MP3 saves the life~

Makes for a great interesting Monday morning news - two tourists trapped in the Swiss mountains when their last best hope for rescue, their mobile phone, died just as they managed to alert the authorities to their situation. They were saved when they were spotted via the light from their MP3 player as the long night wore on. No mention of whether the lifesaving device was an iPod or an Aigo (or one of those wierd "MP10" music players...).

Reuters.com - The light from an MP3 player saved two lost tourists from a chilly night stuck out in the snowy Swiss mountains, rescue authorities said Saturday.

The two -- a skier and snowboarder, both from France -- had got lost late in the day Friday outside marked runs near the resort of Savognin in southeast Switzerland, said Gery Baumann, spokesman for mountain rescue service Rega.

Hybrid SSD/HDD for Notebook

It seems as though the netbook craze won't be dying off very soon. Taiwanese manufacturer, MSI, has just officially launched its U115 hybrid netbook. Hybrid, in the sense that it operates on both solid state drives and hard disk drives. No, it's not a choice of either SSD or HDD, but both storage systems existing on the netbook at the same time. Other than that, its specifications will be akin to what most netbooks out there have, though what'll make it interesting is the possible longer battery life it comes with using SSD.

Engadget - MSI's officially launched the U115 Hybrid netbook we saw not too long ago, which can operate both SSD and HDD drives at the same time. The 10-inch (1024 x 600 resolution) laptop primarily uses the SSD, reserving the HDD for storage, and boasts an "Eco Mode" button which will temporarily disconnect the HDD to save power. The hybrid functions should provide both a faster OS and longer battery life -- but we'll wait till the test results are in to form our opinions.

Holiday Frames

I know I had spoke about Zenni Optics lots of time in my blog, but this time I want to share this news with you all again.

As we all know, Zenni Optics is one of the 1st in the world who sell specs to customers online. Besides that, it is one of the online stores that provide cheapest spectacles. Many of you might wonder that why can they selling those specs at such a low price, are they low in quality? Pirated? 2nd handed? None of them, they can give us such a low price is all because of they get their stocks directly from the manufacturers, so deducting the middleman expenses, we can get the low price but same quality specs!

I love Zenni Optics, not because of their low price, but also wide selections of eyeglasses. They are really success in this. They also provide you with different type of lens, for example single vision lens, bifocal lens, photosensitive lens and lots more. You can choose it when you purchase your spectacles.

Currently, they are promoting the new range of eyeglasses, called Holiday frames. If you’re thinking of getting new specs for this coming holiday, I think it would be a wise choice!

Sapphire Unveils Liquid Cooled Single Slot Atomic HD 4870 X2

SAPPHIRE Technology is now introducing the single slot, liquid cooled ATOMIC Edition of its HD 4870 X2.

Featuring a closed loop liquid cooled system, the SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC brings workstation class cooling to the PC, enabling faster clock speeds and quieter operation - and delivering the fastest graphics performance ever seen in a single slot solution. Both GPU’s in the SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC are clocked at 800MHz and each has 1GB of DDR5 memory clocked at 1000MHz, making a total of 2GB of memory on board. The streamlined single slot cooler assembly on the graphics card evenly cools both GPU’s and their associated memories - enabling this dual graphics system to run with a high level of stability even when delivering the highest levels of performance - currently the fastest PC graphics available.

The SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC is a limited edition product packaged in an aluminium case with a host of accessories aimed at the gaming enthusiast, including HDMI adapter, HDMI cable, CCL UV lamp and SAPPHIRE USB memory sticks, as well as driver and utilities software.

What’s more, each Sapphire HD 4870 X2 is individually identified with an authentification number!

Closed loop liquid cooler

Liquid coolant in the SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC is circulated through the graphics card cooler and a chassis mounted radiator by a pump assembly which fixes onto the standard system CPU mountings (both AMD and Intel mounts supplied). The graphics cooler, CPU cooler and radiator are connected in a closed loop by high quality flexible yet tough Teflon tubing and attached to each module with interference fit barbed joints that are sealed for life. This arrangement is easy to install, and efficiently cools the system CPU even in enthusiast systems where it is common to raise CPU speeds. The pump and sealed joints have been independently tested to 50,000 hours MTBF.

Air flow through the radiator is provided by a low noise 120mm 7-blade fan which delivers up to 60 cfm at full speed and is illuminated by blue LEDs. The fan and radiator can be mounted on the rear panel or in the top of the PC enclosure. The fan can be connected directly to the system power supply, to a motherboard connector, or to a fan speed controller which allows user controlled fan speeds and even lower noise when the PC is used for less demanding applications. Note that this system has only one fan and one pump cooling both CPU and dual graphics, considerably reducing overall system noise.

Complete DUAL system graphics

The SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC comprises two complete HD 4870 graphics systems on a single PCI-Express card connected by an on-board PCI Express Gen 2 bridge chip. Each GPU has 800 stream processors and is equipped with 1MB of GDDR5 memory, making a total of 1600 stream processors and 2GB of memory on-board. Two Dual Link DVI outputs are provided as well as TV-Out. 3D applications such as games use both on-board GPU’s together in CrossFire mode to deliver a single accelerated output on the Primary display. The single board layout of the SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC with its single slot cooler brings the fastest solution yet available to performance users with only a single PCI-Express slot available.

Movie support

The SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC incorporates the latest ATI Avivo HD Technology for enhanced Video display and features a second generation built in UVD (Unified Video decoder) for the hardware accelerated decoding of Blu-ray™ and HD DVD content for both VC-1 and H.264 codecs, as well as mpeg files, reducing CPU loading to a minimum. The SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 is HDCP ready and is compatible with the latest High Definition displays. Like other HD 4800 series products it also supports HDMI over the DVI interface with the correct HDMI Adapter.

All SAPPHIRE's current graphics cards are Microsoft Windows Vista certified and supported by the ATI Catalyst suite of software, ensuring customers have easy and ongoing access to software updates for performance, stability and added features.

Nvidia CUDA Advances Pace of Scientific Research

Once thought of as a technology used only for computer games, NVIDIA GeForce graphics processing units (GPUs) with CUDA technology are now being used for the serious business of scientific computation. Berkeley’s Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC), one of the leading distributed computing platforms in the world, is using CUDA technology to tap the massively parallel processing power of NVIDIA GPUs with astounding results that could change the pace of scientific discovery through projects like GPUGRID and Einstein@home.

The latest breakthrough came with the release of an optimised client that will allow SETI@home to analyse SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) data in about one-eighth of the time it previously took using CPUsi. “NVIDIA CUDA technology opens up processing power for scientific research that was previously unavailable and impossible for researchers to afford,” said Dr David Anderson, Research Scientist UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory and founder of BOINC. “CUDA technology makes it easy for scientists and researchers to optimise BOINC projects for NVIDIA GPUs and they are already using it for applications in molecular dynamics, protein structure prediction, climate and weather modelling, medical imaging, and many other areas.”

BOINC is a unique approach to supercomputing in which multiple consumer computers are joined together over the Internet and their combined computing power is used to tackle very large computational tasks. BOINC provides the distributed computing grid layer for a wide variety of scientific projects that work to help cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research on home PCs.

SETI@Home
Researchers in the scientific field of SETI received a massive increase in computing power today, when NVIDIA and BOINC released an optimised client that will allow SETI@home to be accelerated on GeForce GPUs. SETI@home, the largest BOINC project with nearly 200,000 active users, searches for extra terrestrial intelligence by using radio telescopes to listen for narrow-bandwidth radio signals from space. The performance of a GeForce GTX 280 GPU running SETI@home is more than two times faster than the fastest consumer multi-core CPU (3.2GHz Intel Core i7 965) and nearly eight times faster than an average dual core consumer CPU (2.66 GHz Intel Core2 Duo E8200)ii.

GPUGRID
GPUGRID, the first BOINC project to use NVIDIA GeForce GPUs with CUDA technology for computing, utilises NVIDIA-based graphics cards in participating PCs to compute high-performance biomolecular simulations for scientific research. Adding support for NVIDIA GPUs resulted in 1000 active GPUs delivering the same amount of computing power at least 20,000 CPUs in similar projects, delivering an average speed-up of 20 times. "The molecular simulations performed by our volunteer computing project are some of the most common types performed by scientists, but they are also some of the most computationally demanding and usually require a supercomputer," stated Dr Gianni De Fabritiis, researcher at the Research Unit on Biomedical Informatics at the Municipal Institute of Medical Research and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. "Running GPUGRID on NVIDIA GPUs innovates volunteer computing by delivering supercomputing class applications on a cost effective infrastructure which will greatly impact the way biomedical research is performed."

Einstein@Home
NVIDA CUDA technology will soon be powering the third most widely used BOINC project, Einstein@Home, which uses distributing computing to search for spinning neutron stars (also called pulsars) using data from gravitational wave detectors. “We expect that porting Einstein@Home to GPUs will increase the throughput of our computing by an order of magnitude,” said Bruce Allen, director of the Max Plank Institute for Gravitational Physics and Einstein@Home Leader for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. “This would permit deeper and more sensitive searches for continuous-wave sources of gravitational waves.”

“Parallel processing is the key to enabling visual computing, whether in the home, office or research lab, and the CUDA-accelerated GPU is the leading engine behind this trend. Distributed computing is an ideal application for parallel processing, so it’s no surprise that these amazing applications are taking advantage of the GPU’s unprecedented computational power” said Michael Steele, General Manager of Visual Consumer Solutions at NVIDIA. “NVIDIA GPUs are transforming the way we work, play, live, and discover.”

Step-by-Step Guide to Building A Super Computer

I remembered when they had to ban the shipments of PS2s to Iraq for fear of them building a super computer with it...but that was just the PS2. Imagine what they could have done with the PS3, especially since there's now a guide to actually making your own. Maybe it's time to get cracking on building that 'fricking laser beam' on the moon or maybe just make a super Seti @ Home computer to find alien life....

ps3cluster.org - Our community guide allows you to set up your own MPI (Message Passing Interface) based supercomputer cluster with the Playstation 3. This guide was co-written by Gaurav Khanna, based on his previous work on the Gravity Grid and is a current run-time environment for the research of co-author (Chris Poulin), based on his current work in distributed pattern recognition. As such, we currently utilize the Fedora Core for this infrastructure and illustrate a "how-to" below. NOTE: We focus on the Fedora 8 distribution, due to prevalence of Fedora and its Cell SDK (3.0) compatibility. Finally, this content should be considered open source, and here is the license.

F-Secure Exploit Shield protects against ‘zero-day’ vulnerability exploits

F-Secure today issued a Technology Preview of its new Exploit Shield technology. F-Secure is the first Internet security provider to offer such a shield to protect users from web-based malicious exploits and drive-by downloads, one of the most common ways to infect computers today.

F-Secure Exploit Shield is unique in enabling ordinary consumers to get protection against ‘zero-day’ exploits for which a patch is not available. These are attacks against vulnerabilities that are unknown to vendors at the time of exploitation. Vulnerabilities in computer software open security holes that can allow exploitation. Patches, issued by the manufacturer of the application, fix the vulnerability.

A drive-by-download is a download that happens without the knowledge of the user when visiting a website. The website may be considered safe by the user, although it has been hacked by criminals. This is a very common infection method in today’s threat scenario, and there is a growing number of new exploits being created by Internet criminals.

F-Secure Chief Technology Officer Pirkka Palomäki explains: “F-Secure Exploit Shield would have protected Internet Explorer users against exploits of the latest vulnerability even before it was publicly known. It protects unpatched computers even before patches are available from the software vendor. All F-Secure customers will also benefit as Exploit Shield reports malicious websites to our Real-time Protection Network. Armed with this website information, our Security Labs are alerted faster than ever to new exploits on the Internet and can react to protect all our existing customers.”

F-Secure Exploit Shield recognizes attempts to exploit a known vulnerability and shields the user against them. It also works against new, unknown vulnerability exploits by using generic detection techniques based on the behavior of exploits.

The Technology Preview version of F-Secure Exploit Shield can be downloaded from www.f-secure.com/labs for free. The technology in this stand-alone tool will be integrated into commercial F-Secure solutions during 2009.

The Technology Preview protects against existing and future vulnerabilities in both Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers. It uses only a small amount of system resources and is compatible with other vendors’ antivirus software.

Multi Hand Blackjack

Today, I had good news for you all. Very popular online games provider, the Money Casino had added a new game to its games collections.

This morning, we were talking about the casino. Some of us shared their unique experiences in Casino, while some of them shared about the tricks. One of them talked about that the most worth to play is the blackjack. It is the easiest game that will allow you get win money. While others will be a little bit difficult. The winning percentage is 50 : 50.

Today I back home, my friend in Oxford told me about the Money Casino. He said that Money Casino had added the multi hand blackjacks, where players can play up to 4 hands in a single round. I think most of the players know that multi hand blackjack is a faster and more exciting and much more challenging game.



The strategy to play this game is same like in the single hand blackjack game. Meaning they can use stand, hit, split or double in the game.

The multi hand blackjack in this online casino, had the blackjack strategy table embedded in the blackjack table and can be opened and closed just by clicking the button.

If you wish to try, why not head to there and have fun.

Motorola Introduces the MOTOROKR EM35

Good news for all Motorola fans

Motorola today announced the addition of MOTOROKR EM35 to the ROKR portfolio. A device designed for supreme audio performance both as a mobile device and music player, EM35 delivers an exceptional audio experience for both music and talk.

"As the popularity of integrated music and talk functionalities on mobile devices increases, so does the demand for enhanced audio to ensure the best experience," said Tracey Koziol, corporate vice president, mid-tier and feature products, Mobile Devices, Motorola.

"With virtual surround sound and an abundance of top features, the EM35 is perfect for the consumer looking to receive the highest multimedia and sound performance. When listening with earphones, a unique algorithm enables music to sound as if it is playing in
the space around your head, rather than inside of your eardrums, enhancing the way you listen to music."

EM35 amplifies your conversations and helps reduce background noise with CrystalTalk technology, so virtually nothing comes between you and your call.

From more superior voice quality to personalized noise adaptation, CrystalTalk makes a noticeable difference in the clarity and intelligibility of conversations while in a noisy environment. EM35 further enhances the audio quality with the addition of a second microphone, which helps eliminate more ambient background noise from the call.

ROKR EM35 is a robust music player with a full suite of dedicated keys to easily launch and control music. Whether listening via the built-in dual speakers, stereo Bluetooth wireless technology or 3.5mm stereo wired headphones, the EM35 rocks. Users can quickly access content or search through an entire music library to find a song that suits the mood by simply moving a thumb across the FastScroll navigation wheel. Pressing or holding the dedicated "play" key launches shuffle mode.

Slide the device open to send a text or surf the web while listening to music, or to pause the music and make a phone call. Also, find pre-installed and downloadable widgets - third-party web applications - for access to real-time information such as weather, sports scores, stock tickers, flight information, social media, news headlines and more.

MOTOMUSIC player is an exclusive application that enables users to listen to music while simultaneously being connected to the music store. Once connected, users can discover and access new music, preview and purchase music, retrieve artist information, share favorite tracks with friends, gift tracks from the EM35 and watch videos and free podcasts.

Compatibility with Windows) Media Player 11 gives consumers the freedom to manage music on the PC and discover new music by downloading it from a PC to the phone from more than 200 on-line music stores worldwide.

ROKR EM35 has an integrated FM antenna that enables FM radio to be played over stereo Bluetooth or external stereo speakers without the use of a headset. FM radio with Radio Data System (RDS) technology(4) makes identifying songs and artists easy by displaying available FM station information like song, artist and genre. SONGID technology completes the music experience and gives you new ways to discover music while on the go.

Availability
MOTOROKR EM35 is expected to be available later this quarter. For more information on technical specs, please visit www.motorola.com/motoinfo.

XML Contest

Are you a XML superstar? Do you know about XML? If yes, this is a great chance for you. IDUG is sponsoring a contest for those who are interested. The prizes are awesome and there are 5 categories. Simply picks one or more for yourself.

Below are the categories and prizes. You can start by registering in any of the following contests:

Gadget Contest: Develop a downloadable gadget or widget leveraging DB2.
Prizes: Each month, the winning entry will receive an 80GB Zune.

Video Contest: Invent a creative use of XML, XQuery or DB2 and record yourself doing it.
Prizes: Each month, the winning entry will receive an 8GB iPod nano.

Ported App Contest1: Port or develop a new app for DB2. Enter as an individual or assemble a team.
Prizes:
1st Prize: Each team receives a new notebook computer
2nd Prize: Each team receives a Garmin GPS unit

Query Contest: Use XQuery to find five answers. The best queries win the best prizes! articipants need to get all five queries correct in order to be eligible for the prizes.
Prizes:Once you are announced as a winner you will be eligible for a 1GB USB key and will be placed into the sweepstakes for the grand prize 32GB Apple® iPod touch.

XML2 Contest: Win by building useful, user-friendly XML apps from scratch. Enter as an individual or assemble a team.
Prizes:
1st Prize: Each team gets a 17" Alienware Laptop
2nd Prize: Each team wins a Nintendo Wii

This is really a cool contest. So, what are you waiting for, join IDUG contest now!

Bluetrek Metal Bluetooth Headset

If Kate Moss, the famously thin supermodel, had an equivalent in a Bluetooth headset, that will surely have to be the latest Bluetrek Metal. A definite head turner, KJC's foray to strengthen their hold in the local Bluetooth market has just gotten that much stronger based on our initial impressions.

Cool Thin Mint

If the box was anything to go by, the Bluetrek Metal's pedigree of a product by a famous designer shows. Right from the start the packaging gave us mixed feelings; on one hand, the design was fabulous, on the other, we had a hard time trying to take out the entire package, with only one usable opening on the top of the box.


Once we managed to get to the Bluetrek Metal, we cannot help but marvel at the amazingly thin (4mm thick body!) and light headset, and the aluminum body seems solid enough to withstand drops (not that we did try, though we wished we did). Accessories within the package include a USB adapter for charging the headset and a clip holder, which is oddly out of place with the Bluetrek's sleek design. Suffice to say, you will probably avoid using the clip if you wish to retain the cool factor of the Metal. According to KJC, an AC adapter will be bundled together with the package once it is available in the market.

Metallic, not Tinny

The actual unit is one of the sleekest headset we have ever seen, with only 3 tiny buttons found at the tip of the headset. Pairing is easily done by pressing and holding the middle button for a few seconds until the unit's well concealed LED (near the mic) starts flashing red and blue. Voice quality is generally good, with both parties having no issues when having the conversation in a moving vehicle along the expressway. However, within enclosed space, we noted a slight static on both ends of the conversations, which could probably be due to the thickness of the walls.

Minimal as they may be, the 3 tiny buttons presented foreseeable challenge when we were having a conversation while driving. With the small buttons so closely packed, our attempts to lower the volume actually ended the conversation prematurely. This, however, is more of an issue of adapting to the device rather than a deal breaker for the product in our opinion. Battery life is generally acceptable; it should last you for a day with sporadic phone calls, but nothing more.

Personalized

Still having a headache about what to give your dearest on special occasions? Someone's birthday is up and you have no idea what to get them?

From now until the end of the year, Pexagon is offering 20% off 4 very specialand personalized holiday gifts



Personalized Thumb Drives - available in 14 colors, up to 16GB in capacity with FREE custom laser engraving! Choose from one of our 32 exciting themes such as "#1 Teacher" or "Happy Holidays" and engrave two lines of personalization text on the reverse side! Starting at $7.99 after discount.

Personalized Pens - 3 unique styles, multiple colors and a FREE line of personalized laser engraved text! Starting at $1.59 after discount.

Business Card Flash Drives - the perfect gift for the business person or administrator in your life! It looks like a business card but the back side hides a small USB cable (huge 2GB capacity) and the front side can be engraved for FREE with 3 lines of personalization text! Starting at $15.99 after discount.

Wooden USB Flash Drives - environment-friendly, wooden design with attached cap and two color choices. Available in 2GB and 4GB capacities with 2-sided custom laser engraving absolutely FREE! Starting at $15.99 after discount.

You have never seen something so worth it and beautiful as gifts. Grab this chance now and impress your friends!

HTC S740

Mention non-touch screen smartphones and the usual association is a Symbian S60 device, but a less known fact about Windows Mobile is its Standard edition, which is a non-touch screen version of Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. Being a smartphone manufacturer, HTC has to cover all its bases, and that's what it did with the introduction of the HTC S740, also known as the Rose.

Longing for It

Measuring 43.4mm long, the S740 is one of the longest devices in HTC's lineup, even more so than the recently released HTC Touch Pro. Likewise, the S740 adopts the shine and luster as seen on the HTC Touch Diamond, minus the glossy (and fingerprint smudges) backing. Unfortunately, its front panel which consists of a 2.4-inch 240 x 320 resolution QVGA screen, and a 12-key numeric keypad, will still be prone to fingerprints.

Speaking of which, we were pleasantly pleased with the keypad. Flat as it may be, messaging remained fast and accurate. The issue with the S740 though, is its Call and End buttons. In their attempt to fit everything nicely on the remote-control like device, HTC made the primary call buttons too small and raised too high. This leads to situations where you'll be hitting the call buttons more often than not when you are reaching for its two softkeys, Home and Back button just above and below both the Call and End buttons.


Unlike the Touch Pro's design, the S740's slide-out QWERTY keyboard is designed with one less row and is a four row keyboard instead, more so to fit the width of the device. With its lengthy dimension, you'll notice that the keyboard is wider, and unfortunately, makes it much harder to reach the keys at the extreme ends. Furthermore, the two softkeys are situated rather close to the top edge, thus requiring one to utilize the fingernails to reach them.

There's actually one last issue we had with the HTC S740: the SIM card and microSD slot location. Our first attempt in locating both card slots was a botched one, right after we removed the battery and found it to be empty. Failing which, we slid the device and noticed a small panel at the underbelly of the display. Once we opened it, the first thing that hit us, was the "unique" positioning of the card slots. Essentially, the microSD slot rests below the SIM card holder, and what this means, is that you'll be required to remove your SIM card before you can access your microSD card should you wish to swap it.

Smooth Sailing

Putting aside the above mentioned design grouses, the S740 managed to remove the frowns from our faces and gave us a few reasons to smile, one of which is its technical specifications. Similar to its sibling devices, the S740 runs on a Qualcomm MSM7225 528MHz processor. It's also sufficiently packed with 256MB of both RAM and ROM, and this definitely showed in its application handling when we scrolled through its interface in a manner which can be only described as smooth.


Besides the myriad collection of Home screens such as the Sliding Panel and Sliding Panel Media, HTC also added in their HTC Home screen to fit the black hue of the S740's exterior. This was also where the Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard operating system shone, being a major update to its previously less intuitive Windows Mobile 6 interface. With the sliding panels that allow one to squeeze more shortcuts and access routes via a single panel, we gained access to the S740's multimedia and wireless features in a matter of seconds.


While we're on the topic of features, the S740 is also very well equipped for a device of its size, with connectivity options such as Wi-Fi, HSDPA and even GPS. As with all devices that are small in stature, we didn't set our hopes up too high for its 1000mAH battery, but surprisingly, the S740 managed to last up to almost a day and a half with normal usage.

Patriot's Viper Series Tri-Channel Memory Kits Certified For Use on Intel® Core™ i7 Processors

Patriot Memory announced their DDR3 3GB and 6GB Viper Series Tri-Channel memory kits are certified for use with Intel® Core™ i7 processor-based systems. Intel® has certified five Patriot Memory Viper Series Tri-Channel kits for use on various motherboards from Asus®, Intel®, MSI® and Gigabyte®, the most of any current memory manufacturer.

Intel® Core™ i7 brings unprecedented system performance gains over previous Intel® architectures. Viper Series Tri-Channel memory kits ship with Extreme Memory Profiles (XMP) that allow for easy, uncomplicated over-clocking for optimum system performance. "Viper Series Tri-Channel memory support of the new Core™ i7 processor is only possible by working closely with Intel®," says Les Henry, Technical Director for Patriot Memory. Mr. Henry further stated, "The large number of skus and platforms these kits are certified on exemplifies Patriot's strong R&D and our dedication to the enthusiast market."

High performance XMP memory kits from Patriot Memory, combined with the Intel® X58 Express Chipset and the Intel® Core™ i7 processor, delivers extraordinary levels of performance to PC enthusiasts worldwide," said, Steve R. Peterson, Intel's Director of Chipset & Graphics Marketing. "Together, we help deliver the worlds fastest client PCs… it is a great time to be a videophile or gamer."

Nokia N97 Officially Announced

It's official. Right after introducing their first XpressMusic device with touch screen capability, Nokia has unveiled their next N-series flagship device: the Nokia N97.

At first glance, many would equate the new N97's design with familar sights such as the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 or even the HTC TyTN II due to the inclusion of its slide-out QWERTY keyboard and its arc sliding design. Touch screen on its next N-series device It didn't come as a surprise to us, seeing as how the Symbian S60 5th Edition has finally come to fruition on its earlier Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The new Nokia N97 will be jam packed with features too. It'll sport the largest screen to date on their Nokia lineup, measuring in at 3.5-inches. It also comes as a 16:9 aspect ratio with its 640 x 360 screen resolution.

And big numbers are definitely the flavor of the day as the N97 also comes with an impressive 32GB of onboard memory. If that isn't enough, microSD expandability is also included with the device. The huge memory capacity comes in well with the tie-in to its Nokia Music Store and capability of the N97 to handle a myriad of multimedia files. The N97 also comes with a 3.5mm audio jack, which is in line with its multimedia delivery.

Wireless features are as we expected for a flagship device, which includes Wi-Fi, HSDPA and Bluetooth 2.0. What made the news even more enticing when it was announced over at Nokia World 2008, is the availability date and price. The Nokia N97 has been announced to be available by the first half of 2009, and will be priced at 550 euros (US$693.4) before taxes and subsidies.