Hasta La Gadget!

Ahead of Windows 8′s arrival on October 26, Samsung is launching a couple of Slate PCs with their Series 5 and Series 7 naming. Both slates have been designed to turn from laptop to tablet, thanks to their detachable display and QWERTY dock. In the Android world, this would be something like the Asus Transformer Series. These two tablets are powered by an Intel processor, so they run the desktop version of Windows 8.

Because of that, these tablets can truly run any Windows program, past or future, and that should be most important to those who have legacy or enterprise applications that they can’t live without. There is definitely a market for that. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Samsung Series 5 Ultra laptop, hands-on, Samsung Unpacked, packed,

Microsoft has just announced that the Bing website is now integrating Quora in the social side bar. The idea -says Bing- is that the Microsoft search engine not only want to show pertinent search results, but also who provides relevant answers. Although there are relevant answers elsewhere (forums, Q&A sites…), this is a potentially huge win for Quora, where most users log-in via Facebook with their real identity. U.S based users should start seeing Quora contributors in the sidebar, today. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Bing New Architecture: Introducing Snapshot and Social Sidebar, Yahoo benefits from Google losses in July US search market share,

OnLive has changed a lot since last Friday when the company was “restructured” into a new company according to a recent official announcement. To do so, all the assets of OnLive Inc were sold to the new company. The good news for customers is that Lauder Partners is injecting enough money to allow OnLive to continue its service without any interruption.

After laying off half of its employees, the company says that the new legal entity will re-hire many of them at the same position/salary, although not everyone seems to be coming back. Employees who are not asked to re-join will be given an opportunity to “consult” with the new company.

According to the official statement, this was a necessary step for OnLive although a “heartbreaking” transition. The company has issues a FAQ that addresses many questions people may have. My understanding is that the shares of the former OnLive Inc company did not retain any value during the transition. We’ve pasted the whole statement and Q&A in the full post. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: OnLive Game Streaming Company Goes Under, iPhone, iPad and Macs could be banned on Aug 24,

We have received an invitation to a Nokia event help in NYC on September 5. Without a doubt, this is about the next-generation Lumia which runs on Windows Phone 8, which was revealed in San Francisco earlier this year (catch up with the Windows Phone 8 reveal).

This is going to kick start a new phase for both Microsoft and Nokia who will now be able to come up with high-end smartphones featuring the latest quad-core chips, along with edgy cameras and a new Windows Phone that finally shares its code base with Windows 8.

Microsoft gets a chance to make a great first impression by showing how Windows Phone 8 works on a real product and how a “special” partner like Nokia benefits from this relationship. For Nokia, this is a critical launch that could set the tone for its earnings for the next 12-18 months. Come back on September 5 to learn what Nokia and Microsoft will reveal. There are exciting times.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Windows Phone Apollo launching mid 2012 according to Nokia’s VP, Windows Phone 8 SDK shows off upcoming features,

Telenav has just announced that it has added offline navigation to its Scout personal navigation application on iOS. Before going on the road, users can download regional maps that contains huge areas of the country so that they won’t have to worry about having a working data connection.

It is clear that although data connectivity has become extremely common in urban areas, there are many places where it is too slow, unreliable or simply non-existent. While it’s not dramatic when you want to update a social network status, it can be really annoying when you are trying to find your way in a new area.

Google has recently added offline navigation to Android (a free service), but Apple users don’t have an “out of the box” solution, that’s why Telenav came up with this new option for Scout. This update is called “Always There Navigation” and should be available right now, at least in the USA. Offline navigation is not a free feature, and costs $9.99/yr or $2.99 for customers who subscribe to Scout’s premium features (voice guidance, auto re-route, speed trap+camera info, advanced traffic). Official teaser video in the full post. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: TeleNav launches world’s first HTML5 voice guided, turn-by-turn GPS navigation service, TomTom announces iPad optimized version,