HTC (phones/htc/index.html) unveiled its latest handset, the HTC Touch HD (phones/htc/htc-touch-hd.html) , an entertainment focused mobile handset. Integrating a large 3.8 inch wide-screen VGA display (WVGA), a standard 3.5mm audio jack and a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, the HTC Touch HD is targeted for multimedia fans.The HTC Touch HD will be available across major European carriers in Q4 2008 and be introduced in other global markets shortly following.

HTC (phones/htc/index.html) introduced the HTC Touch 3G (phones/htc/htc-touch-3d.html) and HTC Touch Viva (phones/htc/htc-touch-viva.html) .Continuing HTC’s touch-phone tradition, the Touch 3G and Touch Viva utilize TouchFLO, HTC’s finger-touch optimized navigation experience enabling quick, one-touch access to the people, messages and information people want.“The HTC Touch 3G and Touch Viva embody our commitment to build a family of touch phones that are powerful and stylish but also offer something to everyone,” said Peter Chou, president and CEO, HTC Corporation. “Whether you’re a professional or a student you can now get an HTC touch phone with a beautiful touch user experience.”AvailabilityBoth devices will be available in early October 2008 in a variety of markets. The Touch 3G will be available in four colors: sophisticated black, noble gold, sparkle blue and modern brown while the HTC Touch Viva will be available in Storm Gray.

Sony Ericsson (phones/sonyericsson/index.html) announces 30 September 2008 as the official launch date for the highly anticipated Xperia X1 (phones/sonyericsson/sony-ericsson-xperia-x1.html) – initially available to consumers in the UK, Germany and Sweden. The handset will be available in other markets across Europe, Asia and Latin America throughout Q4 2008.To start the countdown to the launch of Xperia X1, Sony Ericsson will host a live global webcast on September 15 at 13:00 GMT + 1, offering viewers the first in-depth demonstration of the handset. The web cast will also premiere the first episode of an alternative reality thriller Johnny X. To register to view the web cast and Q A session with Xperia X1 Senior Product Manager Magnus J Andersson, please visit: www.sonyericsson.com/premiere (http://www.sonyericsson.com/premiere) .

The new Sony Ericsson G705 mobile phone features a 2.4” screen that enhances the web experience, whether you are searching Google direct from your idle screen, checking emails through the phone’s Exchange ActiveSync capabilities or using Wi-Fi to access the latest news. This slider phone, complete with large 2.4” screen, allows users to surf the internet at high speed with turbo 3G and its full HTML browser – just use the shortcut key and you’re straight through to Google search from the idle screen. Page a bit too small? Use the illuminated zoom web shortcut key or just tilt the phone and it automatically switches to landscape view.“The G705 is ideal for those who need a bit of help organising their busy life.” said Catherine Cherry, Global product marketing manager at Sony Ericsson. “This life-enhancing phone has everything you need to keep track of your daily activities and is perfect for keeping in touch with friends. It also allows you to stay fully up-to-date thanks to the full HTML browser, email support, and desktop RSS feeds - all delivered at turbo 3G speeds.”

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google, Googleholic, web 2.0

Welcome to Googleholic, your weekly fix of everything Google!

In this, "Happy 10th anniversary, Google" edition:

• A decade of Google
• Germany hates Google Chrome
• Picasa and Picasa Web Albums get updated
• Gmail code base updated for IE 6
• Google tips for testing on all browsers
• Google launches its own satellite

Continue reading Googleholic for September 7, 2008

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Fun, Games, Internet, Time-Wasters

Enough of this practical advice and useful downloads! I know you've been working hard, and you're probably itching for some fun and excitement. If you've read some of my previous Time Wasters, you'll know that I've got a soft spot for old school gaming.

Grab your browser, and get ready for some classic, low-fi action!

Neave Games specializes in making flash remakes of classic games, and has a few tasty selections for you. Among them are Frogger, Space Invaders, Tetris, and the old Nokia cellphone game Snake (pictured). Rad.

c64s.com is dedicated to my first computer and gaming system, the Commodore 64. It's been on DS before, but they've added a lot of great new games over the years. Packacuda, Wizard's Lair, Crystal Castles. It's hard to believe how good some of the games were for the trusty old c64.

Continue reading 5 Sites For Old-School Gaming in Your Browser -Time Waster

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Photo, Video, Macintosh

Iris is an OS X app that offers up some cool ways to use your iSight. Of course, it takes still photos and videos. That's useful, but Apple's built-in Photo Booth already offers those features. Iris goes a few steps further, offering a time lapse mode, a security mode (using motion-detection), and a webcam mode (for setting up live streaming).

Each mode is highly customizable. In security mode, you can set everything from the sensitivity of the motion detector to the actions Iris will take when it's set off. You can have it sound an alarm or just grab a movie or a stop-motion and email it to you. With time lapse, you can choose the interval for frame capture and playback. An amazing array of video codecs is available for recording, making the movies Iris produces suitable for playing on any screen or device.

The gallery feature ties all these modes together. It saves your shots and your videos in an iPhoto-style display that gives you easy access for exporting, e-mailing, or uploading to Flickr. It also plays nice with AppleTV. The bottom line: If you've used Photo Booth, Iris won't be difficult to learn, despite its large library of features.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Shareware, Freeware

Hard drive prices are so low now that it really makes sense to use an imaging program. That way you've got a perfectly cloned backup of your system exactly the way you have it configured in case of a crash, which is much more convenient than reinstalling Windows, activating, and loading all your applications all over again.

Here are four great apps to get the job done - without spending a dime!

DriveImage XML. Runtime Software has never placed too much importance on looks, and it's for a very good reason. Their software works really, really well. DriveImage was the first software I used to create images within Windows. Scheduled backups can be created with the Windows Task Scheduler and command line switches. DriveImage is free for private, home use only. Yes, Macrium Reflect does the same thing and looks nicer, but it's $39.99.

For a straight-up, drive-to-drive clone, you can use Runtime's Shadow Copy. Shadow copy is free for everyone, not just home users.

Like DriveImage, XXClone runs in Windows. It has an extremely simple interface, and gives you the option to copy volume ID to your destination and make it bootable. The interface also provides quick access to the Windows disk manager, in case you need to perform some quick drive tasks prior to cloning. XXClone is free for personal, private use.

Continue reading 5 Free Apps to Clone Your Hard Drive

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Mozilla, Browsers

Opera's speed dial might be a cool feature, but there's no way it's going to make me stop using Firefox. It did, however, prompt me to take a look at the addons site to see what options the Firefox developer community had come up with.

For thumbnailed pages, SpeedDial and FastDial (pictured) are both nice options. They don't build your pages automatically, but they're both highly customizable. Right click a tab, send it to your dial page. Easy.

I prefer SpeedDial for its support of hotkeys: ctrl+# opens the page in SpeedDial tab, ctrl+shift+# opens it in a new one. FastDial does allow more thumbnails on the page, and it also lets you drag your pages to reorder them, which is handy.

Continue reading 4 "SpeedDial" Options for Firefox

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Internet, Video, Browsers

Apparently a web browser really is the best place to watch online video. OK, that's probably not at all true. But thanks to YouTube, Hulu, and other Flash video based web sites, most users have gotten used to watching video without launching a separate application. So this week we saw Amazon de-emphasize the download feature of its online video store. Next up? It looks like Joost might end development of its standalone video player and launch a browser-based service instead.

The new Joost browser plugin will still reportedly rely on P2P technology to distribute video, thus lightening the bandwidth load for content providers. The video quality should also be higher than what you find on most YouTube-like video sites.

One of the things that made Joost different from every other online video platform when the service launched was the company's insistence on creating a standalone video browser. After all, web browsers are designed for navigating text and image-based web sites, not video. Joost was designed to be a bit more TV-like. But I can't say I'm surprised to hear that the company is moving back to the browser, because for many computer users, the web browser is the internet.

The image above does not show the new browser plugin. Nobody's seen that yet (except maybe the folks working on it). Rather it shows a Flash based mashup of a Joost-style interface for browsing existing online video sites.

Update: TechCrunch got some screenshots of the new service which is available at a password protected web site. Check one out after the break.

Continue reading Joost to kill desktop client, provide browser-based video player?

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments