NVIDIA launches new GPUs, ATI lies in wait
Today was originally scheduled to be the date that both NVidia and ATI launched their next-generation graphics products, but NVidia had the only one that made it out the door in time.
NVidia's GeForce GTX 200 GPU series (comprised of the 260 and 280 units) has now been made available. The 280 is equipped with 240 cores, and offers 1 GB of frame buffer memory, while the 260 has 192 processors and 896 MB of memory. They cost $649 and $399 respectively through such sites as Amazon, Newegg, TigerDirect, MWave, MCIX, and ZipZoomfly.
Sony Ericsson to debut 8.1 megapixel camera phone
Sporting a design and feature list not unlike Nokia's N95 and N96, Sony Ericsson's C905 Cybershot blows Nokia's devices away in one area: picture resolution.
Sony Ericsson officially announced today its Cybershot C905 handset which had been shown through "leaks" last week. Offering support for GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 UMTS/HSDPA 2100, Sony Ericsson has announced that the C905 will be made available in select markets as early as the fourth quarter of this year.
Red Hat gambles on Amazon's cloud as an infrastructure provider
Linux software player Red Hat this week entered public beta with a hosted edition of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, its second product to take advantage of Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Web-based infrastructure.
A hosted version of Red Hat's enterprise software which includes Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) was made available last November through Amazon's cloud, and is also still in public beta.
The red/blue split for online voters is not 50/50, survey finds
A Pew Research survey released Sunday indicates that nearly half of all Americans have used electronic media to get or spread information about the presidential election. And those active Web users are looking more blue than red.
How much of Americans' news about this year's national elections comes from online sources, and which segment of the voting populace will that news most likely impact? That's the subject of a Pew Research study, conducted with Princeton Survey Research, that polled 2,251 Americans of voting age between April 8 and May 11 (Full report in PDF format available here.)
Apple, AT&T settle visual voicemail patent claims
Apple and AT&T said Monday they had reached a licensing agreement with Klausner Technologies over two of that company's patents related to visual voicemail.
Klausner filed suit in December, asking for damages and royalties totaling $460 million. Separate cases have also been filed against Comcast, Cablevision, and Skype for an additional $300 million in damages. Reuters also reports that the firm has settled with Skype parent company eBay and with US iPhone carrier AT&T as well, both of which will be licensing the patents. Discussions with Comcast and Cablevision are said to be "ongoing."
AP sets up a toll booth for bloggers citing its stories
The AP's disharmony with bloggers may have only just begun, as the alternative it's now offering to being served with takedown notices involves paying an up-front sum for excerpting online articles -- as few as five words.
A meeting between the Associated Press' Vice President for Strategic Planning Jim Kennedy and Robert Cox, who heads the Media Bloggers Association, is now planned for Thursday of this week. The subject at hand is the AP's attempt to find a new way of sharing AP content, which now involves a fee per excerpt based on its word length.
PSP update to include Web searches from Google
Sony said Monday that its version 4 PSP firmware will allow users to access Google's search engine directly from the XMB interface.
Once the PlayStation Portable user installs Sony's new Version 4 firmware, a new "Internet Search" option will appear in the Xross Media Bar. Clicking on it will pop up a search box where the user can enter queries. The software also saves the user's past 20 searches through the device.
Yahoo stalwart Weiner leaves for two greener VC pastures
Adding another stone to the sinking ship of employee morale at Yahoo, long-time company stalwart Jeff Weiner has finally decided to leave, exiting to take on the role of "executive in residence" at two venture capital firms.
In his new dual role with Greylock Partners and Accel Partners, former Yahoo Executive VP Jeff Weiner will advise the companies' leadership teams about consumer technology investments, dividing his time between them.
'Spam King' to pay $6 million to MySpace
Last Saturday, an arbitrator ordered Scott Richter, the president of online advertising and direct marketing firm Media Breakaway, to pay a stiff penalty to MySpace, including $1.2 million in legal fees.
The settlement is the second major one for Richter, who previously settled with Microsoft in August 2005 for $7 million. He was once considered one of the most prolific spammers, sending out over 100 million messages per day.
Europe to become the center of Microsoft's search research efforts
It failed to acquire Yahoo's search business -- or at least that's what Yahoo has said. So now Microsoft has to rely on its own resources to come up with a plan for moving forward in search; and to do that, it's setting up a second laboratory.
This morning, Microsoft publicly announced it will be opening what it's calling a "Search Technology Center" somewhere in Europe at some point next year. It did not say exactly when or exactly where, though with the company's slate of acquisitions in the search space already hailing from all over the continent, there are several intriguing candidates.
Mozilla Firefox 3.0 final release under way
Download Firefox 3.0 Final Release for Windows from FileForum now.
Downloads commenced after 1:00 pm EDT will count toward Mozilla's try for the record.
Palm tries for a smartphone rebound with Centro
With new device releases and firmware upgrades, Palm is clearly paying much less attention recently to its older Treo platform than to its newer and cheaper Centro, perhaps in an effort to maintain its own existence.
Palm Inc. seems to be carving out a lower-end niche for itself in the smartphone market. Statistics from industry analyst firms have strongly suggested that Palm needs to do something about revamping its platform in order to regain market share, particularly in light of competition from Apple's iPhone.
CEA's latest tech show is a leisurely walk in the park, literally
After making its world debut in New York City last week, Digital Downtown -- a consumer show co-sponsored by the producers of the Las Vegas-based CES trade show -- looks like a slam-dunk to make an encore in Manhattan next year.
NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - Gazing around the indoor exhibit hall in Manhattan's venerable, marble-floored World Financial Center -- and the festive outdoor tents set up by Best Buy and Pioneer in the harbor-facing "Winter Garden" outside -- it was kind of hard to tell that you were in New York at all -- as opposed to Vegas, or maybe even Los Angeles or an exotic spot somewhere along the Riviera.
Round two: Radio royalties ruckus resumes in the US House
In an extremely familiar-looking gathering of legislators, performers, and radio broadcasters last Wednesday, Congress once again debated how musicians and performing artists could be compensated by radio without breaking the industry.
Very few rounds of House subcommittee hearings are ever so entertaining that members actually consider the notion -- some not so much in jest at all -- of making it an annual event. Last year, the Subcommittee on the Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property took up a "debate" on the subject of whether the exemption on performers' royalties for terrestrial radio should be lifted, featuring a bench full of proponents of the lift, four more proponents on the panel, and one lone opponent left to represent the radio industry.
Verizon prepares to offer a landline-less option for FiOS
With fewer customers nowadays needing or wanting to replace their landline phone, either because they don't need a new one or don't really want the old one anymore, Verizon is preparing to offer a "double play" in place of its "triple play."
Customers of Verizon Wireless will be eligible to add either FiOS TV and/or DSL and FiOS Internet to their plans in order to receive a discount on services. It will mark the first time the company offers a bundle that does not also require a landline telephone plan.
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