Hasta La Gadget!

North Korea’s relationship with the world wide web has been mostly non-existent, with most of those who reside in the nation being forbade from accessing the Internet. Slowly, however, connectivity has leaked into the northern Korean nation, which now has nearly 2 million 3G subscribers, according to service provider Koryolink’s CEO Ezz Heikal.

This represents a fairly drastic rise in numbers, with subscribers hitting a million a tad over a year ago. Of course, just because an individual subscribes to 3G in North Korea does not mean they have access to the Internet – quite the contrary. Subscribers are able to make voice calls and send text messages, and cannot access the world wide web and cannot communication internationally.

Long-term visitors have different access that is a bit more free, but still regulates international access. And both of these are different than the 3G regulations that visitors were briefly under earlier this year, which allowed for access to the Internet in addition to texting and voice calls. The network availability spurred a flood of photos from within the closed-off nation on Instagram, one of which is featured above.

Sadly, the Internet access wasn’t available for even a solid month before it was cut-off from visitors, leaving them with just voice connectivity and nothing else. No official reason was given for why the Internet access was pulled, with some speculating that the amount of content from within the nation being published online fueled the decision.

[via North Korea Tech]
Image via Joseph Ferris III

North Korea has millions of 3G subscribers, says Koryolink CEO is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We got a look at HP‘s then-unreleased Slate 7 tablet at Mobile World Congress earlier this year and liked what we saw. HP had said the device would be available for purchase in April, but then a bit of debacle started when its product page was updated to show a revised release date in June. That spurred rumors that the slate was delayed, but then the product page changed again, this time back to April, leaving many to wonder when we’d actually see the device on shelves.

HP didn’t say anything about the date change either way, and April has progressed without any changes – until today, that is. The tablet is now available as HP promised, coming in just a handful of days shy of May and in the timeline that HP both originally and revisionally supplied. Users can order it from HP’s website for $169.99.

The HP Slate 7, as its name suggests, features a 7-inch display with multitouch support and a resolution of 1024 x 600. Inside, users will find an ARM Cortext A9 dual-core 1.6GHz processor and 1GB of RAM, as well as 8GB of internal storage and a microSD slot for bumping that number upwards by another 32GB. Connectivity is standard 802.11b/g/n/ wifi and Bluetooth 2.1.

The onboard cameras leave a bit to be desired, with the front camera offering VGA resolution and the rear camera offering 3-megapixels. The battery has a 3500mAh capacity, and the entire device weighs in at just a touch over 13 ounces. The most notable feature on HP’s soft-backed tablet is the inclusion of Beats Audio, which HP says makes it one of the best sounding tablets around.

[via HP]

HP Slate 7 overcomes delay rumors, is available now is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Owning a Wii U can feel like an exercise in patience: games and apps can take up to 30 seconds to load, and downloaded software needs to be manually installed. Thankfully, Nintendo heard its fans lamentations, and has issued the first of two major updates designed to mitigate the problem. In addition to dramatically speeding up software load times, the update revises how the Wii U handles downloads and installs. Rather than manually having to install software, the system will automatically update, download and unwrap patches in the background, even if the console is powered down. The system update also puts the finishing touches on the Wii U Virtual Console, which is promised to launch officially in the coming days. Nintendo’s old VC can be accessed a little quicker now, too, as the update now allows users to jump directly into the sandboxed Wii ecosystem by holding the B button during start up. All in all, a pretty solid update to a system that needs a little fixing. Check out the full list of changes after the break.

Filed under: Gaming, Nintendo

Comments

On April 16, we reported that Provo, Utah would be the next city graced with Google Fiber, followed by a piece last week on its purchase of iProvo, the city’s ailing fiber network. The sale was reported to have taken place for $1, but had to wait on a final okay from the Provo Municipal Council. Such approval was given today, but not without stipulations.

According to The Salt Lake Tribune, the deal will go through for the purchase price of $1, addition to being sealed with Google’s agreement to a variety of conditions. For its part, Google agrees to upgrade the iProvo network and ensure that all the homes in the city have access to it. For the first seven years, Google also agrees to provide all iProvo homes with free 5-megabit service, and to provide 25 schools and other public institutions with free gigabit service. The network will also be leased to Provo by Google without charge for 15 years.

As such, the citizens of Provo will enjoy free Internet service, but will be paying off the $39 million price tag for the fiber network over the next 12 years in the form of tax dollars. Taking interest into account, that works out to a little over $3 million per year in payments towards the bond. On top of this, Provo is also going to shell out $722,000 towards equipment that allows for continued gigabit use of the network by government operations.

Another half a million will be spent by Provo city under the agreement, a requirement by Google that will go towards paying a firm to locate all the buried fiber optic cables. Reportedly, the company responsible for the network’s installation failed to properly maintain records on where all of the cables were laid. This marks the first time Google Fiber will be using an existing network.

[via Salt Lake Tribune]

Google gets iProvo purchase approval is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Ever since going native on iOS, the Tumblr app’s been on the receiving end of many, many new features and improvements. Now, continuing its ongoing efforts to make the application as good as can be, the microblogging site has released a new version for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad owners. As of today, Tumblr for iOS will now allow posts to be shared via email and a few major social networks — including, as you’d expect, Facebook and Twitter. In addition, v3.3.1 brings added integration with Pocket and Instapaper, giving users the ability to save content to either service for offline reading at a later time. Busy couple of days, eh, Tumblr?

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Software, Mobile

Comments

Source: App Store