by Darren Murph, posted Jul 4th 2008 at 8:03PM
Engadget HD managed to acquire one of JVC’s Everio HD40 camcorders — you know, that HD shooter with 120GB of onboard storage. If you’re interested in seeing it get unboxed and manhandled (along with comparison shots with Samsung’s delightful SC-HMX20C), click on over and enjoy. For those wanting some serious impressions, keep a check on this space — we’ll be forming some opinions and penning a review here shortly.

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by Darren Murph, posted Jul 4th 2008 at 12:36PM
At this point, neither the HTC Touch Diamond nor the Samsung i900 Omnia need any introduction, but we’re happy to announce that these two have stepped into the squared circle and faced off in an epic nine-page battle. Reviewers manhandled both phones for an extended time and broke down the UI, hardware, features and overall usability, so if that sounds like something you’d be interested in, cover your face and head on down to the read link. We’re warning you though, it gets ugly.

[Thanks, Chavdar]

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With the rapid change in technology, the business and service sector dealing with communication has also changed to a large extent. These days, a number of people are turning their business into franchise based and same is happening with businesses dealing with communication as they’re turning their communication businesses to communication franchises. International franchising has seen a rapid development in past few years. And the development has been beneficial to both the franchises and the consumers.

Consumers are being benefited as they can easily get hold of their favorite products and the franchises are getting benefited as franchising has helped them to increase their revenue. The communication industry is a big industry as there are a number of products that come under communication category and the target audience is also large. So, communication franchises can take advantage of this fact to improve their revenue.

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On of the tools Google uses for web application testing is called Ratproxy. Its job is to audit applications, checking them for any problems specifically of a security nature. The tool is optimized based on data gathered from typical web 2.0 websites, including the traffic that visits them and more importantly how it visits them.

With Ratproxy they can pick up on cross-site scripting problems, broken defence mechanisms across multiple sites, data leaks and code that does not handle data retrieval from 3rd party sites securely. A useful tool you’d agree?

Well, Google, with their non-evil hat on, has decided to make Ratproxy open source allowing anyone with a website to take advantage of the application. It is available from the Google Code Ratproxy web page and supports Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS X and Windows via Cygwin.

Speaking of the decision, Michal Zalweski, security engineer at Google said:

We feel it will be a valuable contribution to the information security community, helping to advance the understanding of security challenges associated with contemporary web technologies … We believe that responsible security research brings a net overall benefit to the safety of the web as a whole, and have released this tool explicitly to support that kind of research.

Read more at Vnunet.com

Matthew’s Opinion
Website developers and administrators need as many tools as they can get their hands on to test their sites for vulnerabilities. Having your site seen as a security risk can get it a lasting bad reputation with services such as McAfee SiteAdvisor, a slew of bad press and lost revenue from advertisers.

Google’s decision is therefore going to be met with open arms by developers. The fact that it is free just makes the tool that much better and there is no excuse for not adding it to your arsenal of testing tools.

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With the deal closed on the Dictionary.com purchase, Ask.com has now become, at least according to comScore, the ninth-largest web property. The all-cash deal originally began back in mid-May and had Ask.com purchasing Lexico Publishing Group LLC. The web properties that were included were Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com.

Ask.com is reporting that this will give them an increase of around 15 million additional users on a month basis, which would put them up to a monthly audience of around 145 million. Terms of the acquisition, such as how much was paid were not disclosed.

Read [Reuters]

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When I first saw this device, I thought it was some sort of new TV antenna or something. Not that we need one, since TV is getting all digital on us.

I was very surprised when I found out this contraption is actually a wind turbine from a famed designer named Philippe Starck, a man who literally came out of retirement to create this energy-efficient device.

Believe it or not, this wind turbine thing can somehow crank out twenty to sixty percent of the power necessary for a house. This also has an unusual aesthetic, and this design comes in stainless steel, signal orange, or even transparent.

There is no doubt that future homes will want to be less dependent on “the man” for energy as their power bills keep climbing. Renewable sources such as solar and wind are the answer, but the question is: how effective are they?

I tried to find a photo of this turbine that would show the size of this item, and I was surprised by its scale. I have no idea if the device requires this odd looking frame to make it work. Maybe that’s how you channel the wind.

This device costs about $633, and should be available for homes in September.

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Michael Dell has given his company a vote of confidence this week by investing another US$100 million buying shares.

It is thought that Michael paid an average of US$22.07 a share and therefore landed himself an additional 4.5 million shares. That has increased his already majority stake in the company to 221 million shares or 12.4%, and that’s on top of the 26.4 million other shares he indirectly owns.

The purchase was made in 3 lots. The first was on June 27 for 2.23 million shares, the second on June 30 for 100,000 shares and third on July 1 for 2.17 million shares. It is one of the largest new investments in the company for the past 5 years and is being viewed as Michael showing he believes in the future of the PC giant.

Michael Dell returned to the company as CEO in 2007 after it had lost the number one position in the PC market to HP. Since then it has moved more into retail, expanding rapidly in China and Australia, and is now exploring new ranges of laptops including the recently announced Studio range and forthcoming subnotebook Mini Inspiron.

Read more at guardian.co.uk and ZDNet

Matthew’s Opinion
Michael Dell returning to the company has seen things improve there and they look to be on a quest to open up to the market. The days of the gray box PC and standard “just black” laptop are over and PC manufacturers need to react to that. I think Dell are trying very hard as can be seen from their latest laptops, buying Alienware, the Mini Inspiron and the XPS range.

I think this new investment, which may seem substantial to us, but it just a drop in the ocean for Dell’s billions, is a confidence vote. He’s not only making it clear they are trying to regain the PC top spot with the latest products, but also backing that up with new money for the company. In my view it also is a statement that he is there for the long haul.

It will have the desired affect in all quarters I believe. Investors will become more confident, staff will be happy of the extra stability this action conveys and Michael will get the support he needs to continue trying to turn the company around from his management team.

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Michael Dell has given his company a vote of confidence this week by investing another US$100 million buying shares.

It is thought that Michael paid an average of US$22.07 a share and therefore landed himself an additional 4.5 million shares. That has increased his already majority stake in the company to 221 million shares or 12.4%, and that’s on top of the 26.4 million other shares he indirectly owns.

The purchase was made in 3 lots. The first was on June 27 for 2.23 million shares, the second on June 30 for 100,000 shares and third on July 1 for 2.17 million shares. It is one of the largest new investments in the company for the past 5 years and is being viewed as Michael showing he believes in the future of the PC giant.

Michael Dell returned to the company as CEO in 2007 after it had lost the number one position in the PC market to HP. Since then it has moved more into retail, expanding rapidly in China and Australia, and is now exploring new ranges of laptops including the recently announced Studio range and forthcoming subnotebook Mini Inspiron.

Read more at guardian.co.uk and ZDNet

Matthew’s Opinion
Michael Dell returning to the company has seen things improve there and they look to be on a quest to open up to the market. The days of the gray box PC and standard “just black” laptop are over and PC manufacturers need to react to that. I think Dell are trying very hard as can be seen from their latest laptops, buying Alienware, the Mini Inspiron and the XPS range.

I think this new investment, which may seem substantial to us, but it just a drop in the ocean for Dell’s billions, is a confidence vote. He’s not only making it clear they are trying to regain the PC top spot with the latest products, but also backing that up with new money for the company. In my view it also is a statement that he is there for the long haul.

It will have the desired affect in all quarters I believe. Investors will become more confident, staff will be happy of the extra stability this action conveys and Michael will get the support he needs to continue trying to turn the company around from his management team.

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eMachines is looking to get their desktops popular again by announcing a few new desktops, just in time for the new school year. eMachines has announced a trio of new desktops with widescreen LCD displays under the model numbers—T3656, T5274 and W3653.

Each of these PC’s come with similar specs including a 15-in-1 media card reader, six USB ports, Microsoft Works 9.0, Windows Vista with SP1, a SuperMulti DVD drive and 6 channel HD audio with amplified stereo speakers.

The T3656 features an Intel Celeron processor, 1GB RAM, a 160GB hard drive and retails for $299.99. The T5274 runs on an Intel Pentium Dual-Core processor, has 2GB RAM, a 320GB hard drive and retails for $399.99. Finally, the W3653, comes with a 17-inch widescreen LCD display, runs on Intel Celeron Dual-Core processor, 1GB RAM, a 320GB hard drive and retails for $498.

In addition to the PC’s, eMachines has also introduces two new monitors, a 17 and 19-inch LCD. The 17-inch LCD display costs $189.99 and offers a 1440 x 900 resolution, 600:1 contrast ratio, and 8ms response time. The 19-inch LCD display costs $209.99, and has 720p High-Definition support, an 800:1 contrast ratio, 1440 x 900 resolution and a 5ms response time. Unfortunately, no word on exact shipping dates as of now, however, expect these to start shipping sometime in August, before school starts.

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eMachines is looking to get their desktops popular again by announcing a few new desktops, just in time for the new school year. eMachines has announced a trio of new desktops with widescreen LCD displays under the model numbers—T3656, T5274 and W3653.

Each of these PC’s come with similar specs including a 15-in-1 media card reader, six USB ports, Microsoft Works 9.0, Windows Vista with SP1, a SuperMulti DVD drive and 6 channel HD audio with amplified stereo speakers.

The T3656 features an Intel Celeron processor, 1GB RAM, a 160GB hard drive and retails for $299.99. The T5274 runs on an Intel Pentium Dual-Core processor, has 2GB RAM, a 320GB hard drive and retails for $399.99. Finally, the W3653, comes with a 17-inch widescreen LCD display, runs on Intel Celeron Dual-Core processor, 1GB RAM, a 320GB hard drive and retails for $498.

In addition to the PC’s, eMachines has also introduces two new monitors, a 17 and 19-inch LCD. The 17-inch LCD display costs $189.99 and offers a 1440 x 900 resolution, 600:1 contrast ratio, and 8ms response time. The 19-inch LCD display costs $209.99, and has 720p High-Definition support, an 800:1 contrast ratio, 1440 x 900 resolution and a 5ms response time. Unfortunately, no word on exact shipping dates as of now, however, expect these to start shipping sometime in August, before school starts.

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