Sony Takes Aim At Dell Notebooks

To snare market share from Dell and boost its channel presence, Sony has begun offering $500 trade-in bonuses on Dell notebooks and paying solution providers additional spiffs.

The move also reflects the love-hate relationship between Sony and Dell.

Suprisingly, Sony is testing a new promotion, where they will give you a $500 dollar Sony credit towards a Sony VAIO for your trade-in.

Sounds confused? Just steal your grandpa’s old dell laptop and take it to Sony, they will pay you $500 to buy a brand new VAIO.

My only thought is that when someone uses a $500 off coupon towards a Sony VAIO, Sony will most likely lose money on that sale. While, this may not be a catastrophic catch, it could become one if this program actually gains popularity.

I’m not sure how well this will work, as the only way to grow rapidly, much like Dell has in the past, would be to aim at the business and I.T. folks, the people that generate 90% of Dell’s sales. We’ll see how far Sony will go with this.

Source : CRN

via digg

Mininova first birthday!

When SuprNova went offline, many BitTorrent fans found themselves orphaned and forced to seek alternatives to the once great BitTorrent source. Some goes to torrentspy.com and many torrent search engines pop up around the net. But most torrent fans missed the flavor of suprnova.org.

Some fans found themselves in an identical situation and vowed to fix the situation. They then launched Mininova and the rest is history. This was one year ago.

This year, Mininova has earned its reputation as the cutting edge in public BitTorrent indexing sites. It now boasts a large fan base.

At the mininova’s blog, written by Niek said,

“What was the reason for mininovas huge growth?

Was it the simple layout?

The perfect timing after SuprNovas shutdown?

The many revolutionary and advanced features?

The forum with its great community?”

But after newnova.org launches, mininova design has been changed. Many of suprnova.org fans, including me, prefers newnova.org with no exception. Anyway, we are on the same side.

Will PS3 price influence Blu-ray player?

After I have read this article from cnn, I think no one would be stupid enough to pay $1,800 for the standalone Blu-Ray player while they could get PS3 (with built-in Blu-ray drive) with only around $500.

There wasn’t universal consensus, though. Some predicted the price would be closer to $450, others said they wouldn’t be surprised if it was as high as $600. $700 was mentioned by a couple of developers, though even they said the number seemed unreasonable. And one game maker felt Sony would try to stay in line with Microsoft, offering the PS3 for just $399.

Microsoft support for HD-DVD is a big loss for Blu-ray. Surely, Sony and their supporters of Blu-ray might need to adjust price if they don’t want this war to be alike Betamax.

Is AJAX the key to reduce bandwidth?

According to Macrumors.com, they only need to serve 32 GB with AJAX during the keynote adress, if they didn’t use AJAX, they would need to serve 6 times as much data, 196 GB!!!!

We peaked at approximately 103,000 simultaneous web visitors and 6,000 IRC viewers during the Keynote speech and transmited over 32 GB of data in a three hour period. If not for the efficiency of the MacRumorsLive AJAX update system, the same webcast would have required approximately twice as many servers and would have had to transfer almost 6 times as much data (196 GB).

39 megapixel camera!

And just when 12 megapixel cameras were starting to become all the news, Hasselblad’s new H2D-39 D-SLR is the first true 39 megapixel digital camera in the world. It is based on Hasselblad’s existing H2 digital camera and is compatible with the company’s H System lenses and V camera lenses. Prices are up to $40,000.

While I got suprise about this much high resolution and price, some said like this:

Every fashion magazine is pretty much shot on medium and large format and not 35mm. Madison Ave/Times Square billboards are shot with large formats also.

Its like video cameras. While you may buy a $2000 video camera, professionals for TV and film use $70,000 camera with a $30,000 lense (some lense cost more than the camera).

Source : DailyTech

World’s smallest helicopter!

First I thought this is just a fine product of photoshop. But I was wrong. This is real. You can get it for $35,000.

It can Carry On average a 70kg (155 lb.) pilot.It can fly approximately 1 hour on a 5-gallon tank of fuel.Its Engine is Two-stroke, air-cooled, 125cc, horizontally opposed. Two-cylinder.Its also radio controlled…Four independent engines enable normal flight to continue with one engine out. Emergency landing under full control is possible on two engines. Ballistic parachute provided above the mast.

How high will it fly? Is it really safe? blah, blah, blah, …, Got a lot of questions? Check here.

Will Google defeat Yahoo! ?

Google.com has been user’s favorite search engine for quite few years now. Since Google.com started developing new services for its users, it’s user base grew. Nowadays there is no nobody that would have not heard of Google.com. For more than a year, Google.com has been ranked (according to Alexa.com) as the 3rd biggest website in the world, right behind MSN.com and Yahoo.com. According to Alexa.com, less than a week ago, Google.com took over the 2nd place in the world, beating MSN.com.

Source : Digg

Google start 2006 with Google Pack!

In just a few clicks, users can easily discover, install and maintain software to surf the web faster and safer, communicate better, and effectively manage information.

Google Pack offers programs that meets Google’s high software standards and are considered best in their class, including:

Adobe Reader 7
Ad-Aware SE Personal
Google Desktop
Google Earth
Google Pack Screensaver
Google Talk
Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer
Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar
Norton AntiVirus 2005 Special Edition
Picasa

Google Pack also includes Google Updater, a new tool that intelligently downloads, installs and maintains all the software in the Google Pack. Google Updater alerts users when updates and new programs become available and ensures each program is always up-to-date. Google Updater can also be used to monitor the status of installation, run software that’s been installed, or easily uninstall software.

Users can easily select which programs they want to install. For programs already installed on a computer, Google Updater checks whether the latest version is running. If not, Google Updater will install the latest version.

New applications of adsense need valid phone numbers

You can apply for Google Adsense from now on only if you provide a valid phone number. New Adsense applications will not be accepted if they do not provide valid phone number. Google then verifies the phone number automatically.

This Phone verification PIN is kinda like the Address verification PIN that is mailed by post to each AdSense publisher when earnings have reached $50 on their account. The Address PIN is to verify publisher contact address and is sent by snail mail.

Phone verification is completely automated – you’ll only need to key in a 6-digit personal identification number (PIN) using your touch-tone telephone.

When you’re ready to verify your number, click the link provided in the email you received from Google AdSense. This link will bring you to the Phone Verification Setup page, from which you’ll be able to initiate the call or set a convenient time for our system to call you. Have your PIN ready – the number of PIN entry attempts is limited.

Go to Google

Write Now, Send Later ( Emails )

Have you ever dream about sending an email to yourself or your friend at a future date like on 14th February 2008? You don’t need to dream anymore as your dreams come true! There are several email services make it possible.

Here is a list of emailing services that I liked.

Mail to the Future – allows you to send mail to yourself or others at a specified date and time in the future. But requires registration and they wrote In order to use Mail to the Future, your browser must send us a cookie that contains an encoded password. Luckily, if you have an email account somewhere, it’s very easy to get such a cookie. Discontinued

FutureMe – No registration needed made this my favourite service. Specify the email address, subject, message and the date to be sent in the future. The drop menu shows the last year as 2036 ( Will they last that long? ). You can also keep the email private or as an anonymous public one. They have a sense of humor as they wrote this in their copyright statement : if you steal anything, we will sic a pack of cute angry girl lawyers on you. for real.

FutureMail – Use FutureMail to send yourself reminders, notes, or any information you want to have in the future. You can even share your future items in a public RSS feed or your own FutureMail Blog. You can specify your time zone and select an hour along with your message date! This makes FutureMail much more useful for daily reminders!

I am sure there are many other services out there or will come out later. From three of these services, I recommend you to use futureme. That is simple, easy and the best of all : NO REGISTRATION.