Motorola Aura - 16 million colors on the round screen

Motorola is now on her new quest for applause and for our money saved for Christmas presents. The latest announcement Motorola has made today is stunning. The new mobile phone Motorola Aura is breathing on us with its glam and exclusivity from every picture, from any angle. A perfect gadget for a bragger, but Motorola Aura is not only a fancy wrap-up with poor technical implementation, as one might have probably thought for instance, - no, Aura – is a record breaker. That round spot with a deep red shine is a first screen to go beyond all the limits set for even best of smartphones.

Design and technology bound together in an everyday gadget a juicy piece of smartphones' market. Such a way Motorola Aura appears to be a rival to many other phones including Nokia 8800 and others. Will Aura succeed? Probably yes, because sales round the globe start in December – right when everyone is thinking hard over another set of New Year presents for their families. But I think Motorola Aura is more like a present for your girlfriend rather that for someone else. Anyway, 2000 USD is an enormous sum of money for a smartphone, even if is close to a work of art.

There is a lot to tell about how Motorola Aura is built, so the first glance is mostly attracted by its body. Stainless steel housing panels are decorated with patterns and fancifully crossing lines. This beauty will last through ages because materials are really of a high quality. The coating around the moving parts is a PVD one – the same technology is used in producing Swiss watches.Aura's keyboard is one of the most intricate keyboards out there. Every key on it is being lined up one by one and carefully polished.

Rotating form factor that was chosen for Motorola Aura by designers became a headache for technicians. To make the rotary mechanism work stable after thousands of openings and closings, more than 700 unique components were tested. Aura doesn't share any of its parts with other Motorola products.

The final part – display and lens – are actually record breakers. Motorola has installed in Aura the first ever screen with 16 million colors in it. Resolution is 300 dpi. The whole ensemble is sheltered with a sapphire crystal lens. It weights 62 carats and will prevent the record-breaking screen from being scratched.

New "Apple" speakers

At the moment there are a lot of different speakers that have original design. Moreover, due to the fact that many designers and producers have a great deal of new ideas the variety of these devices will go on increasing. So taking into consideration impressive supply of speakers it should be mentioned that a device has to possess at least one distinctive feature in order to be sold.

Thus, Chinese designers have recently invented new speakers in the form of an apple. It's quite possible that they wanted to make consumers think that their newly-made device is an Apple product. But in fact it doesn't really matter because given gadget is very stylish and original as it is. Besides that the price of this concept will probably be moderate enough, so the majority of customers will be able to afford it. As regards available colors there is possibility to choose between green and red.

Of course, new Chinese "Apple" USB speakers won't ever replace iPod Hi-Fi, but they could possibly be useful as a travel accessory for that ultra-modern laptop of yours. In addition, the compact size of the given gadget can be considered as a significant advantage, because it's very easy to find a place in your baggage or back pack for a usual "apple".

Hide a movie in your pocket with Aiptek gadget

Have you ever missed your TV while going to a distant place with not many up-to-date electronics around? Or have you missed a home theater if you have one of course? Probably yes, and if so, you should know that now there is a new cool gadget that can help you. It is Aiptek Pocket Cinema that can bring a pleasant cinema atmosphere anywhere. However that may be, Pocket Cinema gadget is not a naturally born tourist - it is a delicate device. Delicate and small enough to fit in your pocket just like an average mobile phone. In spite of its small dimensions, it allows to display images or movies on a wall or screen or any other clear surface in fact. In work Aiptek Pocket Cinema is specified to show a 50 inch picture with not even slight distortion or bloom effect.

Aiptek Pocket Cinema can be a really good entertaining gadgets if you follow the entire manual guide notifications. Thing is that Aiptek has designed a very interesting, useful and stylish device, but unfortunately it is user unfriendly in a range of aspects. Let's start with the image quality. It is an Aiptek Pocket Cinema's weak spot. It will make a nice clear and bright image on a prepared surface. 50 inches (approximately 120 centimeters) in diagonal are not bad, and the VGA resolution is suitable enough – 640 x 480 pixels. This is a maximum size for 6 feet (180 centimeters) distance between the projector and the image. The minimum size is 6 inches (15 centimeters) in only 8 inches (20 centimeters) of distance. A proper adjustment is done easily with the help of a tripod in the kit.

The list of formats that Aiptek Pocket Cinema is able to playback wouldn't allow a good half of buyers to use it as freely as a PC. It reads MPEG4, ASF or AVI audio / video formats and only JPEG for images. Me myself, I think it should read FLAC or APE also.

In order to synchronize Pocket Cinema with computer you need: Windows Vista / XP / 2000 operating system and to have at least 800 Hz processor , 256 Mb RAM. Once you have loaded its 1 GB internal memory (pretty poor rate, but the problem can be solved with an SD or flash drive), operate it with a remote control . You can also plug Aiptek into a DVD player for a movie that is bigger than 1 GB, but iPod or iPhone synchronization is not available.

For a small portable gadget as the Aiptek Pocket Cinema is, the battery life is very important. Small dimensions didn't allow designers to build in an appropriate memory card, and the battery seems to be tiny to. It can only last 1 hour on the full charge which is a bigger half of an average movie, but not the whole one! Make sure you can charge the portable projector with a USB hub or an AC adapter if you are not going to watch cartoons before bedtime.

Well, even though Aiptek Pocket Cinema doesn’t seem to be a bestseller with a 520 USD sticker, but it can still be a helper in the office routine or at home. One of the best things I liked about it is not portability or something like that, but an instant romantic atmosphere. Think about it if you want to make a good impression on someone.

Mozilla Firefox 3.1. New features. Solid Security

With the latest and greatest release of Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 delivered in the first half of September 2008 and the feedback incorporated in the development process, Mozilla is gearing up for the next stage of Shiretoko.

The delightful new Firefox 3.1 is now available for download. Mozilla is offering the nightly trunk of Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 Pre-signaling that the release of the first Beta development milestone of codename Shiretoko is just around the corner. In this regard, September 30 was synonymous with the code freeze of Firefox 3.1, but although Mozilla indicated that the Beta 1 build would be delivered in October, it failed to pin point a specific deadline.

“It’s time to test the Firefox Nightly Trunk Build in preparation of the Firefox 3.1 Beta 1! We are on the road to Firefox 3.1 Beta 1, so there is plenty to test! If you want to test your favorite Firefox Feature, great! But you can also run some more tests in Litmus and try out the Nightly Build and the other great new Firefox improvements,” revealed Mozilla’s Carsten Book.

According to Mozilla, Firefox 3.1 is set up to deliver a range of improvements across the table. Shiretoko will feature an enhanced Awesome Bar delivering superior control to end users as well as privacy enhancements. In addition, Mozilla is cooking a performance boost for Firefox 3.1, and the much publicized evolution from the JavaScript rendering engine to TraceMonkey is an illustrative example in this context.

Firefox 3.1 will also feature Private Browsing Mode, which Microsoft introduced in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, support for Windows Vista’s Aero Glass, but also closer integration with Ogg Vorbis and Theora codecs, native JSON, CSS 3 and HTML 5. Following the release of Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 in October, Mozilla will make available at least one more beta in November 2008.

Google Android Phones on kick start

Google’s ties with Apple regarding the iPhone have added much speculation to the unavoidable impact that Android will have on the Apple/Google relationship when the smoke clears. Time will tell whether an official gPhone ever comes out. Google has also declared the Android Marketplace, where users will be able to download software applications, several of them free, for their Android phones. These applications will vary from games to navigation tools to travel guides and other reference software.

Google has disclosed on its Android Developer’s Blog that its nascent OS will include access to an application marketplace, similar to the App Store related to with Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch devices. This is so-called “Android Market,” however, will differ from Cupertino’s offering in at least one substantial respect, in that there’s no approval process needed for developers wishing to submit a program. Google has decided to go the route of effectively developing their own version of Java, by writing keys parts in a non-standard way. E.g., Android has a completely non-standard user interface toolkit. In the last couple of months there has been a wild amount of speculation and rumor that Android would be delayed until the first part of 2009.

Google is a very influential company these days, but getting into a totally new market means that the firm should offer the best device possible. With the first Android device, Google will have to rival Apple’s iPod as well as vast family of Nokia business and multimedia phones. Google web searches use Google Suggest technology to offer related, current suggestions. Other applications, like YouTube or Gmail, suggest queries you have previously made so that it’s easier to find and share results that you’ve found before. Google is burned into our lives more than Apple. Between the free press and word of mouth this phone will acquire decent attention.

Google claims the platform will be open to third-party developers—a rarity among mobile phones in general and a stark contrast with Apple, which has made headlines for its new development platform. On the other side, Apple’s iPhone SDK and App Store make for a very smooth buying experience from the consumer perspective, and the process for distributing software to Android devices hasn’t been disclosed yet. Google’s done pretty well thus far, how about we actually wait till the freakin’ OS is available before we start proclaiming it a failure!

AMD Puma

AMD has launch PUMA, its latest mobile platform. Embedding its latest chipset and ATI graphics together with 802.11n WLAN, AMD is taking the fight right up to Intel’s new Centrino 2.

At the heart of PUMA, lies the AMD 780G chipset which can deliver DirectX 10 graphics acceleration, full high definition H.264 decoding with both HDMI and Display Port outputs and 5GHz PCI Express ports. This combined with the new AMD Turion X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile CPU and the ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series embedded graphics, givs it a huge leap in 3D performance and HD playback image quality. Combined with a discreet ATI graphics, not only can it support up to 4 monitors, users will also benefit from ATI CrossFireX Technology which according to AMD boast 3D graphic performance up to 70%.

AMD is also claiming 70% increase in battery life with AMD Enhanced Power Now! and ATI Power Xpress technology which shuts off core logic parts of the CPU when not in use and automatically switches from discreet graphics to integrated graphics when on battery power.

Notebooks utilizing AMD’s PUMA are now available from OEM manufactures such as HP, Compaq and Acer.