IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (TechConnect Magazine) 21/01/2009

Auzentech's X-Fi Forte 7.1 sound card finally goes on sale
Expected to start shipping by the end of last year, the Auzen X-Fi Forte 7.1 sound card had to suffer through a three-week delay but is now finally ready available and ready to provide gamers and audiophiles with top notch noise. Able to brag with being the first low profile card to feature the PCI-Express-native Creative 20K2 X-Fi chip, the Forte 7.1 has a PCI-Express x1 interface and provides 64MB of onboard memory, stereo playback at 16/24-bit up to 192kHz, plus support for WDM, ASIO2.0, EAX 5.0, Direct Sound, Direct Sound 3D and OpenAL.

The Auzen X-Fi Forte 7.1 is priced at $149.99.

Sony to release info on its restructuring plans
Technology giant Sony has announced that it is currently preparing to reveal the final details of its restructuring plan (conceived in December), which will include the exact positions set to be in the swap over.

According to the Financial Times, Chief Executive Howard Stringer has been facing huge resistance to cutting important jobs in the company's electronics division and in Japan. Unfortunately, reports showed that it appeared to be the final option for the company executives to act on to curb investment - risking as many as 16,000 jobs.

Sony is also likely to suffer an operating loss of about $1.1 billion this year, which has of course not been helped by such a strong yen as of late. The shares themselves have already fallen 3.5%, but perhaps once news of the company's plans are out they will install more confidence in their investors.

New Whitehouse.gov introduced alongside inauguration
Just before Obama took office yesterday, the official web site of the White House was rejuvenated and updated with a new design and never before seen features.

We were all already introduced to Change.gov during Obama's campaign, and the site was met by net surfers with great approval and satisfaction. Well, the new Whitehouse.gov possesses a similar horde of information in a neat package as the Change site, and it is designed to act as an all new platform for the Obama administration to connect and involve citizens with the government of their country.

The new site boasts information such as details regarding the structure of politics in the United States, as well as plans for initiatives that Obama wishes to act on in the near future.

Visit Whitehouse.gov

iPod Touch 2G soon to be jailbroken
In a recent post on the iPhone Dev-Team Blog the developers there have managed to successfully SSH into the Unix based operating system on the iPod Touch 2G (second generation iPod Touch) allowing them access to the firmware and back end of the device.

According to the post they did successfully jailbreak the device but it's far too complex for most people to find useful.

iPod Touch 2G in an SSH Terminal

More info on the jailbreak is available at the iPhone Dev-Team Blog.

Android engineer leaves Google
Google's engineering director for the Linux based mobile operating system, Android, has left the company to pursue other interests and landed at Coupons Inc. According to an announcement, Horowitz will oversee all of Coupons' worldwide engineering, product management and technology efforts.

Coupons owns a web site dedicated to providing coupons for numerous online and physical retailers worldwide called Coupons.com, and has become one of the fastest growing brand names in the world.

During Horowitz's term at Google he led the software engineer team behind the Android operating system for mobile devices which is currently available in the United States and the UK.

YouTube supports downloads
Yesterday, following Barack Obama's inauguration as the new president of the United States, Google has introduced a new feature to YouTube, the popular video posting web site, downloads.

While web sites and browser extensions dedicated downloading, or "ripping" YouTube videos are nothing new, the web site having this function may make some of these systems obsolete.

The download links at the moment are only associated with Barack Obama related videos, seemingly just the inauguration videos, but I would not be surprised to see more and more posters offering their videos available for download, especially in higher quality form.

Along with this there are also channels related to political candidates that have been created specifically for the inauguration.

Biostar lists its Micro ATX TA760G M2+ motherboard
As ASRock, Biostar is also gearing up to let loose an AMD 760G-powered motherboard and it can be seen just below. Named TA760G M2+, the upcoming Micro ATX board has support for AM2/AM2+ processors, boasts four DDR2-1066 memory slots and one PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot, and comes with a 350 MHz-clocked Radeon HD 3000 series IGP backed by Hybrid CrossFireX.

The motherboard also features one IDE and six SATA 3.0 Gbps ports, 5.1 channel audio, Gigabit Ethernet and includes both D-Sub and DVI connectivity. No word on pricing yet.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

IT News HeadLines (TechConnect Magazine) 21/01/2009

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