Word on the street is that Bungie is hard at work on Halo 3 (no surprise there), but Kotaku is reporting that they're (Bungie/MS) apparently is targetting the Sony Playstation 3's release date.
Yeah, I found that funny too.
Halo 3 in the Works [Kotaku via Gizmodo]
Although still a "rumor", it is pretty cool news (if it is true, of course). Apparently PalmOne, makers of the famed Treo Smartphone/PDA thingie would be using a Microsoft OS rather than the Palm one in the current Treo 600 and newer Treo 650.
Good news all 'round. I've been looking at smartphones and nice PDAs for a while now trying to figure out which one to pick up. HP makes great PDAs but not sure how I feel about their h6315.
Rumor: PalmOne Building Windows Treo [via Gizmodo]
palmOne to make Microsoft Windows Mobile Treo? [via Engadget]
PalmNone, with Windows Treo [via GigaOM]
Unless I'm reading something wrong (or the news source is way off) it would appear that IBM is recalling 553,000 of their laptop batteries.
The adapters can overheat and melt, posing a fire and electrical shock hazard to users, according to a statement released Thursday by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.The flaw has led to some "minor property damage," but no reports of personal injury, IBM said in a statement on its Web site. The adapters were sold worldwide with IBM's ThinkPad i Series laptops and ThinkPad 390 and 240 computers as well as certain ThinkPad s Series notebooks sold in the Asia-Pacific region outside of Japan, according to the IBM statement.
So, if you own an affected ThinkPad or if you fear spontaneous combustion, you may want to have that checked out.
[via PC World]
According to GameSpot the upcoming Nintendo DS (the successor of the Nintendo GameBoy Advance) will "enable free phone calls at wireless hotspots".
Last week Gizmodo posted about the "mystery hole" on the Nintendo DS and confirmed that it was for a microphone headset, which definitely jives with the news being released today. What still isn't known so far though, is whether you'll be able to call anybody over the VoIP setup, or if it can only call other Nintendo DS users. Here's a quote:
Analyst Boris Markovich in his weekly memo said, "The headset will allow gamers to use the DS as a phone handset enabling free phone calls over wireless network hotspots. We think that this will be a very compelling application of the handset..."[GameSpot]
Information has come out about Nintendo's upcoming DS handheld's ability to serve as a voice-over-IP handset, allowing DS gamers to make phone calls when connected to a Wi-Fi access point. There's no word if the service will allow DS users to call other, regular phones or not. Knowing Nintendo, it's probably more likely that DS users will be able to chat to other DS users, and not serve as an actual phone.
[via Gizmodo]
According to InfoWorld, WinXP SP2 could be availabe on Windows Update as soon as Wednesday August 25th. Although the 266MB service pack has been available to download for a couple weeks (see: WinXP SP2 network install available from Microsoft) Microsoft has delayed its release to allow corporations a bit more time to disable automatic updates to prevent the service pack from being automatically installed.
Here's a spicy quote from the InfoWorld article:
Faced with concerns from business users, Microsoft two weeks ago made available a tool that allows users to set a Windows registry key that will instruct the system to skip downloading and installing the service pack for 120 days, but still download other critical updates. The tool was released one day after the network installation package for SP2.SP2 is more than the usual roll-up of bug fixes and updates; it makes significant changes to Windows in the name of increased security. As a result, SP2 can render existing applications inoperable. Because of those changes, many businesses want to hold off on installing the update and are taking time for testing. Automatic Updates initially did not give users that flexibility.
You can find more info on disabling automatic installation of SP2 at: Temporarily Disabling Delivery of Windows XP Service Pack 2 Through Windows Update and Automatic Updates [Microsoft.com]
[via InfoWorld]
Although it isn't supposed to be officially announced until the end of the week, it seems like Canon accidentally posted some photos of the new camera in their Press Room.
This new Digital SLR is rumored to be 8.2 MegaPixels (According to the DPReview forums [view]). The camera also shares the same lens mount as the Canon Digital Rebel (Canon EOS 300D).
[via Engadget]
[via Gizmodo]
[via PhotographyBLOG]
[via DPReview Forums]
EOS-20D
8.2 MegaPixels
DIGIC II
1:1.6x Crop
9 Point focusing
1/8000s Max Shutter speed
5fps Continuous speed
25 frame buffer
EF-s support
E-TTL II support
0.2sec startup time
50g lighter than 10D
Price US$1600 RRP
(Street price should be closer to 1300 they say)August 20 - Announcement
September 20 - On SaleAlso 2 Lenses will be announced at launch of 20D
EF-s 10-22mm /f 3.5-4.5
EF-s 17-85mm /f 4-5.6 IS (Will be sold with 20D also like the 300D)
This showed up on my FeedDemon radar today... Seems that there is some speculation running rampant that Sony may be producing a PDA sporting Pocket PC rather than the Palm OS.
...Sony may be reentering the US PDA market with another Clië - this time running Windows Pocket PC operating system. Although there's not much to go on at the moment - just the overheard comments of a Sony executive - it would be an interesting turn...[Gizmodo]
I'd definitely be interested to see if this turns out to be true, but personally, I'm still very excited to see the new HP iPAQ hx4700, which has a 624 MHz Processor, 4.0" Transflective VGA (480 x 640 pixels) TFT color display; landscape and portrait display modes and Touchpad with mouse-like curser.