Microsoft Expected to Announce Windows 7 Beta at CES

The annual Consumer Electronics Show kicks off Wednesday night in Las Vegas with a keynote address by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Among the announcements expected during the event is the general availability of Microsoft Windows 7 Beta 1 to qualified testers.

We got our first peek at a pre-beta version of the desktop operating system at a Microsoft developer event back in October. Since then, a more fleshed-out version of Windows 7 -- believed by many to be a leaked version of Beta 1 -- has been making the rounds on BitTorrent.

Ballmer will likely show off the key features of the new OS while on stage Wednesday night, emphasizing the many enhancements and improvements that set Windows 7 apart from its predecessor, Windows Vista.

Vista, which is two years old this month, received a famously cold reaction from consumers and business users alike, and Microsoft is eager to distance itself from the whole mess. The result is a slimmed-down, much improved version of Windows that emphasizes performance, makes home networking easier and addresses the growing popularity of web applications.

Windows 7, expected to ship within the year, contains scores of interface tweaks and new animated desktop behaviors. There are home networking enhancements that simplify the sharing of music and movies between PCs, and improvements to the way the computer interacts with phones, media players and various devices. Also, in a bold attempt to drop weight, Microsoft is encouraging users to switch to web-based clients for things like e-mail, photo management and document sharing.

Also, based on demonstrations of both official pre-release builds and the recently leaked code, Windows 7 boasts a substantial performance boost over Vista. Back in October, Microsoft senior VP Steve Sinofsky delivered his live on-stage walk-through of the new OS using a netbook with a 1-GHz processor and 1GB of RAM.

iPhone Magnetic Camera Lens

Although they keep your phone safe, those snazzy iPhone 3G cases won’t make your sorry iPhone camera any better, but now thanks to USB Fever, you can purchase detachable magnetic lenses in fish-eye, 2x zoom and wide angle/super macro. The lens goes beyond the iPhone and is compatible with other gadgets like Macbook and Smartphone. Visit USB Fever to view all the specs and make you’re camera that much better for 8.00 pound

Tech Blake

hi all am sorry for my absence since i have been very busy the last couple of weeks getting reedy for Christmas and new year but i am now back and working the new website will be uploaded within the next couple of days so i hope you will all like it and one more thing we have a new year special week which will be in another blog post shortly Thanks, Tech Blake

Google, Yahoo!, and YouTube: Where are people searching?

Study shows Google is by far the most popular search engine, and even its YouTube video site beats Yahoo!.

Samsung looks to be making sure it doesn’t get left out of the Android party in 2009 as it has just announced it will release an Android-powered hands

Samsung looks to be making sure it doesn’t get left out of the Android party in 2009 as it has just announced it will release an Android-powered handset much like the Omnia and Instinct. While it would be nice to see some new and exciting hardware, Samsung could have definitely picked worse handsets to base its virgin Android offering on. A Samsung rep was quoted as saying, “We are accelerating the development process for Google phone in order to meet the specific need of local carriers. We will be able to release Google phone in the second quarter of the next year in the US market and UK .” Which carriers will those be? T-Mobile, which gets its second (or third?) Android device, and Sprint will apparently be graced by the Google gods. Sprint? Huh? Earlier this year, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse stated pretty bluntly that Android isn’t yet “good enough to put the Sprint brand on,” but apparently he’s singing a different tune these days. Anyone excited about this? Yeah… don’t raise your hands all at once.

MSI to Launch Wind U110 and U115 Netbooks

MSI is ready to launch even more netbooks. We showed you the U120 but MSI has a couple of new netbooks ready to roll out: the Wind U110 and U115.

The MSI Wind U115 is a 10 inch netbook, with WiFi and Bluetooth support and a 4-in-1 card reader. What’s surprising is the “hybrid storage” system which means you will have both a SSD and a HDD available. The netbook will be available either with an 8GB SSD/80GB HDD bundle or with a 16GB SSD/120GB HDD. As for processor, the U115 will come equipped with an Intel Atom Z530 processor.

The MSI Wind U110 will be similar to the U115 but it won’t have any SSD inside. You can choose from a 120GB, 160GB or 250GB hard drive. We have no idea about pricing and availability dates for the new netbooks yet but we’ll keep you posted.

Linux 2.6 kernel ported to the iPhone

A rather interesting report has been filtering out of various websites: a 2.6 version of the Linux kernel has been ported to the iPhone. This Linux operating system can be used on the iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, and first-generation iPod touch platforms.

This site: http://linuxoniphone.blogspot.com/2008/11/linux-on-iphone.html announced that the Linux 2.6 kernel has been ported to Apple’s iPhone and is fully (more or less) functional, with support for the first and second generation iPhones as well as the first generation iPod touch. They do warn that this is a rough first draft

of the port, and many drivers are still missing, but it’s enough that a real alternative operating system is running on the iPhone.

This could be an important stepping stone for the true acceptance of the iPhone for a new breed of higher-end tech user.

What’s included so far: the Framebuffer driver, a Serial driver (and over USB as well), and interrupts, MMU and clock. Read-only support for the NAND is nearly complete as well. Touchscreen, sound and wireless networking as still being added, but he anticipates those will be in soon.