According to a French message board, a new Samsung Blu Ray Player is to appear on the market and it will be called BD-P2500. Although there are a lot of rumors out there, what is interesting now is the fact that this here blu ray player would be the first one that has hardware to support full spec BD-Live from Samsung. On the other hand, the company also announced that the BD-P1500 will become “BD-Live-ready” if you get a firmware upgrade that is needed in order to get to 2.0 spec. The new rumored blu ray player would come equipped with this 2.0 action and this would make it a lot easier. Still, this might just be a good rumor.

Japanese cell phones are highly complicated and they have a lot of features, we all know this. The problem is that it is estimated that people actually only use a maximum of 10 percent of the functions of mobile phones in Japan, according to Nobi Hayashi. He actually gave an example in the Panasonic P905i, which comes with 3-inh TV, GPS, 3G, motion controlled Wii Style games and the hard truth is that all these are not that perfect as motion controls are slow and the TV cuts out. We have a lot of complicated menus that do hide the cool functions in deep sub-menus. With this in mind the iPhone should be quite good as it is easy to use and has enough features.

Talking strictly about the iPhone Hayashi said: “It may sell modestly as a smart phone or as an upgraded iPod, but it’s not quite cutting it as a competitor in our mobile-based culture.” This basically means that the iPhone would need more features in order to be suitable in the Japanese smart phone market. A recent poll also showed that half of the people in the poll would want to buy an iPhone but only a fifth actually knew what it was. The only thing that is good at the moment for the iPhone in the Japanese market is the Apple brand, which is well known and might sell alone a lot of the units that will be sold. An increase in features would be good and might pull off a huge surprise in the country but still, the current line of features of the iPhone is considered not enough for the Japanese mobile market, even if the leaders have too many features. Quite strange, no?

Recent news in show that Sony is getting ready to release a small laptop (low cost of course) that is based on Via Technologies. A prototype was announced last week and shown by Quanta Computer (contract manufacturer) at WiMax Expo in Taipei. The mini laptop is based on the open source Via OpenBook reference design and will start shipping during the third quarter of this year.

Going into specs we see that the laptop will feature a 1.6 GHz C7-M processor (from Via,of course) and is listed with Sony as manufacturer. What is interesting is that Quanta is currently the largest laptop maker for laptop computers in the world although Sony was listed as manufacturer at the official showing. The truth is that Quanta is currently under contract for many big brands in the industry and they are not allowed to discuss customer facts with anyone. This might be the case with Sony as well and we do expect Sony to be officially listed as manufacturer. We must keep in mind that if Sony is in fact Read more »

Here we go towards science Fiction a little but it does seem that science fiction is quickly becoming reality from many point of views. Now we found out that a computer is capable to read our minds by simply looking at scans of their brains while thinking about some words. The scientists responsible think that this can lead to us understanding how the brain stores information and more importantly, where. According to Tom Mitchell (Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University and the same individual that helped to lead the study) this discovery can aid in the treatment of various learning disabilities and language disorders. He stated that:

“The question we are trying to get at is one people have been thinking about for centuries, which is: How does the brain organize knowledge? It is only in the last 10 or 15 years that we have this way that we can study this question.”

The team of scientists used Read more »

Firefox 3 will surely be one software that will be downloaded very fast but the question is: will it make history? We are talking about Mozilla trying to set a world record for the largest number of downloads done in 24 hours with the new browser. Now if they are successful it will be great although the record will be brought done eventually. Now the scoop is that they want to do this on the official launch day of Firefox 3. The problem is that the exact day is not posted, although it will surely be next month. We do hope that their servers can handle the load. Until that time, Mozilla has set up a special page where you are invited to pledge that you will download Firefox 3 on the launch day. You will probably be announced when that is and so far there are around 450 thousand people that have vowed to download the browser. In order to see how things are going you should visit the official World Record Setting Details page.

This is one game that is known around the world under two names, based on where you live: Project Zero or Fatal Frame. Regardless the name, this is definitely one of the creepiest video games you have ever played and based on the screenshots we saw at GameSpot (be sure to click next and previous to see all the screenshots), the newest game in the series is sure to keep us entertained the same way, if not more.

What is interesting is that the new game will only be released for the Nintendo Wii, something that is a good marketing approach since there are not many adult games for the Wii. We do expect the actual launch to have a lot of press coverage, it being dated on the 31st of July in Japan. The release dates for the other countries have not been published but they should be close.

If you looked (or will look) at the screenshots (linked above) you will notice that the game looks really good and I dare to say that it should be the one with the most polished look ever on the Nintendo Wii. Using the Wiimore in order to control the character should fit the game since the camera is actually your “weapon” (so to speak). We recommend that you try other Fatal Frame (or Project Zero) games in the series if you do not have a Nintendo Wii and if you have one you should definitely purchase this title, unless you are faint of heart. The ghosts are tremendous and you might have the feeling you are located in a horror movie.

A lot of gamers are eagerly waiting for the upcoming Resident Evil 5 game and so far not much was known except some screenshots that were released by Capcom. If you saw them you surely noticed that the franchise is going towards a new direction that actually started in Resident Evil 4, with the introduction of various gameplay elements. The bad news is that everybody is keeping the release date a secret although news concerning it have appeared. A business presentation by Capcom was held last week and we did find out a little about Resident Evil 5. It seems that the company plans to launch the game and others from their franchises before the end of March 2009. Capcom seemed to be very happy with RE5 and they think that the game will sell around 2.3 million copies around the world, something that can be achieved if we think about a game that should be better than its predecessor.

Unified SCC is a great plugin that is basically a source control integration for Visual Studio and other IDEs. It can add integration with CVS and Subversion/SVN to a multitude of tools including the already mentioned Microsoft Visual Studio, Visio, Delphi, MatLab, 3D Studio Max and many other MSSCCI compatible programs. Unified SCC aids in automating routine work through easy access to the most used operations while also showing file status in the IDE. A number of advantages can be mentioned upon your consideration of the plugin. First off the need to hold file structure in sync manually is removed. Adding, renaming, removing and moving folders and files is done inside the IDE and all required source control commands are done automatically by this plugin. We can say that source control operations are easily accessible and the integration of the file status icons and the pending modifications window are two very good add-ons, together with the file history viewer. We can also notice the possibility to set source control repository for every single project. If you get stuck, you will also be happy to know that good user support is a reality and this is one of the trademarks of the Unified SCC Plugin.

You can download a 14 day trial easily and try it out from the web site and you can also view the manual, something that you might need, especially at the beginning of operating with the plugin. Full licenses can be ordered online and if you are involved with an open source project actively, one can be requested for free. The same goes if you can help the development of the plugin, find bugs and whatever might benefit the developers. In order to download the trial for Unified SCC Plugin, CLICK HERE to visit its web page.

The Canon EOS 450D is the fourth entry-level model from the company and was launched immediately after Canon had a huge success with the EOS 300D, a model responsible for price breakthrough. This is a long time back but the fact is a lot of people are currently using the D-SLR model, one that is highly popular with photographers from around the world. Canon did have a huge success with the EOS 300D, changing the amateur photographer market forever.

The newest Canon D-SLR is labeled with the name Canon EOS 450D and will appear alongside the 400D model. These two digital cameras look alike and we need to know that the 450D is basically a 400D model but with some extra twists. The Canon EOS 450D works with EF-S lenses and they were especially developed for the APS-C format noticed in the image sensor. Thus the result is a more Read more »

Once in a while you notice some web sites that are worth mentioning to the world and this is exactly the case here with Dream Templates. How many of you needed a good template at one point in time and you simply did not find one that suits your needs? This is usually because the free templates that are available online are very similar to one another and you basically have to pay for those that are good and can be used. The entire industry is based on money and everybody wants to gain as much as possible. There is one site that is not really like that because you can get over 300 website templates for free. We are talking about templates that come in various categories and that are good enough to be used by all that need it, both the experienced designer that wants to make something better and the beginner designer that simply needs help with the templates. To make it even more special, you can gain access to thousands more for just $59.95 and this is the main aspect that makes Dream Templates a great tool as the fee will get you access for full downloads for one entire year. Needless to say that this is quite cheap when compared to other similar web sites out there. Now the even better news is that you do not only get CSS website templates. You also have flash templates, powerpoint templates and even word templates. Everything is organized in categories so that you can easily browse through the templates. It would be kind of hard to just click next and browse like this through templates, especially when there are over 2800 to choose from.

Besides the actual templates that you get from being a member, you can also promote this web site and gain money as an affiliate. You get 30% of all the money spent by people that you refer, an offer that is kind of unique and rare given the high quality of everything offered. Dream Templates is a resource that you should use if needed, be it for personal financial gain as an affiliate or simply for gaining benefits from the free website templates offered or the thousands on display for the small price mentioned above. In any case, keep in mind that the number of web site templates here is constantly rising and this is again something that is worth mentioning.