Samsung have announced that it has developed the industry’s first 1.98” LCD panel to achieve 640 x 480 pixels (VGA resolution).
This means that camera and mobile phone-size screens will be able to display images at 300 dots-per-inch, three times that of most LCD displays, and ten times that of many plasma screens. The practical outcome of this is that text will remain legible at smaller sizes, and more data can be viewed without ‘panning and scanning’.
I’m looking forward to the time when PDAs (and laptops) come with screens with this (and greater) resolution. The primary benefit will be that text can be displayed at qualites that approach those of the printed page.
(Contributed by: Brett Jordan)

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As you can see from the side-by-side comparison of the hw6915 (far right), h6315 (center) and h4355, I’m somewhat of an iPAQ fan and have been for several years. I started with Newtons many years ago and tried a few Palm devices, but always preferred the iPAQ and the MS Mobile OSes. Being primarily a long-time Mac user, I have to admit that Microsoft does a good job as long as they stick to simple OSes. But, I digress.
Simply put, after using this device for a couple of weeks, this is my favorite handheld device I have ever owned or could wish to own and leaves me for want of nothing, but there are some caveats and a warning which I will get to later.
The 240X240 screen took me about a day to get used to, but it is sharp, briliant and bright and any reservations I had about moving from 240X320 are gone. The Intel PXA270 416 MHz CPU isn’t the fastest out there, but it is plenty zippy for all my tasks and web pages, large pdf and Word files load in a snap. The backlit keyboard is amazingly bright and the keys feel great.
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Contributed by: Cyberdog

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AtechFlash market a range of flash memory-related prodcuts. What inspired them to add this to their range is a mystery, but it did make me smile, in an incredulous ‘what the?’ kind of way.
iCarta (a ‘Stereo Dock for iPod® with Bath Tissue Holder’) will ‘Enhance your Experience in any room with your favorite music from your iPod.’ For those of you who are thinking ‘I can only think of one room in my house where I want a ‘Bath Tissue Holder’, think again… the ‘Integrated Bath tissue holder that can be easily folded as a stereo dock’… clever!
Features also include: ’4 Integrated high performance moisture-free speakers’, presumably ‘moisturised’ speakers will be made available as an optional extra in the future.
Oh, and before you reach for your credit card, the iCarta ‘Requires AC Power (AC Adapter included)’. So, if your WC is lacking in a mains socket, you’re out of luck!
Contributed by: Brett Jordan.

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With an expected release date of late November 2006, details of Nintendo’s latest console are causing a growing wave of speculation. Much of it is in the context of how different it is from Sony’s next console, the PS3, which is slated for release at a similar time.
The disparity in the length of queues to try out the Wii and PS3 at E3 2006 have become a thing of geek legend. And the price differences (c. £450 vs £150) are equally significant when considering items that are going to be at the top of many people’s Christmas lists this year!
To view some of the reasons why I believe that the Wii is going to be a Christmas hit, visit this link for a five-minute video montage of some Nintendo ads.
And if you’re willing to turn down your politically correct antennae, this perceptive and hilarious spoof of the recent Apple ads will tell you more about the differences between the consoles than any comparison charts or discussion forums will!
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(Contributed by: Brett Jordan)

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Microsoft apologist Paul Thurrott is doing his very best to scribble up a negative spin on Apple’s WWDC Leopard announcements. Poor Paul! After five years of Longhorn waiting and regular Vista disappointments, his very best attempts at poo-pooing Leopard sound a lot like sour grapes.
In the previous article, Three Reasons Why Microsoft Can’t Ship (and Apple can), I described why Thurrott is so bitter about Leopard: Apple has been shipping so much innovation while Microsoft struggles to deliver any! Here’s a look at the real secrets behind Leopard that Thurrott doesn’t want you to notice.
WW-Developer-C
The first thing Thurrott missed was the big D in WWDC. Perhaps if Steve Jobs had jumped around the stage in a sweaty fat suit, and repeated the word over and over, it would have sunk in better.
Thurrott wasn’t the only one stymied by the meaning of WWDC’s acronym. There were a number of other consumer electronics enthusiasts who paid for a full WWDC tuition just to be entertained by Jobs’ keynote; they too felt disenfranchised by all the tech talk.
Where’s the iPod Phone, the new movie rental store, the Red Box, WINE, or Windows Virtualization, or the Linux kernel, the news of about a Microkernel removal, the Intel-Only release of Leopard, and the closure of the open Darwin project? Above all else, where are the minor speed bump announcements that have never, ever been announced at WWDC?
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Contributed by: Daniel Eran, RoughlyDrafted Magazine

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How has Apple been able to ship six major revisions of Mac OS X in the same timeframe that Microsoft has done little for their desktop users apart from service packs, patches and ads?
Compare Apple’s development of Mac OS X with these three distractions that Microsoft struggles with, and you’ll see why half a decade has passed without any significant feature upgrades to Windows XP!
It’s not that Microsoft has been standing still. They’ve been working hard to deliver a regular volley of patches and workarounds to Windows’ security vulnerabilities and redesigns for Window’s architectural flaws. Further, they’ve been sidetracked by the allure of adware and paid search.
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Contributed by: Daniel Eran, RoughlyDrafted Magazine

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Back in February I posted links to some alternative interfaces. One of them was by Jeff Han, a research scientist for New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.
Adobe has posted a fascinating and informative video of Jeff demonstrating his latest developments. The clip runs for just under 10 minutes, so is ideal to watch while you are taking a *insert beverage of choice* break.
It is also available as a video Podcast, so you can download it to watch later on the QuickTime-enabled viewer of your choice.
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Contributed by: Brett Jordan

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Wired reports:
Hoping to tap into the growth of wireless networks across college campuses, other public spaces and within homes, Sony is introducing a new pocket-sized gadget for instant messaging and other internet-based communications.
The Sony mylo, slated for availability in September at a retail price of about $350, is a first-of-its-kind product that uses Wi-Fi networks, analysts say. It is not a cellular phone and thus doesn’t carry monthly service fees. And though it could handle web-based e-mail services, it doesn’t support corporate e-mail programs.
Instead, the slim, oblong-shaped gizmo that has a 2.4-inch display and slides open to expose a thumb keyboard specifically geared toward young, mainstream consumers for messaging and internet-based calls. As long as a Wi-Fi network is accessible, a mylo user could chat away or browse the web.
The mylo — which stands for “my life online,” — will be marketed toward 18-24 year-olds, the multitasking generation that relies heavily on instant messaging and is already viewing e-mail as passe, Sony said.
Sony has partnered with Yahoo and Google to integrate their instant-messaging services, and is looking to expand mylo’s support to other services as well, most notably the leading messaging provider, America Online.
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(Contributed by Brett Jordan)

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New Open Source Announcements
Open Source Product Manager Ernest Prabhakar announced a broad new initiative that includes buildable Intel kernel source. Thank you, and please note Tom Yager was as completely full of hot air as I had suggested. No vast conspiracy afoot, just a delay involved with rolling out Leopard and the Intel platform.
Prabhakar also announced a new, open calendar server under the Apache license, a direct blow to Microsoft Exchange Server. The iCal Server, along with Bonjour and Launchd will be supported in a new Mac OS X centric, open development website called Mac OS Forge.
Leopard feature overview
Leopard Server feature overview
Contributed by: Daniel Eran, RoughlyDrafted.com

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At Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco today CEO Steve Jobs announced two new pieces of hardware:
Mac Pro
- Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon “Woodcrest” processors
- 4MB shared L2 cache per processor
- 1.33GHz dual independent frontside buses
- 1GB memory (667MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
- NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics with 256MB memory
- 250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive
- 16x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
- US$2,499
- Press release
- Product page
- Apple store page
Xserve
- Two 64-bit 2.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors
- 1.33GHz frontside bus and 4MB shared L2 cache per processor
- 1GB memory (667MHz DDR2 ECC fully buffered DIMM)
- 80GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA hard drive
- Built-in ATI Radeon X1300 graphics with 64MB RAM
- Mac OS X Server 10.4 Unlimited-Client Edition
- Starting at US$2,999
- Available in October
- Press release
- Product page
- Apple store page

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