Few days back O2 the Exclusive iPhone provider in UK announced that iPhone is no longer available in UK. But Today Customers trying to buy iPhone from Apple online stores in UK and US will find both the 8GB and 16GB models are “Currently Unavailable.” It was believed that O2 has stopped stocking the iPhone in anticipation of the next generation 3G iPhone. Diminishing supply of the iPhone in Apple US retail stores has been reported for past few months now. It looks like Apple might have stopped manufacturing the present generation iPhone. The next generation 3G iPhone doesn’t get more imminent that this.

Toshiba unveiled its plan to ship notebooks equipped with SpursEngine graphics chip by end of this year. Toshiba will use the SpursEngine SE100 chip in high-end multimedia oriented laptops such as the Qosmio G40 notebook computer. The SE1000 is based on the Cell processor used in PlayStation 3. The SE1000 will have four cores compared to eight core found on the processor used by PS3. The chip is capable of MPEG-2 and H.264 encoding and decoding at full HD resolution. The chip will also be capable of upscaling standard definition to full HD resolution (1080p). Toshiba is planning to later use the chip in other products like TV and DVD players also. Now don’t start thinking that Toshiba is replacing the graphics card on the computer as this chip is mainly designed to handle video only and the graphics cards will still handle 3D stuff. We have to wait till Toshiba releases SpursEngine based laptops to see how much difference the chip makes in video playback quality.

Panasonic revealed their new wireless home theater system that will ship by end of spring 2008. The Blu-ray HTiB comes with 5.1 surround sound wireless speakers and can be upgraded to 7.1 surround by adding two more wireless speakers. An iPod dock comes with the system that supports audio as well as video playback via the system. It also has an SD card slot that can be used for images or video in standard or high definition AVCHD format. The audio formats supported by the system are Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD, DTS-HD, DTS-HD High Resolution, DTS-HD Master Audio and Linear PCM. The SC-BT100 supports the Blu-ray Final Standard Profile 1.1 and HDMI standard 1.3. The SC-BT100 home theater system will available for $999.95.
[Via Slashgear]

Sony unveiled their new digital photo frame, VGF-CP1, the frame comes with a 7” screen that support 16 million colors and has 800 X 480 resolution. Onboard memory on the frame is 512MB and can be expanded using Memory stick card, CF card or SD card. The frame also comes with WiFi that enables the photo frame to network with PC for loading media wirelessly or work with online photo services like Picassa. The Slim bezel hides two 1.6W speakers to play MP3 and WMA audio files. Though 1.6W speakers will be of no use in a normal size room. It can display RSS feeds and Yahoo News items via its WiFi. It’ll be on sale in Japan on May 17th for 30,000 yen ($280).

Development in the Server/Workstation market is a very good indicator of future of desktop and laptop markets. Hence the roadmap show by AMD for its Server/Workstation market is very important, in signaling the direction AMD is heading. For past few years Intel’s processor performance has left AMD in dust, which is another reason why this processor roadmap to 2010 is very important. The first processor on the roadmap is the upcoming 45nm Shanghai processor that will ship by end of 2008 and compete with Intel’s Yorkfield based Xeon processor. The processor will see 20% gain in performance and energy efficiency. The 4-core processor will come with 6MB L3 cache, 512K L2 cache and 128K L1 cache. Now the problem for AMD is that when the Shanghai processor is released it will compete with last generation of Intel’s processors as by then Intel would have launched Nehalem architecture based processors. According to Intel the Nehalem based processor will perform 15%-25% better then Yorkfield processors, again leaving AMD well behind in performance. In second half of 2009 AMD will release Istanbul, a six-core processor based on 45nm technology. Expect number of cores, the Istanbul processors will be same as Shanghai processors. Intel will be releasing their 8-core Nehalem based processors in early 2009 more then six months before AMD’s Istanbul processors. In 2010 AMD will introduce Magny-Cours, a 12-core design that will have DDR3 support, 12MB L3 cache, 4X Hypertransport 3 and probe filters. A six-core design based on Magny-Cours will be called Sao Paulo and will also be launched in 2010. Both the processors will use 45nm-manufacturing technology and work with a new platform called Maranello. Here again Intel beats AMD, as they will start using 32nm-manufacturing technology by 2010. Even though Intel has not said how many cores its processors will have in 2010 we can do an educated guess that they will have 12 to 16 core processors by then. Intel is almost doubling number of core every year and has already shown a 100-core processor that they plan to launch by 2012. In short if AMD wants to stop losing the processor market share in Server/Workstation market as well as desktop and laptop markets they have to speed up their development to be toe to toe with Intel rather then just following them.
[Via Arstechnia]

O2 the exclusive iPhone provider in UK announced on its website that the iPhones are no longer available in UK. They later said to Register Hardware that O2 is replenishing stocks of the 16GB iPhone to be sold online. O2 website presently shows the only 16GB iPhone in stock. Last week O2’s retail partner Carphone Warehouse reported that they no longer have iPhone for sales.  Both O2 and Carphone Warehouse have already said that the 8GB iPhone has reached end-of-life at least in UK. All this is an indication that Apple might discontinue 8GB model. The next generation 3G iPhone, which will be launched in June, will have 16GB as minimum storage. UK might be one of the first countries to get the new 3G iPhone, as the exclusive iPhone provider O2 is not even trying to stock present generation iPhone. It looks like Apple will be launching 3G iPhone in at least 5 countries including US, UK, Germany, France and Austria simultaneously.

Take Two announced that it sold more than 6 million copies of Grand Theft Auto IV and made around $500 million in first week sales. Making GTA the largest launch in the history of gaming industry. GTA stomped past Halo 3’s record of $300 million in first week sales. On the opening day GTA sold 3.6million copies for a total of $310 million in revenue, again making it biggest launch day sales ever. So GTA went past Halo 3’s first week sales record in just one day. Strauss Zelnick CEO of Take Two said, “Grand Theft Auto IV’s first week performance represents the largest launch in the history of interactive entertainment, and we believe these retail sales levels surpass any movie or music launch to date.”

According to a report by NY Times, Microsoft and NBC are working on a feature that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on Microsoft’s portable media player. When asked, why NBC is working with Microsoft for selling TV shows and not with Apple, J. B. Perrette, the president of digital distribution for NBC said, the first reason is Apple insists that all TV shows have an identical wholesale price and the second reason is that Apple refused to cooperate with NBC on building filters into its iPod player to remove pirated movies and videos. Microsoft on the other hand is accepting NBC’s pricing scheme and will work with NBC to develop a copyright “cop” to be installed on its devices. DRM restricts the ways in which we can use the media bought.  I do understand that the copyright owners want to protect their content but adding a filtering technology that will decide what one can play or not play on a device that I paid for is crazy. Microsoft announced on its Zune insider blog that they have no plans or commitments to implement any new type of content filtering in the Zune devices as part of their content distribution deal with NBC. But to be true, I don’t believe Microsoft at all because the company changes its opinion every other day. Microsoft in 2005 believed that Play for Sure is the right way to sell music but they followed the Apple iTunes closed system approach and released Zune. Starting from August 2008, if you bought a song through Microsoft’s Play for sure service you won’t be able to transfer the song or play it on anything else except the computer it is authorized for. If you buy a new computer and get rid of your old computer, your songs are also gone. Another good reason to save yourself the trouble and not buy the Zune!

Qtrax a free file-sharing music download service announced in January that it has deals in place with major record labels to distribute music free online. But all major record labels said that they have not authorized Qtrax service to distribute music. That all changed on Tuesday when Universal Music Groups spokesman Peter Lofrumento confirmed that an agreement has been reached but declined to elaborate. Qtrax’s spokeswoman told Associated press “All of UMG’s music available digitally will be available for free, legal downloads on Qtrax.” Neither UMG nor Qtrax announced when the service will start or what terms and conditions will apply for the usage of the free downloads. Nonetheless a major recording label giving music for free does sound very promising.
[Via Associated Press]

Well Philips also joins iPhone wannabe lineup with its upcoming Xenium X800 e2e handset. Actually it’s not Philips but a Chinese company that bought Philips cellphone subsidiary and still has rights to use Philips logo on the products (like Lenovo uses IBM logo). The e2e in the name stands for edge to edge for full-face touchscreen. The photos indicate that the phone will have WiFi and Bluetooth. No other information is available about the phone. If the images are real it will be interesting to see yet another iPhone follower in the market.

Hitachi today started shipping the fourth generation of 7,200 RPM mobile hard drive, the Travelstar 7K320. The new 2.5” hard drive will offer 60% more storage, 12% performance improvement and 22% less power consumption. The hard drive will come with Bulk Data Encryption for increased data security. Travelstar 7K320 will have 12ms average read time and 4.2ms average latency. The drive will use 0.8w power in idle state and 1.0w in active state. It uses SATA 3Gb/s interface to connect with the computer. The 320GB hard drive is available for $219.
[Via Business Wire]

Pioneer showcased their first generation of impressive KURO plasma TV at CES 2008. Well they have been hard at work and just after six months have announced the second generation of KURO display with black levels five times deeper than the previous generation. Like its Elite Series brother the KURO also gets Optimum Mode that allows the display to examine the sound, picture and room light conditions to automatically make appropriate adjustments to audio and video settings for optimal viewing. The 3.7” thick displays will come in two sizes, the 50” model for $4,000 and the 60” model for $5,500. Both the displays will support 1080p resolution and come with a new redesigned HD interface in June.

Pioneer announced two new Blu-ray players to accompany its TV and A/V receiver announcements. Both the players will have decoders for every next-gen multi-channel audio codec or will sent complete audio bitstream to the A/V receiver. According to Pioneer both the players will be fastest Blu-ray player in the industry with 15-second eject from off time and 22-second disc load time. The Blu-ray player BDP-51FD will be priced $599 and the higher end model Elite BDP-05FD will cost you $799. The Elite model will come with gold connectors, superior video decoder and a front faceplate with capacitance touch keys. Both the players will ship this summer.

Pioneer today announced four new high-end Elite A/V receivers – the Elite SC-07, SC-05, VSX-03TXH and VSX-01TXH. The receivers are designed to deliver the ultimate HD picture and sound performance for your home theater system. All the receivers will support DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS_HD High Resolution, Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus. The receivers will have 12-bit color depth and a Faroudja video scaler. The SC-05 will be priced $1,800 and the top of the line SC-07 will be priced $2,200, both the receivers will be released in august. The VSX-01TXH and VSX-03TXH will be available next month for $750 and $1,000 respectively.

Pioneer has announced four new Elite KURO displays designed specifically for custom installation in high-end home theater systems. The displays employees an “Optimum mode” feature that allows the display to examine the sound, picture and room light conditions to automatically adjust audio and video setting, delivering a near flawless viewing experience. The 50” PRO-111FD ($5000) and the 60” PRO-151FD ($6500) Elite KURO HDTV models will be available in June. The Signature Series 50” PRO-101FD and 60” PRO-141FD monitors will be released in October and August respectively. All the models will have 1080p resolution and come with 2-year warranty.
[Via Business Wire]

Apple today updated the iPhone SDK for developers. The iPhone SDK beta 5 build 9M2173a contains bug fixes and the newest version of iPhone firmware 2.0 beta. It was expected that Apple would add GPS support and/or remote media streaming and control in this software update. But Apple has provided no such information in the release note. You can download the SDK from Apple’s website.

Samsung has also come to Windows Mobile 6.1 party and announced their new SGH-i200 handset. The 11.8mm thick handset comes with tri-band GSM, HSDPA, 2.3” QVGA display, 2-megapixel camera, VGA camera for video calls, Bluetooth and microSD card slot. The candybar handset has 4 hours talk time and 360 hours standby time. The media player on the phone supports WMA, MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, OGG and AMR formats. The phone measures 4.59” x 2” x 0.46” and weighs just 3.6 oz. The SGH-i200 will be released in Europe in June and rest of the world release will follow within a month.

According to an inside source at Palm, the company is working on two new handsets that will be launched in the third quarter of 2008. One of the two handsets codenamed Skywriter might be a Centro like Windows Mobile 6.1 based device and the other device codenamed Zeppelin might be a higher end device using Linux. Palm is also seeking developers for the platform, setting a deadline of May 30th for applications that will be launched with the new devices. Palm needs a very good new mobile device soon as the other smartphone makers like Apple and RIM are leaving the company well behind.
[Via Macnn]

HTC today unveiled the sexy Touch Diamond phone at its press conference. The Windows Mobile 6.1 based phone uses Qualcomm 528MHz ARM processor. For connectivity the phone uses WCDMA, HSPA, HSDPA, Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi and Quad band GSM. The Touch Diamond has a 2.8” touchscreen with 480 x 640 resolution and two cameras, one for video calls in front and a 3.2-megapixel on back of the phone. The phone comes with 192MB RAM and 4GB onboard memory. The phone measures 4” x 2” x 0.44” and weighs just 110g making it smaller and lighter then the iPhone. The 2.8” touchscreen on HTC is also smaller then the 3.5” screen on the iPhone. The only thing that I didn’t like about this phone is that it uses mini-USB jack for audio output and not the regular 3.5mm stereo jack. The phone will be released in Europe and Asia in June 2008. HTC didn’t announce the price but said it will be priced competitively to the phones with similar specs.

Engadget has posted information from an AT&T memo forwarded to them by an AT&T employee. According to the memo employees are requested not to take any vacations between June 15th and July 12th. Last year when the iPhone was released AT&T had sent a similar memo to its employees. The memo cites “an exciting Summer Promotional Launch,” which is again a definite indication of 3G-iPhone launch. The memo adds that the employees can take vacations after first week of July implying that Apple is planning to launch iPhone around the same time first generation iPhone was launched last year (June 29th).

VMware announced the availability of VMware Fusion 2.0 public Beta 1. Fusion 2.0 adds support for multiple displays (up to 10 displays), experimental DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2 3D acceleration, easier printing via Mac and shared folder improvements. The software also adds direct import of Parallels virtual drive, Virtual PC virtual drive or Boot Camp Partition to a VMware virtual machine. The Fusion 2.0 beta 1 is available is free download here and you can also watch videos of new features on the same page. As pointed out by VMware, Beta software can be prone to instability and bugs. Do not run beta software in mission-critical environments.

Super talent today launched it MasterDrive MX a new solid-state drive that uses less expensive multi-level cell technology flash memory to reduce cost. The 2.5” laptop drive will be available in three sizes 120GB for $699, 60GB for $499 and 30GB for $299. The MasterDrive MX SSDs are priced less than half the cost of typical SSDs available in the market. The company is using a new flash memory technology that would last longer and will have faster read and write (40Mbps) speed compared to present multi-level cell technology (MLC). Super Talent has also released a high performance DX line that uses single-level cell technology for faster write speed (70Mbps) and would last longer. The 30GB DX SSD will be priced $699 and the 60GB will be priced $1299. Both the MX and DX series use faster SATA connection to communicate with the computer.
[Via Electronista]

Vodafone the second largest mobile phone carrier after China mobile announced today that it has reached an agreement with Apple to launch the iPhone later this year in ten countries. Vodafone will launch iPhone for its customers in Australia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey. Vodafone is the second company after Rogers of Canada to announce a deal with Apple to launch the famous touchscreen phone. Vodafone will most probably release the iPhone in the ten countries after Apple announces the 3G iPhone in June. The rollout to all ten countries will be completed by end of 2008.

Chinese website WeiPhone has posted photos of upcoming 3G iPhone. The iPhone shown in the images has white plastic back, added sensors, modified microphone and speaker grills matching the exact description released by iLounge of the upcoming iPhone.

In another iPhone related news Apple has added support of handwriting recognition for traditional and simplified Chinese in firmware 2.0 beta. Chinese writing uses characters and knowledge of at least three thousand characters is needed to write Chinese properly. As Chinese uses more than 3000 characters in place of 50 alphabets, handwriting recognition support will be a crucial feature when iPhone is released in China. Handwriting recognition in iPhone firmware 2.0 beta allows you to draw characters on the screen with your finger. As you draw the character, four possibilities appear on the right side of the screen. Wretch.cc has posted many screenshots of the new feature. This is a definite indication of things to come. Apple will release iPhone in China soon as it is the biggest mobile market in world and handwriting recognition will be part of the iPhone not just for Chinese but for other languages also.

Austrian paper Der Standard is reporting that 3G iPhone is coming soon to T-Mobile Austria and may bring pricing changes along with it. The 3G iPhone will use existing UMTS network and T-Mobile Austria will be one of the first to carry the hardware. T-Mobile didn’t give any information about the specs of the upcoming 3G iPhone nor did it unveil when the iPhone will be released. According to the newspaper pricing is likely to change, T-mobile’s chief Handrik Kasteel said that the company would offer more flexible subscriptions than it offers now. Apple has not announced information about the upcoming 3G iPhone except that it will be launched sometime this year.

Sony has launched their new BRAVIA V4500 for European market. The TV will be available in three sizes 26”, 32” and 37” with integrated MPEG-4 AVC HD tuner. The V4500 series will use BRAVIA ENGINE 2 technology for superb picture quality. The LCDs will have 1360 x 768 resolution and offer contrast ration of 33000:1 resulting in cinema like blacks. The Picture Frame Mode will allow users to display digital images using any compatible USB flash memory drive. There are three HDMI ports for adding multiple devices to the TV directly. "The superbly styled, easy to use BRAVIA™ V4500 series gives everyone a more satisfying home entertainment experience, whether they're into TV, movies or games", comments Hiroshi Sakamoto, Marketing and Product Planning Vice President, TV Operations Europe, Sony Europe. "And now with the inclusion of an HD tuner, there are even more options for enjoying great-looking HD images with breathtaking quality." No word on pricing yet.

Scientists at Xerox have developed a way to make prints whose images last only a day. The technology creates temporary images using compounds that change color when they absorb a certain wavelength of light but then will gradually disappear, so that the paper can be used again and again. Xerox calls the technology “erasable paper” and the paper self erases within 16-24 hours. Xerox collaborated with PARC (Palo Alto Research Center Inc.) to develop the technology. PARC has already developed a prototype printer that creates the images on the paper using a light bar that uses a specific wavelength of light to print on the paper. The “erasable paper” is part of Xerox’s ongoing investment in development of green products and the company estimates that as many as two out of every five pages printed in a office are for single viewing only. Using of erasable paper will reduce paper usage by as much as 30% in a typical office environment. Commercial products based on this technology are still far away as the technology is still in experimental stage.
[Via Xerox]

T-Mobile today announced the rollout of its 3G network using UMTS/HSDPA in New York City.  The company plans to rollout high-speed data network by end of 2008 in those cities where a majority of its subscribers currently use data services. T-Mobile currently offers multiple phones that are able to operate on the UMTS network. The 3G enabled phones will automatically switch to 3G networks in areas where 3G service is available. The company will offer its first HSDPA (faster network speed) device in second half of 2008. T-Mobile is the last of the four major cellphone providers in US to add 3G support. It will be using the relatively uncommon 1,700MHz Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum for its 3G service and hence will need different device that can function on the spectrum. So basically you can’t buy 3G handset from Europe and hope that it will work with your T-Mobile 3G service in US.