TechBloggin.com

Filed under: Cellphones

An AP report out today claims that AT&T has made “technical adjustments” to correct problems with its “overloaded servers”, which have been making it hard or impossible for new iPhone owners to activate their device — and as many of you know, a non-activated iPhone is essentially useless, save for emergency calls and showing off to your friends. A spokesman for the company said that while there have been problems with getting users up and running, nearly all customers have been able to activate their phones within five to eight minutes — though we suspect that information will just be salt in the wound to people who are still having trouble. The rep also stated that the company is expecting new gears for its steam engines any day now, and that the laborers who shovel coal into its furnaces have doubled their efforts.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

written by Joshua Topolsky

Filed under: Portable Audio

Looks like a pillar of iTunes content might be on the brink of collapse — Universal Music, the world’s largest music business, has officially opted not to renew its contract with Apple for vending music on the iTunes Music Store. We don’t know specifically what caused Universal to turn away — perhaps it’s the weight of the rising anti-DRM movement among consumers, or perhaps it’s because of Stevie J.’s brash negotiating tactics, continual refusal to hand over iPod cash, or oceanic persistence in keeping tracks locked in at $0.99. Whatever the reason, we can’t say we’re all that surprised; Universal’s been a pain in Apple’s ass for years now. So what’s the end result? Well, Universal music will still be sold through iTunes at will, so that means consumers can keep buying tracks for the time being, but Apple runs the risk of losing Universal’s content on very short notice if the companies don’t make happy with one another and put pen to paper once more.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

written by Ryan Block

Filed under: Cellphones

That sound you’re hearing is the collective sigh from everyone patiently waiting for Palm to actually get its act together and unveil its depressingly overdue Linux mobile OS. Yet again, it seems we’ve been fooled into believing that Palm actually had its ducks in a proverbial row, as BrightHand is now reporting that Palm CEO Ed Colligan recently announced on a conference call that “products based on the new Linux-based platform won’t be available until some time next year.” Interestingly enough, Colligan also insinuated that the firm would “continue to use Windows Mobile and Garnet OS / Palm OS II for the foreseeable future.” Wait, they can actually see some light at the end of this perpetually growing tunnel? We sure as hell can’t.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

written by Darren Murph

Filed under: Announcements

Yeap, we’re still giving away an 8GB iPhone. Go, it’s all over tonight at 11:59PM EST!

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

written by Ryan Block

Filed under: Storage

Western Digital has bought Komag, a company that supplies its buyer with thin-film media used to create disk drives, for $1 billion. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of the year, and has been completely approved by both boards, with just regulatory approvals needed to be cleared. The deal is overshadowed somewhat by the statement by one analyst that unusual trading in options ahead of the deal looked “suspicious,” which makes it hard for us to recall an example where stock trading in the time immediately surrounding a merger deal wasn’t suspicious.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

written by Conrad Quilty-Harper

Filed under: Desktops

The concept of light powered computing has surfaced again, this time thanks to a group of researchers at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Using laser technology that we’re not even going to pretend to understand, they’ve figured out a way of transferring data in speeds measured in quadrillionths of a second — a measurement so fast even our spell checker doesn’t recognize it. The technology is around 100 times faster than traditional magnetic storage methods, but it still has some way to go until it can replace your hard drive: for one thing, the researchers need to figure out a way to reduce the footprint of the laser, currently at an apparently massive 5 microns width. As always, we shall wait in anticipation for any developments.

[Via Slashdot]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

written by Conrad Quilty-Harper

Filed under: Laptops

At a shopping mall called Vivocity in Singapore, Fujitsu has shown off two new 12.1- and 17-inch notebook models. The 12.1-inch T2010 is actually a tablet, which weighs 3.3 pounds, is based on Santa Rosa, and has a fingerprint reader and Bluetooth. The 17-inch N6460 is very much not a tablet, instead targeting desktop replacement dudes with a full size QWERTY keyboard — numpad and all — and a 500GB drive and ATI graphics card. Both are expected to ship in August, but for how much we don’t know.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

written by Conrad Quilty-Harper

Filed under: Cellphones

Looks like today’s morning’s firmware leak turned up some well hidden details about the iPhone’s hardware engine — and also confirming some reports we’d previously received. From what we can tell, it looks like the iPhone’s got a 620MHz ARM chip running under the hood. Specifics:

• ARM1176JZF chip with TrustZone (enables trusted computing environment for media, apps, network, OS, etc. — very bad for hackers)
• Can vary in clock speed up to 700MHz or more, depending on implementation (thanks, Nigma)
• ARM Intelligent Energy Manager (claimed to reduce power consumption 25-50% in portables)
• 16K / 16K cache
• Features vector floating point coprocessor (”for embedded 3D-graphics”)
• ARM Jazelle enabled for embedded Java execution (hmm…)
• SIMD, high perf integer CPU (8-stage pipeline, 675 Dhrystone, 2.1 MIPS)
• 0.45 mW/MHz power draw (with cache)

Whatever it is Apple’s got that thing doing, they’re doing it right. Thus far our iPhone battery life tests have far exceeded expectations (more on that soon).

Update: Sascha at Gear Log seems to think given the recently discovered Samsung chip in the iPhone, perhaps the processor in question is a Samsung S3C6400, a recently-produced 667MHz ARM1176JZF-based CPU that seems to fit the bill.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

written by Ryan Block