Sprint Launches Revamped Motorola i580

print announced on Wednesday that it had launched a revamped version of the already known Motorola i580 iDEN rugged handset. The new device comes with a new coat, bearing yellow, as well as with a series of other changes and improvements over the previous version. Besides the visible color, the Motorola i580 also includes a more powerful battery, 1130 mAh, able to offer users up to 200 minutes of talk time.

HTC Magic's Circular Zooming Caught on Video

HTC Magic is reported to come around with a series of nice features over the existing G1 Android phone, provided not only by the new design it bears, but also by the new version of the operating system it should come with, the Android Cupcake. Besides the new capabilities, it seems that there will also be improvements compared to the previous version of the platform. Among the capabilities that HTC Magic has, and which were unavailable on G1 (HTC Dream), we can count the ability to play and record videos, as well as the Bluetooth connectivity to a headset. At the same time, the lack of a mechanical keyboard improves the exterior aspect of the device. The virtual keyboard offered by G2 can be used both in portrait and landscape mode, with most applications, which is much more comfortable than the one offered by the iPhone, for example.

More ease of use is also possible thanks to the fact that menus and applications can be displayed in both portrait and landscape mode. In addition, the device comes with a 1340 mAh battery which should be able to provide users with longer life than the 1150 mAh one available on Dream.

For what it's worth, the Cupcake update for Google's Android operating system is expected to soon become available for users of a G1 device as well. As soon as it lands, they should also be able to enjoy some of the features, if not all, that will come with the second Android-powered mobile phone.

Among the other features that the second Google phone, HTC Magic, is able to provide users with, there is also smooth zooming of websites, pictures and more, which is available via a circular touchscreen wheel. The Scroll Wheel Zoom available with HTC Magic has been caught on video during an interview with CNET France, and you can take a look at it below. Even if all the talking is done in French, the video footage is able to speak for itself.

Samsung to Soon Unveil Mobile Movie Store

It seems that the Korean mobile phone maker Samsung plans to launch a movie store for its handset users in the near future. According to the recent news on the Internet, the giant manufacturer plans to include around 500 movie titles from major Hollywood movie makers with its 'Samsung Movies' store at launch. In addition, it seems that the company also intends to include more than 1,000 movie titles and TV shows with its store before the end of June 2009. Users will be able to find titles like The Dark Knight, RocknRolla and Iron Man, which will become available for acquisition or rent on phones, laptops and desktop PCs. In addition, Samsung is also reported to be planning on extending the availability of the service to mp3/mp4 players and Samsung TVs.

The Korean company intends to offer the content for 24-hour rental for a £2.49 fee, while users will also be able to purchase the content for £4.99. Initially, the movie service will be available for users in the UK and Germany, but it is also expected to launch on additional European markets later during the ongoing year. We should also note that the service is powered by digital movie specialist Acetrax.

According to Samsung, the service should allow it to showcase its hi-res touchscreen devices. Many of you might already know the company's plans in this area, as well as the fact that Samsung's Tocco Ultra Edition comes to the UK market with a 2.8-inch AMOLED screen.

“We’re very excited to be able to provide customers access to their favourite movies and TV shows across a number of different Samsung platforms. On top of this, it’s all in superior picture and sound quality to the standard currently available in the market,” stated Nick Turner-Samuels, head of content at Samsung Mobile UK.

The new service announced by Samsung is not unique, as Motorola also launched a similar offering last year in partnership with Paramount.

iPhone Vs. Pre: the Gap Narrows Down

alm has had some financial problems lately, with its legacy mobile phones registering weaker demand on the market, which is why it sees Pre like a device that should help it push its business forward. Yet, in order to do so, Pre must prove itself quite success on the market, especially in front of Apple's iPhone, which it might not leave so far behind as originally predicted.

The handset is slated for launch sometime in the second quarter of the year, and it should be able to easily outpace the features that the iPhone currently has to offer under its OS 2.0. Not long after Pre's launch, if not in the same time frame, Apple will also bring on the market its iPhone OS 3.0, which has already been announced recently, and which is meant to narrow the gap between iPhone and Pre's capabilities.

How to Convert Movies for Your Symbian Smartphone

SmartMovie, developed by Lonely Cat Games, is a collection of two software programs that allows Symbian-based devices to run movies at a high quality. The two applications have to be installed on different platforms: PC Converter, which allows you to convert video clips from your desktop PC to a format playable on a mobile device, and Mobile Player, which allows you to play back the converted video on your mobile device. SmartMovie is one of the most useful applications for those who own multimedia Symbian devices such as: Nokia N96, Nokia N95 8GB or the latest Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Fennec 1.0 Beta 1 Is Here, Download Available

Mozilla has finally released into the wild the Beta version of Fennec, which we should admit we were expecting with great interest. Prior to this release, there were some alpha versions available for download as well, yet they lacked the smoothness and stability one would expect to see from a web browser. The new Beta version of Fennec comes to the surface for the Maemo platform, which runs on the Nokia 810 tablet device. The new version of the application is able to deliver a wide range of improvements over the previous alpha variants, as well as some nice new features. Those of you who don't have a Nokia 810 but would like to

Ubuntu 9.04 Has a Brand New Wallpaper

fter the new login screen, new themes and the new boot splash theme introduced the other day, Canonical finally updated the old Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) wallpaper with a brand new one. As you can see in the image below, there's no more logo as everyone expected... instead, the wallpaper is slick, simple and stylish. Softpedia is once again the first website to offer you a preview of the new artwork, which will probably be present in the final release of Ubuntu 9.04.

And this will conclude the artwork for the upcoming Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) operating system. The Beta version is in freeze starting today March 19th, and is expected next Thursday, March 26th. Only beta-critical bug fixes will be allowed from now on!

Ubuntu 9.04 Daily Build 03192009 with the new wallpaper and the New Wave theme

But wait... surprise, surprise, there's another wallpaper! Well, I guess Canonical wanted to show that they can listen to their users and offer them freedom of choice. However, the first one above is set as default, for now.

Ubuntu 9.04 Daily Build 03192009 with the second wallpaper and the Human theme

Absolute Linux 12.2.2 Was Released

Paul Sherman, the creator of Absolute Linux, a Slackware-based Linux distribution, has announced yesterday, March 19th, the release of Absolute Linux 12.2.2. Among others things, changes were made to the Linux kernel that is now at version 2.6.28.7 and to the installation that now uses ext4 as the default filesystem. Ext3 and ReiserFS are of course still available for those who don't yet trust the hype surrounding ext4.

"The kernel, for now, is the Slackware hugesmp, so it is Slackware "stock" Waiting feedback if users like this or would rather get specific configuration tweaked. The large number of changes along with imminent bump in Xorg led me to go with the flow for now in order to expedite and allow easier input from Slack-compatible repositories." said Paul Sherman, in the o

Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit Is Live

Just ahead of MIX09 I told you that Microsoft was gearing up to make available the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit. And in fact, as of the first day of the conference, the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit is now live and available to developers. The toolkit is essentially a collection of resources including a set of controls and libraries, designed to integrate Windows Live Messenger with a website. Microsoft is stressing the capacity of the Windows Live messenger Web Toolkit to enhance social networking websites by enabling users to connect with each other as well as with the people that built the website.

New Google Chrome Beta Available for Download

Google has made a new version of its open-source browser available for download, reintroducing the Beta label. Chrome 1.0 itself debuted into Beta in September 2008, and was released to web in December of the past year. Subsequently, the Mountain-view search giant moved onward with the development of Chrome 2.0, and with the latest release started to address a larger audience than developers, opening up the testing milestone to the general public. “Since we took the "beta" tag off Google Chrome in December, we've been updating two release channels: developer and stable. With our latest release, we're re-introducing the beta channel for some early feedback,” revealed Brian Rakowski, Google Chrome product manager.

Windows 7 Aero Snap Development Started in Early 2007

Back on February 13, 2007, just a few weeks after Windows Vista hit the shelves, Kevin Kutz, director, Windows Client, revealed that Microsoft had started working on the next iteration of the Windows client. At that point in time the Redmond company insisted that it was still in the planning stages of Windows 7, and in fact it wasn't even referring to Windows Vista's successor as Windows 7. However, the software giant had indeed started laboring on the next version of the Windows client, and the Aero Snap feature is an illustrative example in this case.

“We’re back in early 2007, and after we established window management as a potential area of interest, and identified several appealing scenarios, we started with brainstorms to generate ideas. “How can we make window arranging more efficient?” “More direct?” “More fun?” are some of the questions we asked ourselves. This was a multidisciplinary process, with disciplines like design, user research, program management and development involved. All in all there were around a handful of us, certainly less than a dozen, thinking about this space at the time,” revealed Stephan Hoefnagels, a senior UX designer.

Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Update Roll-up 7

Microsoft has made available for download the new step in the evolution of Exchange Server 2007. Update Rollup 7 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 went live on March 18, 2009, and is currently up for grabs. The bits are already live on the Microsoft Download Center, and the Redmond company informed that it also planned to offer Update Rollup 7 through its updating infrastructure. In this context, the software giant informed that Update Rollup 7 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 would go live on Windows Update on March 24.

Windows Server 2008 Administration Pack for IIS 7.0 RTW

At MIX09 Microsoft released to web a collection of resources, both tools and UI extensions, designed to take the administrative tasks of IIS 7.0 server to the next level. Windows Server 2008 Administration Pack for IIS 7.0 RTW is not available for download in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Essentially Microsoft is promising that via the set of modules delivered with the Admin Pack IIS Manager it will enable administrators to be more productive. The toolset brings to the table enhancements in functionality to customers running Internet Information Services 7.0 as well as the IIS Management Console “The IIS 7.0 Administration Pack enhances the set of management features in IIS by providing management user interface extensions for ASP.NET authorization, custom errors, FastCGI configuration, Request Filtering, and a generic configuration editor,” revealed David Lowe, group product manager for Windows Server. The fresh Administration Pack for IIS 7.0 RTW UI Extensions allows customers to turn to the IIS Manager in order to handle FastCGI settings (via the FastCGI module). At the same time, the administration of custom error settings as well as of actions involving authorization can be performed with a couple of ASP.NET modules. In addition, Administration Pack for IIS 7.0 RTW makes sure that http request filtering can be performed through setup rules. “Configuration Editor - the configuration editor module will help you manage your configuration files. This tool is available for server administrators only. It allows you to edit any section, attribute, element or collection in your configuration file. In addition to editing these values you are also able to lock and unlock them. The configuration editor also allows you to generate scripts based on the actions you take as well as search the file to see where values are being used,” explained Keith Combs, Microsoft evangelist. Windows Server 2008 Administration Pack for IIS 7.0 RTW can be downloaded from here.

Silverlight to Stream the Next Olympics Fully in

It looks like by any measure Silverlight (Silverlight 3 Beta now available) has become a 'mascot' of the Olympic Games. Last year, NBC used Microsoft's alternative to Adobe Flash to take the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing online. Come next year, Silverlight has already qualified to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. At MIX09, Microsoft and NBC announced a renewal of the 2008 partnership designed to offer users online video content of NBC's 2010 Olympics coverage. Perkins Miller, NBC senior vice president, revealed that the 2010 Olympics would be delivered fully in HD via Silverlight.

“This is going to be an adaptive, Smooth Streaming event, full 720p,” Miller stated. “So, when you walk out of your house in the morning, and you go to your office, and you've left your beautiful 52-inch HD television at home, and you sit down at your desk and you want to grab some video from the Olympics that day, it's going to mirror that experience. We're going to be able to deliver you that continuous, high quality experience that you expect now as a consumer.”

However, the user experience will be evolved compared to the 2008 coverage of the Beijing Olympics. This because viewers will not only be able to watch content in HD, with adaptive smooth streaming delivered at 720p, but also pause, rewind, view in super slow motion, perform high resolution frame capture, take advantage of metadata overlays, and real-time video alerts and feeds, all live.

“Last summer, NBC hosted the largest sporting event ever held on the web, and they chose Silverlight to do this. Perkins Miller, SVP/GM Digital Media at NBC Sports is on-stage to talk about the background. A cacophony of statistics: 1.3 billion page views, 52.1 unique visitors, 75.5 million videos watched, 9.9 million hours of video consumed, 27 minutes of viewing per session, 5,000 unique clips viewed per day during the final week, 35 million mobile views, 130,000 peak streams, 3.4 petabytes of video de

App Store Bug Signaled by Developers

The iPod and iPhone-focused iLounge is reporting that several iPhone developers have discovered a nasty bug in the App Store. According to those devs, the flaw prevents new applications from appearing on the mobile version of the venue when the user wants to view apps sorted by release date. The issue affects developers directly, as users aren't shown the latest apps, or updates to those apps when accessing the store from their handheld devices.

iLounge claims to have received an email from a concerned developer saying that “the problem has been ongoing for some time, and despite contact from a number of developers complaining about the issue, the problem has yet to be fixed.” The site also points out to another developer using a forum to reveal the issues he's had with App Store listings. He claims that, because of the same bug, his revenue is down by 50% for March, citing “decreased exposure.”

Another developer reporting the bug even went and reproduced a conversation he had with one of Apple's Support staffers. “At one point in a conversation it was like this,” the developer writes, posting a piece of the alleged conversation.

iPhone Chip Maker Intros Multi-Core CPU

Imagination Technologies, which makes the iPhone’s PowerVR MBX chip, has introduced a new GP-GPU multi-core mobile processor that sounds like a great candidate for the next generation iPhone, or an Apple tablet. The fresh chip (PowerVX SGX543) is designed to scale from two to sixteen cores without increasing performance challenges for developers, according to the company’s CEO. It will support both OpenGL ES and OpenCL standards, the latter being totally embraced by Apple.

Imagination Technologies is a fabless chip designer probably best known for equipping Apple's iPhone with the PowerVR MBX, but also because the Mac maker and Intel have invested in the company substantially, The Register reports. According to the piece, Imagination's VP of marketing, Tony King, delivered a keynote address on Tuesday, at the Multicore Expo in Santa Clara, California, telling engineers that the SGX543MP family would support from two to sixteen cores.

King-Smith demoed only graphics apps as example; however, in a statement, he referred to the SGX543MP cores as "GP-GPU" processors - invoking the "general-purpose computing on GPU," sought by the likes of Nvidia, Apple, Intel, AMD and ARM in adopting the OpenCL standard.

The Register points out to Apple's upcoming Mac OS X version, 10.6 aka Snow Leopard as a clear indication that PowerVX SGX543 is most likely going inside an Apple system, seeing how the latest version of Leopard embraces the GP-GPU focus of OpenCL. Moreover, Apple will most likely continue to use Imagination Technologies PowerVR MBX core in its portables, especially with this recently introduced variant, whether it's for a new iPhone, a netbook, a Mac OS-running tablet, or whatever the Apple community is after.

Resistance 2

There's a bitter war between the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, as, although the Japanese console has the advantage of hardware power, it hasn't been backed up by many game designers like its North American counterpart. But when the Xbox 360 received the blockbuster Gears of War shooter, which propelled it in terms of sales and popularity, Sony turned to Insomniac Games to create their own high-end shooter.

The result was Resistance: Fall of Man, which gained critical acclaim for its stunning environments, unique story and interesting gameplay mechanics. Now, as the years have passed, the second installment, Resistance 2, was thrown into the war against Gears of War 2 in order to confirm the power of the PlayStation 3. While Epic Games' creation had the upper hand in terms of fans, Resistance won over more reviewers, but, sadly, sales charts didn't confirm the latter’s belief. Now, as the dust has settled, we had the chance to review this game. Should you try out this shooter or wait for Killzone 2 or other titles? Read on to find out.

While Epic Games chose to go into the future for Gears of War, Insomniac turned to the past, but altered it in a very interesting way. Here's a brief roundup of the major events that happen until the game starts. The Chimera is an unknown virus that turns people into blood-thirsty monsters equipped with some sort of futuristic weaponry and at the command of some unique machines. You are Nathan Hale, a Sergeant in the United States Rangers who battled in the United Kingdom in order to prevent the Chimera from getting hold of the whole European continent.

As you may or may not know from the first game, things have gone well for the UK but not so good for Hale, as he was left surrounded by unknown people in the middle of a forest. The start of Resistance 2 is actually the end of the first title, picking off exactly in the moment when Hale was rushed in a helicopter. It seems that the mysterious soldiers were actually part of an elite squad of the United States called the Sentinels, which have been infused with the Chimera virus, much like Hale, but are subject to an inhibitor treatment in order to stay human.

Now, after four years, you are the leader of a Sentinel squad and essentially go on a field trip across the United States in order to prevent the Chimera from completely taking over the whole country. I won't spoil a lot of things for you, as the story is very solid and reveals even more details about the Chimera and about Nathan than you could possibly imagine. If you believed that the story in the first game was solid, you deserve to play this one.

WinAce 2.69

WinAce is meant to provide the user with a means to create, modify or extract compressed files of different types.

WinAce is not limited to ACE compression formats alone - other popular formats, such as ACE, ZIP, LHA, MS-CAB can be used for compression; as for extraction. WinAce can decompress formats as follows: ACE, ZIP, LHA, MS-CAB, RAR, ARC, ARJ, GZIP, TAR, BZip2, ISO-Images, ZOO.

WinAce is very easy to use! To open an archive linked with WinAce you only need to double click it in any shell environment, like the Microsoft Explorer. When running WinAce, archives may also be browsed for and/or opened by using the File/Open command. WinAce can also be used as a file manager shell. It supports operations like copying, moving or deleting files as well as viewing text and commonly used graphic files.

Archives opened with WinAce are handled like ordinary directories. This basically means that archive files can be opened or displayed by the internal viewer by double clicking on the archive name. WinAce has also full Drag&Drop support.

Other features include:
Self-Extracting archives (SFX modules) for ACE and ZIP,
encryption of archives,
recovery data for corrupted archives,
AV signatures (authenticity verification) for ACE-archives,
HTML, ANSI, and ASCII-comments for ACE- and ZIP-archives (displays comments of any other formats, too),
Integrated viewer and quick viewer for Word-documents, RTF-, HTML-, ASCII- and commonly used graphic files,
automated installation of archives containing "SETUP.EXE" or "INSTALL.EXE".

Pluses: Compared to WinRar and WinZip, WinAce came out third when it comes to compression rate and speed : a directory containing multimedia and text files in total size of 104 Mb compressed at a normal rate by WinRar resulted in a 64 Mb in 51 seconds compared to 76,2 Mb in 17 seconds for WinZip and 64,2 Mb in 1 minute and 11 seconds for WinAce.
In addition to the Windows version there is a DOS version available which also includes an easy-to-use shell and several command line versions for various operating systems (DOS, Win32 and OS/2 as of 6/99).

Drawbacks / flaws:You cannot archive to .rar, which is quite a common type of archive.

In conclusion: With an easy, user configurable and clearly arranged shell and a good compression rate (if you are not in a hurry) we may say that WinAce is a good choice for compressing/decompressing files.

More security patches for Thunderbird 2

Mozilla Messaging released four bug-fixing patches for Thunderbird 2 last night, plugging memory leaks and correcting vulnerabilities.

iTunes rolls out high-def movie downloads

Film purchases in high definition will cost $19.99 and rentals, which will be available a month after the movie's release, will cost $4.99.

LimeWire:

LimeWire is the world's fastest P2P file-sharing application for all types of computer files, including music, video, pictures, games, and text documents. Other features include dynamic querying, file previews during download, advanced techniques for locating rare files, and an easy, clean user interface.

LimeWire's new spam blocker gets rid of junk results, and automatic updates will keep you sharing faster than ever with the latest version. You can search for Creative Commons and Weedshare licensed files, and publish your own creative works with Creative Commons licensing. LimeWire continues its guarantee of no adware or spyware. Includes built-in bittorent support.

Version 5 includes a revamped interface, lets you share files with your friends, and increases security. Version 5.0.11 is a bug-fixing release.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition

AVG Free Edition is the well-known antivirus protection tool. AVG Free is available free of charge to home users for the life of the product. Rapid virus database updates are available for the lifetime of the product, thereby providing the high level of detection capability that millions of users around the world trust to protect their computers. AVG Free is easy to use and will not slow your system down (low system resource requirements. Highlights include automatic update functionality, the AVG Resident Shield, which provides real-time protection as files are opened and programs are run, free Virus Database Updates for the lifetime of the product, and AVG Virus Vault for safe handling of infected files.

IE8: A whopper

Microsoft gamely hints at the undertaking ahead by warning you to close down programs, save your files, and secure all animals in the zoo. Installing IE 8, at least in our tests, is an involved process, and one that will reboot your computer. This is a good time to make a phone call, brew some coffee, or begin a calisthenics routine.

New software for your Nokia N95

Your multimedia computer can do so many great things, but so can you. Here’s your chance to update your Nokia N95 with the latest improvements - making your connected life just that bit smoother. Available directly from the Nokia Software Updater (NSU), the latest software for the Nokia N95 will elevate performance levels even further, thanks to added features.
The new improvements from this software version touch those experiences that make your life more enjoyable: music, maps and games - and supported in even more languages than ever before.
The beauty of the multimedia computer is in its ability to multitask, just the way you need it to. The new addition of on-demand paging means you can run more applications and run them faster, whether that’s listening to music or surfing with the improved browser at the same time.
Now you can rock on even longer to your favorite tunes, with up to 30 percent longer playback time from your multimedia computer’s music player - that’s an extra three hours, up from nine to up to 12 hours. With the Nokia Music Store now live in the United Kingdom, users can enjoy the convenience of instant over-the-air downloads.
This latest software release brings added speed to your Nokia Maps with faster positioning times, a faster Map Loader, and a free* three-day navigation trial. With Nokia Maps, there are maps available for more than 150 countries, with navigation supported for over 30 countries.
Discover a whole new mobile gaming experience with the N-Gage preview application for enjoying game demos with your Nokia N95. For access to more games, just go into the Download! application.
Follow the millions before you who have already discovered the convenience of NSU. Available in almost 40 different languages, the Nokia Software Updater is a free PC application that enables people to update the device software on compatible Nokia devices.