Oh yeah! Its finally out in Sweden! Enjoy the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 unboxing pictures!
About Sony Ericsson Xperia
The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 is an arc slider mobile phone delivering a premium, converged mobile experience addressing web communication and multimedia entertainment.
The XPERIA X1 runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1, an open platform and applications designed for X1 will run on other Windows Mobile 6.1 devices with the same screen resolution and hardware features. The XPERIA X1 combines a 800×480 pixel WVGA touchscreen, a wide-pitch full QWERTY keyboard, WiFi, A-GPS, a 3.2 megapixel camera and 400MB user free memory in a quality metal-finish body. The Java ME Platform is also supported with CLDC 1.1, MIDP 2.0 and other JSRs.
Exclusive to Sony Ericsson, the XPERIA panel user interface on the desktop gives access to different options using finger-tip navigation and is configurable by the end-user. The XPERIA X1 seamlessly integrates interaction between the touchscreen, full QWERTY keyboard, 4-way key and optical joystick.
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Unboxing Pictures: Sony Ericsson Xperia X1
In the midst of the financial meltdown and a contentious upcoming election, you might think the U.S. government and taxpayers are just funding wars, bank bailouts, and bridges to nowhere or somewhere. But this is the same government that funded the Internet way back when and is also funding the next generation of technologies that will make the current Internet seem like a Model-T.
Over the last several years, the U.S. government–via DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) grants–has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in PAL, an acronym for “Personalized Assistant that Learns.” Smarter software and networks and augmenting human intelligence are useful in times of war and peace.
As part of the PAL project, more than $200 million of DARPA money has been poured into CALO (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes) over the last five years. CALO has been run out of SRI International with the assistance of 25 research organizations and 400 researchers.
Several companies, including Radar Networks, Farecast (acquired by Microsoft) and Adapx, have been spun out of SRI based on some facet of CALO technology. The latest, Siri, was founded in December last year and has raised $8.5 million in series A funding from Menlo Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures.At this point, Siri’s management is being secretive about what the company is developing. The elevator pitch goes something like, “Users’ online lives are becoming more complicated and getting out of control for mainstream users. What if there was an easy way for normal users (non-power users) to ask the Internet to help them.”
According to the Siri PR pitch, the product is “a new interaction paradigm for the consumer Internet experience that applies intelligence at the interface.” The company expects to release a beta version of its initial product in the first half of 2009, according to Dag Kittlaus, a former Telenor Mobile and Motorola executive who is a co-founder and CEO of the company.
“We have to be careful at this stage,” Kittlaus told me. “We don’t like to play these games, but we need to keep a tight lid on what we are specifically doing. We have some original ideas of what the product is going to do, but we don’t want to spark ideas among potential competitors.” Those competitors would likely be masters of the Internet with large Internet footprints and research prowess like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo.
Kittlaus did allow that Siri has more than a dozen partners, presumably large, well-established distribution players that can help build a consumer market for Siri’s product. Unlike most Web start-ups, Siri has a business model, Kittlaus claimed. “We have good business models, both existing and emerging. We think CPA (cost per action) is the future, and this specific application is good for CPA and we are partnering on that.”
He also touted the pedigree of the company’s current cadre of 19 employees. “They are mostly engineers from Yahoo, Google, SRI, NASA, and Xerox PARC,” he said. The chief architect of the CALO project, Adam Cheyer is a co-founder and vice president of engineering at Siri, and Tom Gruber, a well-known artificial intelligence and semantic Web expert, is a co-founder and CTO.
Cheyer described CALO as superset of what Siri is developing. “The CALO project is building an automated assistant to help manage and improve your life. The technology spans all aspects of interaction–natural language processing, speech recognition, and planning and reasoning capabilities–and interfaces with all kinds of systems, such as email and contacts,” he said.
(Credit: SRI International)“Learning in the wild is core focus,” he continued. “We want it to improve over time and learn from users with no coaching and without changing any code. We are taking the key elements from the project to commercialize it in a form that will delight users. We are not building systems that do things but that learn how to do things.”
CALO sounds like a representation of the famous Apple Knowledge Navigator video from 1987.
“Siri is a subset of that concept,” Cheyer said. “We have to keep in mind existing user behavior. It will feel like something close to what people use a lot. We will add speech recognition and other features as we go. We don’t want to take such a leap that people cannot identify with it. We’ll do things similar to but more advanced than what we do now. The longer term vision is the Knowledge Navigator, although it is an early chapter now and it might look different than that.”
According to Gruber, intelligence at the interface allows the computers to make recommendations, like a personal assistant:
The interfaces we use to interact with the world’s information are getting smarter. Web portals gave us someone else’s idea of the content we should see. Then came search engines, which let us tell the system what we want, one query at a time. We are about to see the next wave — intelligence at the interface — in which the system knows about us, our information, and our physical environment. With knowledge about our context, an intelligent system can make recommendations and act on our behalf.
(Credit: Tom Gruber)Siri may be working on more intelligent Web interfaces that can make inferences based a wide variety of user activities (the “lifestream”), learning over time on its own, and then taking actions on behalf of users. For example, if you are booking travel or looking for a restaurant, Siri would know your preferences and about travel sites or restaurants, integrating data and context from multiple sources to deliver personal assistance. This could be especially useful in mobile scenarios where you don’t want to wade through pages of search results or deal with complex interactions.
Tom Gruber: “If we want our technology to have world-changing impact, bring it to the interface: get useful knowledge from all those intelligent people on the Internet give the benefit of this knowledge to everyone. “
(Credit: Tom Gruber)
We’ll have to wait for next year, if the company stays on schedule, to see whether Siri can really define a new paradigm for experiencing the Web.
Originally posted here:
Start-up developing new Web interaction paradigm
The new MacBook and MacBook Pro are here. No, not just “here” in the sense of “publicly acknowledged by Apple and being shipped to arrive in Apple Stores tomorrow.” Here in the sense of, in my office right now. So in advance of our full reviews and lab tests of these products, let me give you a quick tour of the products.
The big physical differences between the MacBook Pro and MacBook lines are gone with this update. The MacBook looks like a 13-inch version of the 15-inch MacBook Pro. Both of them have the aluminum enclosure and a black screen covered from end to end with glass. Both have the same black keyboard found in the MacBook Air. Both of them are curvy around the sides and bottom, making them easy to grip.
Basically they both look like the bigger brothers of the MacBook Air. The Air was clearly the first product in a wave of new laptop designs from Apple, and now we’ve seen the second and third versions. They feel rigid and sturdy, despite their light weight.
At first glance, the screens of both models appear to be quite similar—and similar to the MacBook Air’s as well. The LED backlighting is remarkably bright, meaning these laptops are going to be quite usable, even in very bright conditions.
Users who are fans of the matte finish on the MacBook Pro are going to be quite disappointed about these new systems’ standardization, iMac style, on a glossy glass-covered display. In my extensive time with the MacBook Air over the past few months, I’ve found that the bright LED-lit screen could overpower just about every bright, glaring location you could think of.
However, since the displays are a single span of glass, there’s an easy solution for fans of anti-glare-coated displays: if they don’t already, companies will no doubt begin to make screen protectors, like those already available for the iPhone, that you can apply to your display in order to remove the shine and return an old-school matte finish. Yeah, it’ll be more work and more cost, but it’s not as if there isn’t an option out there if you just can’t stand the glossy look. (Me, I love it.)
The MacBook Pro’s prominent speaker grille holes on both sides of its keyboard are now much smaller, owing to Apple’s new production process. And the MacBook continues to have its stereo speakers embedded right next to the display’s hinge, so that the sound can bounce off the screen. So far as I can tell, the speakers are more or less the same as in past generations.
The MacBook Pro, which previously offered most of its ports on its left side—but with a few ports on the right—has joined the MacBook in offering ports on only one side.
Both models use the same MagSafe connector found in previous generations; unlike the MacBook Air, which sports a redesigned power adapter due to its unique shape, these models appear to use the same adapters as they did before. The MacBook Pro comes with a larger, 85-watt adapter; the MacBook comes with a smaller 60-watt adapter.
Both offer an Ethernet port, two USB 2 ports, audio in and out, and the new Mini DisplayPort monitor port. (DisplayPort is an emerging display-connectivity standard; it’s unclear if Apple’s the first company to offer the “mini” version of DisplayPort, and if it’s an Apple-invented proprietary variation or if it’s something we’ll see in many other computers and displays to come.) Apple says there will be Mini Display Port-to-DVI and Mini-Display-Port-to-VGA adapters available; it’s unclear if support for composite and S-Video connections has been dropped with these systems.
In addition to the ports shared by the two systems, the MacBook Pro offers a single FireWire 800 port (yes, you can buy a FireWire 800 to FireWire 400 adapter) and an ExpressCard slot hidden behind an aluminum door. Both models offer a slot-loading SuperDrive on the right side. (Previously the MacBook Pro’s slot was on the front.) Yes, this means that the new MacBook joins the MacBook Air in not offering any sort of FireWire connectivity.
Two new preference panes. Note the compact-fluorescent bulb.
One of the most ballyhooed new features of these MacBooks is the new clickable glass trackpad. So, about that button. Longtime users of Apple laptops will find it quite a bit disconcerting to reach below the trackpad with their thumbs, only to find no button there. However, it’s a pretty easy step to just slide your hand up on the trackpad so that you continue to point with one finger and click on the pad with your thumb. The trackpad is smart enough not to get confused by the presence of a finger and a thumb on the trackpad. And of course, those who are adventurous will get used to pressing with their index finger as they mouse around, giving their thumbs a break. (For clicking and dragging, you’ll basically still need two fingers.)
The new trackpad looks pretty much like the old trackpad. It’s painted the same color as the MacBook’s aluminum body. But it’s smoother than an old-style Apple trackpad. The sensation of moving your fingers across it is a little disconcerting; there’s friction but not a lot of texture. It definitely doesn’t feel like you’re running your finger across a pane of glass, though that’s what it is.
With the new trackpad come a new set of supported multi-finger gestures, all configured via the new Trackpad preference pane. The gestures supported by the past generation of laptops are still there, including two-finger scrolling, pinching and spreading fingers to zoom in and out, and swiping three fingers to navigate forward and back.
The new Trackpad control panel.
But the new trackpad has a few new tricks up its sleeve. You can program either the bottom right or left corner of the trackpad to act as a secondary mouse button. In other words, if you click in the bottom corner of the trackpad, it can be registered as a right-click. So the no-button laptop can act as a two-button laptop after all. (There’s no support for any additional button mappings, however.)
The laptops’ new four-finger gestures are built into the system and can’t be customized, but they’re still pretty cool. Place four fingers on the trackpad and flick them up, and Expose hides all your windows and exposes the desktop. Flick down with the same four fingers, and Expose shows all windows. Swipe left or right and the application switcher appears.
At 4.5 pounds, the new MacBook is half a pound lighter than the old version. With its new complement of previously-Pro-only features and its lighter weight, people who have been considering the MacBook Air will probably want to give that purchase some more consideration. The new MacBook isn’t close to the three-pound Air on weight, but it’s noticeably lighter than its predecessor and it’s cheaper and faster than the Air. As a MacBook Air user, I will have to seriously consider switching back to the MacBook now that it’s gained these new features and lightened its load by half a pound.
The MacBook Pro, on the other hand, is two-tenths of a pound heavier than its predecessor. In practice you probably wouldn’t notice the difference, but the Pro definitely didn’t go on the same diet as the MacBook.
The new MacBook Pro has two separate graphics subsystems inside of it. One, the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, is the same one found in the new MacBook and MacBook Air models. It’s less powerful—and uses less power. The other, the NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT, is a much faster, higher-performance graphics processor. To choose which one you use, you must go to the Energy Saver preference pane, fresh with its new icon. (The Energy Saver icon used to be an incandescent light bulb; Apple has replaced it with a compact fluorescent as a part of its quest to reduce the energy consumption of its icons.)
Within the Energy Saver preference pane, you can choose between “Better battery life” (the 9400M) and “Higher performance” (the 9600M GT) for graphics. However, this isn’t a switch you can do on the fly—nor can you set the system to use one when you’re on battery power and the other when you’re attached to an outlet. In fact, to switch between the two cards requires you to log out of your user account and log back in.
Yes, it’s true—these new MacBooks work with your iPhone headphones. If you click the button on your iPhone headphones, iTunes pauses. Click again, and the music resumes. A double-click advances one track, and a triple-click moves back a track—just like on the iPhone. What’s more, the headphones’ built-in microphone appears as the input device “Microphone port” in the Sound preference pane.
Both models use the same keyboard, the one that debuted on the MacBook and then made its way to the MacBook Air. If you love it—or hate it—you probably already know. As for me, I find the feel identical to other recent Apple laptops, even though the look is a bit different.
The new MacBook, like the MacBook Air, lacks a FireWire port entirely. What this means is that the old laptop data-transfer standby known as Target Disk Mode—enabled by holding down the T key upon startup, allowing your laptop’s hard drive to appear as an external hard drive when plugged in to another computer—is gone. And there’s no USB equivalent of Target Disk Mode. What this means is, if you’re using Apple’s Migration Assistant to move your data to the new MacBook, you’ll have to transfer your data over the network from your other computer. (The fastest solution: attach via an Ethernet cable and do it direct at full speed.)
When the original MacBook came out, one of my favorite features was the easy access it provided to its hard drive and RAM, both of which lurked behind a few screws under the laptop’s battery bay. Sadly, the MacBook Pro remained extremely hard to upgrade—until now. These are the most upgradeable Apple laptops yet.
Both models are identical in this respect. On the bottom side of the computer there’s a switch you flip up, which releases a metal door.
Lift it off, and beneath you’ll find a battery and a hard drive.
To remove the battery, just pull up on the plastic tab attached to it and it’ll lift right out. To remove the hard drive, you’ll need a small Phillips screwdriver in order to remove a single screw from a small plastic locking mechanism that sits between the main laptop case and the drive. Then lift the drive out and disconnect it from the drive cable.
Reaching the RAM’s a bit more involved: you need to use that same screwdriver to remove eight screws at the top and bottom of the undershell of the MacBook case. The entire bottom shell lifts off, and you’ll see two RAM slots right above the battery bay, dead center. (The MacBooks both have two SO-DIMM slots for a maximum RAM total of 4GB.)
An important note about the battery: it no longer comes with its own battery-level light. (Which would be tricky, since it’s hidden behind the removable door.) Instead, on the left side of both models there’s a small button that you press to see the capacity of the currently inserted battery. You’ll get a more detailed look than in previous models, too: eight tiny battery lights make up the battery-status display.
It’s worth noting that while the old MacBook line (still kicking around as a $999 low-end MacBook) let you choose between white and black models, with these new MacBooks you can have any color you like, so long as it’s silver. However, in line with the latest iMac models, it’s a definite silver-and-black look, thanks to the keyboard and the solid black glass face of the display. Even the display’s hinge is black, as opposed to the gray found in the Macbook Air.
Not five minutes out of the box and already a software update.
Apple crows about the reduced waste in the packaging of these products, and it’s true. They follow the MacBook Air approach: it’s a tiny box with not a whole lot in it. (Not even any video adapters.) But it’s definitely less wasteful packaging.
Once I got the computers out of the box, I was immediately slapped with a Software Update notice. Between the installation of software on the systems at the factory in China and their arrival in the United States, Apple’s software engineers evidently fixed some bugs. I was immediately prompted with an alert to update to Version 1.2 of the MacBook, MacBook Pro Software Update for “precision aluminum unibody enclosure MacBook and MacBook Pro notebook computers.” Whew!
After a few hours with these systems, I have to say that I like them a lot. The new trackpad takes some getting used to, but I think most users will like it. Lovers of matte displays will be angry, though that anger might be mitigated by third-party anti-glare overlays. And the displays themselves are bright and beautiful, which is a good thing. The new graphics performance of these systems—especially the MacBook, which previously used Intel’s integrated graphics—should be good, though we’ll have to wait for Macworld Lab to weigh in to know for sure.
Thus ends my rapid-fire hands-on look of the MacBook and MacBook Pro. Stay tuned later this week for Macworld Lab’s tests of these systems, followed by complete reviews. And when the new MacBook Air arrives in November, we’ll take that one for a spin as well.
Jason Snell is Macworld’s editorial director. You can follow him on Twitter. Jason thanks the good folks on Twitter for suggesting so many of the questions he answered in this story.
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First Look: MacBook and MacBook Pro
A rumor that’s been floating around the web lately is that Google will offer RSS feeds for new results in basic web search. Today Search Engine Land confirmed that Google will “soon” offer this functionality. Why is this big news? Because there’s no better way to keep track of new mentions of a company, person or concept online than through RSS.
digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/tech_news/Finally_Google_to_Offer_RSS_Feeds_for_Web_Search_Results’;digg_bgcolor = ‘#ffffff’;digg_skin = ‘normal’;As Search Engine Land’s Matt McGee points out in his post, Google is the only major web search engine to not offer feeds for basic web search, as they do in blog search and news. We’d previously recommended Live.com for web search feeds, but who really cares about Live.com search results? They’re terrible. Google feeds are good news.
Google says that the new feeds will be part of the Google Alerts product, which currently delivers e-mail alerts for new search results in web, blog and other result types. Google Alerts are widely used but are, we’d argue, like training wheels for people not yet comfortable with RSS feeds. There’s nothing wrong with that, but many of us want our feeds.
Though blogs and news sites are of growing importance, there’s still nothing quite like good old Web Search for getting a broad picture of who is linking where and what kind of online mentions are occurring. Google says it cannot confirm when the web search feeds will be available.
We hope that Google web search feeds will include “site:” searches for new mentions of keywords inside particular domains (Live and Yahoo do), and that they will deliver nice clean direct URLs – which Live.com feeds do but Yahoo search feeds do not.
There’s still no alerts or feeds available for Google Image Search, probably because the index is so woefully behind the web at large.
The rest is here:
Finally! Google to Offer RSS Feeds for Web Search Results
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Google Puts Tunes From YouTube a Click Away
CBS Labs
has rolled out a labs version of a new product called Social Viewing Room, you pick a live show and chat about it with others.
Credit:
CBS : Social Viewing Room
(Credit: CNET News)Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign launched an iPhone application on Thursday that turns the vaunted device into a political recruiting tool.
The most notable feature “organizes and prioritizes your contacts by key battleground states, making it easy to reach out and make an impact quickly,” according to the software.
On my phone, the application ranked contacts in Colorado, Michigan, and New Mexico at the top; at the bottom was a friend whose cell phone has a Texas number, though she actually lives in California.
The application anonymously reports back the number of calls made this way: “Your privacy is important: no personal data or contacts will be uploaded or stored. Only the total number of calls you make is uploaded anonymously.”
The software is the latest effort by politicians to capitalize on technology, joining other examples such as ads distributed through YouTube, Web-based fund-raising, Facebook pages and fan groups, and e-mail recruitment drives.
The Obama for America iPhone application is available for download through Apple’s iTunes store, said Raven Zachary, an iPhone consultant who’s directing the launch effort.
A “get involved” feature uses the phone’s GPS-based location sensing to find the nearest Obama campaign headquarters, and “local events” likewise pulls up a list of activities sorted by proximity.
A “media” section provides links to video and photos, but beware: YouTube showed errors following some of the links. Perhaps the newer videos hadn’t been prepared for iPhone display yet.
The application also shows Obama statements to the news media and a guide to Obama’s positions on various issues.
Update 8:50 a.m. PDT: The application shows how many calls have been made nationwide and how many you made. Those statistics are the kind that can motivate people–they can feel like they’re part of something bigger. That may sound a bit silly as a motivational tool, but consider that Smule’s Sonic Lighter application for the iPhone is popular, despite the fact that it costs 99 cents more than its free competition, likely because people can see where else on the globe people are using it and because the longer you run the application, the bigger your own spot on the map becomes. It’s a kind of competition.
Update 9:28 a.m. PDT: The campaign added an Obama iPhone app Web site, too.
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Obama releases iPhone recruiting, campaign tool
Are Netbooks ripe to be resized? Via Technologies thinks so. The Intel-compatible chipmaker says larger Netbooks are on the way.
Via Nano processor
(Credit: Via Technologies)
In an interview, Glenn Henry, the head of Via Technologies subsidiary Centaur Technology, said that Via has just begun commercial shipments of its Intel-compatible, power-sipping Nano processor. Centaur headed up development of the Nano processor.
“We just started shipping to customers last week and this week–literally right now,” Henry said.
Henry said there is a lot of demand for larger form factors. “Everyone wants to build a (Netbook) of some variety these days. Most of the interest we see from customers is for a larger screen than the HP (2133). There’s a lot of demand to move those things up to higher screen sizes. I’ve heard customers say they want to build 12- or 13-inch notebooks,” Henry said.
Via’s most illustrious customer is Hewlett-Packard, which currently uses the older Via C7 processor in its 2133 Mini-Note PC.
Though Henry refused to talk about design wins, he did say that there is interest from major companies. “We’ve given them (HP) samples,” he said. Though Henry qualified this by saying that Via has given samples to a lot of potential customers. “There’s a great deal of interest in the part from people whose name you would recognize,” he said.
The Nano processor is seen as the only real competition for Intel’s popular Atom chip, which is used in Netbooks from a long list of companies including Acer, Asus, Lenovo, and Dell.
The 2.6-pound HP 2133 Mini-Note uses the Via C7 processor.
(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)
There is one crucial difference with the Atom. Nano has a thermal envelope of 5 watts at 1GHz. Though this is low compared with a standard Intel Core 2 mobile processor (typically drawing 25 watts to 35 watts), this is higher than Intel’s single-core Atom chip for netbooks which tops out at just 2 watts. At 1.3GHz, Nano has a thermal envelope of 8 watts, approaching that of Intel’s dual-core Atom.
Why the difference? Nano uses a more sophisticated superscalar, out-of-order design, while Atom has a more simple “in-order execution” architecture. Because of Nano’s more complex design, it may deliver better performance than Atom in some cases.
The thermal envelope, however, is important because it can influence the design of a Netbook-type device. Typically, parts with lower thermal envelopes can go into smaller devices.
On the upside, Nano can be plugged directly into a design that uses the older C7 processor. “One of the very interesting things about the Nano is that it’s plug compatible with our current C7s. You can plug the part into the same socket.” Though some adjustments must be made: A BIOS upgrade is necessary and “more importantly the part has a different power-versus-megahertz (paradigm) compared to the current part because it’s running benchmarks two times faster,” Henry said.
He said products using the Nano processor will not appear immediately. “No product that actually uses this is for sale to the end customer (yet). So the parts we’re shipping are going into the (customer’s) manufacturing process or development process.”
And what about a Via dual-core processor? “We’re working on it. When you see it, who knows. We’re implementing it but it’s not near at hand,” Henry said.
(Note: There are several ways to categorize a design as a netbook. One is screen size. Typically netbooks have 7-, 8-, or 9-inch screens. But this definition is in flux with, for example, the newest Atom-processor-based Eee PC 1000 that sports a 10-inch screen. So, as netbooks get redefined upward, the silicon inside–and other hardware–becomes the defining factor, i.e., low-power, low-performance processors and graphics that dictate how the computer should be used: primarily as a Net-centric device for Web browsing and email. Prices will also typically be lower than standard notebooks.)
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Intel Atom rival ships; larger Netbooks coming?
The Internet has had an enormous impact on people’s lives around the world in the ten years since Google’s founding. It has changed politics, entertainment, culture, business, health care, the environment and just about every other topic you can think of. Which got us to thinking, what’s going to happen in the next ten years? How will this phenomenal technology evolve, how will we adapt, and (more importantly) how will it adapt to us? We asked ten of our top experts this very question, and during September (our 10th anniversary month) we are presenting their responses. As computer scientist Alan Kay has famously observed, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, so we will be doing our best to make good on our experts’ words every day. – Karen Wickre and Alan Eagle, series editors
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The next Internet
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Google Blogsearch Relaunches as Techmeme Killer, Across 11 Categories
