IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (TechConnect Magazine) 27/01/2011

Friday, January 28, 2011

IT News HeadLines (TechConnect Magazine) 27/01/2011

Techconnect Review Round-up 27/1/11
Today's review round-up...

Point of View and TGT debut a trio of triple-fan-cooled GeForce GTX 560 cards
European add-in card maker Point of View has once again teamed up with the TGT team in Germany and together they developed three GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics cards that are sure to stand out thanks to their use of a triple-slot cooler.

OCZ officially intros the Z-Drive R3 PCI-Express solid state drives
Revealed at CES 2011 earlier this month, OCZ's next-gen Z-Drive, the Z-Drive R3 P84, has now been announced as a enterprise-minded storage solution that offers greater performance, reliability, and design flexibility.

AMD renames ATI Stream SDK, updates its with APU, OpenCL 1.1 support
AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) has today made available a new version of the ATI Stream SDK (Software development kit) only now it is called Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) SDK because it comes with support for the first APUs (Accelerated Processing Units).

ASRock climbs to third spot in the motherboard market
Taiwanese manufacturer ASRock has made the right moves with its motherboard business in 2010 as it managed to surpass its older and experienced rivals MSI and ECS (Elitegroup Computer Systems) in terms of unit shipments and claimed the third place in the board market.

be quiet! goes big and heavy with the Dark Rock Pro CPU cooler
If it want to, German company be quiet! can bend your motherboard to its will, not through any telekinetic skill, but with its newest high-end CPU cooler which, while allegedly quiet, can tip the scale to 1550 grams (somehow we think Thermalright should be jealous).

Lenovo and NEC forming PC joint venture to boost their presence in Japan
Confirming recent rumors, Chinese heavyweight Lenovo and Japan-based NEC Corp. have revealed their intention to establish a joint venture focused on the Japanese PC market. The new company is expected to be the largest PC group in Japan which is the world's third-largest PC market.

PowerColor unveils the PCS+ HD6970 custom and overclocked graphics card
To better take on the green competition (in this case, the GeForce GTX 570), AMD-exclusive board partner PowerColor has developed a PCS+ (Professional Cooling System) card based on the Cayman-powered Radeon HD 6970.

Buffalo announces new, hardware encrypting-enabled external drive
Buffalo Inc. is going after businesses with its latest storage offering, the HDS-CXU2 external hard drive which provides enhanced data security through the use of hardware AES 256bit encryption and password authentication.

I-O Data preps dual USB-interface portable hard drive
I-O Data has this week revealed a portable hard drive which features a dual-interface, boasting both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 connectors. The mini USB 2.0 port is to be used with older systems, while the micro USB2.0/USB 3.0 connector next is aimed for more modern systems (power is provided via USB 2.0).

Motorola says yes to Xoom February release, plans 7-inch tablet for 2H
Yesterday, during Motorola Mobility's Q4 earnings call, the company's CEO Sanjay Jha stated that the CES 2011-unveiled Xoom tablet is on track to ship by the end of February, loaded with the first tablet-focused/friendly Android release (version 3.0 aka Honeycomb).

Sony promises 'PlayStation quality' games on Android with new initiative
Today in Tokyo, Sony Computer Entertainment (or Sony for short) has declared its love for Android by unveiling the PlayStation Suite, a software and service combo which is aimed at enabling 'PlayStation quality' content on Android-based devices (tablets, smartphones).

Gigabyte readies the Pure Rock pocketable hard drive
All-round hardware supplier Gigabyte Technology is set to expand its product portfolio soon and release an external storage solution, the Pure Rock portable hard drive which features a 'minimalistic' design and a sleek, glossy casing.

Leaked Samsung slide confirms Galaxy S 2 & Galaxy Tab 2 MWC unveiling
It's no denying it now, at the Mobile World Congress next month Samsung will reveal its second-generation Galaxy Tab tablet and Galaxy S smartphone. Both devices are set to be announced on February 13 in Barcelona, with availability likely being scheduled for late Q1 or Q2.

Motorola Mobility ends 2010 on the rise, says Q1 2011 won't be pretty
Recently separated from Motorola Solutions, the consumer device-focused Motorola Mobility Holdings has reported a Q4 2010 net revenue of $3.4 billion (up 21% from Q4 2009) and earning of $80 million, or $0.27 per share, on sales of 11.3 million handsets (4.9 million were smartphones).

Plantronics rolls out the Voyager PRO UC 'smart' Bluetooth headset
Santa Cruz-based Plantronics, Inc. has now released a new 'intelligent' Bluetooth headset called Voyager PRO UC which makes use of both hardware and software components to make communication as hassle-free as possible.

Google confirms Fflick acquisition, ties it to YouTube improvement
Reported earlier this week, Google's acquisition of movie recommendation service Fflick has been announced on the YouTube blog. According to the blog post, the Fflick team will be working on enabling YouTube to better connect users with the most shared/talked about videos.

Techconnect Review Round-up 26/1/11
Today's review round-up...

Catalyst 11.1

Catalyst 11.1 driver released, brings fixes, a few performance boosts
AMD has delivered an schedule the first Catalyst driver of 2011, the version 11.1 which features WHQL certification and includes support for Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000, HD 4000, HD 5000 and HD 6000 series cards and Radeon 3000 and 4000 series chipsets.

MSI ships its first Sandy Bridge-powered gaming laptops in North America
Taiwanese manufacturer MSI has today announced the North American availability of the GT680R, its first gaming-focused portable PC to be based on Intel's Huron River platform which is part of the Sandy Bridge family of CPUs and chipsets.

Motorola Droid X2 said to pack Tegra 2 chip, 540 x 960 display
Unsurprisingly, Motorola Mobility is reported to be working on several high-end smartphones based on Google's Android OS, and one of them (codenamed Daytona) is the successor of the Droid X model which was released in July 2010 through Verizon.

YouSendIt delivers Yahoo! Mail app enabling large files attachments
Frustrated by the 25MB limit for attachments in Yahoo! Mail? Then you'll be happy to know that YouSendIt is offering Y!Mail users the possibility of sending files of up to 100MB quickly and in a secure manner at no extra charge.

Packard Bell releasing its first USB 3.0 external drive
After announcing multiple USB 3.0-supporting EasyNote laptops at CES 2011, Packard Bell has also revealed its intention to release an updated PB Go line of external (portable) hard drives that features a SuperSpeed USB (aka USB 3.0) interface.

CompuLab designs Tegra 2-powered uber-compact 'desktop'
Nvidia's Tegra 2 SoC (system-on-chip) was designed for mobile devices, and it is proving very popular among companies entering the tablet market (LG is using it for its Optimus 2X superphone even), but CompuLab found another use for it, and that's the core of a tiny but capable HTPC.

Acer's Aspire One 522 Fusion-flavored netbook goes on sale
After many years of wait, people can now finally get their hands on a PC, a netbook in this case, that features AMD Fusion technology. The machine in question is Acer's Aspire One 522 netbook which is based on AMD's Brazos platform and is selling in the US for $330.

AMD Radeon HD 6990 sample seen in detail
Fabless chip company AMD has showcased in Singapore its upcoming flagship graphics card which is known as Radeon HD 6990 (codename Antilles) and features two 40nm Cayman GPUs (graphics processing units) and 4GB of GDDR5 memory.

Gigabyte also offers 1GHz-clocked GeForce GTX 560 Ti card
Beside Sparkle, another Taiwanese company, Gigabyte Technology, has launched a GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics card with a GPU overclocked to 1 GHz. The model in question is known as GV-N560SO-1GI, is part of the Super Overclock Series and comes with a custom cooling solution.

Aerocool readies the Sixth Element gaming chassis for March release
Taiwanese company Aerocool Advanced Technologies has today revealed what it claims to be 'an ultimate gamers' choice' in terms of PC cases, the Sixth Element mid-tower which tries to stand out through a design that uses sharp lines and simple geometric shapes.

Intel said to release SATA 6.0 Gbps solid state drives next month
Contrary to information 'leaked' last year, a new report claims that Intel will next month release not the G3 SATA 3.0 Gbps solid state drives but the 510 Series (codename Emcrest) SSDs that feature a SATA 6.0 Gbps interface.

Sparkle goes all-out with 1GHz Calibre X560 graphics card
Add-in card company Sparkle Computer has also announced a few GeForce GTX 560 Ti models, and one really stands out since it features a custom cooler made by Arctic, and is factory overclocked to a rather spectacular degree.

Samsung confirms four mid-range Galaxy series smartphones for MWC - update
While a lot (most?) people are looking forward to the Galaxy S2 launch at the Mobile World Congress next month, the show in Barcelona will also see Samsung introduce four mainstream (read - more affordable) smartphones - the Galaxy Ace, Galaxy Gio, Galaxy Fit and Galaxy mini.

Intel names BEP's will.i.am its director of creative innovation
US microprocessor giant Intel is really getting its phunk on as yesterday it announced will.i.am (William James Adams, Jr.), frontman of six-time Grammy award-winning group the Black Eyed Peas, as its director of creative innovation.

Firefox 4.0 beta 10 available for download
The Mozilla Foundation rolled out the tenth, yes tenth Firefox 4.0 beta build which brings memory usage improvements, as well as support for a graphics driver blacklist to improve stability, and compatibility and stability tweaks for using Adobe Flash on Mac OS X.

HTC Flyer tablet detailed, said to launch with Android 2.3
The first tablet from Taiwanese smartphone expert HTC, codenamed Flyer, is still a few months away from launch but a nice batch of leaks is already painting a pretty clear picture of device which should run Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) but be upgradeable to version 3.0 (Honeycomb).

Google acquires social voice promoter SayNow
Search giant Google has been confirmed to have acquired, for an unknown sum, Palo Alto-based SayNow, the developer of a voice communication platform that allows for social network-integrated voice messaging, one-on-one conversations, and group calls.

Techconnect Review Round-up 25/1/11
Today's review round-up...

LG may reveal 3D smartphone next month
The 3D bug already bit LG Electronics and made it release 3D TVs and Blu-ray 3D players, so the South Korean conglomerate is now looking at bringing 3D to more devices, including smartphones.

MSI using Twin Frozr II cooler on four GeForce GTX 560 Ti cards
Taiwanese company MSI has stayed away from Nvidia's reference design with its four GeForce GTX 560 Ti cards, and equipped all of them with the proprietary Twin Frozr II cooler and higher-end components to ensure lower operating temperatures, a lower sound output and higher overclocking potential.

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