It has been a while, but Motorola has finally returned to the mobile phone scene – its first Android smartphone, the Dext, was launched here last week.

Running on the older Android operating system version 1.5, the Dext packs a 3.1-inch touchscreen display, a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera capable of video capture in H.264, and Assisted-GPS. It touts connectivity options like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and comes with a 2GB microSD card (it supports microSD cards up to 32GB) for you to immediately store your captured photos and videos.

The still camera’s quality is not bad, but videos look pixelated. Audio quality in those videos, however, is good.

The highlight of the phone really lies in its Motoblur user interface platform. As its name implies, Motoblur tries to blur the boundaries among various social networks.

You only need to register once and add your multiple accounts, and Motoblur will synchronise all your emails, feeds, messages and photos from sites like Facebook, Twitter and Gmail, pushing all updates to your home screen.

Simply tap on the screen to activate a window that allows you to add the various widgets, from Facebook to weather. You can keep up to date with all the happenings around you with one glance on your home screen.

The phone’s contact list is also automatically updated from your various accounts. You can choose to call, email, Twitter or Facebook your friend when you view their contact. It’s pretty neat to have such options, especially when you can view your friends’ current status. So, you might want to refrain from calling your wife when her Facebook status says “In a very bad mood”.

Meanwhile, the competent Web browser can keep you occupied with an unlimited number of open windows. While the rendition of the websites is good, scrolling on the touchscreen interface is a little sluggish. Texting on the touchscreen is not as responsive as we would have liked, too.

But the Dext has a secret weapon. Slide it open and you get a qwerty keyboard. The display also changes to landscape mode automatically. The keyboard provides great tactile response and is a much faster way to type emails and SMSes.

Though somewhat bulky, the built of the Dext is really solid. The SIM card, microSD card and the battery are situated beneath the back cover, which might be a bother.

Also, with all that constant “pushing” of updates, the phone battery lasts a day at best.

Social media addicts might care less about these little quirks though. Get the Motorola Dext from SingTel at prices ranging from S$0 to S$348, depending on subscription plans.

US book publishers are smiling again, after years of watching digital versions of their titles sell for below what they thought they were worth.

A host of rivals to the market-dominating Kindle electronic reader has given newfound hope to publishers that they will finally be able to dictate their own terms after being at the mercy of Amazon.

Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. stable includes publisher Harper-Collins, could hardly contain his glee during an earnings call last week.

“Without content, the ever larger and flatter screens, the tablets, the e-readers and the increasingly sophisticated mobile phones would be lifeless,” Murdoch said. “Without content these ingenious and wonderful devices would be unloved and unsold.”

One new arrival in particular has Murdoch and other publishers excited — Apple’s iPad tablet computer, which doubles as a full-colour e-reader of books, newspapers and magazines.

“We’re at a happy point, not just with Apple, but with Barnes & Noble and the ‘Nook,’ the 23 devices that have been launched, and Google Books seems to be just around the corner,” a source in the publishing industry said.

“Now we have that many more distribution outlets coming,” said the source, who requested anonymity out of fear of antagonizing Amazon, which may be facing competition but remains the undisputed e-book leader.

Although the iPad will not be available to consumers until the end of March, Apple is shaking up the digital book market like it did the music industry with the iPod and iTunes music store.

Unveiling the iPad, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs announced deals with five major publishers and an agreement that allows publishers to set higher prices while Apple settles for a 30-percent cut.

The so-called “agency model” is a departure from the way Amazon has been doing business with book publishers.

Since the release of the Kindle two years ago, Amazon has sold digital versions of hardcover new releases and bestsellers for 9.99 US dollars, a move primarily aimed at driving sales of the online retail giant’s e-reader.

Publishers were generally opposed, believing the price was too low, but were not in a position to argue while Amazon was the only game in town.

That is no longer the case and the revolt against Amazon was immediate.

Just days after the wraps were taken off the iPad, Macmillan informed Amazon it wanted to begin charging between 12.99 and 14.99 US dollars for e-book versions of most hardcover new releases and bestsellers.

Macmillan said it would give Amazon a 30-percent cut, as with Apple.

Amazon protested, temporarily pulling Macmillan titles — both print and e-books — from its online bookstore, but acknowledged that “ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms.”

Another major publisher, Hachette Book Group, quickly followed Macmillan.

“It’s important to note that we are not looking to the agency model as a way to make more money on e-books,” Hachette chairman and chief executive David Young said in a letter to literary agents.

“In fact, we make less on each e-book sale under the new model,” he said. “We’re willing to accept lower return for e-book sales as we control the value of our product — books, and content in general.

“We’re taking the long view on e-book pricing, and this new model helps protect the long-term viability of the book marketplace,” Young said.

Gartner analyst Allen Weiner said it remains to be seen whether consumers, having gotten used to paying 9.99 US dollars for a bestseller or a new release, will pay more.

“The precedent may have already been set,” Weiner said. “Consumers may not pay more than 12 dollars.”

“The damage that Amazon has done may be irreparable,” he said. “The cow is out of the barn. I don’t know how you get the cow back in the barn.”

At the same time though, “we’re in the process of having all distribution lines and pricing models redrawn,” Weiner said. “It’s Chapter One in all of this, but it may or may not dictate what happens at the end.”

The Singapore Airshow opens its doors to the public this weekend and it’s proving to be a crowd-puller as tickets for the first day were sold out.

However, the biennial airshow has drawn some mixed reviews this time round.

As soon as doors opened at 9.30 am on Saturday, the crowd started streaming in.

Those who were at the previous airshow said security clearance was smoother this time round.

More facilities and manpower have also been put in place to reduce waiting time.

Once inside, visitors were treated to a static display of aviation equipment as well as a mix of the new and old in the aviation industry.

The F-111 owned by the Australian Airforce is making its last appearance in Asia. It’s a plane that is designed to give maximum speed. It can travel up to two times faster than the speed of sound. Also, it takes just under two minutes to travel from one end of Singapore to the other.

Typically, the air-show attracts over 90,000 visitors over the two days it is opened to the public.

But this year, organisers said that they have decided to cap the number of visitors at 60,000.

This is to give more room for spectators to enjoy the sights and sounds, especially when it comes to the aerial display.

This year’s aerial display showcased solo and paired performances from the Republic of Singapore Airforce, Korean Aerospace Industries and making its debut – the A-10 Thunderbolt 2 from the US Airforce.

Visitors can also look forward to a giant family-oriented carnival where organisers of the Youth Olympic Games are drumming up support for the upcoming Games in August.

The visitors had mixed reactions about this year’s airshow.

One of them said: “Two years ago, there were more fighters and we could get really close to the fighter planes. For this year, we have to stand behind the barricades. I hope they can invite the Black Knights again because Black Knights makes Singapore proud.

“The airshow is quite interesting, because we don’t find much of the airshows in much of the countries,” said another visitor.

“I hope for next year’s airshow, there will be more fighter jets passing through because we really did not see much for this year. You only see a few of them and just doing a few turn-overs here and there and then that’s it. Hopefully there will be more action in the air,” said a visitor.

However, organisers are optimistic that ticket sales will pick up.

The Singapore Airshow ends on Sunday.

The next one is slated for 14 February 2012.

Resorts World at Sentosa has been awarded its casino licence. It is the first of Singapore’s two integrated resorts to get the go ahead for its casino operations.

Although the opening date of the casino at Resort World has not been announced, preparations are in full swing.

Resorts World Sentosa chairman Lim Kok Thay said: “We are very happy to have received the casino licence. This was made possible by the dedicated team, consultants, contractors and government officials, especially the Casino Regulatory Authority, which worked tirelessly to set up the regulatory framework within a very agressive timeline.”

Lunar New Year decorations have already been put up at the lobby of the casino.

Resorts World staff were in the midst of an orientation when the MediaCorp news team visited.

Although the doors remain shut, visitors are excited about the prospect the casino may be opening soon.

Some are hoping the casino will be open in time for the Lunar New Year which begins on February 14.

While foreigners do not have to pay the US$100 levy before entering the casino, locals will have to do so at this booth.

Before arriving at the booth, visitors to the casino will be segregated according to whether they are Singaporeans or overseas guests.

The S$6.6 billion integrated resort at Sentosa is opening in phases, starting with its hotels last month.

Many are also waiting for the theme park, Universal Studios Singapore to open.

Some of the staff at the resort have been busy testing out the amusement rides and more.

Andrea Teo, vice president, Entertainment, Resorts World Sentosa, said: “We are in full swing, getting ready for the theme park. We have been testing and commissioning the rides. Some of our people have been experiencing this – going from ride to ride to ride and having a very good time. And we have all been eating at restaurants, trying out the food at very good prices.

“We are at various percentages of finishing the different rides and resorts. But I would say that we are on an actually pretty fast track to completely everything. Our hotel opened on the January 20 and since then, we’ve had 90 per cent occupancy. Festive Hotel and Hard Rock have been fully booked. And for Chinese New Year, we are fully booked.”

And while casino staff are busy gearing up for the opening day, Singapore’s Police have also been started serving the Exclusion Orders to those with a history of crimes such as those related to drugs and illegal moneylending.

So far, about 3,500 people with serious criminal records have been barred from the two casinos when they open.

The latest exclusion orders are on top of what the National Council on Problem Gambling has issued.

Some 28,000 undischarged bankrupts and those on public assistance have also been banned from entering casinos.

Toyota, reeling from safety woes that have sullied its reputation around the globe, will this week announce the recall of 300,000 Prius hybrid vehicles because of brake flaws, reports said Sunday.

The move by the Japanese auto giant will affect the latest model of the Prius, a car beloved of Hollywood stars and environmentalists, following scores of complaints about brake malfunctions.

The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said the recall, which would repair a software programme for the anti-lock braking system designed to prevent skidding, is expected to affect some 270,000 vehicles in Japan and the United States alone.

“The company has notified its dealers in Japan that it would recall all the (new model Prius) vehicles sold in the country,” the mass-circulation paper said, without giving a source.

“The company will also repair the software free of charge in the United States and other countries in a similar manner,” Yomiuri said, adding that the company would make an official announcement this week.

The Nikkei business daily said Toyota would also repair about 30,000 vehicles sold in Europe, China, Australia, Middle East and other areas.

Toyota, which has had to recall around eight million cars around the world because of sticky accelerator pedals, has sold more than 300,000 of the latest Prius in 60 countries and territories since the new model rolled out in May.

Representatives of Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, were not immediately available to confirm the reports.

Toyota has come under fresh fire after it said it had fixed the Prius brake system in January without warning drivers who already own the model about the possibility of brake failure.

Japan’s transport ministry has reportedly received about 80 complaints this month about malfunctions in the brake system and called for an investigation, while Toyota has separately received more than 100 complaints since the crisis broke.

Local media have said that five cases reported to the government relate to crashes in which the brakes malfunctioned, according to the drivers.

The Prius — which combines a petrol combustion engine with a battery-powered electric motor — is Toyota’s flagship hybrid car and key to its efforts to stay in pole position in fuel-efficient vehicles.

Toyota, which dethroned General Motors in 2008 as the world’s biggest automaker, produced 530,000 hybrids in 2009, spanning 15 models from sport utility vehicles to sedans, mini-vans and the luxury Lexus series.

The Prius braking problems have come on top of trouble with unintended acceleration with Toyota cars.

The company has come under heavy fire for its handling of massive recalls affecting about eight million vehicles worldwide — more than its entire 2009 global sales of 7.8 million vehicles — due to accelerator trouble.

The accelerator problems have been blamed for several accidents, including an incident in California in August in which four family members were killed when their Lexus sedan sped up on a highway and crashed in a ball of flames.

A US class-action lawsuit filed in Colorado against Toyota has alleged the Japanese automaker hid problems that have led to the rash of recalls and seeking compensation for all residents who own affected cars.

Company president Akio Toyoda said Friday he was “deeply sorry” for the string of quality issues and said he would head a new task force to raise standards and investigate the cause of the problems.

“Believe me, Toyota cars are safe,” he said.

But major Japanese newspapers have lashed out at Toyota’s slow response to the safety fiasco and warned it could hurt the country’s hard-won reputation for trustworthy technology.

“Words alone cannot settle the situation. Toyota represents Japan and its shaking could lead to a loss of trust for the entire Japan brand,” the Nikkei business daily said in an editorial on Saturday.

“Failure to deal properly with the current fiasco could deal a blow to the international trust in Japan’s manufacturing technology,” added the Yomiuri.

Toyota, which is staring at a two-billion-US-dollar bill from the global recall, is facing “a moment of crisis,” admitted Toyoda, grandson of the company’s founder.

Despite the huge recalls, however, the Japanese giant reported last week it was on course to earn 80 billion yen (880 million US dollars) this fiscal year to March.

Well known Chinese publisher and blogger Hong Huang has dismissed speculation that Wendi Murdoch, wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, is behind the ‘black paint incident’ targeted at Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi.

The ‘black paint incident’ referred to an incident on the night of December 23 when a group of men barged into the Park Hyatt Beijing where Zhang is rumoured to own an apartment and created a scene, claiming that Zhang had “cheated people of their money” and seduced a married man.

Another group of men returned later that same night and splashed black paint on a window advertisement featuring Zhang at a store near the hotel.

The incident sparked speculation that a disgruntled business partner had ordered thugs to carry out the deed.

Zhang is co-producing the English language movie “Snow Flower and Secret Fan” with Wendi Murdoch and will also star in the production. This led to rumours that Murdoch is the business partner in question and was behind the incident.

Hong said in her blog update that people who think Murdoch orchestrated the whole thing are completely mistaken.

“As far as I know, the mastermind behind this incident does not have a husband. She is someone’s second mistress. But for a second mistress to be so brazen, she must be somebody. I suggest that entertainment reporters focus on finding out who she is,” Hong said in her update.

She also told Chinese reporters in a phone interview that any logical person would know Murdoch is completely innocent.

“She holds an eminent position in society. Why would she resort to these unsavoury methods?” Hong said. She also urged netizens to stop speculating and find out who was responsible for the incident.

Zhang’s blog entry on December 22, the day before the ‘black paint incident’ seems to support Hong’s view. Zhang posted a picture of herself with Wendi Murdoch and her children in New York that day, indirectly proving that there was no bad blood between Murdoch and herself.

Hong Kong actress Jessica Hsuan’s boyfriend, South African veterinarian Ruan Bester, has been found to have a history of embezzlement and dishonest conduct, according to Hong Kong media reports.

In 2008, 35-year-old Bester opened the Royal Veterinary Centre, the biggest veterinary clinic in Macau at the time, with Faye Ho, the eldest granddaughter of Macau’s ‘Casino King’ Stanley Ho.

However, the pair got into a serious financial dispute over ownership of the clinic and even went to court. Bester was also found to have misappropriated company funds to pay for his rent.

Bester was said to have roped in Faye Ho to open the hospital after he went through a series of unhappy incidents while working at other veterinary clinics.

Ho agreed to put up HK$5 million (S$1 million) to open the Royal Veterinary Centre with Bester because she felt he was a good vet. She would hold a 75 per cent stake in the clinic while Bester was to own the remaining 25 per cent.

However, on the day they were to sign the contract, Bester asked to increase his stake to 50 per cent but admitted he did not have the funds to do so. Ho agreed to his request, on the condition that Bester will receive no salary for the first two years, and the papers were signed.

Bester was left completely in charge of the clinic. However, Ho found irregularities in the clinic’s books and wanted to engage an accountant to check the accounts but Bester refused.

Bester also complained to nurses that he was not being paid for his work despite agreeing to do so as part of his ownership deal. He allegedly boasted he would borrow funds and buy out Ho, but when he failed to secure a loan, Bester incited a strike by the clinic’s nurses to force Ho to relinquish her share of the clinic.

When contacted about the matter, Ho, who is also the chairperson of Macau animal welfare group Anima, said: “This is all true but I do not wish to comment further on the issue.”

Actress Jessica Hsuan met Bester four years ago at a veterinary clinic but the pair only began dating recently.

Hsuan, 39, even let slip that Bester was her first foreign boyfriend and that she saw him as a potential husband in interviews with Hong Kong newspapers.

These allegations, if they turn out to be true, may very well put the brakes on any marriage plans she might have.

Susan Boyle, the Scottish singer whose talent show performance catapulted her to global stardom, arrived in Japan on Tuesday to perform on a New Year’s Eve music gala watched by millions.

Boyle waved cheerfully to fans as she was escorted through Narita airport east of Tokyo, declining a request by television networks to give an impromptu song on the spot.

She is due to appear on Japan’s best-known music extravaganza, public broadcaster NHK’s year-end “Kohaku Uta Gassen”, which literally means “Red and White Song Battle” and has been running since 1951.

The plain, unemployed 48-year-old’s soaring voice was discovered in April when she stunned judges on the “Britain’s Got Talent” television show with her performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Miserables”.

Although she ended up as the runner-up in the competition, footage of her singing became a YouTube hit, with more than 100 million viewings.

The church volunteer’s first album, “I Dreamed a Dream”, was the best-selling debut in British chart history and it also topped the US charts.

Chelsea won for only the second time in eight matches to extend their Premier League lead to five points after coming from behind to beat Fulham 2-1 in a dramatic west London derby on Sunday.

Fulham needed just four minutes to go ahead at Stamford Bridge through Zoltan Gera before Carlo Ancelotti’s side scored twice in two minutes late on though Didier Drogba and a Chris Smalling own-goal to rescue all three points.

But second-placed champions Manchester United will cut Chelsea’s lead back to two points if they win at home to Wigan on Wednesday.

Fulham, who’ve already beaten Manchester United and Liverpool this season, stunned their hosts when the Blues failed to clear a Paul Konchesky cross and Hungarian midfielder Gera hooked an acrobatic shot past Petr Cech.

It wasn’t until the 73rd minute that striker Drogba, in his last Chelsea match before he departs on African Nations Cup duty with the Ivory Coast, equalised with a powerful header – the forward’s 19th goal in all competitions this term.

And just two minutes later Chelsea were in front after Daniel Sturridge’s cross-shot was saved by Fulham’s Australian goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer only for the rebound to go in off luckless defender Smalling.

Earlier, Luka Modric marked his first start since August by scoring the opener as Tottenham Hotspur beat West Ham 2-0 at White Hart Lane to go fourth in the table.

In Monday’s late match, Manchester City made it two wins, and two clean sheets, out of two under new manager Roberto Mancini with a 3-0 victory away to Wolves.

Argentina striker Carlos Tevez twice finished in style, his 33rd and 86th minute goals sandwiching Javier Garrido’s superb free-kick which the Spanish midfielder curled around the wall.

Victory saw City move level on points with fifth-placed Aston Villa, who will go fourth if they beat Liverpool on Tuesday.

In-form Birmingham, now unbeaten in their last 11 league games, won 1-0 away to Stoke thanks to striker Cameron Jerome’s 50th minute goal.

Elsewhere, England forward Darren Bent scored twice as Sunderland drew 2-2 away to Blackburn Rovers while Everton beat 10-man Burnley 2-0.

Croatia midfielder Modric, out for several months with a broken leg, started and finished a length of the field move in the 11th minute.

Jermain Defoe sealed victory against his old club nine minutes from time with his 14th league goal of the season, a strike that left the England forward as the division’s top scorer.

Spurs manager Harry Redknapp said a top four finish and a place in next term’s Champions League would be a remarkable feat given Tottenham’s lowly position in the relegation zone when he arrived at the club early last season.

“We would certainly settle for finishing in the top four from where we were last year,” Redknapp told Sky Sports.

Defeat against their London rivals left West Ham hovering above the relegation zone and the loss was made worse by the early exit of key midfielder Scott Parker with what appeared to be a recurrence of a hamstring injury.

Everton substitute James Vaughan came off the bench to score seven minutes from time at Goodison Park before South Africa’s Steven Pienaar wrapped up victory in the dying seconds against a Burnley side reduced to 10 men midway through the second half after Stephen Jordan was sent-off.

English Premier League results on Monday:

Blackburn 2 Sunderland 2
Chelsea 2 Fulham 1
Everton 2 Burnley 0
Stoke 0 Birmingham 1
Tottenham 2 West Ham 0
Wolves 0 Manchester City 3

Al-Qaeda claimed the failed December 25 bombing of a US-bound aircraft in a statement picked up by US monitors on Monday, as the jihadists threatened attacks on the West and Yemen vowed no let-up against them.

Al-Qaeda’s Arabian peninsula franchise acknowledged in the Internet posting that a “technical fault” had caused the failure of the plot against Friday’s Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, SITE Intelligence said.

The statement which was accompanied by a picture of suspected would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boasted of the coup delivered by the “Nigerian brother” against Western airport security.

He “was able to breach all the modern and sophisticated technologies and checkpoints at the airports around the world,” another US monitoring group, IntelCenter, said.

“His act has dealt a huge blow to the myth of American and global intelligence services and showed how fragile its structure is.”

The monitoring organisation, which specialises in following Islamic militant groups, said the claim by Al-Qaeda’s Yemen and Saudi arm marked a “significant escalation in the group’s activities.”

It was also a “great cause for concern” from the point of view of the potentially widening ambitions of other Al-Qaeda regional affiliates, IntelCenter added.

The claim came as US leaders spoke of Yemen as a new frontline in the war against Al-Qaeda after it emerged Abdulmutallab had spent time in the impoverished Arab state, apparently for training by Islamic militants who have exploited the loose control of central government over the heavily tribalised
provinces.

Washington identified Yemen as a potential Al-Qaeda stronghold soon after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and established a counter-terrorism base just across the Bab al-Mandab strait in Djibouti to run operations in the region.

But Yemen vowed on Monday it would not become a new refuge for Al-Qaeda like Afghanistan even as the jihadists’ local franchise urged new attacks against Western targets in the strategic Gulf region.

“Yemen is a land of peace and security, and will never be a refuge for these terrorist murderers and drug traffickers,” the defence ministry newspaper quoted a senior security official as saying.

“Our mountains will never be a new Tora Bora for them,” the official added, referring to the Afghan hideout where US-backed Afghan opposition forces came close to capturing or killing Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in December 2001.

“We will hunt them down until we have rooted out their terrorism and cleansed Yemeni soil of their satanic crimes,” the newspaper’s 26Sep.net site quoted the official as saying.

He promised “more operations against the terrorists and their hideouts” like those of December 17 and 24, when Yemen’s air force launched deadly strikes against suspected jihadist targets.

The official’s comments came after a statement posted on an Islamist website in the name of Al-Qaeda threatened revenge for this month’s attacks, in which 68 suspected militants were killed in eight days. Tribal sources and witnesses said many of the dead were civilian bystanders.

The Al-Qaeda statement called on Yemen’s powerful tribes to “tackle head-on this campaign by the Crusaders and their agents… by striking their military bases, the intelligence stations concealed in their embassies, and their naval vessels operating in the waters off the Arabian peninsula.”

Yemen is Osama’s ancestral homeland. In the most spectacular attack by the jihadists in the country so far, Al-Qaeda suicide bombers killed 17 US sailors on the destroyer USS Cole in the southern port of Aden in October 2000.

The United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al-Qaeda in Yemen, The New York Times reported late Sunday.

Citing an unnamed former top CIA official, the newspaper said a year ago the Central Intelligence Agency sent many field operatives with counter-terrorism experience to the country.

President Barack Obama vowed on Monday to hunt down extremists wherever they plot attacks against the United States as Al-Qaeda claimed it hatched the attempt to blow up a US-bound airliner on Christmas Day.

Obama pledged to “disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us – whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia or anywhere where they are plotting attacks against the US homeland.”

The president said he had ordered a probe to find out how 23-year-old suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab of Nigeria managed to board a Detroit-bound plane from Amsterdam with an explosive device.

“A full investigation has been launched into this attempted act of terrorism and we will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable,” Obama said in his first public comments since the botched attack.

As millions of edgy air travellers endured stringent new security measures for flights around the globe, Obama was under massive pressure to ease frayed nerves and counter accusations his administration is soft on terror.

“This was a serious reminder of the dangers that we face and the nature of those who threaten our homeland,” Obama said, three days after catastrophe was narrowly averted on Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

An Al-Qaeda affiliate in the Arabian peninsula claimed Monday it was behind the failed bombing and threatened new attacks on the West, US monitoring groups said.

It acknowledged in the Internet posting that a “technical fault” had caused the failure of the plot, SITE Intelligence said.

The statement, which was accompanied by a picture of suspected would-be bomber Abdulmutallab, boasted of the coup delivered by the “Nigerian brother” against Western airport security.

He “was able to breach all the modern and sophisticated technologies and checkpoints at the airports around the world,” another US monitoring group, IntelCenter, said, quoting from the statement.

“His act has dealt a huge blow to the myth of American and global intelligence services and showed how fragile its structure is.”

According to a charge sheet prepared by prosecutors, Abdulmutallab tried to bring down the Northwest Airlines Airbus A330 with 290 people on board using a device containing PETN, also known as pentaerythritol, a high explosive.

The explosive material was allegedly sewn into his underwear and officials believe tragedy was averted only because the makeshift detonator failed to work properly before fellow passengers jumped on the would-be bomber.

Obama has ordered a review of US no-fly lists after it emerged that Abdulmutallab was on a broad terrorist watch-list of 500,000 names but was still able to fly from Amsterdam to Detroit with a valid US visa.

He was added to the watch-list last month after his father told US embassy officials in Abuja that he was concerned by his son’s increasing radicalism, but remained off a definitive no-fly list of roughly 4,000 names.

Obama’s security chief demanded to know how Abdulmutallab retained his visa despite being on the watch-list, while Britain confirmed the 23-year-old had also been placed on its security blacklist in May this year.

“We all want to know the answer to that question,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told CNN, referring to why US authorities did not revoke the two-year visa issued in June 2008.

“Clearly this individual should not have been able to board this plane carrying that material,” said Napolitano.

The suspect was moved from a hospital to a federal prison west of Detroit on Sunday. A hearing on Monday to address a request for a DNA sample was postponed and he is not due to appear in court until he is arraigned on January 8.

With renewed questions being asked about air security, travellers in the United States were told to check in four hours ahead of scheduled departure times, while bomb-sniffing dogs were visible at airports across the country.

Restrictions on passengers holding coats or blankets in their laps and entering restrooms for the last hour of their flights were later relaxed to be at the discretion of the individual air crews, CNN reported.

In Nigeria, Abdulmutallab’s family promised their full cooperation with security agencies and said his recent behaviour had been “completely out of character.”

According to The New York Times, Abdulmutallab told FBI agents he was connected to the Al-Qaeda affiliate, which operates largely in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, by a radical Yemeni cleric whom he contacted online.

American law enforcement officials, quoted anonymously by US media, have said the suspect confessed once in custody to receiving specific training for the attack from an Al-Qaeda bomb maker in Yemen.

Dear diary,

Been long time since my last personal post. Very busy lately on work and some special event, let’s hope everything turn out nicely as according to the planning.

I’m currently on he train towards orchard meeting wm & Vivien, while k will be joining us later on, the toot currently doing some voluntary event at tua payoh haha, don’t understand but well metally support her

The iPhone turn out pretty good so far, other than some small minor error here and there and also some signal issue, infect thanks to iPhone I now able to blog on the move.

Hope can take a quick and relaxing break soon, totally worn out, and I think it’s time to recharge, just like ong. Btw ong, give me a few years and I’ll be able to be like you backpacking tour around the world. let’s rock together ok, time will come soon…

Hmm nothing much now and hope Wednesday a successful one

Cheers

Google on Thursday provided a peek beneath the hood of its new Chrome operating system, making the software public and promising it will run netbooks by the end of next year.

Google-crafted Chrome OS will be tailored exclusively for applications hosted as services in the Internet “cloud” and debut on low-cost, bare-bones netbooks that have been a booming segment of the laptop computer market.

“We believe there is a better model of computing we can give users,” vice president of Chrome OS Sundar Pichai said while demonstrating the in-progress software at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.

“That is what Chrome OS is. Speed, simplicity and security. We want Google Chrome OS to be so blazingly fast… We think it should be like a TV, you turn it on and you are in the application.”

Google is working with computer makers to build Chrome OS into netbooks to be available in stores in time for holiday season shopping at the end of 2010.

Chrome OS will only be available pre-loaded on netbooks that are compatible with the software, according to Pichai.

“We are really focused on making a netbook that is lean and mean and runs the Internet really well,” said Chrome OS engineering director Matt Papakipos.

Chrome OS will eventually expand to other computing devices, but the priority is to have it in netbooks within a year, according to Pichai.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin brushed off questions about whether Chrome OS will challenge the long-time dominance of Microsoft Windows operating systems in the global computer market.

“Call us dumb businessmen, but we really focus on user needs rather than on strategies related to other businesses,” Brin said.

“There is a real need to use computers easily. We believe the Web platform is a much simpler way; where Web machines are more stateless and more cache-like.”

Google made the Chrome OS code available Thursday to outside developers so they could start crafting software or applications to work with the system.

The late King of Pop Michael Jackson ruled the Internet this year, with his name crowned the most popular search term at Google, Yahoo! and Bing.

Jackson dethroned pop princess Britney Spears, a controversy plagued music star that had reigned supreme in annual Top 10 search results at Yahoo! for the previous four years, the California-based Internet firm said Tuesday.

Spears was the fifth most popular search topic at Yahoo! in 2009, ranking behind Jackson; teenage vampire book and film series “Twilight”, World Wrestling Entertainment, and rising star Megan Fox in that order.

“We saw consumers escape to the Web hoping to pursue news and their guilty pleasures: vampires, political implosions, how to moonwalk – you name it, people went online to find it,” said Yahoo! trend analyst Vera Chan.

“And with economic uncertainty looming, people looked for ways to find stability by searching the Web for new jobs, unemployment benefits, and ways to save through old-fashioned coupon hunting.”

Jackson was also king of Google’s list of fastest-rising searches this year, which included social networking websites, “Twilight”, and US singer Lady Gaga.

Facebook came second on Google’s “Zeitgeist” list, released by the California-based search engine, followed by Facebook’s Spanish-language counterpart Tuenti in third place and micro-blogging site Twitter.

The Turkish website Sanalika was fifth ahead of “New Moon”, the title of the popular vampire book from the “Twilight” series that was made into a movie.

New York-born Lady Gaga was in seventh place ahead of Windows 7, dantri.com.vn and torpedo gratis.

Google said it filtered out spam and repeat queries to build year-end search term lists “that best reflect the spirit of the times”.

Microsoft, in a blog post late Sunday, said “Michael Jackson”, “Twitter” and “Swine Flu” were the top three search topics of the year on Bing, which launched in June.

Others making the list of top 10 Bing searches were “Stock Market”, “Farrah Fawcett”, the actress who died in June, “Patrick Swayze”, the actor who died in September, and “Jaycee Dugard”, the California girl kidnapped at the age of 11 who turned up alive 18 years later.

Jackson died on June 25 in Los Angeles and an investigation into his death has focused on unlawful prescriptions of the powerful anesthetic propofol.

Microsoft said it had analysed billions of search queries to come up with the list.

Global Language Monitor (GLM), a Texas-based company which analyses and tracks language trends, said meanwhile that “Twitter” was the “Top Word of 2009″.

“In a year dominated by world-shaking political events, a pandemic, the after effects of a financial tsunami and the death of a revered pop icon, the word Twitter stands above all the other words,” said GLM president Paul Payack.

Other top words on the GLM list included “Obama”, “Stimulus”, “Vampire” and “Deficit”.

GLM said it uses a “proprietary algorithm that tracks words and phrases in the media and on the Internet” to compile its rankings.

It said words are tracked in relation to “frequency, contextual usage and appearance in global media outlets, factoring in long-term trends, short-term changes, momentum and velocity”.

The new operating system from Microsoft has been flying off the shelves since its official launch in October.

Is it a case of good press? Not really.

Having tested Windows 7 in its Beta stage, the success of the successor to Windows Vista has come as no surprise.

So after the 22 October launch of Windows 7, I decided to take it a step further, by upgrading a home PC which some of you may want to attempt.

This was to be my first attempt at installing a new OS on a PC and if that weren’t risky enough, I chose to commandeer a PC in constant use by a kid.

Knowing that there could be days of complaints or worse, a PC sent to the workshop, I took a deep breath and popped in the Microsoft disc.

It became clear that the Microsoft team had been taking notes since the early testing stage, so as to offer users a relatively easy experience whatever the level or stage of use.

There are prompts apart from the usual reminders to back up your information, such as the suggestion to download Windows Easy Transfer which helps you transfer files, e-mail as well as settings so that you can continue as before once the new OS is up and running.

There’s also a prompt to carry out a compatibility check, which is a useful reminder just to make sure your PC meets the specifications required to run Windows 7, such as a minimum 1 GHz, 32 or 64-bit processor with 1-2GB RAM and 16-20 GB hard disk space.

Once you’ve made all the checks, you can safely take the plunge and do a clean install over Windows Vista or XP.

Alternatively, if you have enough space on your PC or as in my case, you accidentally choose another drive with ample disk space instead of the normal C drive, you have the option later to run either Windows 7 or the old operating system.

Yes, the process is quite forgiving even from step one, which is to choose “Custom Install” if you are updating from Windows XP.

Make sure you set aside at least an hour for the entire process and have at hand any passwords, key codes and discs that may be required.

It’s best to nurse your favourite cuppa and some patience as the PC hums along with some restarts in between.

The magic is three for Windows 7, and after the third restart you are on your way.

There were no panic attacks, and even after installing the OS on a different drive, I had no problem starting up the PC in the new, attractive environment.

Having tested out Windows 7 earlier, I found the final version to be not very different to the Beta and Release Candidate which fixed the bugs and came ahead of the final launch.

Although Windows 7 is visually rich and pleasing, it doesn’t take up huge amount of resources, which means you can safely run it on a netbook.

Tasks are also easier to execute as the ribbon at the bottom of the screen is where you can place frequently used folders and applications, replacing them anytime you want.

This means you don’t need to hunt around on your desktop which is now much for your favourite pictures and widgets.

Also handy is the Snap option where you drag or nudge open windows to view them side by side rather than having to pop them up and down as in older systems.

Having passed the easy-install test, the next challenge was to return the PC to its normal user and wait for a reaction.

There were no instructions given, other than how to choose between XP and Windows 7 when the options appear after starting the PC.

Given that there were days of complaints when IE8 was installed on the PC after a service, I braced myself for a new earful while junior got used to the new OS.

But there wasn’t a peep of displeasure.

All the programs that used to run on the PC in XP were still functioning, with only one driver needing a new install which was child’s play since the OS detected the problem and went off to get the fix in one click.

Putting it down to the initial excitement of using a just-launched OS before the other kids, I waited it out.

As the days passed, the 12-year-old who decided to ‘own’ the PC deftly launched Windows 7 to quickly run through his gamut of games and videos.

“Why don’t you choose to use XP since it’s also on the PC?”, I ventured to ask one day.

It seemed a nonsensical thought to the kid who clearly enjoyed using Windows 7.

“It’s faster” he also shared. But not the PC with the new OS.

If like me, you are now shopping for something new, a number of new models are available with Windows 7 installed.

Lenovo has a new IdeaPad range from the family friendly Y550P, to the very portable U150 and U450P, as well as the SL410 and SL510 ThinkPads, while for desktops there are the Q110 and B500 IdeaCentres, all of which run on Windows 7.

The style conscious can look to Sony’s lineup of the colourful 14-inch VAIO CW and desktop replacement VAIO NW with 16:9 aspect ratio high-definition screen.

Dell has what’s said to be the world’s thinnest laptop, the Adamo XPS which measures 9.99mm, while Korea’s Samsung has released the price-conscious 14 inch X420 notebook that is just 2.3cm thin and weighs 1.76kg with its six-cell battery.

Asus has enhanced its notebook and Eee Series range to extend and improve the overall Windows 7 experience.

“Users are finding it that much easier to navigate their PCs using Windows 7” said Tony Chen, Corporate Vice President of ASUS.

“The netbooks segment in particular has seen strong growth in Asia and we expect this to continue.”

If you plan to upgrade your OS, it would be good to look at Windows 7 Professional which allows you to run programs in XP Mode, or the Ultimate which offers a little more, such as data protection, with just a small price gap differential.

Google, under fire from Rupert Murdoch and some other newspaper owners, said Tuesday it will let publishers set a limit on the number of articles people can read for free through its search engine.

The Google announcement came as the News Corp. chairman, who has threatened to block the Internet giant from indexing his newspapers, and other US media heavyweights gathered here to discuss journalism in the Internet age.

Murdoch, speaking at the two-day meeting hosted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), said newspapers “need to do a better job of persuading consumers that high quality reliable news and information does not come free.”

“Good journalism is an expensive commodity,” said the 78-year-old Murdoch, who repeated his intention to begin charging readers of News Corp. newspapers on the Web.

Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post website, accused Murdoch and other newspaper publishers meanwhile of being in “digital denial” and said they needed to “stop whining.”

Murdoch has accused Google and other news aggregators of “stealing” stories without sharing advertising revenue and has reportedly been holding talks with Microsoft about making News Corp.’s content accessible exclusively through the software giant’s new search engine, Bing.

Acknowledging that “creating high-quality content is not easy and, in many cases, expensive” Google said in a blog post on Tuesday that it was changing its “First Click Free” system.

First Click Free lets Web readers access a story on a newspaper’s website from Google or Google News but prevents them from having unrestricted access once they reach the site.

Google noted, however, that some readers were “abusing” the system by returning to Google or Google News and clicking through to other stories.

“Previously, each click from a user would be treated as free,” Google senior business product manager Josh Cohen said in a blog post. “Now, we’ve updated the programme so that publishers can limit users to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing.”

Asked about the Google announcement, Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of SearchEngineLand.com, said: “You can call it a concession or you can call it Google being responsive to publishers. Depends on the spin you put on it.”

Without naming names, Murdoch hit out against news aggregator sites saying they’re “feeding off the hard-earned efforts and investments of others.

“To be impolite it’s theft,” he said.

The News Corp. chief also said “some newspapers and some news organisations will not adapt to the digital realities and they will fail.”

“The old business model based on advertising only is dead,” he said. “In the future, good journalism will depend on the ability of a news organization to attract readers by providing news and information they’re willing to pay for.

“In the new business model we will be charging consumers for the news we provide on our Internet sites,” Murdoch said. “We are already charging – and successfully so – for the Wall Street Journal online.

“We intend to expand this pay model to all our newspapers in the News Corp. stable: the Times of London, The Australian, the rest,” he said.

“Some critics say people won’t pay,” Murdoch said. “I believe they will.”

Murdoch also warned against seeking government help for the newspaper industry, which is battling declining print advertising revenue, falling circulation and free news on the Web.

“The prospect of the US government becoming directly involved in commercial journalism ought to be chilling to anyone who cares about free speech,” he said.

Huffington rejected Murdoch’s criticism of news aggregators saying they actually drive traffic to newspaper websites.

“In most industries, if your customers were leaving in droves, you would try to figure out what to do to get them back,” she said. “Not in the media. They’d rather accuse aggregators of stealing their content.

“It’s time for traditional media companies to stop whining,” she said.

For the first time in a decade, the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) is in the red. In its latest fiscal year ending June 2009, NKF had a deficit of S$900,000.

The lack of donations and a dip in investment income were cited as reasons for the deficit.

S$18.5 million were received in donations, a 26 per cent or S$6.5 million drop from the previous fiscal year. Investment income dipped by 97.5 per cent from S$3 million to S$80,000.

NKF hopes donors will return with the end of the recession and will nurture existing donors. Every year, NKF has a net increase of about 150 patients.

Expenses rose as the number of patients increased by 7.3 per cent to hit 2,574. Subsidies and assistance also rose by 9.4 per cent to S$22.3 million.

For this financial year, the organisation is setting aside S$24.5 million for assistance aid and subsidies.

Its reserves currently stands at S$270 million. NKF said it is able to cope and will use the surplus from the previous years to tide over the deficit.

Despite the deficit, NKF is still planning to build a new dialysis centre in Jurong.

Dell’s slimmest laptop ever still isn’t shipping out to eager consumers, but at least the Win7-packin’ Adamo XPS is now configurable over on the outfit’s website. The base $1,799 configuration includes a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo SU9400 CPU, a 128GB solid state drive, 13.4-inch WLED panel, 2 megapixel camera, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, GS45 integrated graphics, WiFi and a USB Ethernet adapter. Unfortunately, hardly any of the components are upgradable, but there are a few select upgrades available for those with the cheddar. The scary part? That December 22nd estimated ship date. Better spring for overnight and cross those toes!

There is a sleek new Wi-Fi tablet on the market that is only 0.9 inches thick, gets months of battery life from four AAA batteries and is so durable that its manufacturer encourages users to regularly step on it. After all, it’s a scale — the Withings WiFi Body Scale.

The market for Internet-connected fitness gadgets has come a long way since 2000, when SportBrain introduced a pedometer that used a modem-equipped docking base to upload physical activity records. The past few years have seen products for fitness enthusiasts such as the Garmin’s ForeRunner watches and the Nike+ system for iPod, but they are now migrating to more casual personal data nerds. Recent tech products like the Fitbit (a modern-day reworking of the SportBrain) can measure your activity throughout the day and night and the Neo Personal Sleep Coach can provide detailed reports on your sleep patterns. But all these products digitally measure efforts at healthier living — few have digitally measured results.

While weight is far from an absolute indicator of health, it is certainly one that many consumers monitor closely. A modern dark glass and metal affair with a backlit display, the WiFi Body Scale can track the weight of up to three household members. It also calculates an estimated BMI based on a height measurement given during setup and lean body mass by measuring your body’s capacitance. As with other scales that estimate body fat and lean body mass, one must weigh oneself in bare feet to obtain this measurement.

As there’s no way to enter any data on the scale, it must be set up from the PC using a supplied USB cable or by using the WiScale app for the iPhone/iPod touch. After that, using the scale can be the standard exhilarating or deflating experience

depending on the change you see. Those used to the chatty banter of the balance board in Wii Fit will find the Wifi Body Scale is a silent, non-judgmental servant that provides no positive reinforcement other than a trend line.

The iPhone app and Withings’ website provide a colorful user interface that allow you to graph changes over time. The iPhone app takes advantage push notification to remind you of new measurements. While you can export data from the Web site, the service would benefit greatly breaking out of its data silo and playing along with the Web sites of other fitness gadgets to facilitate seeing the impact of activity.

Withings also recently added Twitter support so you can tweet your weight, although it’s questionable whether weight is something that changes often enough to merit frequent updates. The WiFi Body Scale could be a useful motivator and useful tracking tool for someone looking to improve their overall fitness level, but at this point it is more of a novel harbinger of the networked appliance and the era of comprehensive personal health data and self-monitoring. If Withings can build out its service to include things such as fitness tips, integration with nutritionists or personal trainers, sites such as eDiets or weightwatchers.com, motivational messages and the like, then the WiFi Body Scale will have much greater weight in the marketplace.

For as long as we can remember, AMIMON’s WHDI technology has been reserved for use in high-end AV components — HDTVs, Blu-ray players, set-top-boxes, etc. Today, the outfit has finally figured out a way to break free from its current box and get all up in the grille of the mainstream market. As of now, WHDI modules are being made available for netbook and laptop manufacturers, enabling portable PCs to send or receive high-def signals from other WHDI-enabled devices sans cabling. The outfit expects lappies with their tech built-in to ship sometime in 2010, and when we prodded for more information on who exactly would be taking ‘em up on their offer, the company stated that specific partners wouldn’t be announced for a few more months. Still, built-in support for beaming 1080p content from a laptop to an HD panel without a single cord? Major score.

It’s looking increasingly unlikely that Google’s Chrome OS is really launching this week (not that we were really that convinced anyway). What is true, however, is that the company is hosting an event later this week at its Mountain View, CA headquarters to showcase its progress, provide an overview of the platform, and give information on its “launch plans for next year.” Excited? Us, too.

No knock on Acer, who got here first with the Aspire 5738DG, but it sounds like the ASUS G51J 3D has the technology edge in the nascent 3D laptop category. We’ll have to see it in action to be sure, but the laptop is using NVIDIA’s 3D Vision tech for extensive game compatibility (around 400 games currently work with it), and a 120Hz, 15.6-inch screen paired with some active shutter glasses. We’ve found the shutter method to be typically a more enjoyable 3D experience than polarized solutions, with no knock on frame rate or resolution. The GeForce GTX 260M card with 1GB of DDR3 memory doesn’t hurt either, but that hugegantic USB IR blaster that has to sit on the desk and sync up with the glasses could be a problem for 3D-on-the-go. Of course, the benchmark friendly Core i7-based G51J which this machine is based on (the only real difference is the screen) was never much of one for portability. The laptop will be out soon, with a starting price of $1,700.

APEC finance ministers will reject any premature moves towards fiscal tightening and advocate a steady retreat from stimulus measures, according to a draft communique obtained by AFP on Tuesday.

“We agree that the solution is not to rush to fiscal tightening, especially while credit markets are still recovering,” the draft said. “Careful planning and timing withdrawal of extraordinary stimulus measures will help to avoid a double-dip recession.”

Leaders of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, including the United States and China, will meet in Singapore on November 14-15 to discuss global economic recovery, environmental issues and free trade.

The draft finance ministers’ statement is currently being refined by senior officials, ahead of the ministerial meeting on Thursday.

“While we have transited from a crisis to a more stable phase, we remain vigilant as economic recovery is still tentative and likely to be slow going forward,” it said.

“We noted the initial positive effects of the stimulus measures, but also recognised their longer-term implications on public debt/deficits,” it said, adding the measures should be well-designed and include exit strategies.

In another draft communique obtained by AFP last week, APEC leaders also pledged to maintain hefty stimulus packages until they secure a “durable” recovery from the global economic slowdown.

“We will maintain our economic stimulus policies until a durable economic recovery is secured,” the leaders’ draft said, stressing that “economic recovery is not yet on a solid footing”.

The administration of US President Barack Obama – who will attend APEC – implemented a 787-billion-dollar Recovery Act in February which the White House says has saved or created nearly 650,000 jobs, and likely more than a million.

And analysts say massive stimulus packages rolled out by Asian governments played an important role in helping the region weather the downturn better than the United States or Europe.

The Asian packages totalled more than one trillion US dollars, according to a tally by Standard and Poor’s, led by 585 billion dollars in spending by China.

The APEC summit’s host, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, said last week that winding down the stimulus packages to make way for growth led by the private sector should be managed carefully.

“How exactly it has to be phased out… and how you balance the risks of withdrawing too quickly and administering too much adrenalin, that is something which will have to be discussed by the finance ministers and the central banks and calibrated as we go along,” he said.

Low cost carrier Jestar Asia is widening its reach. Its CEO, Chong Phit Lian has confirmed that the carrier’s applied to fly twice daily to Haneda in Japan, using the wide-bodied A330, from its hub in Changi Airport.

Once accepted, this would mark its foray into the long-haul, wide-bodied aircraft market.

Typically, low cost carriers always use smaller A320s and fly within a five-hour radius.

But analysts said this move by Jetstar Asia marks a growing trend of a hybrid model that is forming – of low cost but long haul flights, a trend kick-started by Air Asia in this region.

One advantage Jetstar Asia has here is its interline agreements with Qantas, which offers it a ready pool of passengers.

However, choosing the Japan market to start with may have mixed results.

While the Japan aviation market has been quite resilient, especially with the recent strength of the yen, it remains an expensive market for carriers.

This is why most other Asian low cost carriers do not offer it yet.

Hey guys how’s day? I just happened to find out that you can link yuur wordpress with the iPhone together, simply visit the iTunes store and download the wordress 2 app!

Don’t panic, we haven’t gone back in time. What we’re looking at here is the world’s first but still-yet-to-be-released phone that runs on Windows XP, and its Chinese maker has just released some juicy specs and interface images to tease us all. The ITG xpPhone will be blessed with the chutzpah-filled AMD “Super Mobile” CPU, coupled with either 512MB or 1GB RAM. Storage options range from 8GB SSD to 120GB HDD (probably 1.8-inch) and everything in between. While the sheet confirms both GSM and CDMA support, ITG’s pre-order page — which looks more like a newsletter sign-up page at the moment — is still vague on the phone’s availability and price. For now we’ll just continue to gaze at the interface pictures until something happens.

The fine folks at both HotHardware and PC Perspective have run the new ASUS P7P55D-E Premium motherboard through its paces, which has the particular distinction of handling both USB 3.0 and the up-and-coming SATA 6G through controllers by NEC and Marvell, respectively. Lucky for us, both sites’ tests came to similar conclusions. The Seagate Barracuda XT SATA 6G drive has almost zero improvement over SATA 3G, other than in some burst speeds due to the fancy cache on the 6G — the bottleneck here is the drive, not the controller. Meanwhile, USB 3.0 has speeds that are roughly 5 to 6 times faster than USB 2.0 with the same drive, a huge win for fans of external storage the world over. Perhaps even better news is that an ASUS US36 controller card with USB 3.0 and SATA 6G support is a mere $30, so this stuff is already basically within reach to the average desktop user.

Like it or not, we’ve got it on pretty reasonable authority that HTC’s first “DROID” phone is nothing more than a rebadged, shape-shifted Hero (something we’ve been hearing for a while now), and that it’ll be launching on Verizon on November 6th, the same day as Motorola’s DROID. That means Android 1.5 “Cupcake,” Sense UI, 3.2-inch screen, 528MHz processor and so forth. The Eris will retail for $199 but with a $100 mail-in rebate. It’ll pack in an 8GB microSD card and the hopes and dreams of a generation of cheapskates that will be hopin’ and prayin’ that HTC manages to push Android 2.0 onto this thing so they don’t look too bad in front of their DROID-toting buddies on Verizon.

Whoa, is that webOS 2.0 we see on the horizon? No, sorry, it definitely isn’t — but we can say with relative confidence that the upcoming Pixi will be shipping with a newer, slightly more feature-rich version of webOS than its Pre brethren around the world; if nothing else, Synergy supports Yahoo on the new model, as PreCentral observes. What remains to be seen is the exact version number that’ll be shipping out of the gate — recent DSLReports user agent logs suggest that 1.2.9 might be the gold build (for the record, the Sprint Pre currently rocks 1.2.1), but apparently there’s some chatter going on about a 1.3 as well. Doesn’t seem like much of a difference, but a 0.1 increment usually means more features, fixes, and changes than a 0.01 increment does, so naturally, we’re pulling for a bigger number. There isn’t any intel on what this mythical 1.3 might contain just yet or whether it’d be heading to Bell, Sprint, and O2 Pres, but we’ll keep an eye out.

And now… fighting out of the red corner, weighing in with two Evergreen GPUs, and wearing black trunks and red trim, it’s the Radeon HD 5970. ATI’s latest challenger for the title of undisputed graphics champion has been snared in the wild, and its photo shoot reveals a suitably oversized beast. Measuring in at 13.5 inches and requiring both an eight- and six-pin power connector, the pre-production sample can fit inside only the roomiest and best-powered rigs around. It’s named somewhat confusingly, with AMD dropping its X2 nomenclature for dual GPU setups, but it features two HD 5870 chips running in onboard Crossfire on the same PCB, and foreshadows a HD 5950, which will combine a pair of the more affordable HD 5850s. Performance figures available earlier have been pulled, at the behest of AMD, but we’ve got plenty of eye candy to admire, and there’s also no price tag in sight to spoil our daydreaming pleasure.