Author: Tarandeep Kaur

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Acer 10-inch netbook will be released in February 2009 [Netbook]

Despite the fact that the Acer joined the netbook game later than the ASUS, Acer’s Aspire One was the best selling netbook of the year 2008. Digitimes is now reporting that Acer will soon be coming out with a netbook with 10-inch screen. It will be manufactured by Compal Electronics and will be available in 3 colors: black, white and red. The 10-inch Acer Aspire One will be available in February 2009 at a competitive price of $399.

The original Aspire one was also launched at $399. Whether it would come with built-in mobile broadband is still unknown. Also, it would be great if the Acer engineers are able to squeeze in the 10-inch display in the original Acer Aspire one’s body. There is a lot of free space around the screen, which can be used to put in a 10-inch display. I hope they use the same chassis and keep the size as compact as possible.

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Developers only: Use GPS And Web Maps For Location-Aware Apps [Windows Mobile]

Windows Mobile provides many interfaces and capabilities that can help keep the device informed about its environment—where it is, whether it has a signal, how much of a signal, and so on. But how can these features be used in your applications? The most prominent and arguably useful of these capabilities is location awareness. This should enable you to create location-aware applications, ranging from the rather obvious satellite navigation program to the much more sophisticated task list that will be discussed here.

This article will look at the issues involved with using this capability and the additional code you need to write to develop useful applications. In this article, I will discuss the mobile application development environment and utilities, and show you how to build a location-aware task list application that can remind you of a task when and where it’s appropriate.

Read the full article here

[MSmobiles]

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HTC Touch HD Manila on HTC DIAMOND – [Windows Mobile]

xboxmod has ported the HTC TOUCH HD’s manila to the HTC DIAMOND. The Touch HD’s manila has some nice enhancements like ability to display weather of upcoming days; more information on contacts tab, inclusion of stock tab and ability to change the arrangement of tabs.

Directions to install:

  • close Manila (Uncheck touchflo 3D from today)
  • install XBmod HD MANILA.cab INTO DEVICE NOT INTERNAL STORAGE
  • install attached FIX v5.cab
  • reboot
  • wait until manila boot

Get the required files from this post at xda-devs

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Circuit City liquidates

The second largest retail chain in US, Circuit City announced today that it will seek Bankruptcy Court approval to begin the process to liquidate the assets of the company.

“We are extremely disappointed by this outcome. The company had been in continuous negotiations regarding a going concern transaction. Regrettably for the more than 30,000 employees of Circuit City and our loyal customers, we were unable to reach an agreement with our creditors and lenders to structure a going-concern transaction in the limited timeframe available, and so this is the only possible path for our company,” said James A. Marcum, vice chairman and acting president and chief executive officer for Circuit City Stores, Inc.

The company does not anticipate any value will remain from the bankruptcy estate for the holders of the company’s common equity, although this will be determined in the continuing bankruptcy proceedings.

Read the official statement here

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Motorola MotoSurf A3100 goes on sale [Windows Mobile]

Motorola MotoSurf A3100 was planned to made available in the Q1 this year. But, it has already gone on sale in Taiwan, just mere 9 days after it’s announcement! Motorola MotoSurf is powered by Qualcomm 7201A processor clocked at 528MHz processor. It has a 2.8″ QVGA display, 128MB RAM, 256MB ROM, 3MP auto-focus camera, aGPS and 1170mAh battery.

It may not the the most powerful phone in the market, but it is certainly better than the old Motorola’s Windows Mobile handsets. It is priced at NT$15,900 (€363/$477/£325) and comes without a contract, which means you can pop-in any GSM SIM card and you are ready to go.If you live in Taiwan, you already place the order here

[fudzilla]

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MSI Wind NetTop D130 – World’s first Dual Core Nettop

MSI Wind NetTop D130 is equipped with the latest Intel® Atom™ 330 dual-core processor and 2GB DDR2 memory. Both high-definition video of HD-class home theater and other high-load applications, Wind NetTop D130 is easy to handle. Based on the origin of Wind series, Wind NetTop D130 using the same “ultra energy-saving” power design can save nearly up to 90% on electricity. Users no longer worry about overdraft electricity, even when the users use the computer for over a 24-hour period.

MSI Wind NetTop D130 - World's first Dual Core Nettop

It also comes with a Super-Multi DVD burner built-in. Now, the people seem to be complaining it’s inability to play the 1080p videos even though it claims to play the HD videos. Although, just like most netbooks and nettops in the market, it can play the 720p videos just fine. May be the MSI should incorporate the NVIDIA Ion Platform to run those 1080p videos (hint hint MSI!). [global.msi.com]

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OQO Model 2+ benchmarked [UMPC]

The OQO Model 2+ was revealed at the CES 2009. The best thing about the OQO Model 2+ is the use of the fastest Atom processor so far, the Atom Z540 CPU running at 1.86GHz. OQO also beefed up the RAM to 2GB, which made everything even more smoother than before.

OQO Model 2+ benchmarked

Jenn, over midmoves have done some benchmark tests on the new OQO 2+. Here is the screenshot of Windows Experience Index. It is quite odd on the Windows Vista’s way of judging  the base score by taking into account the lowest score rather than taking the average score into consideration. Nevertheless, we can easily make out that Vista seems to be quite usable on the little machine from OQO.

Here are the scores from the CrystalMark, which are not shabby at all comparing to the other UMPCs and Netbooks in the market.

Benchmarks aside, the main aspect of the OQO Model 2+ that stops me from getting one is the low resolution WVGA display, which can natively show only 800 x 480. Folks at OQO should have put in a minimum of 1024 x 600 pixel display which is more common on the netbooks and UMPCs these days. A WVGA display can ruin the whole user experience if you are running a lot of applications concurrently or you are running a lot of tabs in firefox/IE/Chrome.

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HTC rolls out mass update for HTC TOUCH DIAMOND [Windows Mobile]

HTC has been rolling out new updated ROMs for the HTC TOUCH DIAMOND. Yes, HTC has not forgotten the Touch Diamond users (totally).

Improved Functions and Fixes:

  1. When you launch the Camera while the system is working on other programs, the preview screen may become black.
  2. When playing a video, sometimes a portion of the video will be cut off a little bit.
  3. Fixes Audio playback problem with the speaker. Specific issues: sometimes the music will turn off and on after 10 minutes, or there is a buzzing sound or no sound at all.
  4. Fixes the problem of not being able to receive MMS when in standby mode.
  5. When launching music via the Music tab on TouchFLO 3D, the sound may intermittently turn off for a second and come back on.

HTC warns that after the update, you won’t be able to roll back to previous official ROM.

Get the European ROM from here

Other HTC DIAMOND users shall get their update from their regional HTC website. Go to Support link to find out if HTC has an update for you.

Note: There is no update for the Indian HTC DIAMOND

Usual warning: This is a generic update, which means that it would wipe-off the data on your device. Make sure to do a proper backup. Please note that the contents of the “intenal storage” would remain intact.