THE BEST PTC EVER

Friday, April 30, 2010

iPhone HD prototype finders outed

In the ongoing iPhone HD saga, we’ve seen the engineer who lost the prototype handset named, various legal strategies played – including an evidence-collecting police raid – and now, finally, the names of the people in the center of all this: the person who took the smartphone from the bar, and his friend who helped him to hawk it around tech blogs. Wired has been chasing down the identity and various details on Brian J. Hogan, the 21 year old who removed the iPhone HD from the bar at which Apple engineer Gray Powell left it, while CNET turned their attention to Sage Robert Wallower, his 27-year-old friend who, they say, acted as “go-between” in negotiating the sale of the prototype.

brian hogan sage wallower iphone hd

Hogan is known to have retained legal advice, and both say they are willing to cooperate with the ongoing investigation. Neither has been charged with any crime, with Stephen Wagstaffe, chief deputy district attorney, only stating that the felony criminal investigation was still being looked at, and that his team were “still collecting facts.” However, he also said that Hogan “is very definitely one of the people who is being looked at as a suspect in theft.”

“I’m not the person who found it. I didn’t see it or touch it in any manner. But I know who found it … I think I have already said too much” Sage Robert Wallower

It’s not directly clear whether Wallower is the unnamed individual who, according to Wired’s piece, “offered to call Apple Care on Hogan’s behalf, according to Hogan’s lawyer.” The site has named themselves as one of the tech blogs offered the prototype, but they claim to have ceased contact “after the tipster made a thinly veiled request for money.”

Hogan was later paid $5,000 for the device, though his lawyer insists that he thought that was so that the buyers “could review the phone,” presumably rather than outright selling it. ”This thing has gotten completely, completely out of control,” lawyer Jeffrey Bornstein reckons, “he made a mistake, he should have just immediately turned that phone in.”

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Ultra-low voltage Core i7 CPU coming

Intel already has several ultra-low voltage or ULV processors on the market in different ranges. The ULV processor is an important part of the mobile computer world thanks to the power savings offered that allows for longer battery life.

The downside to ULV processors is that they tend to offer less performance than normal counterparts do. Some have been disappointed with Intel ULV processors on the market right now. Intel is said to be getting a new ULV processor ready that should hit market this year.

The new CPU will be a ULV Core i7 part with a 1.4GHz clock speed. The CPU is said to be the Core i7-680UM and it is expected to be a quad-core part with 4MB of cache. Pricing isn’t mentioned and we don’t know exactly when the CPU will land.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Paragon Hard Disk Manager Professional

Downloadbuyer.com is an established software reseller specialising in the sale of downloadable versions of well known products for PC and Apple Mac platforms to home users and small to medium businesses. A key differentiator is we are an online catalogue based service offering choice, advice and support across hundreds of products covering over 130 subcategories.

As our products are download only there’s an incredible environmental advantage when compared to traditional bricks-and-mortar retail and mail order outlets fulfilling physical boxed software products.

Downloads take just a few minutes to select, download and install saving considerable time, they are generally cheaper as there’s no delivery charges and often, download versions cost less than physical ones, but most importantly there’s minimal environmental impact as there’s no packaging and no fuel used for transportation.


The vast majority of software sold is in physical boxes and as such is totally consumptive throughout its lifecycle from manufacture, packaging and transportation. Wood for packaging and fuel for packaging and transportation are used in copious quantities but once the software is installed prove irrelevant to their continued use and storage.

Downloadbuyer presents environmental benefits by its mere existence. Every unit of software sold as a download as opposed to a physical box represents a positive environmental impact. The more Downloadbuyer achieves the more other companies will follow. Its success breeds further success. A reduction in physical boxed software sales has a measurable benefit to the environment.

It’s an achievable objective because it requires less effort by the general public and business buyers than the existing infrastructure.

It provides a “real” solution to environmental issues with minimal change in behaviour. If the public and businesses were educated to the facts they would see the instant benefit and make that change happily knowing that

Try this on downloadbuyer, Paragon Hard Disk Manager Professional
http://www.downloadbuyer.com/Paragon_Software_-_Hard_Disk_Manager_2010_Professional/537/1/64/v

Apple iPod Touch With Camera Appears on eBay, Brings Its Sibling Along

Looks like you can’t stop the avalanche. Just when we would have imagined the lock-down on Apple pre-released products would have gone in overdrive, a pair of iPod Touches with cameras appeared on eBay this morning, but then were quickly yanked from prying eyes. So many questions, and yet no answers to go along with them, except from what we can take away from the pictures.

iPod touch Camera2 540x365

That’s right, Mr. Blurrycam was on scene to take a few shots of the devices in question, and while there’s definitely a lot to be desired for the quality, we can see enough to whet our appetites. For now. Thanks to 9to5Mac, who managed to snag the screenshots before the listing was pulled, we can see that these two devices are certainly part of Apple’s Development Team, as is made evident from the DVT-1 and DVT-2 markings on the back. Also, according to the listing, both of these devices housed 32GB of memory inside, and obviously included that little bit of impossibility: the camera.

iPod Touch Camera3 540x405

It’s positioned at the top, right in the middle, so it should make it pretty easy for people to snap photos. That is, if these products do indeed make it to market in the near future. If you’ll remember, this isn’t the first time an iPod Touch has been “seen” with a camera. We’ve had a case that could house a camera wielding iPod Touch, and we’ve even seen the case of one on video. Subsequently, “manufacturing problems” came up before the release of the official product, and Steve Jobs went on record saying that it was impossible to fit a camera in a device as thin as the iPod Touch. So, place your bets folks: will the next iPod Touch have a camera or not? Considering how quickly it was pulled from eBay, we imagine this may be something akin to the iPhone HD/4G situation, which just adds more trouble for Apple.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Xbox Live Integration Part of a Managed Portfolio

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 is doing a pretty good job of maintaining itself in the market, even if it is still months away before a launch. But, with videos like the one we saw earlier today, showcasing the Office Hub, how could it not be? This time around we don’t have a video, but we do have some more information pertaining to the Xbox LIVE experience you should expect this holiday season on your handset.

7 Series LIVE 540x251

Andre Vrignaud is Microsoft’s Director of Games Platform Strategy, and he has recently illuminated some details about how the game selection is going to take place in the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. First and foremost, he wants to make sure that people understand that the system is going to work much in the same way that the system works for the Xbox LIVE Arcade titles selection process. The company has a managed portfolio, and they want to make sure that they do not saturate the market, and therefore negatively impact the products therein.

Microsoft sees how the mobile gaming industry is evolving, and they’ve noticed that the one, most obvious problem is the “race to zero.” This means that there are so many mixed-bag experiences in any one particular market, all of them at varying prices, that it becomes hard for any one title, no matter how great it is, to stand out amongst the over-sized crowd. We imagine ranking systems can do some good for sifting out the lower-quality titles, but when ranked titles go head-to-head, we concur that usually the free version will more than likely win out.

3D Game WP7S 540x304

Having too many, mixed quality titles available in any one marketplace just minimizes the overall quality of that marketplace, and Microsoft wants to do everything they can to make sure that doesn’t happen. And the way they are going to make sure it doesn’t, is to cultivate a steadily growing portfolio of titles that are released at regular intervals, much the same way they do with the games released through the Xbox LIVE Arcade.

So, what does this mean for games developed for Windows Phone 7? There will be high quality titles, developed by first party publishers as well as third-party, that feature Xbox LIVE integration (which means Achivements, etcetera), that are released in a timely fashion, and that are priced aggressively for the ecosystem. On top of that, there will be other third-party publishers that release games for Windows Phone 7 that don’t take part of the Xbox LIVE integration. So, in the face of Apple’s upcoming Game Center (which is going to have months and months of up-time before Windows Phone 7 even hits the market), how do you think this strategy fares?