Hasta La Gadget!

The Vega, a Tegra 2-powered Android tablet, has had a long and painful birth, but it looks as if it is just about to see the light of day. First shown off in November 2009, back when we were still calling the iPad the “Apple Tablet”, the Vega should soon be on sale in the UK, for a bargain-priced £250 ($395).

To be sold in the UK by the Dixons Group (in PC World and Currys stores), the Vega is incredibly well appointed for the price. At it’s heart is a 1GHz Nvidia T20 Tegra 2 processor and a 10.1-inch capacitive 1024 x 600 touch-screen. Then things get ridiculous: A micro SD-card slot (with 4GB card supplied), 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, 3G-ready SIM-slot, a microphone, Bluetooth, 1.3-megapixel webcam and a battery which will play n1080p video for up to six and a half hours.

There is also a 1.5-Watt speaker, a USB-port and even and HDMI-port. The OS is Android 2.2 Froyo, and the RAM is 512MB, with 1GB option. Whew.

But it’s bound to be junk, right? How could they make it so cheap, with so many things packed inside? Well, take a look at this video and you’ll see that it actually runs pretty well:

Pretty amazing, huh? Apart from that awful keyboard, I mean. Without any official announcement of pricing and availability, we’ll have to wait and see if that figure is really correct. The Vega will sell under the Advent brand, which is just a rebadging for Dixon’s stores (the original MSI Wind netbook was also sold under the Advent brand, for instance). This appears to be the same Vega that was announced by Converged Devices all those months ago.

It’s been a while but, with this and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab due very soon, the competition for the iPad is starting to arrive. That’s good for everyone: iPad haters get alternatives, and iPad lovers benefit from Apple’s response to competition.

Advent Android tablets set to hit the Dixons Group stores shortly [Android Modaco Forums]

See Also:

• Vega Tablet Beats Apple and Crunchpad
• Why 2010 Will Be the Year of the Tablet
• How the Tablet Will Change the World
• Tablet Rumors Multiply as iPad Sales Soar

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A long-awaited Froyo update for the original T-Mobile MyTouch 3G is expected to begin its release as early as today, breathing new life into an old handset.

Originally posted at Android Atlas

The latest version of Uniflow, Canon’s corporate document management system, uses OCR to prevent people from printing or copying documents that contain specific words.

People have gotten a bit jumpy when it comes to Apple’s censorship policies–and understandably so. The company has been notoriously dictatorial when it comes to what content can and cannot exist on the device, having banned apps from iTunes, based on the inclusion of words like “boobs” and “booty.”

So when word got out that the US Patent and Trademark Office has granted the company a patent for “text-based communication control for personal communication device[s],” people predictably freaked out a bit. After all, the ability for the company to control user text messages sets a pretty scary precedent, right?

After all, if Apple is so keen to blog questionable words in the context of the App Store, it seems logical that the company would also attempt exercise such control over, you know, sexting and stuff.

No so fast. The patent is actually decidedly less big brothery. It’s actually has more to do with optional parental control. Here’s a bit from the filing,

The parental control application evaluates whether or not the communication contains approved text based on, for example, objective ratings criteria or a user’s age or grade level, and, if unauthorized, prevents such text from being included in the text-based communication.

So carrying on sexting each other, America. It’s your constitutional right! (Unless, of course, your parents aren’t into it.)

CNN is currently offering live streaming video of the rescue of the 33 trapped Chilean miners. It’s a bit surreal, to say the least–but then, there’s very little about this whole story that isn’t surreal, I suppose. The miners have managed to survive underground for 69 days. They survived for weeks by rationing food, until a rescue team was able to lower down everything from food to medicine to movies.

Now, more than two months later, the rescue is finally underway. For safety’s sake, the rescuers are taking things slowly, pulling the miners up the 2,000 feet drop, one a time. At last count, 13 of the miners have been rescued in the 11 and a half hours since rescue began, much to the relief of all of the family members present.

The footage, while slow, is pretty engrossing, as the miners emerge, one by one, to smiles, applause, and hugs.