The unit will weight almost 19kg, but have some awesome features. You can choose between two options.

The first one will get you a new quad-core Mac Pro and costs $2,499. It will include:

• one 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon W3530 processor with 8MB of fully-shared L3 cache;
• 3GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory, expandable up to 16GB;
• ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of GDDR5 memory;
• two Mini DisplayPorts and one DVI (dual-link) port (adapters sold separately);
• 1TB Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
• 18x SuperDrive® with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
• four PCI Express 2.0 slots;
• five USB 2.0 ports and four FireWire® 800 ports;
• AirPort Extreme® 802.11n;
• Bluetooth 2.1+EDR;
• Apple Keyboard with numerical keypad and Magic Mouse.

The second option will offer you an 8-core Mac Pro with a suggested retail price of $3,499. It will include:

• two 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5620 processors with 12MB of fully-shared L3 cache per processor;
• 6GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory, expandable up to 32GB;
• ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of GDDR5 memory;
• two Mini DisplayPorts and one DVI (dual-link) port (adapters sold separately);
• 1TB Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
• 18x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
• four PCI Express 2.0 slots;
• five USB 2.0 ports and four FireWire 800 ports;
• AirPort Extreme 802.11n;
• Bluetooth 2.1+EDR;
• Apple Keyboard with numerical keypad and Magic Mouse.

Additional updates are still available if you plan to improve this monster:

• one 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon W3565 processor for the quad-core Mac Pro;

• one 3.33 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon W3680 processor for the quad-core Mac Pro;
• two 2.66 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon X5650 processors (12-cores) for the 8-core Mac Pro;
• two 2.93 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon X5670 processors (12-cores) for the 8-core Mac Pro;
• two ATI Radeon HD 5770 cards with 1GB of GDDR5 memory;
• one ATI Radeon HD 5870 card with 1GB of GDDR5 memory;
• up to 16GB of DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory for the quad-core Mac Pro;
• up to 32GB of DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory for the 8-core Mac Pro;
• up to four 512GB solid state drives (SSD); or
• up to four 1TB or 2TB Serial ATA hard drives running at 7200 rpm;
• Mac Pro RAID card;
• dual-channel or quad-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel card; and
• up to two 18x SuperDrives with double-layer support.

It will cost you almost $5000 to reach a 12-core processor performance and 32Gb RAM, but at least you will know you can ride a machine right from your desk. In a world where you can feed a whole city with $5000, there will be always guys who will spend this amount just for fun.

When you will purchase an Apple Mac Pro you will find in the box:

• Mac Pro
• Power cord
• Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad
• Magic Mouse
• USB keyboard extension cable
• Install/restore DVDs
• Printed and electronic documentation

Accessories include: Magic Trackpad, Apple Battery Charger, wired Apple Mouse, wireless Apple Keyboard, Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter, Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter (for 30-inch DVI display), Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter, the AppleCare® Protection Plan; and pre-installed copies of Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server; iWork®, Logic Express 9, Final Cut Express 4 and Aperture 3.

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The conference begun in Apple way: “We are not perfect” “We want to make all our users happy”, said Steve.

Then Steve admit that antenna issue is real, but this problem is on all smartphones(Nokia, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung). This thing may be possible, but why is Apple quoting other companies when they should have mind their own problem and solve it !? We think Apple point of view was shameless regarding this issue.

After the conference Nokia released a statement saying that when they build a phone,  they “prioritize antenna performance over physical design“. This is the full statement:

“Antenna design is a complex subject and has been a core competence at Nokia for decades, across hundreds of phone models. Nokia was the pioneer in internal antennas; the Nokia 8810, launched in 1998, was the first commercial phone with this feature.

Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying human behavior, including how people hold their phones for calls, music playing, web browsing and so on. As you would expect from a company focused on connecting people, we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict.

In general, antenna performance of a mobile device/phone may be affected with a tight grip, depending on how the device is held. That’s why Nokia designs our phones to ensure acceptable performance in all real life cases, for example when the phone is held in either hand. Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying how people hold their phones and allows for this in designs, for example by having antennas both at the top and bottom of the phone and by careful selection of materials and their use in the mechanical design.”

After this, we were able to see that iPhone 4 is one of the best smartphone from the market and has been sold in more than 3.000.000 pieces. It has been reviewed by many publications(engadget, consumer reports, etc) and all claimed it’s a wonderful phone.

There has been 22 days since Apple discovered this problem and they start making their own tests about antenna signal on several phones: BlackBerry Bold 9700, HTC Droid Eris and Samsung Omnia II.

Steve claimed that every phone have week spots and admit they made a big mistake when they designed iPhone 4: they marked the spot where the antenna signal could have problems.
Apple posted on their site a new section where we could see their Antenna Design and Test Labs.

Apple never releases a product without thoroughly testing it first. To do this, we built our multimillion-dollar antenna design and test labs. These labs feature 17 different antenna characterization chambers (or anechoic chambers) designed to accurately measure antenna and wireless performance.

Apple engineers tested iPhone 4 in a variety of scenarios, environments, and conditions in order to gauge performance. They spent thousands of hours in cities in the U.S. and throughout the world testing iPhone 4 call quality, dropped-call performance, call origination and termination, and in-service time. They tested iPhone 4 while stationary, at high and low speeds, and in urban, dense urban, and highway environments. In low-coverage areas and good-coverage areas, during peak and off-peak hours — iPhone 4 was field-tested in nearly every possible coverage scenario across different vendor and carrier equipment all over the world.

To calm down all users, Steve presented some data numbers:

-AppleCare recorded 0.55% users complaining about iPhone 4 antenna or reception.

-AT&T had 1.7% return rate for iPhone 4(iPhone 3GS had 6% return rate).

-AT&T recorded less than 1 additional call dropped/100 calls compared to iPhone 3GS.

Reports say that duct tape or bumpers solves the signal strength problem. To prove that Apple cares about all of their customers they will send every iPhone 4 owner a free case(bumper), until September 30. From next week you can apply to get a free case from Apple website. If you already bought one, you will be refunded by Apple. If you’re still unhappy with your iPhone 4 you can return the phone undamaged within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.

In the end will like to finish here and say that we think Apple took the right decision, by offering free bumpers to everybody and we believe that with or without this issue they will continue to sell their products with big success.

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To cut energy to one ten thousandth of current consumption might seem to be an impossible target, but according to a group of experts working on this challenge it is a realistic target. All that it needs are improved and more intelligent data coding techniques.

The group of researchers who are investigating this is called “Green Touch” and far from being a group of cranks, the group is being coordinated by the world leading Bell Research Laboratories in Murray hill, New Jersey USA. This is the very place where the transistor was invented, not to mention the laser.

The first objective is to reduce power use in telecommunications to 0.1 % of today’s levels by 2015. The amount of carbon dioxide that telecoms output to the atmosphere is currently 300,000,000 tons a year which is equivalent to 50,000,000 cars.

The plans involve developing better coding so that low power channels can be used without the risk of interference destroying data. Currently, in order to avoid interference, signal to noise ratios need to be high, and this means using high signal power levels, but if clever coding could avoid this risk then power levels could be reduced substantially.

Another energy saving technique is to bundle data that is sharing similar routes. Currently a considerable amount of energy is dissipated that could be avoided if bundling protocols could be developed.

A third way is to reduce the energy consumption of mobile phones and other hardware such as modems, and routers. Here the trick will be to develop ways in which these devices can go into a deep sleep mode where they effectively hibernate and use virtually no energy when they are not in use, but wake up very quickly when they are needed.

Another group is concentrating on improving the way in which we use our mobiles by providing us with energy saving settings along with accurate battery indicators so that we manage them more efficiently.

Assuming these important changes will take effect by 2015, it remains to see what will be real and what will be fiction.

Green Touch

The film which ironically is silent shows two women walking along a street in an American city. They are carrying a large wooden box of which the top flips open to reveal a phone. They take a wire from the phone and connect it to a fire hydrant. It is assumed that this provides the radio phone with a ground connection as was necessary in the old analogue radios.

They then erect an umbrella around which is would another wire. We assume that this is an aerial. They then initiate a phone conversation with a telephone operator. The operator plays a 78rpm record on an old fashioned record player and holds the mouthpiece of her telephone to the player so that she is broadcasting the sound to the women with the mobile. They listen to the sound and move in time with the music.

The movie footage was discovered by British Pathe whilst searching through an ancient archive of movie clips. They were surprised to find that mobile phone technology had not only been conceived of ninety years ago, but that a version of it had been implemented in reality.

The film first appeared in what was termed a cine-magazine for women called Eve’s Film Review. Titles in the film allude to women being ever interested in new things saying that Eve is now staging an invasion of the wireless world. They refer to the phone as Eve’s Portable Wireless Phone and indicate that one day their husbands will have to carry one – no doubt so the women can keep a check on what he is up to.

The phone in the film has a flip-up lid and can be seen as a portent of things to come. Nowadays mobile phones are so popular that a recent survey has found that nine out of ten school children possess a mobile.

Mobile technology has come a long way since then. The new iPhone 4 by Apple broke the record in launch sales, with 1.7 million sold within the first 3 days! It has gone down as Apple’s most successful launch product in history, but I’m sure we can expect much more from them in the future.

If you want to keep up-to-date with all of the latest mobile phone news and shop around the latest products, visit the Dialaphone blog.

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Move is a motion-sensing game controller developed by PlayStation for their 3-rd generation of consoles and claims to be better than Nintendo WII one. As you may see from the left picture, this motion system  has two components: Motion controller and Navigation one. Both use Bluetooth 2.0 wireless radio communication and an internal lithium-ion battery(charged by USB) to communicate with PlayStation unit. You can you use up to four move controllers same time.

The motion controller allows the user to interact with the game wirelessly with motion and positioning sensors through PlayStation Eye Camera. The color changing rubber sphere from the top of this controller helps PlayStation to track your position in 3D space with 3 coordinates(X, Y, Z). This sphere helps you to easy identify your own controller and never miss a shot whether you play golf, beach volley or other games. PlayStation Move space orientation is different from WII because it’s using three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer and a magnetometer(“used for calibrating the controller’s orientation against the Earth’s magnetic field”) while the Japanese controller is using only the accelerometer sensor.

Under the colorful sphere there are the four buttons similar with the ones from the PlayStation controller: square / circle / triangle / x and in the middle there is large button with Move sign on it. On the left and right side of the controller are the Select and Start buttons while on the back is the analog trigger(T). Vibration feedback is felt during the controller usage.

Moving next to navigation controller, the one that is supplementary to the Motion one and features an analog stick, directional buttons and two shoulder buttons. Between the analog stick and directional buttons, x and circle buttons are positioned on each side. There are no motion sensors inside the navigation controller.

Most games will require a setup that you will perform in front of the Eye camera and can consist in a full stretch of the arms with both controllers or other special movements. There actions will make it easy for PS3 to detect further movements performed by you inside games.

PlayStation Move will be released on Q3 this year and the price is estimated to be under $100 and will include Motion and Navigation controllers. Another Move component could be released at the end of the year and is a shooting(handgun) attachment.

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Nintendo released DS in 2004 and changed the way users experienced games. After that, another major release was the WII console that was the first motion controlled gaming console.

This week at E3 the new portable gadget sends Gaming industry to the next level: 3D.

The top screen is an LCD display with 3.53-inches and  supports 800 x 240 pixel resolution. We almost forgot to tell you, the display has 3D view, whom can be activated or deactivated by switch button located on the right side(400 pixels are allocated for each eye to enable 3D viewing). Above the 3D screen is situated the inner camera and on the sides there are Stereo Speakers.

On the control side of the gadget, there is a secondary 3.02-inches LCD touch screen with 320 x 240 pixel resolution right in the middle(4 inches telescoping stylus is included ). On the left is the “Slide Pad” that allows a 360-degree analog input and the Control pad (with four buttons) while at the right there are the four usual console buttons(A/B/X/Y). Under this screen we will find Select, Home Start buttons and right near the Power button.

At the left side of the 3DS we have volume buttons and SD card slot while at the right side is the Wireless switch than can be used even during game play to turn on or off wireless(2.4 GHz band) communications. Users can connect to LAN access points and play Games together through Wireless and IEEE 802.11 with enhanced security (WPA/WPA2) is also supported. The jack port is on the bottom side of the control side part.

Other things to remember: 2Gb internal memory, two outer camera(on the back) with 640 x 480 (0.3 Mega) pixel resolution, gyro sensor(same as the iPhone 4) and motion sensor.

At the end we’ll show you what games will be on Nintendo 3DS soon, but we are sad because we didn’t found out anything about the date launch or an estimating price.

At the E3 Expo, Nintendo showed attendees a range of games and applications for Nintendo 3DS that reinvent some of the industry’s most beloved franchises. These include:

· Kid Icarus™: Uprising, the long-awaited franchise follow-up to the NES™ classic.

· Mario Kart™, which shows off the potential of driving and tossing bananas in 3D.

· nintendogs™ + cats, a new version of the best-selling nintendogs franchise that lets players interact even more with their virtual puppies – and kittens!

· PilotWings Resort™, a flying simulation that lets players soar above Wuhu Island.

· Animal Crossing™, a new installment of the charming community-building franchise.

· StarFox 64™ 3D, a game that demonstrates the true distance and depth of outer space using Nintendo’s well-known franchise.

· Steel Diver™, a new submarine-navigation game from Nintendo.

· Paper Mario™, which brings paper-based 2D environments to life.

Nintendo 3DS also comes to market with the strongest third-party support of any video game system in Nintendo history. Games on display at the Nintendo booth at the E3 Expo include:

· DJ Hero® 3D from Activision

· RESIDENT EVIL® REVELATIONS from Capcom

· The Sims™ 3 from Electronic Arts

· HIDEO KOJIMA’S METAL GEAR SOLID SNAKE EATER 3D “The Naked Sample” from Konami

· Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracles (name not final) from LEVEL-5

· RIDGE RACER® (name not final) from Namco Bandai Games

· KINGDOM HEARTS franchise game from Square Enix

· DEAD OR ALIVE® 3D (name not final) from Tecmo Koei Games

· SAMURAI WARRIORS® 3D from Tecmo Koei Games

· Battle of Giants™: Dinosaur Strike from Ubisoft

· Hollywood 61 (name not final) from Ubisoft

A sampling of other Nintendo 3DS games already in planning includes SUPER STREET FIGHTER IV 3D Edition (name not final) from Capcom; Madden NFL and FIFA Soccer games from Electronic Arts; CODENAME: Chocobo Racing® 3D and a FINAL FANTASY ® franchise game and from Square Enix; a NINJA GAIDEN® (name not final) game from Tecmo Koei Games; Saint’s Row: Drive By from THQ; Assassin’s Creed™Lost Legacy, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon™ and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory™ from Ubisoft; and a Batman game from Warner Bros. Additional games are in development by Atlus, AQ Interactive, Disney Interactive Studios, Harmonix, Hudson Soft, Majesco, Marvelous Entertainment, Rocket, SEGA, Takara Tommy and Take-Two Interactive.

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The sensor connects to any Xbox 360 device and through it’s camera, audio and motion sensors tracks 48 points of body movements.

With this new add-on you have the ability to control every move inside the game: “You simply step in front of the sensor and Kinect sees you move, hears your voice and recognizes your face.”

A demo of Project Natal has been announced last year during E3 and everybody was eager to see if this was as Microsoft promised. We were able to see Milo being raised in front of the TV or a family which could play a Formula 1 game.

Starting today, Kinect is the official name of the sensor and some of the details can be seen directly from the games that were featured during the event:

• Kinectimals is a pet simulator that let’s you interact with over 20 virtual animals(cats, lions, cheetah, tigers).
• Joyride is a racing game that can uses your hands to control the steering wheel.
• Kinect Sports is a new sports game(remember Wii Sports) that includes boxing, bowling, beach volleyball, track and field, soccer and table tennis. Every game action is controlled with the move of your body. For instance in the demo, we could see 2 players during an obstacle course that were running and jumping with their own bodies in front of the Kinect sensor.
• Dance Central is made by MTV Games and seamed to be one of the most entertaining game featured at E3. From the demo we could see that you can dance and perform at guitar same time with two more players. Looks like a Guitar Hero/ Rock Band futuristic style.
• Star Wars is a game still in development, but looked quite interesting. We could see a Jedi handling the laser sword with his both hands.
• Kinect Adventures featured a demo with a river rafting game that could be played by four people.
• Your Shape: Fitness Evolved an advanced Ubisoft fitness game.

As we saw last year from the demo of  “Project Natal”, the Kinect sensor will also feature a Menu interface and at the E3 event we could see Twitter, Facebook, Zune and Netflix icons there and also a movie playbacked and skipped with user own hands.

Microsoft Kinect will be release at November 2010 and has an estimated price close to $150. Remember, this is just the motion sensor, an Xbox 360 console is also required.

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