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Google agrees to pay $8.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over privacy problems with Google Buzz.
[via Wireless Goodness]
I love how Sony pretty much ignores the rest of the world, and does whatever they want. Take memory cards for example. Rather then use the industry standard compact flash or SD cards, Sony creates a new format in the memory stick. No one but Sony uses it, and they continue to use the memory stick to this day. Sometimes, admittedly, they win (Blu-ray) and sometimes they lose (Betamax), but they are never afraid to ignore what other people have done and do their own thing.
That brings us back to the latest example of Sony’s particular brand of crazy: music streaming. Despite the fact that there are other perfectly good music streaming applications out there, Sony has created one of their own. The new service, called Music Unlimited, is designed to work with many of Sony’s existing products to provide access to millions of stored tracks via the internet. I can’t really see a widespread adoption of Music Unlimited, unless they make it the only option to purchasers of their products. Sony announced this new service last night at the IFA show, just hours before Apple announced their latest and greatest. Brilliant. [via DeepTech]
Man, this is why I play Super Nintendo.
People tell us all that time that they’re getting more and more mail and often feel overwhelmed by it all. We know what you mean—here at Google we run on email. Our inboxes are slammed with hundreds, sometimes thousands of messages a day—mail from colleagues, from lists, about appointments and automated mail that’s often not important. It’s time-consuming to figure out what needs to be read and what needs a reply. Today, we’re happy to introduce Priority Inbox (in beta)—an experimental new way of taking on information overload in Gmail. Gmail has always been pretty good at filtering junk mail into the “spam” folder. But today, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn't outright junk but isn't very important—bologna, or “bacn.” So we've evolved Gmail's filter to address this problem and extended it to not only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate this "bologna" from the important stuff. In a way, Priority Inbox is like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules. Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: “Important and unread,” “Starred” and “Everything else”:  As messages come in, Gmail automatically flags some of them as important. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most (if you email Bob a lot, a message from Bob is probably important) and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over). And as you use Gmail, it will get better at categorizing messages for you. You can help it get better by clicking the  or  buttons at the top of the inbox to correctly mark a conversation as important or not important. (You can even set up filters to always mark certain things important or unimportant, or rearrange and customize the three inbox sections.)After lots of internal testing here at Google, as well as with Gmail and Google Apps users at home and at work, we’re ready for more people to try it out. Priority Inbox will be rolling out to all Gmail users, including those of you who use Google Apps, over the next week or so. Once you see the "New! Priority Inbox" link in the top right corner of your Gmail account (or the new Priority Inbox tab in Gmail Settings), take a look.  Singapore has proposed changes to a telecommunications law that would raise penalties for companies that violate their licenses.
Plus: a rejected rebate request and a laptop battery recall.
There’s not too much to say: 12 megapixels, 5x optical zoom, ISO 64-3200, 720p video. The main thing, though, is the ruggedness. It looks to be about as rugged as those in our roundup a few months back: 5m underwater, 2m drop, dust and chemical sealed. Nice touch: you can use the regular rechargeable battery pack, but you can switch to AAAs if you find yourself away from an outlet. I like Ricoh. Not sure why, I just like those guys.
I’ve only had this little guy for long enough to charge him for a few hours and give him the run of the living room once, so this is just a quick overview. So how is it? It’s cute! And compact. I’m always surprised by how big Roombas really are; the Mint is about the size of a big book or a couple netbooks stacked on top of each other. This means it can get into corners and edge around things easily. It’s three inches tall, which means it’ll go under most furniture and some couches. It fits under my couch just fine, but a low-hanging bookcase hits it on the “forehead,” which to be fair it figured out right away and worked along the edge of.
It’s extremely quiet. If you’re not paying attention, you won’t notice it until it’s bumping into you. But it still has enough torque to push my garbage can around a bit (it wasn’t sure what to make of that). Very easy to set up. It uses little cloths or Swiffer wipes, which are very easy to install. Then just put its little base somewhere in the room and it syncs up and off it goes. I thought it would restrict itself to the room it’s in, but it found its way into my bedroom through a hallway, and came back after a few minutes. Bonus! I just wanted to put these pictures up with these first impressions; expect a full review once I try it out for a week or so, get a feel for its battery life, shortcomings, and so on. But I like this little guy. It costs $250, which is a lot more than a broom, but hey.
Google has overtaken Microsoft to secure the top spot in a major Japanese survey of corporate brand perception.
Skeptical? Enraged? Singularity believer? Read first, then flame.
Online gaming may soon be getting more expensive. Sony is currently looking into joining the ranks of Ubisoft, EA, and THQ. They are investigating charging gamers for a pass to play used games online.
According to NowGamer via Games Industry, “Similar to EA's model, the pass would open up online features...
The CEO of AU Optronics, who faces felony charges related to a price-fixing investigation, has been barred from leaving the U.S.
The world's most popular search engine, Google, has confirmed it has begun limited testing of a new search results page that updates as you type your query.
SEO consultant Rob Ousbey spotted the change and recorded a video of the new-look page (embedded below), which a Google spokesperson today confirmed is...
Sure, you could tie a string to a bolt and use that to steady things, but why not buy one already put together for $30? This little thing might actually be pretty handy, and it’s travel-sized.
The VPC-PD2 (or just PD2) shoots up to 1080p at 30FPS, and takes 10-megapixel photos as well. It’s also got a 3x optical zoom, and those little ears on it mean some seriously decent stereo sound. It’s got a 3″ LCD with… not very high resoultion. 150,000 dots means less than 320×240. Boo. It has a built-in USB thing, which you can use to get your media off it and recharge its little battery. It records to SD cards (including SDXC) and has a mini-HDMI out for putting the signal right on your TV. Of course there isn’t much we can say before we get our hands on it, but Sanyo has a good track record so I’m going to give this one a preemptive thumbs up.
HP has signed on executive search firm Spencer Stuart to lead its bid to find a replacement for former chairman, president and CEO Mark Hurd.
[via Notcot]
Microsoft today made available the beta versions of Windows Home Server "Vail" and "Aurora" -- two significantly different products that fall under the same umbrella -- on Microsoft Connect.
"Aurora" is an edition based on Windows Home Server but designed with the cloud in mind, and allows the use of cloud-hosted...
This Browser roundup feature is designed to bring you the latest news about a variety of browsers and provides an overview of the last month of new browser technologies. This month, we look at Google Chrome 6, Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4.0.
Google Chrome:
Last week, Google Chrome 6 hit...
An Apple manager with responsibilities for the company's contract manufacturing in Asia was arrested Friday and charged with accepting kickbacks.
It’ll set you back $745 without drives, so it’s not exactly an impulse buy, but that’s really not a bad deal. [via MacNN]
Earlier this year we heard reports of a CDMA iPhone, making all of the Verizon users simultaneously jump for joy. Now we finally have an idea of when it should be released and revealed to the world. Sometime in January 2011 is likely for a release, due to Apple ordering...
[Via LifeHacker & ByteArray]
Asus is testing the waters with two models, the B43 (a 14-inch) and the B53 (a 15-inch). You’ve got to love how creative Asus is with their model names. Here’s a few specs to whet your appetite, the two models will be available in four different configurations:
Asus also mentioned something called a Sonata Long Life Battery. Apparently, this battery is guaranteed to work at at least 80% of its initial capacity for 3 years. Quite impressive. Of course we don’t know how much it’s going to cost, but we’ll let you know as soon as we find out. [via Laptop]
Here's how to know which features of cameras, camcorders, HDTVs, LCD monitors, and printers are crucial--and when you can save big by buying a model that skips features you don't absolutely need.
Apple's Senior Vice President of Devices Hardware Engineering, Mark Papermaster, has reportedly left the company following the disastrous (but nonexistent) iPhone 4 antenna issues.
Papermaster joined Apple in November 2008, following the stepping down of Tony Fadell earlier in the month, but was soon ordered to cease work at the Cupertino-based...
Apple's Senior Vice President of Devices Hardware Engineering, Mark Papermaster, has reportedly left the company following the disastrous (but nonexistent) iPhone 4 antenna issues.
Papermaster joined Apple in November 2008, following the stepping down of Tony Fadell earlier in the month, but was soon ordered to cease work at the Cupertino-based...
That 250GB bundle was recently spotted in Australia and appears to be a shiny, rather than matte bundle. In addition to the larger hard drive, the 250GB bundle will also include a headset, and come pre-installed with demos and apparently a game. No word on pricing of course or an international release schedule but it is probable they’ll have something for us by the holidays.
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So this popped up on the FCC website today, and it’s all very mysterious, but it looks like Netgear and 
A lot of noise gets made about nanotechnology. “Nano” is a prefix people like to use because it sounds futuristic and everyone knows that really small stuff is awesome. But the physical and chemical laws governing interactions at scales of a billionth of a meter are so far beyond our ability to reliably control them that you may as well just forget about nanomachines altogether. I love future toys, too, but unrealistic expectations of science and industry end up making things worse for everybody.
Adobe released the latest version of Flash for the Mac recently, bringing it up to speed with the Windows version, which has built in hardware accelerated video decoding. The version you want is 10.1.82.76, which you can dowload 
Up to this point, Asus’ US product line has been aimed directly at the consumer. This is about to change, as Asus recently announced that they will be offering their B series of laptops, which were previously limited to the Asian market. 
We heard about the