Today’s news headlines is definitely going to Nokia’s big surprise to date. How about this? - turn-by-turn navigation on all its smartphones via the new Ovi Maps available worldwide and free forever. Well not really forever I supposed. Maybe for as long as your Nokia smartphones are working and functional and for as long as Nokia keeps on creating new smartphones that you’d eventually end up buying.
So according to the news, starting March 2010, all new GPS-enabled Nokia smartphones will come installed with the new version of Ovi Maps. This means that those smartphones will be able to provide you with free global sat-nav feature, or turn-by-turn walk and drive navigational maps.
As for the current crop of Nokia smartphones, the new Nokia Ovi Maps can be immediately installed. So, if you own any of these Nokia smartphones right now, you might as well get the new Nokia Ovi Maps up and running on them. These smartphones include Nokia N97 mini, 5800 XpressMusic, 5800 Navigation Edition, E52, E55, E72, 5230, 6710 Navigator, 6730 classic and X6. And Nokia promises to add more handsets into the list. More →
We all know that Apple is set to announce something big on January 27 since a couple of weeks ago. But it is only now that Apple has started to send out official invitations to press people about their gig happening next week.
According to the official invitation, Apple is inviting selected people to “come and see our latest creation.” So obviously, Apple is about to announce a new product. And we don’t have to think hard enough to know what this product is going to be since rumors of Apple launching an Apple Tablet, or what others call it – iSlate has been going around.
But just as Apple sent out the invites, new speculations started to come out. And that pertains to Apple not just launching the iSlate but perhaps another product, something that will serve as its answer to the Google Nexus One phone. Yes, dear readers Apple might also announced the iPhone 4.0, but not the device yet. It might probably be the latest iPhone OS.
Foxnews is actually running a story about this, citing sources at Apple saying that the Jan 27 event would likely focus on three projects – tablet device, iPhone 4.0 and a new round of iLife2010.
Interestingly, Apple’s invitation is pretty creative, possibly hinting of what it will be launching on January 27. The invitation features colorful spray-painted blobs in vibrant colors. Foxnews is also suggesting that it could be pointing to “a device that captures” creative activities. And we couldn’t agree more.
Besides, the Apple Tablet is a long overdue announcement. Despite Google not very successful with the launch of its Google Nexus One phone, Apple still needs to retaliate. And indeed it is about to fight back – with the iSlate, Apple Tablet or whatever you may want to call it.
After several months, social media center Boxee is finally available in beta. Boxee lets you play media from your computer and other devices in your home network as well as stream or download moviews, tv shows, music and photos from Internet sources to your TV. If you don’t want to buy the Boxee Box which was launched recently, the Boxee software will allow you to do all the things you can do with the Boxee Box using your computer.
To kickstart the release of Boxee Beta, which you can download right now here, Boxee has also snagged partnerships with several content providers including TV.com, Blip.tv, and IGN. TV. com has several great shows including Family Guy, Heroes and more. Blip.tv is a great source for independently produced content and IGN is of course for gaming content. In addition, Boxee is also bringing in an app for the upcoming awesome movie Wolfman.
Boxee Beta is available for Windows, Linux and of course Mac OS X. For more details on what Boxee can do, check out an earlier post from the Boxee blog.
To get started using Boxee, you need to sign-up at this site, grab the software, connect your PC to your TV or get wait for the D-Link Boxee Box to be released, grab a popcorn and then sit back, relax and enjoy watching media content on your 32-inch HDTV.
Alright, let me just set aside my Apple fanboy persona and let’s an take an objective look at what Steve Ballmer just presented during his keynote speech at CES 2010. True to the rumors that has been going on the past few days, Microsoft and HP has collaborated on a Tablet PC. It’s a Microsoft tablet PC that is called the HP Slate. Now, that’s confusing, isn’t it?
Anyway, as soon as Mr. Ballmer showed the HP Slate, some resourceful geeks just spotted the official video demo and an official photo of the Tablet PC branded as HP.
Ok, for the purpose of this report, let’s call it the HP Slate. What does it brings to the “not-yet-so-carved” new generation tablet PC niche? What else but Windows 7, to make its screen fully touch-enabled.
Mr. Ballmer describes the Windows 7-powered HP Slate as “ more powerful than a phone and almost as powerful as a PC. Perfect for reading, surfing the web and taking entertainment on the go.”
In other words, Microsoft and HP are hitting several birds with one stone, or slate for this matter – the rumored Apple and Google tablets, e-book readers and perhaps netbooks as well.
The HP Slate is a multi-functional device. It’s a netbook minus the bezel.
So, are you excited? I am. Not because I’m buying this HP Slate but because I’m pretty excited on what lies ahead. Just imagine – Apple Tablet vs. Microsoft HP Slate vs. Google Tablet/Slate? Ain’t that exciting enough?
RIM has just launched it latest smartphone accessory, the BlackBerry Presenter - a small and light device that you can easily plug into a projector or monitor to display a Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation. You then control the presentation using your BlackBerry phone. Sounds cool? It certainly is, handy and useful as well.
Utilizing Bluetooth connectivity, the BlackBerry Presenter connects with your BlackBerry smartphone. As such, it allows you to move freely when doing your presentation, that is within the 30 feet range. This allows you to easily control your presentation – navigate through the slides, view speaker notes, loop presentation slided and reference information on one slide while displaying another.
The BlackBerry Presenter has the following specs – supports NTSC and PAL video formats, S-Video and VGA video cable, micro USB connection, and support for various display resolution – VGA, SVGA and XGA. It doesn’t need any additional file processing as you can do your presentations directly without tweaking your presentation on your PC.
No details on availability yet, but if you’re keen on getting the BlackBerry Presenter, it will set you back for $199. It works with most BlackBerry models except BlackBerry Curve series and BlackBerry Pearl Flip series.
It looks like CES 2010 will be dominated not only by netbooks and tablet PCs, and e-book readers but also of multimedia entertainment hub that brings various content from multiple devices to home TV viewing. We’ve covered AXAR technology and Popbox Hub recently, and now here comes another one straight out of CES 2010 announcement – D-Link Boxee Box.
The Boxee Box brings movies, TV shows, music and photos from your computer, home network, and the Internet to HDTV. Aside from this, Boxee Box also has social networking features including direct access to Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.
The Boxee Box takes the popular PC, Mac and Linux software in the form of a HDTV device to bring access to a huge library of content direct from the Internet. You can also add your own content through RSS or XML feeds. Users will also have access to music sites including Pandora, last.fm, shoutcase and We are Hunted as well on photo sites such as Flickr, Picasa and Facebook.
In addition to Internet content Boxee Box also works with your digital media content that you have accumulated on your computer hard drive or home network. It finds relevant cover art, synopses, reviews, and other information about your digital content to form your multimedia libraries.Boxee Box supports various formats as well and supports Wi-Fi 802.11.
And finally, Boxee Box lets you discover multimedia content of your Facebook and Twitter friends as well as share your own multimedia list to them.
To continue our coverage of Pre-CES 2010, here we have an ambitious media hub from Syabas, the same company that gave you Popcorn Hour. The new media device called Popbox Hub promises a better interface highlighted by visual thumbnails, applets called Infopops and a much improved universal search tool.
In case you’re not familiar with Popcorn Hour, it’s a multimedia machine that streams and plays all kinds of video and digital media to your TV or home entertainment system from your PC, storage device, network or over the Internet.
Popbox Hub carries on this functionality plus more. First, there’s still the Popapps which were re-programmed to store content locally as well as use more complex code including Java, Flash or Qt. This allows local content such as games as well as content provider such as Netflix.
Popbox Hub will also continue to stream content from ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN and NBC. It will also continue to support major podcasters – Revision3 and Next New Networks as well as non-vide services including Facebook, Shoutcast MP3 and of course Twitter. More →
With CES 2010 just a few days away, manufacturers are already prepping up their latest wares for display during the said event. One of these latest wares that caught my interest was Provision Communications’ AXAR Technology that allows streaming of video content from one source to multiple HDTVs wirelessly.
AXAR Technology currently supports two separate HD streams at the same time, although Provision says it can handle more. Unfortunately, Provision has no plans yet of making this new technology available to consumer level. But it is already negotiating with various major players in the TV and network router markets to incorporate Axar technology into their products and services. And if we are lucky, AXAR will find its way to home TVs, set-top boxes and network devices just in time for Christmas 2010.
Pocket-Lint was given a demo by Provision of the AXAR technology. What it does is to stream HD video content from any HD source to AXAR enabled TVs or Wi-Fi connected PC and other mobile devices including your mobile phone. Or if luck comes our way, perhaps the new Apple iSlate or the rumored Google Tablet, without lag time. The video source can be anything from a Blu-ray player, PVR or HD set top box.
So, how good is this new technology really? Pocket-Lint has this to say:
Picture quality was very good with the green hues of the grass of Centre Court at Wimbledon recaptured perfectly even though the signal was being fired over the air from a ground floor living room to first floor bedroom.
With new technology as good as the AXAR, I really envy those folks who will make it to CES 2010. If you’re going to be at the gig, be sure to look for Provision Communications booth and check out the AXAR.
You know Evernote? That very useful multi-platform productivity app that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Android, BlackBerry smartphones and of course iPhone and iPod Touch? I’m pretty sure that if you’re not using it right now, you’ve probably heard about it before. Well, guess what? Evernote just reached the 2 million user mark. Aren’t we excited? By all means we are.
I personally like Evernote’s iPhone app. It was the first productivity app that I used on my iPhone, although I could not say that I have become more productive since I started using it. But still, it has helped me remember things that I would otherwise forget if I didn’t use the app.
Anyway, going back to Evernote’s recent achievement, the official Evernote blog says that they wouldn’t have achieved the 2 million user mark if not for the big push in usage given by both Android and iPhone apps. But looking at the given stats, it seems that Evernote has to thank only the iPhone since more than 1M users used the Evernote iPhone app. While Android could only give 26K+ users.
Evernote for Windows follow the iPhone app in terms of usage with more 600K people who used it, followed by the Evernote web app.
Here’s a breakdown of Evernote’s usage stat, in case you’re curious to know.
2,062,015 total Evernote users
1,005,048 iPhone app users
623,900 Windows users
604,480 web app users
342,620 Mac users
90,972 Palm Pre users
80,890 Windows Mobile users
78,406 BlackBerry users
29,861 Android users
If you haven’t used Evernote, now is probably a good time to start using it. Who knows? – It might help you be more productive in 2010.
Look here. This is one of the nicest things about news blogging that others don’t seem to mind at all – you get to learn new things, concepts, softwares and all those stuff as you struggle to find news items relevant enough to occupy a space in this blog. Like XBMC Software Media Player and Entertainment Hub. I’ve never heard of this stuff before and wouldn’t have known about if I’m not blogging for 901am.
So, what’s XBMC anyway? It’s a free, open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for all your digital media. It runs on Linux, OSX and Windows and even the original Xbox console. And its also a perfect companion for your HTPC. In short, it’s a perfect solution for your home theater needs.
XBMC lets you play almost all audio and video formats and was designed for network playback, allowing you to stream multimedia from anywhere in your house. Or even directly from the internet using any network protocols. It also lets you play CDs and DVDs either from a disk or image file. In short, if you’ve installed XBMC, your computer is probably a fully functional multimedia jukebox by now. If not, well you can start doing so by downloading XBMC’s latest version update – XBMC 9.11 codenamed – “Camelot.”
New on XBMC version 9.11 include -
revamped user interface through a new skin called “Confluence”, which by the way looks stunning,
DirectX support for Windows,
completely reorganized settings menu,
automatic video information extraction,
smoother video playback
support for new remotes out of the box
updated codecs
Alright folks, you may download the new version of XBMC from here.
