Acer hasn't gotten official with this one just yet, but Macles has turned up some pictures of an as yet unannounced Acer Aspire One 521 netbook, and some purported details on it. The biggest of those is that the netbook apparently packs a 1.2GHz AMD V105 processor -- which would be a first for the Aspire One line -- along with some ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4225 graphics, and AMD's M880G chipset, among some other standard netbook fare. As you can see, it also sports a fairly eye-catching design, including a large, chrome-plated logo atop an nicely understated background on the lid, although things are decidedly closer to previous Aspire Ones once you pop it open. Unfortunately, the two big details not leaked are a price and release date -- here's hoping Acer can fill those in sooner rather than later.

Microsoft has apparently revealed at a developer event in India that it intends to produce a "low-cost version" of Windows Phone 7 primarily targeting emerging markets that would come after the initial volley of higher-end devices schedule to launch at the tail end of this year. Little else is known at this point, but Sudeep Bharati -- director of India's Visual Studio group -- has mentioned that it will have a smaller screen, suggesting that this might be one and the same as the HVGA spec Microsoft mentioned back at MIX a few weeks ago. He went on to say that they're currently in talks with manufacturers to get feedback on the lower-end version, so it sounds like this isn't quite solidified yet -- but considering that the first WinPho 7 devices promise to be pretty pricey, we wouldn't mind seeing these things materialize, "emerging market" or otherwise.

Four solid months after going into open beta, Palm's entirely web-based SDK for webOS -- the so-called Ares SDK -- has reached version 1.0, bringing "lots and lots" of new features along for the ride. Biggies include UI-less components that add functionality to your application, in-line help, undo and copy / paste functionality (for the SDK, that is), and a plug-and-play multitouch-enabled Google Maps widget that you can drop into your own screens. Even if you don't own a Pre and have no intention of commercializing a webOS app, it sounds like a blast to screw around with -- and considering how important the third-party ecosystem is for Palm right now, we'd say that's a good thing. Interested parties can get set up with the gold build right now.

We'd love to say that many have tried, but really, the bona fide docking station market dried up years ago in every sector save for enterprise, and while a few companies have served up "universal" alternatives, none of them were particularly well-designed. Out of nowhere, Henge Docks has emerged in order to provide a solution to your MacBook docking woes, and we've got to say -- for a first try, the products being offered up here look mighty fine. Designed to work with most modern MacBooks as well as 13/15/17-inch MacBook Pros, these all-white stands hold your machine vertical while providing seamless access to desk-strapped peripherals (a monitor, iPod dock, mouse, heated USB blanket, etc.) It also uses Apple's own MagSafe adapter, and your optical drive is still flipped out if you need to access it. The 13-inch MBP model is available now for $59.95 to $64.95, while every other flavor is available for pre-order; check out a video after the break if you're having issues pulling the trigger.

In a communication with Phone Scoop, Adobe has tidied up the meaning of its CEO's words from a recent interview with Fox Business. In it, Shantanu Narayen repeatedly tells us to expect new Android, WebOS and BlackBerry devices with integrated Flash compatibility during the second half of 2010, but Adobe has now explained that he didn't mean that the Flash delivery schedule will be delayed, not at all. You see, Narayen was talking about hardware coming out in the second half, but Flash 10.1 itself will still be arriving "to first mobile platforms including Android ... before the end of the first half of 2010." Interesting that only Android is mentioned explicitly, but at least this provides some reassurance to any fretting Flash fans out there.

Panasonic already outed its new Lumix G2 and G10 Micro Four Thirds cameras back in March, but it's just now finally gotten official with the pricing and availability for them. While there's still no word on an exact release date, both cameras are now slated to be available in "late-May," with the G2 running $799.95 in your choice of red, blue or black, while the black-only G10 will set you back $599.95. That will get you the same 12.1-megapixel sensor, Venus Engine HD II, and LUMIX G VARIO 14-42mm/F3.5-5.6 ASPH/MEGA O.I.S. lens on each, while the G2 boasts an added movable touchscreen -- a first for a Micro Four Thirds camera. Full press release is after the break.

Whether it's branded the Mini 5, the Streak, the Streak 5, or something else entirely, we can say with certainty that Dell's going to be hitting the Android market hard in 2010 -- but we didn't realize it'd be hitting this hard. It looks like the company might be taking a tack similar to Google's with the Nexus One, because a second variant of product code M01M just garnered FCC approval -- this time featuring WCDMA Band IV in place of Bands II and V, which means it'll work on T-Mobile's airwaves instead of AT&T's. In lieu of a carrier deal, could Dell be looking to blow this out on as many carriers as it possibly can? We hope so -- as long as our wallets can stomach the unsubsidized hit.

Sarotech's newest might not be the wildest media player in town, but if you're looking to get down to business in a svelte (4.5 x 3.75 x 0.85-inch) package, the T2 should be more than up to the task. This bad boy sports a Sigma SMPS8653 CPU (500MHz), support for Full HD MKV, H.264 videos, DTS and Dolby sound, and 1080p HDMI 1.3 output. If that weren't enough, this will also apparently function as a NAS functions (including FTP and Samba), 802.11n WiFi, and it has a USB port for external storage. Available now in South Korea for 160,000 won (about $143

Looks like brain implants have just got a lot more effective -- and a lot creepier. Developed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, the new bio-integrated electronics eschew electrodes resembling needles or semi-flexible wires for an ultrathin flexible material that is made partly from silk. Since the new material "essentially melts into place" (scientists compare it to shrink-wrap), it hugs the brain, getting more effective readings than previous technology. It is hoped that the new technology will prove much more effective -- and extremely beneficial for patients with epilepsy, spinal cord injuries, and other neurological disorders. According to John Rogers, Ph.D., the man who invented the flexible electronics at the University of Illinois, "It may also be possible to compress the silk-based implants and deliver them to the brain, through a catheter." We wish these good folks the best of luck with their research -- and we really, really hope that we never have anything shot into our brain with a catheter

Last week's Finetech Japan 2010 expo allowed display manufacturers to show and tell each other about their latest innovations and advancements. One of the unquestioned highlights was NewSight's implementation of parallax barrier technology on displays up to 70 inches in size. The company is claiming its demo unit as the world's largest glasses-free 3D screen, but regrettably deprives us of any further details. All we're told is that the parallax barrier is "affixed to commercial-grade" LCDs, which suggests to us that perhaps the technique and hardware could be applied atop your favorite brand's existent 2D models. Of course, that'd only matter if these displays deliver a manifestly better picture and experience than what we have now, but it's looking like we'll have to wait a little bit longer to find out.

Well, it's not everyday you see a navigation unit that truly stands out from the rest, but Garmin has managed to do that with its new 3700 series, which are both completely new, yet somewhat... familiar. Available in nüvi 3790T, nüvi 3760T and nüvi 3750 models, the devices are all just 9mm thick, and pack a 4.3-inch capacitive WVGA display (with full multitouch), Garmin's own EcoRoute and nüRoute with trafficTrends services, the usual 2D and 3D views, and a microSD card slot for expansion, among other standard fare. The 3790T and 3760T also add Bluetooth and free lifetime traffic alerts, while the 3790T is the only one of the lot with complete voice-activated navigation including a customizable wake-up phrase. Of course, the real news here is the design, which has earned Garmin a Red Dot Design Award, and features a brushed metal enclosure, a flush glass display and only the minimum buttons required on the side. As you might have guessed, however, these aren't exactly Garmin's new entry-level offerings, with the 3750, 3760T and 3790T set to run $349, $399 and $449 when they roll out sometime in the third quarter.

Just a bit more than a year after we first laid eyes on iPhone OS 3.0, Apple is back with the latest big revision of the OS that powers the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. iPhone OS 4 is shipping this summer (iPad in the fall), and the developer preview will be out today. iPhone 3GS and new-gen iPod touch will get all the features, but some features won't make it to the iPhone 3G, original iPhone, and older iPod touches. The biggest new feature is multitasking, which Apple says is going to be the "best" implementation in the smartphone space, though it's obviously not the first. App switching is activated by double tapping the home button, which pulls up a "dock" of currently running apps, and Apple claims it can do this without hurting battery life or performance for the front app. Unfortunately, this multitasking won't be available for devices older than the 3GS and new iPod touch. Multitasking is just one of seven different new "tentpole" features, including Game Center, enhanced Mail, and more...

Notable new features for users ("tentpoles" are in bold):
•Multitasking.
•Spell check (like on the iPad).
•Bluetooth keyboard support (again, on the iPad).
•User-defined wallpaper (a jailbreak favorite).
•Tap to focus when recording video, just like with photos, and a 5x digital zoom for the camera.
•Playlist creation and nested playlists.
•App folders for sorting apps! You can even put an app folder in the dock.
•Enhanced Mail! You can have a merged inbox view, switch between inboxes quickly, and sync to more than one Exchange account. There's also threaded messaging (at last!) and in-app attachment viewing.
•iBooks, just like on iPad, only smaller. You can wirelessly sync books between platforms, a la Kindle.
•Enterprise features, including remote device management and wireless app distribution.
•Game Center. It's like Xbox Live, but for iPhone games. Includes achievements, leaderboards, and match making. It will be available as a "developer preview," and out for consumers later this year.

Developers are getting plenty of new tricks too:
•New SDK, available today.
•1,500 new APIs.
•Background audio (think Pandora).
•Background VoIP (think Skype).
•Background location data, both with live GPS for backgrounded turn-by-turn, and cell tower-based for lower power draw.
•Local notifications. Like push notifications, but sends a notification straight from the app without needing a push notification server, perfect for an alarm, for instance.
•Fast app switching. Saves the state of an app and resumes it from where you left off, without dwelling in memory.
•iAd. Apple says it's for keeping "free apps free." The ads keep you in the app, while also taking over the screen and adding interactivity -- using HTML 5 for video -- up to simple gaming in-ad. Apple will offer a 60 / 40 split on revenue, and users can even buy apps straight from an ad.
•In-app SMS.
•Map overlays.
•Quick look for previewing documents.
•Photo Library access.
•Calendar access.
•Full access to the camera.
•Video playback and capture.
•Date and address "data detectors."
•Automated testing and performance / power analysis (the same tools Apple uses).

America has spoken (at least the TV-addicted, iPhone owning segment) and the cry is being heard: they want to control their DVRs from their handset! The Verizon FiOS DVR Manager sounds pretty straightforward: set your DVR! Set parental controls! Bookmark, browse, search TV programming, and more! Kind of makes that old iTunes-based media management system seem a little weak sauce, doesn't it? Of course, if you're out at dinner or in a meeting and you're being driven to distraction trying to remember if Ninja Assassin is a video-on-demand selection this month, you probably have much bigger problems than on-the-road DVR management. But that's none of our business. Compatible with your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad sportin' OS 3.0 or later.Hit the source link to download now!

Source:

App Store

If you didn't already have enough ways to get content onto your iPhone, Marusys is adding two more to the pile with its MS630S and MS850S set-top boxes. Said to be PVR-ready, these boxes are designed to serve up content in all sorts of ways, with composite, component, and HDMI video outputs on the back and, inside, the ability to run Linux-based media players like XBMC. Both rock a Magnum DX6225 media chip, enabling on-the-fly transcoding of content into a variety of formats, including the hallmark feature of these devices: streaming straight to the iPhone over WiFi. It's not exactly clear how this will work as Marusys itself doesn't explain this functionality on its site, but Magnum certainly talks it up in the press release after the break. No word on price and availability of either, or when we might get more info on how this whole thing fits together, but you can be sure you'll know as soon as we do.

If you're itching to put a webOS device on your AT&T account and don't mind having half the now-standard RAM, the developers at jictechnology have released what they're claiming is an official, permanent SIM unlock for the original Palm Pre. A few bugs to get through, but it's apparently legitimate enough (we haven't tried, but the happy customers in the forums seem to suggest success) for the group to charge around £25. Great news all around, but if you're the sort whose fixation on Palm hasn't been so grand that you resisted switching to Sprint or Verizon, you can probably wait for the AT&T's Plus-sized model

Apple has just updated its online store with a shipping date for the 3G-equipped variants of its iPad. As you can see, all varieties of the hallowed Apple tablet should be out and about by May 7th -- meaning that some deliveries could sneak out even earlier -- and you can expect AT&T will be ready and waiting for you to activate that $30 a month unlimited data plan. Just for the European record, that means the iPad will be out in full force for American consumers three days ahead of the announcement of specific international availability. Ah well, at least that gives the UK and others hope that they might see the 3G and WiFi-only slates coming out at the same time, which should be somewhere around the end of May.


Update: We've heard from numerous tipsters that 3G iPads pre-ordered before today are still on track for a somewhat woolly "late April" delivery. It seems, therefore, that the new date relates to pre-orders being taken from here on out. Here's the direct quote from Apple's email:

"To Our Valued Apple Customer:

Thank you for your recent order of the magical and revolutionary iPad 3G.

We would like to confirm that your order will be shipped in late April as communicated at the time you placed your order. You will receive a confirmation notice when your order has shipped."

Inside tech fiends the world over, there is a deep-seated desire to film lightning strikes, bullets penetrating glass and objects dropped into water, if only to see the fantastic, chaotic patterns played back in slow motion. (Peep an example after the break.) Thing is, most cameras fast enough to catch such phenomena do so with a tradeoff -- like the Phantom V12, which had a tiny 256 x 8 picture at its impressive 1,000,000fps. But now, Vision Research claims they have a camera that does it all: the Phantom Flex, which captures 1080p images at up to 2,800fps -- with 1000 ISO sensitivity -- and can shoot higher (2560 x 1600 at 1,560fps), faster (640 x 480 at 13,000fps) or even slower (down to 5fps) for regular filming. Since the high speed modes fill the onboard 16 or 32GB of memory in the blink of an eye, the sexy black number supports hot-swappable SSD modules for storage, and can even be synced in pairs to film blue alien Pocahontas reenactments in stereoscopic 3D. Hit the source link for a mouthwatering spec sheet, and don't ask how much it costs. You really don't want to know.

Arduino-powered clothing is nothing new; we've seen CO2-detecting dresses, compass belts and inbox-checking T-shirts all within the last six months. But this Ping social networking garment concept is not quite the same thing. Where those were DIY projects with a single-function, Ping is the brainchild of a professional UI designer... and the fabric itself is a social network UI that registers your movements as attempts to communicate. Woven with flexible sensors and conductive threads connected to an Arduino Lilypad and Xbee, clothing made from the fabric can detect when you lift a hood or tie a ribbon and wirelessly send Facebook status updates accordingly -- or tap you on the shoulder in a number of different rhythms so you know not only when, but who might be trying to get in touch. Designer Jennifer Darmour imagines a future in which clothing offers full-body 3D gesture recognition and senses our environment. When we can reliably use it to control our computers, we hope she'll get in touch.

It seems that even the fully-integrated desktop is not immune to the wiles of 3D. NEC has demonstrated an all-in-one desktop PC that features a Blu-ray player and an LCD display that, when paired with some inexpensive polarized glasses, adds a little depth to movie content. That's all we know about it at this point, other than a release date that's been pegged as happening sometime in 2010, with Impress indicating that it could even be sometime in the first half of this year. The question is, of course: will anyone buy it?

Seagate's FreeAgent Theater+ HD media player has quite a few competitors surrounding it, and for the most part, it didn't really offer a huge competitive advantage when we peeked it back in September. 'Course, that's before support for Netflix's Watch Instantly came along, and today, the tables seem to have turned. The aforesaid storage outfit has announced that a gratis firmware update will enable this here player to stream Netflix as well as content from YouTube, vTuner and Mediafly. For those just now willing to give this unit a second look, it also doubles as a UPnP / DLNA streamer to play content stored on networked PCs and drives, and it can procured for right around $100 sans a FreeAgent HDD. So, Roku -- you just going to sit there and take this, or what?