Hasta La Gadget!

It looks like Verizon’s gone and added yet another device — make that two — to their 4G LTE network. The company announced Thursday that it will offer the business-savvy Cius tablet on LTE starting this March, and will also offer LTE interfaces for Cisco’s second generation Integrated Service Router. Verizon says it’s got about one-third of the US covered with LTE, which offers downstream speeds between 5Mbps and 12Mbps, and will have the other two-thrids blanketed by 2012. If you’re lucky enough to live in that first one-third, the Cius tablet, which sports a 7-inch diagonal touchscreen and weighs about 1.15lbs, could become your preferred form of business communication — it offers HD video streaming, real-time video, and multi-party conferencing. Cius will also have 3G capability for those unfortunate souls operating outside of the LTE sphere. Verizon isn’t ready to settle on a data plan for the tablet, as its main functions have potential to eat up a ton of bandwidth, but they’re pretty sure employers will be the ones footing the bill.

Cisco’s Cius tablet gets the Verizon LTE treatment originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 17:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Back in December, Facebook introduced its new profile to the world. The new profile features: an info summary at the top of your profile, a row of recently tagged photos, the ability to highlight friendships, more of your favorite activities and interests, and the ability to tag your friends in life experiences. On its blog, Facebook said, the new profile “makes it even easier for you to tell your story and learn about your friends” and that “hundreds of millions” already made the switch.

Until now, the change to the new profile was optional, but that time has passed. Starting today, Facebook is rolling out the new profile to the everyone. No more option. And the “Bring the old profile back!”, “Stop changing things!”, “The new profile sucks!” madness ensues. Love it or hate it, it’s here to stay…until the next upgrade. 

AMD CEO Dirk Meyer resigns, CFO Seifert takes interim role originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 17:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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GreatCall, maker of the Jitterbug phone popular with seniors, has recently introduced a new service called 5Star that connects subscribers to health and security services.

Originally posted at CES 2011

Between slagging each other off with cartoons like the one above and taking each other to court over chipset licenses, there’s been no love lost between NVIDIA and Intel over the past few years — but it looks like the war is over. The two companies just announced a new six-year cross-licensing deal that will see Intel paying NVIDIA a total of $1.5b over the next five years for access to NVIDIA’s technology, while also giving NVIDIA a license to some of Intel’s patents. The two companies have also agreed to drop all pending litigation, because you know, they’re now friends who just exchanged a billion and half dollars. Crucially, Intel won’t give up rights to x86, flash memory or “certain chipsets,” so we don’t really know if this agreement allows NVIDIA to produce integrated graphics for Sandy Bridge — although most manufacturers are going with an Optimus-style discrete / integrated switchable arrangement that pairs Intel’s on-die graphics with a discrete NVIDIA chip anyway, so we’re not so sure it actually matters. We would love to see NVIDIA support Intel’s Wireless Display 2.0 and the new Insider 1080p movie service, though — and if these two coming closer together results in better Intel on-board graphics that can rival AMD Fusion, well, things will get very interesting indeed. Oh, the possibilities of peace.

P.S.- And seriously, what a turnaround for NVIDIA at CES: it’s gone from being the company that was going nowhere with Tegra to completely dominating the Android landscape with Tegra 2, finding its way into all sorts of cars, and upending the desktop processor space with Project Denver — all while pocketing $1.5b of Intel’s cash. Not bad work for one Mr. Jen-Hsun Huang.

Update: NVIDIA just said on its press call that it has “no intentions to build chipsets for Intel processors,” and that Intel will be able to use NVIDIA’s technology in Sandy Bridge, so we suppose that answers that question.

Continue reading Intel agrees to pay NVIDIA $1.5b in patent license fees, signs cross-license

Intel agrees to pay NVIDIA $1.5b in patent license fees, signs cross-license originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 17:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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