Iran's defence technology

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Sony X-Series laptop review

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Top 5 Nexus One Apps

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'Roxxxy', world's first sex robot introduced

New Jersey company TrueCompanion and Hines has developed the world’s first “sex robot”. The robot called ‘Roxxxy’ has different personalities and responds to the sense of touch.
Roxxxy, is a female robot which acts as a life partner or mate for those who can’t find the 'real thing'. TrueCompanion claims Roxxxy “can carry on a discussion and expresses her love to you and be your loving friend. She can talk to you, listen to you and feel your touch.”
TrueCompanion introduced its first robot, Trudy, in 1993.

Google Nexus One Vs. Apple iPhone

Promoting and directly marketing HTC's latest new Android phone under its own brand, Google has taken the fate of its Android smartphone platform into its own hands. How does the new "superphone" mass up to last summer's iPhone 3GS?

AppleInsider has presented a series of articles on how Android stacks up against Apple's iPhone OS as a platform in general terms. In this article, we'll consider the hardware specifics of the latest offering from Google's partner.

Meet your maker

While the tech press likes to say Google designed the Nexus One "with HTC," Google executives clearly gave all the credit to HTC at its introduction, saying "It’s inaccurate to say Google designed the phone. Peter [Chou] and his team [at HTC] built and designed the phone. Google is just marketing and selling the phone."

The phone is nearly identical to what HTC itself sells under the name Bravo in Europe, apart from the placement of its buttons. Google's impact on the Nexus One's specs is far less significant than even Microsoft's original Zune, which while being based on the Toshiba Gigabeat, was at least given a design update and noticeably different software that rendered it incompatible with other PlaysforSure MP3 players. In contrast, the Nexus One is very clearly a Google-branded HTC phone, and there are no intentional, artificial compatibility barriers with other Android platform devices.

HTC has a history of building higher-end PDA-style phones, often with physical keyboards, large screens, and envelope pushing hardware features. Most of its phones have been designed to run Microsoft's Windows Mobile, and are therefore targeted at that platform's core market of IT staff and gadget enthusiasts. HTC has served as Microsoft's primary licensee, building 80% of the Windows Mobile phones to reach the market (although many of these were sold under different brand names, just as Google is now doing with the Nexus One).

The company also built previous generations of PDA-style phones sold by Palm, prior to the debut of the new WebOS-based Pre. But HTC's history as the leading maker of Windows Mobile phones is what positioned it to be the first major manufacture to launch an Android phone, because Google targeted its relatively new Android operating system at hardware reference designs running Windows Mobile, in much the same way that popular desktop distributions of Linux are geared to run on Microsoft's reference design for Windows PCs.

Magic, Dream, Hero, Passion

Google launched Android 1.0 in October 2008 with HTC's Dream (sold as the T-Mobile G1), then followed up with HTC's second generation Magic (the T-Mobile myTouch) last summer, and then the HTC Hero (also sold with slight modifications as the Verizon Droid Eris) last fall. It's therefore nothing out of the ordinary that the newly released Nexus One running Android 2.1 is also being sold under other HTC names in other markets.

Unike earlier HTC models, the new Nexus One does not pair the stock Android OS with HTC's "Sense UI," a user interface theme HTC added to the stock Android both to differentiate its offerings and to solve some rough edges in the Android interface, such as the look of its virtual keyboard. HTC also applies Sense to its Windows Mobile phones which makes HTC's Android phones look and feel more similar to the company's other products than to those of other Android makers, including Motorola's Verizon Droid and the upcoming Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.

Overall, this fractionalization has resulted in making the Android platform less similar to commodity Windows PCs and more like PlaysForSure devices in terms of being unique to their manufacturer rather than offering a largely identical experience between vendors. With Android 2.1 however, Google seems to be signaling the intention to fold in many of HTC's Sense improvements into the standard OS, which should help streamline the platform at the expense of HTC's differentiation.

The Android balancing act

It remains to be seen whether Google will continue to work to neutralize the differentiation efforts of its partners in order to strengthen the Android brand, or whether it will continue to encourage vendors to create their own look and feel independently, as Motorola did with Blur and Sony Ericsson is expected to do with its upcoming phone.

On the other hand, it is in HTC's interests to create reasons for customers to pick its phones over those of other competitors. The company already advertises its Android and Windows Mobile devices under the same ad campaign, direction attention to its own brand rather than to either licensed operating system. Further, at CES the company unveiled a new initiative to release a series of lower-end smartphones based on BREW, Qualcomm's proprietary alternative to Java.

That indicates that despite its shift from Windows Mobile, HTC isn't betting its future on Android. Additionally, it shows that Android itself doesn't do enough to allow phone makers to hit low price points. Successful Android phones require a fast processor and significant RAM and other system resources to be taken seriously.

Finding one operating system to span from the bargain bin to the high end has similarly been a challenge for Nokia, which uses its own simple Nokia OS, the more sophisticated Symbian, a full distro of Maemo Linux in its Internet Tablets, and Windows on its netbook. Samsung has also announced plans to juggle Windows Mobile, Android, and its own Bada platform. Most other makers also have a variety of operating systems, leaving Apple, RIM, and Palm unique in pushing one single OS.

Motorola has announced an intention do to this with Android, but is already facing a rather direct blow from Google and its new branding partnership with HTC. On the other side, Google is also planning to add its new Chrome OS into the mix as a way to enter the significantly different netbook market, which will splinter efforts by its current licensees who already have Android netbooks and tablets under development.

The company has also announced a clear intention to turn its hardware partners into commodity manufacturers, leaving Google with control of all the value across their products, much as Microsoft did to PC makers in the 90s. This is all a precarious balancing act challenge Apple doesn't face.

Android super-Hero

Unlike most of its Windows Mobile phones, which nearly always supply a physical keyboard, HTC's Nexus One builds upon the previous Hero/Droid Eris form factor to deliver something that's closer to the iPhone, but which still supplies a trackball pointer rather than relying on ubiquitous multitouch for navigation. The result is a something of a middle ground between the gadgety PC experience of Windows Mobile and the slick and refined appliance experience Apple provides.

In many ways, the Nexus One is HTC's answer to the Motorola Verizon Droid, which stole the spotlight this winter as Google focused on it and left HTC's Hero (Verizon Droid Eris) to serve as a runner up to be given away for free with Droid purchases. HTC's Hero was also relegated to running an older version of the Android OS, as Google launched Android 2.0 on the Droid exclusively.

As with the Droid, the Nexus One's hybrid design of being an iPhone-like touchscreen but still sporting a Windows Mobile-like array of touch sensitive buttons and a physical trackball results in the problem of making it easy to inadvertently fall back to the home screen while attempting to type. "we found ourselves consistently accidentally tapping them while composing an email or text message," Engadget complained. That review also said the unit's "[trackball] placement feels a bit awkward here, and there's literally nothing in the OS that requires it." In contrast, the iPhone 3GS uses a recessed home button that is difficult to hit accidentally.

The Nexus One now brings the Android 2.x platform to HTC's product lineup, although existing Hero/Droid Eris users will have to wait as long as this summer before they can obtain the latest update from their mobile provider. Apple regularly releases updates that all iPhone users can install as soon as they become available. Again, the layers of differentiation that Android partners are adding (like HTC's Sense, Motorola's Blur, and support for unique hardware) tend to complicate and slow the propagation of Android updates for users.

New Features

The Nexus One carries forward the basic iPhone-like design of the earlier Magic and Hero, adding a suite of new features such as a fast new processor, noise canceling audio, a better camera supporting 720p HD capture and playback initial reviewers have noted that HTC's camera works much better than the Droid's, which was plagued by focusing issues), a higher resolution screen, and a new OLED display like the Zune HD.

The display resolution of the Nexus One now almost matches the Droid, although it does so using an OLED screen. This may be why it uses a 480x800 resolution rather than the Droid's 480x854, adding some extra complication for Android developers who now have three different popular resolutions to account for on the platform (earlier models use the same 320x480 resolution of the iPhone).

As we noted in regard to the Zune HD, OLED technology results in a screen that promises to save power and which looks exceptional in low light. However, reviewers have actually reported that, like the Zune HD, the Nexus One's screen is terrible to the point of unusable in bright light, with Engadget writing, "Oh, and using this thing in daylight? Forget about it. Like most screens of this type, the Nexus One is a nightmare to see with any kind of bright light around, and snapping photos with it on a sunny day was like taking shots with your eyes closed."

At the same time, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, who has been using the phone for weeks, complained that he "found battery life to be woefully brief," and that users should "be prepared to keep this phone near a charger at all times," regardless of its rated battery life and the energy saving potential of its new display.

Google's Zune

In addition to OLED, the Nexus One also shares other engineering choices with the Zune. Unlike the iPhone and the iPods before it, which are all designed to power down the screen as quickly as possible the moment you stop interacting with it, the Nexus One debuts Zune-like flashy effects that assume you'll be staring at the screen even while listening to music. These include new interactive graphic background effects and music visualizers which require the screen to be on in order to notice them, an engineering decision that, like Microsoft's Zune, indicates more interest in delivering Vista-like sizzle than the practical, functional utility that Apple trends toward.

For Apple's products, anything that distracts from core features or doesn't add tangible value is a potential casualty. The company canned the latent audio recording features on the first iPods and initially delivered a simple black and white screen. The iPhone's user interface is rich with animation effects, but they are all targeted at enhancing its navigation and overall feel, not to decorate the screen with superfluous candy.

There are also more practical features the Nexus One holds over last summer's iPhone 3GS: the camera has an LED flash, which is handy when taking close ups in dim lighting; the camera also has a higher rated resolution, but that isn't necessarily an improvement when you're using a tiny CCD chip, as packing more pixels into a tiny sensor can result in more grain noise and greater file sizes without actually improving the shots you can take. The noise cancellation feature sound promising and valuable, and there's also a novel speech recognition feature designed to serve as an alternative to the virtual keyboard. Engadget called it "marginally successful."

The phone is also faster; it's rated to be significantly faster than the Droid, but only slightly faster then the iPhone 3GS when loading web pages. In JavaScript rendering, the iPhone 3GS actually came out ahead in some tests. One would expect that the very latest Android phone using the most advanced ARM processor available would perform significantly better than last summer's iPhone 3GS and just narrowly better than the Droid.

This indicates that Apple's software provides significant performance optimization, something that last year's Palm Pre also demonstrated. That model used the same chip Apple put in the iPhone 3GS, but failed to achieve the same performance. This does not bode well for competitors once Apple debuts its own optimized ARM cores under development within the company's PA Semi subsidiary.

Missing Features

Despite being almost a year ahead of the iPhone 3GS in an industry where performance and capacity can often double on an annual basis, the Nexus One doesn't do a lot of things Apple's phone did last year. Like the Droid, the Nexus One doesn't do hardware encryption, meaning that most Microsoft Exchange shops will refuse to support either model (unless you can convince your company to downgrade its default security policy). The iPhone 3GS does support Exchange's default policy settings, which require device encryption.

The Android OS also can't handle moving purchased software titles from Android Market into the devices' Flash RAM storage (which on HTC and Motorola devices, like other phones developed for Windows Mobile, is provided primarily on removable SD RAM cards). This results in a significant limitation for developers and for users who want to run sophisticated mobile apps such as games. Google as been aware of this issue for a long time, but only commented that it has plans to address it at some point in the future.

Until that happens, growth of the Android Market will be artificially handicapped as Apple's App Store juggernaut further establishes itself as the best way for developers to make money and for users to find the latest, richest, and most regularly updated games, serious applications, and software-integrated hardware peripherals. Speaking of which, the Nexus One doesn't have anything comparable to the iPhone's Dock Connector, which has given birth to an ecosystem of iPhone and iPod related peripherals. Instead, the Nexus One only provides a mini USB connector.

Microsoft copied Apple in creating its own hybrid connector supplying power, USB, audio, and video signals for the Zune, but also demonstrated how difficult it was to build momentum behind such a standard. Google, partnered with a variety of hardware competitors under Android, neither created a standard hardware connector for Android nor one for its own branded version of the HTC Passion/Bravo. There is a docking mechanism of some sort, but no details on when the dock will be made available and what capabilities it will have in the absence of a hybrid connector.

The iPhone 3GS also supplies a consistent multitouch user interface that is used throughout it bundled apps. Google has only added limited support for this in the Android OS, and apps that can make the most use of "pinch to zoom" type features don't consistently offer it to the user. That includes Google's own web browser, which has become a primary feature of smartphones. The Nexus One also lacks the iPhone 3GS' automatic focus, white balance, and exposure set by the user's touch.

The Network

It's often said that the biggest problem with the iPhone is its association with AT&T, at least in the US. That being the case, it's hard to see how the Nexus One improves upon things by either limiting users to an even less complete network on T-Mobile (which suffers from serious problems both due to its less penetrating higher frequency radio spectrum as well as its much smaller network, primarily concentrated in urban areas) or asking them to revert back to 2007 and forgo 3G service completely to use the phone unlocked on AT&T.

Google promises a Verizon version to follow, but hasn't said when, hinting only that it is likely around the same time Apple is expected to bring the iPhone to CDMA carriers using either a worldmode or separate CDMA chipset. The reason behind this vagueness is likely related to Google's efforts to balance its love between carriers and hardware partners. Users interested in the Nexus One but wanting a Verizon phone are directed to the Droid.

Of course, the iPhone is also limited to working on AT&T or in EDGE-only mode on T-Mobile (if users incur the risks involved with cracking the carrier lock). It remains to be seen whether Google can keep users satisfied with T-Mobile's network and avoid the same criticism Apple gets for partnering with AT&T. If it can, Apple may be more likely to offer a new version of the iPhone that works with both AT&T and T-Mobile's 3G networks.

Reception

When Apple debuted the iPhone 3GS last summer, it all but silenced any talk out the Palm Pre, which up to that point had stoked lots of enthusiastic anticipation. Observers immediately shifted their attention to other potential rivals to the iPhone, and Android began receiving much of that attention. The Hero and then the Droid took turns basking in the Android spotlight last winter, and have now been eclipsed by the Nexus One, with general consensus being that this model is the "Droid-killer."

At the same time, Apple has continued selling its iPhone 3GS, shifting focus only slightly to the complementary iPod touch. Now Apple is stoking hype surrounding its expected Tablet launch, while continuing to sell and promote the same iPhone model. This pattern of Apple conquering new territory with blockbuster releases that occur only once a year while rivals throw handfuls of new models under its tank treads appears to be continuing with Android.

Google appears to be purposely fractionalizing its brand by pitting itself against each of its hardware rivals while also assigning Android credibility to Verizon with the "Droid" brand, and associating "with Google" to anyone who agrees to put its apps on their phone. While the iPhone brand has remained globally famous for going on three years now, Google is making Android an umbrella term that doesn't necessarily mean anything really good or bad while its partners also pick a variety of model names that will only apply to specific markets and or providers.

But the point of a brand is to associate a name with a strong reputation and consistent level of quality. It's not clear how Nexus One will do that for Google, no matter how much success it can generate before Android's attention spotlight shifts to another model. Additionally, by launching the marginally new HTC model with the hubris of "superphone" attached to it, Google risks associating itself with an embarrassing failure that will impede its ability to grab legitimate attention in the future, another similarity it shares with Microsoft's Zune.

Source: AppleInsider

MSI launches two new Gaming notebooks-Bringing advanced processing technology to your notebook

Laptop specialist MSI launched its two latest GX series notebooks at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, purpose-built for gaming addicts on the move. The new GX640 and GX740 machines come equipped with a high-specification designed to run the latest gaming titles smoothly and with the portability of a notebook.

"In the months leading up to CES we've seen huge advances in software and hardware, including Windows 7 and the new Intel Core i5 Arrandale processor and Calpella platform.” At the world press launch MSI's president Joseph Hsu alleged, “We're extremely proud to announce notebooks that make full use of this technology to significantly outperform their predecessors."

The Taiwanese manufacturer's notebooks come with MSI's own Turbo Boost technology which diverts system resources, using Intel's own Hyper-Threading system, for the fastest gaming experience, no matter what background operations are running.

Machines Features:

• Built-in with Intel Core i5 Arrandale,
• Built-in with Window's 7 operating systems,
• Latest Graphics Media Accelerator HD system to run the latest PC games smoothly,
• ATi's Mobility Radeon HD 3D graphics card,
• Radeon HD 3D graphics card supports DirectX11 and renders game graphics in spectacular definition,
• 25.6" LCD screen,
• Five speakers, two above the keyboard, two along the front and a woofer to bring to life deep explosions in the base,
• GX series notebooks promise to make your games sound great despite the machines ultra slim proportions,

The notebooks shouldn't cause any humiliation if you flip one open in a trendy cafe having scooped Germany's iF Product Design Award - the design equivalent of an Oscar.

The W, A, S and D keys - vital for game controls - have been highlighted in red to make them easier to spot and a luminescent touch sonsor control panel and independent number pad also improve game control.

The MSI GX640 and GX740 notebooks will be available in the UK from March 2010 and prices start from £999.

CES 2010: The Year of the Tablet PC

Apple’s iSlate

Ah the illusive iSlate! Like most new Apple products we haven’t seen it, we’ve just heard of it—and the lack of details is driving us crazy. Apple did not (does not ever) attend CES, so there was no debut of the iSlate, but the company did set a press conference date for late January.

HP Multitouch Tablet

This unnamed HP tablet was announced at CES by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer. The nameless tablet was runs Windows 7 supports multitouch gestures, and is due out in mid-2010 for under $500. HP-slate

Dell Android Tablet

Dell’s “tablet concept” features a 5-inch display, a 5 megapixel camera and is an Android-powered device. Dell’s being very hush-hush about any other specs and details concerning its new tablet. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Archos 9 PC Tablet

This poor guy was overshadowed by all of the “newer” tablets, like HP nameless one, because it technically came out in mid-2009. Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer announced this tablet as well during his CES keynote. The Archos tablet sports a 1.1GHz Intel Atom Z510 processor, a 60GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, and offers networking via 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and 100-mbps Ethernet. Archos-9-PC-Tablet

Lenovo IdeadPad U1 Hybrid

Tablet or notebook? How about both—Lenovo’s new Ideapad U1 starts out as a lightweight, Windows 7 laptop running on a Core 2 Duo CULV processor and a 128GB solid-state drive, but if you remove the 11.6-inch display you’ve got yourself a stand-alone Linux tablet PC, powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon ARM processor with 16GB of flash memory. ideapadu1hybrid

Freescale Tablet

This year’s affordable tablet PC—the $199 Freescale Tablet. The Freescale tablet includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth wireless connectivity, and also features a 3D desktop framework with touch screen/QWERTY keyboard support. The company says this $199 tablet also boasts a power-efficient ARM processor: the i.MX515 chip based on ARM Cortex-A8 technology.

Pegatron Tablet

Another highly overshadowed tablet PC—also announced by Ballmer during his keynote—doesn’t even have any glamour shots. Pegatron—spin off of AsusTek Computer—didn’t release many detail either. Neowin described the tablet as having thesespecs: An 11.6-inch touchscreen display, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of on-board storage, a Webcam, and HDMI-out.

Innovative Converged Devices’ Ultra and Vega Tablets

ICD has revealed a pair of Android 2.0 tablets, the Ultra and the Vega. The Ultra was on display at both Verizon and Nvidia’s CES booths since the two companies teamed up on the tabletsmodem and processor. The Ultra tablet has a 7-inch touchscreen and is powered by a 1GHz nVidia Tegra T20 processor, which lets you watch smooth 1080p video; the device also includes 4GB of on-board storage space, as well as a MicroSD card slot for further expansion.  The ICD Vega, has a 15.6-inch, 1366-by-768-pixel touchscreen and a 32GB solid-state drive.

Dell is serious about its Tablet

Dell gives the impression to be very solemn about its Android laden devices. After its initial push into the Android side of things with the Mini 3 smartphone, it has organized this MID that shows off of a 5 inch display and is all set to arrive on one of the U.S.-based leading networks. Dell, at the ongoing CES 2010, said this is just a concept as of now.

Whereas Dell hasn't discovered the specifications of this MID, official pictures have already been released. The only other thing that we know about this MID other than it being Android based and having a 5 inch screen is that there is a 5 megapixel camera too at the rear of the device. Oh, and it's has a SIM card slot as well thereby making it a cellphone - one of the biggest you will ever come across.

There is no word as to when one of these would be released for consumers around the world. One thing that's certain would be the fact that this would be one expensive gadget.

Nexus One review

While Google’s Android has powered other phones, this is the first one where the search giant has specified the design. The pencil-thin Nexus One is built to feel like a genuine object of desire.

And the Nexus One offers features the iPhone lacks, too – the camera’s resolution is 5mp, compared to Apple’s 3mp, there are satnav capabilities built in that cost Apple users extra, and a fast processor means the Nexus One operates quicker than any phone currently on sale in the UK. Web-browsing is impressive, although in the UK is likely to lack the multitouch capabilities that have been available on previous versions of Android. Automatic online synchronization of camera photos is also impressive. It’s effective voice operation, for controlling the phone and writing emails, however, that is the most surprising feature. This is the first time I’ve seen a version of that technology that is genuinely useable.

In the burgeoning market for additional applications, however, Apple’s iTunes Store offers 115,000 compared to the 20,000 or so in Google’s Android Marketplace. That means that there are currently far more games, tools and clever tricks available to iPhone owners. As more phones start to adopt Google’s operating system, however, Android is likely to catch up fast. And while Android can run a number of Apps at once, the iPhone can’t.

Does the Nexus One feel quite as well put together as the iPhone? No, although it’s close enough to make no meaningful difference. What Android handsets can’t do, however, is plug in to your music collection as seamlessly as an iPod or an iMac. And that’s the biggest problem Google faces – an iPhone is a web-browsing, every song in your pocket, phone call making pleasure to own. It’s part of an entire ecosystem, with accessories, covers, speaker systems and even ties that are built to house iPods.

But the Nexus One does plug in effortlessly to the web, social media, email, calendar, search and contacts functions; perhaps the company that dominates web search should simply start making the computers as well.

Five New Planets: The Kepler Telescope's on a Roll

A NASA space telescope Kepler has discovered five planets outside of our solar system. NASA said the planets are dilapidated. Because, in these planets temperatures hotter than molten lava.

Borucki heads the Kepler Mission, a space-based planet-hunting telescope that went into solar orbit last spring to search for isolated worlds like our own. While the first five worlds detected are nothing like Earth, nobody expected them to be. What's important, Borucki declared, was that "these five new exoplanets come from the first six weeks of data." An additional eight months of Kepler observations are already in the can and awaiting analysis, meaning many more planets are undoubtedly lurking on hard drives at the NASA Ames Research Center in California, where Kepler is headquartered. "We're going home to lots of presents still unopened," says Natalie Batalha, a San Jose State University astronomer on the Kepler team. "These observations contribute to our understanding of how planetary systems form and evolve from the gas and dust disks that give rise to both the stars and their planets," alleged Borucki. "The discoveries also show that our science instrument is working well. Indications are that Kepler will meet all its science goals."

NASA launched the Kepler space telescope in March, 2009. The craft is on a six-year mission to find Earth-like planets and carrying a telescope and multiple computers. “NASA scientists expect Kepler to find large planets during its first several months in space” Kepler program manager James Fanson alleged Last year. “And in two to three years, the craft should begin to spot planets closer to the size of Earth” Fanson added.

The Kepler spacecraft is designed to study between 100,000 and 170,000 sunlike stars and find Earth-like planets orbiting them. The telescope onboard the spacecraft will measure the brightness of those stars every half hour, allowing scientists to detect any dimming that would be caused by orbiting planets passing in front of them.

Scientists anticipate to receive enough figures from Kepler to find out not only the size of a planet but to be able to detect whether it has a solid surface and if there's the potential for it to have water, which is crucial to the formation of life.

NASA reported this week that Kepler spotted its first five exoplanets, which are planets outside of our solar system.

The planets range in size from smaller than Neptune to larger than Jupiter. These exoplanets have temperatures reading between 2,200 to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, according to NASA.

"It's gratifying to see the first Kepler discoveries rolling off the assembly line," alleged Jon Morse, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division. "We expected Jupiter-size planets in short orbits to be the first planets Kepler could detect. It's only a matter of time before more Kepler observations lead to smaller planets with longer period orbits, coming closer and closer to the discovery of the first Earth analog."

Apple tablet could land By March

Apple Inc. plans to unveil a long-awaited tablet computer this month which may begin to ship in March. A Taiwanese components supplier has notified longtime Apple analyst Gene Munster at Piper Jaffray that it is "likely" the tablet could be available by late March. Munster says he has not been briefed by Apple on the product.

Munster and other analysts have speculated the tablet — expected to be introduced in late January — will come with a 10-inch touch display that lets consumers read newspapers and books, watch movies and TV, play games and use the Internet.

"It's a combination of e-book reader/Web-surfing device/e-mail/video player," Munster says. Third-party applications, which are so popular on the iPhone, will extend the tablet's functionality and "really let it rip," he says.

Published reports have speculated the tablet could cost $1,000 and could include a Wi-Fi subscription. USA TODAY could not independently verify the reports. Apple declined to comment.

An Apple tablet that is bigger than an iPhone and smaller than a laptop "is likely to be a terrific product, but unless it meets some need not currently met by a netbook or iPhone, it's a limited opportunity," says Charles Wolf, a longtime Apple analyst at Needham & Co. Still, Apple's entry could significantly perk up the $950 million U.S. market for tablets. Sales declined 25% in 2008 and were expected to drop again in 2009. "It has been a disastrous market because there has been no champion," says David Daoud, an analyst at IDC.

Munster expects Apple to sell about 2 million tablets in its first year. The company has approached some book publishers with proposals to distribute content, he says.

The product already has commanded attention ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas, where several tablets are expected to be unveiled, including one from Notion with paper-quality screen graphics for easy reading outdoors.

Nexus One Phone Officially Pits Google Against Apple

The Nexus One Phone is anticipated to be wider but slimmer than Apple's market-leading iPhone and faster than Motorola's Fortune 500, is the first handset to be designed, marketed and sold exclusively by Google.

It will run the search leader's Android operating system on a high-speed processor with the complete binding touch-screen and virtual keyboard of the smartphone.

Google has alleged little about the Nexus One since giving the device to its employees last month for testing. But it is expected to reveal its plans for the phone during a press conference about the Android system at its Mountain View headquarters in California today.

Early assesses imply the Nexus camera, that comes with a flash, is preferred to that on the iPhone, and it is expected to win the battle over battery life, with the facility to hold full charge for at least 24 hours. It will also come complete with a light sensor, proximity sensor and an accelerometer.

But the Nexus will fall short of the iPhone in the applications arena, with around 16,000 available for Android phones compared with 100,000 at the Apple App Store.

The phone, which stores audio and video, will also not offer a connection to Apple's iTunes online music library.

CES 2010 Flashpoints: The platforms for the next decade in electronics

Every year, the Consumer Electronics Show is a gauge of the directions in which platforms are moving, a barometer of the evolution of functionality. In no doubt, we see ample of tidy toys, many of which wind up either being for kids or making us feel like kids. And definitely, we hear ample of slackly coupled metaphors that play to our need to be excited, like how a certain device unleashes connectivity or harnesses the power of disruption -- phrases that read like they were assembled using that word game you play with refrigerator magnets. The devices, known as tablet computers, have screens of between 7in and 10in in size, and dissimilar traditional laptops, they use an on-screen "virtual" keyboard, like that used by Apple's iPhone, rather than a physical keyboard.

From March Apple is likely to open its own tablet computer, alleged to be named the iSlate and competitor computer makers are thought to be keen to expose their designs ahead of any Apple press conference.

Freescale, A US company, has shown off a archetype device that could be used by other electronics manufacturers to create advanced tablet computers that will cost less than $200. The 7in touch-screen tablet turns on quickly and connects instantly to the internet via Wi-Fi or the mobile phone network, and provides a full day of battery life.

Dozens of other manufacturers will also use the Consumer Electronics Show to showcase their tablet devices. Notion Ink, an Indian manufacturer, will unveil its tablet computer, which runs Google's Android operating system and features an energy-saving 10in scratch-proof touch-screen, and will allow users to watch high-definition video on the move, and to surf the internet and send emails. Dell might also launch an Android-based tablet device, while gadget fans will be hoping that Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, uses his keynote speech on Wednesday evening to share more details about the Courier, a dual-screen tablet computer and ebook reader that Microsoft is rumoured to be working on.

"Missing link" between PCs and smartphones" Henri Richard, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Freescale, said "The PC has been stale in terms of its ability to innovate. Smartphones have been making progress, but they have limitations," he said.

Analysts at DisplaySearch expect the tablet computer market to be worth $3.5 billion by the end of the year, a significant figure for an emerging device category. "We're talking about a brand-new market," said John Jacobs, a senior analyst with DisplaySearch.

The tablet revolution is being driven by the growing ubiquity of wireless internet connections, and consumers' desire to surf the internet and watch videos on devices that are bigger than a smart phone, but smaller than a conventional laptop.

Glen Burchers, director of consumer product marketing for Freescale, said his company's tablet computer was aimed at people aged between 12 and 30, who wanted a web-friendly device with a bigger screen than a smart phone to surf sites such as Facebook and YouTube.

"The tablet is the newest category of mobile device, and we believe it has the potential to be the fastest-growing," he said. "Everyone who uses the internet finds value there."

New Sony Ericsson Kanna Phone leaked

The phone-terrain now gets one more drop in its pail. Now it appears that Sony Ericsson failed to hide from view its brand-new phone from a spark of camera for so long. According to FoneArena, in the past days there was a Sony Ericsson phone that was leaked for everybody to feast eyes on.

Tagged as ‘Kanna’, the eye-catching device runs on Symbian S60 5th Edition OS and comes equipped with a 3.2-inch touchscreen display, a highly impressive 8.1-megapixel camera and Wi-Fi connectivity, reveals FoneArena.

Seemingly, other leaked details of the new Sony Ericsson Kanna include 360 x 640 pixels resolution, QWERTY keyboard, microUSB port, and that weighty 8.1-megapixel camera with autofocus.

It seems that, the satiny phone is a sister of Kurara. The compelling camera further lends support to 720p HD video recording and also features a 3.4mm audio jack.

The newest offering from Sony Ericsson is likely to be announced at the Mobile World Congress, on February 14, 2010.

Windows 7 fails to impact Mac sale

The release of Windows 7 has definitely helped in increasing the sales of the PC at work, but have failed to slow the increase in adoption of Macs at the workplace, according to a study. Apple is expected to grow at the same time, while the number of companies buying Mac desktops remains flat at about seven percent, the number of those buying MacBooks has grown by 10 percent, according to Electronista.

The ChangeWave study also reports that Dell and HP should benefit from a slight increase in corporate sales with a respective 33 percent and 18 percent companies planning to buy both desktops and notebooks from the two. Also, 93 percent of those who had tried Windows 7 were either somewhat or very satisfied with the OS, that hasn't translated into significant decisions to move up upgrades at the office. But only 19 percent plan any sort of change, and only three percent plan a "significant" change to get Windows 7 into their businesses early.

It's not known what's leading to Apple's increase, though native Exchange 2007 support in Snow Leopard may contribute to the results along with overall less expensive MacBooks and MacBook Pros from the past few months.

World's tallest building's true height still a secret

In the annals of tall skyscrapers, there is no doubt that the soon-to-open Burj Dubai will be the world's tallest. But how tall is known to only a few.

"It's still a secret," William Baker of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP, the tower's structural engineer, said in an interview ahead of the Burj Dubai's January 4 opening.

"The client (Emaar Properties) will only let us say it's more than 800 metres tall. It's part of the mystique of the project," he said.

Baker said the architects wondered if someone would try to figure out the slender tower's height by measuring its shadow.

Chicago-based Skidmore developed the "buttressed core" structural system that resembles a gigantic "Y" to support the super-tall tower, which is nearly twice as tall as Skidmore's 442-metre Willis Tower in Chicago.

The 35-year-old Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower and once the world's tallest building, will be bumped down to fifth spot, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, which tracks such things. The current record-holder, the Taipei 101, will be dropped to second.

Seven of the world's 10 tallest towers are in Asia, all built in the past 13 years.

Jan Klerks of the Council on Tall Buildings said the group has asked to know the tower's exact height.

"We have expressed this a number of times, but if there are reasons not to disclose it, then I guess we have to do without an official number. We also do not know why they chose not to disclose the number. The only thing we are sure of is that it is the tallest building in the world, and that it is at least 800 metres," Klerks said in an email.

The Burj Dubai "really cannot be rationalized through urban scarcity and land prices," Klerks said. "As such it is very much an iconic building, aiming at those who want an iconic address."

Apparently, the emirate's recent financial problems have not hurt sales of the approximately 1100 one- to three-bedroom residences in the tower, which are "pretty much 100 per cent sold out," Baker said. Those include corporate "apartments" near the summit topping out at around the 164th floor.

A luxury Armani hotel will occupy the bottom floors.

The cost of the tower has been put at around US$1.5 billion (A$1.69 billion) in published reports.

From the 124th floor observation deck of the tower viewers can see 80 kilometres on a clear day.

Terraces are located at setbacks spiraling up the tapered tower, which is based on the "geometries of the desert flower and the patterning systems embodied in Islamic architecture," according to its promotional literature.

The air is noticeably cooler and fresher on the terraces compared to the stifling heat and humidity at ground level during Dubai's summer, Baker said.

He said it takes about two minutes to get to the summit on some of the fastest elevators in the world, which travel at up to 40 kilometres per hour.

The tower's exterior is glass and steel that would cover 17 soccer fields, and will require six to eight weeks to clean.

Concrete was used extensively in the core, enough to build a sidewalk 1283 miles long, and the steel reinforcing bar used would stretch a quarter of the way around the Earth. The cooling system produces enough condensation to fill 20 Olympic swimming pools a year, which will be used to water the grounds.

BlackBerry Storm2 review

There’s no denying that if you want to see your email when you’re on the move, you can’t beat BlackBerry with its efficient, fast, easy-to-use system. And if you’re suffering a little Apple iPhone envy, BlackBerry has its own touchscreen handset, the Storm, released a year ago.

Although popular with end users, it had a mixed critical reception. Nobody liked the lack of wi-fi, requiring you to find a decent 3G phone signal before you could surf the net at speed.

Its unique touchscreen was a Marmite affair: the screen was sprung so you’d rest your finger on a menu item to highlight it but push through to make the screen click in order to activate it. I loved this – it was a reassuring confirmation that you were doing what you were trying to and worked better than the vibrating response offered with some other smartphones. And many felt that texting was a dog and the motion sensor was erratic – turn the phone sideways and the screen took an age to reformat, for instance.

So how does the Storm2 fare? Well, it’s a whacking great improvement in every single way. The springy screen is more accurate, though you’ll still like it or loathe it. The new software makes the accelerometer responsive and effective and texting is a little better – though the fact that when you touch a key with your thumb renders it invisible still hasn’t been addressed. Other smart phones display the key above your finger, so you know you’ve got the right one. Best of all, though, the BlackBerry boffins have found space for a wi-fi chip.

The new model is sleeker and sexier than the first, and in the last six months the BlackBerry AppWorld application store has built up its catalog. Not huge, but with lots of business-oriented add-ons, though many are pricey.

Original Storm users are promised a software update which will, it’s claimed address many of the usability issues. But, of course, it can’t add wi-fi. Still, it may tide you over until it’s time to upgrade.