paid) measured by download.
• New “Plug-in development kit” for WebOS, too.
• Some new games to show off from the likes of gameloft, Electronic Arts (ERTS). Need for Speed, Sims, etc. Available today in the US.
• Here’s Travis Boatman, VP of EA Mobile’s Worldwide studios. Palm came to us a few months ago. Some praise for Palm (duh): “Within a few weeks, we realized how great this SDK is… really easy to use” etc.
• Some demos: Sims3, Need for Speed Undercover (which does indeed look “gorgeous” as Boatman says).
• More from Mitic, who intros Paul Cousinea, product marketing director, who is going to demo something involving Pre’s camera.
• New feature: Video recording. Demoing editing feature with footage he just took onstage. Sharing to YouTube, Facebook, etc. Available to all customers in February via software update. “No new hardware required.”
• Demos integration of various WebOS features, moving and using data/elements from one app to another: Sharing YouTube clip of clip you just shot, etc.
• And back to Mitic: More on over-the-air software updates. We’ve had 9 since June. Battery performance, email search, etc. “Bringing pace of Web development to the mobile environment.” Feb. update will have battery performance boost, too.
• Back to Rubinstein. Two new products. Pulls “Pre Plus” from his pocket. “More elegant, easy to use experience.” Button goes away, memory increases. Comes with 16 gigs of flash.  Also: “Pixi Plus” comes with built-in wifi. More color choices for back cover.
• Carrier announcements: Both new phones available exclusively on Verizon Wireless.
• New 3G “mobile hotspot”  app for both new phones. Allows you to tether “with appropriate data plan”. Can connect up to 5 devices.
• Taped message from Verizon Wireless CMO John Stratton , who is snowed in at O’Hare, apparently. Phones avail January 25.
• How much will new phones cost? We won’t tell you! Ho ho ho.
• Rubinstein recaps, promises to let CES visitors actually hold the new phones this time (last year Palm had a “look but don’t touch” policy when it showed off the Pre).

No mention of AT&T, even though the carrier has been talking about it in public. Interesting. Maybe there’s a “one carrier per press event” rule.

UPDATE (sort of): After the event, I asked Rubinstein about the phantom announcement from AT&T. Here’s the entire exchange.

Rubinstein: “We don’t have anything to announce”.

Me: “Really? Because AT&T executives are saying they’ll have two phones running the WebOS later this year.”

Rubinstein: “We don’t have anything to announce”.

He was smiling a bit, though. Certainly cheerier than when I asked former Palm CEO Ed Colligan about Pre pricing last year.

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Filed under: OS, Rumors, Odds and ends

Dan Frommer over at The Business Insider had a nice, juicy tidbit to send out to anyone who is interested in Apple tablet rumors: he’s apparently heard from someone who has seen the tablet’s operating system, but not the actual device.

There were three little quotes from the mysterious source in Frommer’s nugget of tablet gold:

• It’s “pretty” — obviously.
• “The UI has a good bit of new sexy to it.”
• “It’s a big iPhone, but it’s not just a big iPhone.”

Frommer goes on to mention recent reports that speculate that the user interface could have a “steep learning curve.” However, he also brings up the very valid point that Steve Jobs would never let a product out the doors of Apple if it was difficult to use or required a lot of learning.

What’s “difficult to use?” The original CultOfMac post Frommer alluded to was concerned about text entry, and cited Palm’s old Graffiti method as something that people had problems with. Even Apple’s own Newton MessagePad lost market credibility after its handwriting recognition was widely lampooned by the press. As for the rest of the user interface, it is impossible to imagine that Apple will introduce something that is harder to use than a Mac or iPhone. The “new sexy” could be the key Apple design touch that makes the UI something attractive, functional, and desirable.

Twenty more days… and I’m sure we’ll hear at least twenty more rumors.

TUAWTablet OS “has a good bit of new sexy to it” originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Cult of Mac, Odds and ends

We’re dreaming of a TUAW tablet
Just like the Newton we used to own…
Where the touch pad glistens,
And the sensors listen
To hear accelerometer events, and so…

We’re dreaming of a TUAW tablet
With every blog post that we write,
May your devices be merry and bright…
And may your tablet be beautiful and light

Thanks to reader Juan Secin, who imagined and designed this conceptual mock-up

TUAWWe’re dreaming of a TUAW tablet… originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Hybrid, Sedan, Hatchback, Chevrolet, GM, Earnings/Financials, Electric

We seem to know nearly everything there is to know about the 2011 Chevrolet Volt. Well, everything but one of the most important pieces of its environmentally friendly puzzle, that is: How much will it cost? Predictions vary widely, with the $40,000 mark widely bandied about as a likely target – though whether or not that figure arrives before or after a federal $7,500 tax credit is complete speculation. For its part, General Motors has said it won’t set final pricing until late 2010.

Throwing a wrench into the Volt-price-guessing works is none other than GM’s own head of global program management, John Lauckner, who has reportedly told The Wall Street Journal that the extended-range electric vehicle could hit the market for well under that preconceived $40K level. Fortunately, “We have until this summer to figure that out,” he said. Perhaps we can create ourselves a Price is Right-style contest?

The notion that GM may launch the Volt earlier than initially planned – possibly as early as this upcoming summer or fall, well before the expected launch in November – is also reportedly being discussed by GM’s top brass. Regardless of when the first few units hit the market, don’t expect to see a national launch outside of a few carefully selected regions until well into 2011. Thanks for the tip, Berto!

[Source: The Wall Street Journal]

Report: GM’s Lauckner says Volt could cost under $40,000 originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: CES, Technology, Kia

Tucked in between Google’s hot new smartphone and a variety of other computer peripheral equipment at this year’s CES show is a crossover. Not the jacked-up, tricked-out, neon-dragging customized type that we typically see around the Consumer Electronics Show, but a bone-stock, 2011 Kia Sorento. Well, stock except for one option: UVO.

We recently got a chance to try out the newly-announced system in the plastic, and while impressive in its own right, just hours after sitting down with Ford to check out the latest Sync and MyFord Touch, it’s somewhat less than stunning. But, ignoring that for now, Kia’s offering looks good and still ahead of the rest of the curve. It’s functionally comparable to early Sync, enabling easy access to media on 1GB of internal storage, on a USB-connected drive or even on a CD. You can rip from CD straight to internal memory or to a thumb drive, an interesting feature we’re not sure is particularly useful. The touchscreen display is a nice improvement over Ford’s two-line Sync readout, but remember that if you get this system, you’ll have to opt out of in-dash GPS. Good thing you splurged and got that Droid, right? Check out some screens in the gallery below, and there’s a quick video demo after the break.

Continue reading Video: We take Kia and Microsoft’s Uvo for a test drive at CES

Video: We take Kia and Microsoft’s Uvo for a test drive at CES originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Sedan, Recalls, Safety, Hyundai

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued a recall campaign directed at certain model year 2006 through 2009 Hyundai Azera sedans. All affected Azera models were manufactured between September 27, 2005, and October 1, 2008 – in total, 65,226 vehicles are subject to the recall action. The Azera was previously dinged by NHTSA last April as part of a multi-line recall over faulty taillamps.

According to NHTSA, the wiring harness for the front right seat belt tension sensor may become damaged after repeated use over time. If the sensor wiring is broken, the airbag will not deploy in the event of a serious crash or collision – understandably putting the seat occupant at risk of injury. Hyundai will notify owners, inspect vehicles, and make repairs free of charge under the terms of the recall that is scheduled to officially begin next month. In the meantime, owners may contact Hyundai Customer Service at 1-800-633-5151, contact the NHTSA’s Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236, or visit www.safercar.gov. Press release after the jump.

[Source: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration]

Continue reading Hyundai recalls 65,000+ 2006-2009 Azera sedans over seatbelt issue

Hyundai recalls 65,000+ 2006-2009 Azera sedans over seatbelt issue originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Reva Electric Car Co., GM’s partner in developing an electric vehicle, plans to set up four overseas automating ventures that may be profitable while producing as few as 5,000 cars per year; a feat unheard of in the automotive business.

The company intends to establish production facilities in the U.S., Europe, Southeast Asia, and South America. The time is right for electric vehicles too, as a PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP study indicates that 42 electric models will be available worldwide by 2012.

“Break-even could happen in 5,000 to 10,000 vehicles, which is unheard of in the automotive business,” said Chetan Kumaar Maini, deputy chairman and chief technology officer. The company will cut costs by using locally made components and manpower, he said.

Right now, the company is in talks with Bannon Automotive, developing their U.S. joint venture – a plant near Syracuse, New York, which would cost about $30 million.

General Motors India announced a partnership with Reva to produce electric-vehicle for the Indian market in Sept.

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: BusinessWeek

Last night, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave a short demo of an HP slate computer — “slate” is just another word for “tablet” — that runs Windows 7. But HP, the world’s largest technology company with over 300,000 full-time employees worldwide, has other gadgets in R&D, too.

One is a tablet that boots Google’s Android OS. “It is almost identical in every respect to the one he showed off except for the OS,” an anonymized source told TechCrunch.

The company made a 17-second teaser video for it that shows a gesture-scrolled book with black-and-white illustration, a flickable color photo gallery, and a video chat with a beaming young lady being recorded. If only it were longer.

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Nvidia chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang declared that 2010 will be the year of the tablet computer.

Of course, that has a lot to do with the fact that the graphics chip maker has a new chip for use in tablet computers, the just announced Tegra 2. Huang spoke at the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip maker’s press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show. About 50 new Tegra-based tablets are in the works, including one that Huang held up.

“This year is going to be absolutely wild,” Huang said.

Apple has a rumored tablet product coming on Jan. 27, of course. Nvidia is not likely to get its chips into that one, since Apple bought PA Semi to make chips for that purpose.

But Huang argued that Nvidia has done the basic plumbing with Tegra to enable the tablet devices to take off. Huang showed off a half-dozen different tablets on stage, doing a live demo of one being used for e-commerce. He said that Adobe will port its Adobe Air software to the Tegra platform so that Tegra-based machines will be able to display rich content such as digital magazines. Huang said big Taiwanese computer manufacturers such as Compal, Quanta, MSI, and Asus are involved.

Tim Sweeney, chief executive of Epic Games, joined Huang on stage to talk about his excitement about how great processing power and 3-D graphics is now coming to the mobile gadget and cell phone industries. Chips like Tegra 2 add the graphics horsepower to make toys into something more gorgeous, Sweeney said. Sweeney said his company and Nvidia have ported the Unreal Engine to the Tegra platform. They showed the full version of Unreal 3, a first-person shooter game that runs on game PCs, running on the Tegra. The game was working live on a prototype tablet.

Comparing Tegra to the Nintendo DS grahpics, Sweeney said, “They’re decades apart.” Sweeney said, “We’re only a decade away from reaching true movie-like graphics in games. It’s only a matter of time before that comes to the mobile industry.”

Tegra is also being used in navigation systems being designed for cars. Mathias Halliger, a chief architect of the info systems at Audi, said that computer technology can revolutionize driving in terms of better safety, information and entertainment in cars. Huang and Halliger showed Google Maps-based navigation working in a car mock-up.

Huang also talked about how the movement to create 3-D viewing of computer games has developed in the past year. A year ago, Nvidia introduced its 3D Vision glasses for viewing games and movies on a PC or on specially-equipped rear-projection TVs. The kit combines glasses, an input system, monitors, and a graphics card. With it, just about game can be viewed in 3-D.

This year, Huang said the technology is gaining momentum. Today, Asus, MSI and Klevo are all introducing laptops with screens that are ready for Nvidia’s 3D Vision product. Acer, Alienware, and LG will also make their gaming monitors for desktops ready for 3D Vision. Nvidia will also pack the new Avatar game with its Nvision kits. Huang showed a trailer from Disney’s upcoming A Christmas Carol animated film in 3-D. It looked great.

On YouTube, there are some 5,000 videos available in a 3-D viewable format. “We have done a lot in the last year,” Huang said.

Lastly, Huang said Nvidia’s new graphics chip, code-named GF100, or Fermi, is in mass production and will be available soon. The new chip can handle 6 million pixels on screen, at 120 hertz. That means it can run great 3-D viewable content. The chip is on display at the Nvidia booth for demos, but Huang did not show any.

Check out our CES 2010 coverage.

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An Abdominoplasty(tummy tuck) surgery is a procedure that gets rid of excess skin and fat from the abdomen as well as tighten abdominal muscles that are loose, giving you the flat stomach you always wanted.

This procedure can make a huge impact on your physical appearance and as such, it is very important that you make sure you learn as much as you can about it to be sure it is the procedure for you.

Some scarring is left over from this procedure but is usually hidden below the bikini line however this procedure is not only good for women, but men as well.

For anyone looking to learn more about this procedure here is a page that I found very useful in teaching about this and many other plastic surgery procedures like Abdominoplasty.

Japanese outdoor label White Mountaineering continues to deliver with quality constructed outerwear pieces. With a knack for mixing functionality and current streetwear/outdoor trends, White Mountaineering offers the MD310 Gore-Tex jacket as one of their more impressive pieces. Combined with a wool/tweed blend, the jacket has the appearance of your regular wool coat, the inside lining however gives you a more technical appearance synonymous with most gore-tex outerwear products. Available at WTDWE.

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Source: WTDWE

Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

In what may be a pre-emptive move to turn down the heat, beleaguered Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ) says today it has entered into a “mutual cooperation agreement” with Relational Investors, the $6 billion activist investment fund based in San Diego.

The private investment firm began to acquire Genzyme shares in 2008, and Relational co-founder Ralph Whitworth began to publicly call for changes late last year at the Cambridge, MA-based biotech. Whitworth’s expertise in corporate governance and his reputation as an activist investor triggered a flurry of media speculation about the prospects for a shakeup at Genzyme. The San Diego fund now owns about 4 percent of the company’s stock.

Whitworth praised Genzyme’s appointment of former Schering-Plough executive Robert J. Bertolini to its board in early December, but called for “significant further improvements” in the composition of Genzyme’s board. At the time, Whitworth would not rule out waging a proxy battle to bring about such changes, according to a Dow Jones report. (Whitworth’s office did not respond in December to my request for an interview.)

Whitworth, who joined investor David Batchelder at Relational Investors in the early 1990s, prefers to work for change inside the boardroom. In his profile on the Relational Investors website, Whitworth describes the time he served as chairman of Waste Management in 1999 “as a major crisis management assignment in the midst of an accounting scandal.” Whitworth, who served on Waste Management’s board from 1998 to 2004, assumed responsibility for overall management at the company in 1999, including an extensive audit and a recruiting effort to replace the management team. In 2000, during Whitworth’s tenure as chairman at Apria Healthcare Group, Institutional Shareholder Services named the home health provider the “best governed company in North America.” At the same time, Whitworth’s not afraid to get into a public scrap—such as the 2007 battle that Relational Investors waged over the compensation package awarded to Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli.

As part of the agreement announced today, Relational Investors has pledged to support Genzyme’s slate of board candidates and other proposals in 2010. If Relational is not satisfied with those changes and still wants a …Next Page »

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In the latest builds of Windows Mobile, there have been a few improvements. One of the major changes is the updated Outlook client on device.

Microsoft have said they’re serious about on device updating and this is appearing in the Outlook client now.

As of yet, this seems fairly meaningless, but is at least a sign of things to come.

There is also a change to the UI, with threaded email that has long been available on desktop versions of Outlook (and web email services like Google Mail) coming to the mobile space,

Microsoft have also made it easier to add new accounts, with a quick picker for common email accounts much like some of the HTC enhancements to Windows Mobile.

This new update to Outlook is available in the latest builds in the 235XX tree, available on XDA-Developers (including for the Diamond, here).