There is no question about the fact that the mobile phone world suffered a great impact by the appearance of the iPhone and everybody is starting to think about touchscreen as a needed feature in cell phones. Of course there are also others that will not agree with this but the one thing that people do not realize is that other mobile phone makers did offer touchscreen devices before the appearance of the iPhone. Well, let us leave history as history and focus on this piece of technology news that shows us Nokia trying to hit Apple where it hurts: the lack of tactile feedback from the onscreen keyboard. It seems there is some new technology that can do this and it is named Haptikos technology.

The special aspect we can notice in Nokia’s Haptikos is that it will not only vibrate upon touching but will come with feeling and clicking just as you would push a real key. This would be perfect for pleasing both users that want touchscreen and those that love the old feeling of mobile phones. On the other hand we are dealing with one technology that does sound very similar to a patent recently filed by Apple in which a touchscreen would use a special screen with 2 elements that will move in order to create a feeling of clicking. On the other hand, we are dealing with a touchy subject here, one that could lead to a war between Nokia and Apple if patent is somehow the case. According to Roope Takala, Senior Program Manager at Nokia, the basics for the Haptikos technology is easy and everything is done by putting in 2 small piezo sensor pads located under the screen and “engineered in a 0.1 mm. movement in the screen itself”.

Reports show that the new Nokia technology is working great and we hear rumors that the first Nokia mobile phone to see benefits from the new touchscreen is the Nokia S60 Touch phone that was seen in Nokia demos. The company also announced that they are aiming towards getting a new type of sensation when the user is using programs similar to Paint or scrolling.

People who were capricious owners of car subwoofers and loud huge dvd players until yesterday, have something to be proud of today. With their free satellite tv plugged in, there are the proud owners of home theater systems now.

There have been reports in the past concerning Intel’s Skulltrail but they are now outdated. We are now dealing with a beautiful Skulltrail prototype motherboard that is almost ready and should be a hit among those that love overclocking. We can notice a Seaburg chipset and two 771-pin Xeon sockets and according to reports we can say that this baby reached 5.0 GHz in a stable overclocked state and also 5.2 in an almost stable state. We are dealing with a system that utilizes vapor cooling and there are some silicon add-ons on some special parts of the motherboard in order to stop condensation from coming into play. During Fall IDF we noticed that a similar model only reached 4 GHz and this is because of the BIOS limitations that were present at the moment. There was simply no way of getting higher.Intel knows that overclocking is a reality and it does look that they think it should be done right if it is still done against company recommendations. It does look like Skulltrail comes with enough on it to make it almost impossible to getting damaged in overclocking (if it is done correctly of course).

Intel’s Skulltrail does seem to come with a big improvement when compared with their V8. We are dealing with a quad-core machine but it is one that was design while thinking flexibility in overclocking. A lot of regulators were added to the mix and this makes it possible to allow voltage adjustments with higher amperage (around 90 amps on each processor at just over 1 volt). We are also dealing with a special overclocking BIOS that is not found on regular Xeon boards and on the whole we are dealing with a motherboard that will portray a rock solid voltage in any conditions according to Francois Piednoel, Intel senior performance analyst. The Skulltrail model that was overclocked also comes with dual input power ports in order to deal with the increased power needed.

via TG Daily

There have been a lot of rumors going around the Motorola Q9h arriving out of AT&T for some months now but we can officially say the wait is over. We can now notice the Motorola Q9h on sale in AT&T shops with a price of just $200, which will probably change in the near future. It comes with Windows Mobile 6 and HSDPA. Other interesting features include GPS, a 2 Megapixel camera, Express Mail, Good 5 and the standard software package we have come to expect. Good news for fans, not that interesting for the regular mobile phone user.

Earlier this week we got to witness a convention held at the Ubuntu Developer Summit with developers and artists participating in a special desktop theming specification meeting. The theme of the meeting was talking about a visual refresh of Hardy Heron, which is actually the future major release of Ubuntu Linux. Everything was led by Kenneth Wimer, Ubuntu art director. He explained that Hardy aims to have a radical change in both artwork ant theming. This means that all should be changed or at least modified from boot to logout.

Everything will need careful planning of course and it will be interesting to see what Ubuntu will come with when talking about the new Hardy Heron. A lot of fans are waiting for it but few are actually expecting anything particular. Anyway, a lot more details on the upcoming Ubuntu re-design can be read on ArsTechnica