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The HTC Titan is one of a crop of Windows Phone Mango handsets that will debut this fall. Image: HTC

AT&T announced today that it is getting three new Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) handsets sometime this fall.

The three smartphones, the Samsung Focus S, Samsung Focus Flash and HTC Titan, are 4G. The Focus S features a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display and a 1.4 GHz Snapdragon processor. The Focus Flash has the same chip but a more pocket-friendly 3.7-inch Super AMOLED screen. The S has an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, while the Flash has a 5-megapixel front-facing cam.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone Mango is expected to bring much needed updates and social networking integration to Windows Phone 7. One key feature of the Mango update is its streamlined “People” hub, an all-in-one contacts list with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn integration. The OS refresh will also allow for multitasking. Windows Phone 8 also is set to debut soon, rumored for a 2012 release and a possible giveaway for developers at the BUILD conference. But as of now, it looks like it’s designed more specifically for tablet and desktop PCs.

At the IFA electronics showcase in Berlin, HTC showed off the Mango-running Titan and Radar smartphones. The Titan, coming to AT&T, has an almost-monstrous 4.7-inch display. It also features a 1.5 MHz processor and an 8-megapixel camera with dual LED flash.

The precursor to the Samsung Focus S is the Samsung Focus, released in 2010 and one of Wired.com’s 10 most significant gadgets of the year.

AT&T also will provide Mango updates for several Windows Phone 7 handset models, including the Samsung Focus, LG Quantum, HTC Surround and HTC HD7S.

So far, Windows Phone 7 hasn’t gained a lot of traction despite fairing well critically. Recent stats show it has about 9 percent of the mobile OS market in the United States. With Nokia’s adoption of the Windows Phone 7 platform and abandoning of their Symbian OS, Windows Phone could start taking a bigger chunk of the market… if consumers warm up to it.

The days of being tied to a traditional TV to watch your favorite shows is becoming less and less of a dream — at least for Mediaroom 2.0 users, like those who subscribe to AT&T U-Verse. It hasn’t even been a full year since Xbox 360 owners were first able to launch a U-Verse blade to watch TV, but it has been about nine months when we first heard rumors of Mediaroom clients for Windows Media Center (aka Monaco), Silverlight (aka Taos) and Windows Phone (aka Rome) would see the light of day. A recent post on William Zhang’s blog, a Microsoft employee, confirms the rumored code names in addition to giving us reason to believe those using Mediaroom 2.0 software might still realize the three screen dream by the end of 2011 after all.

New Mediaroom clients to bring Microsoft’s TV platform everywhere this year originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Sep 2011 23:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on January 25, 2010 by CyberNet.

For many of us instant messengers have become an important part of our daily lives, and in some cases IM’ing has begun to replace email communication. That’s why I’m always on the lookout for the best messenger application, and for awhile I gave that crown to Digsby… that is until they started to use what I consider to be shady practices to infest computers with adware.

A friend at work introduced me to a new messenger application called Qnext. I was instantly impressed that it was a cross-platform messenger (runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux), and works with all of the major networks including MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, ICQ, Jabber, and Google Talk. The thing is that Qnext goes way beyond just being a messenger. It does all of the voice chat, video conferencing, photo sharing, and file transfers that you want from an app like this, but it is also able to grant remote access to your PC for one of your friends or even stream music from another computer that’s running Qnext. Sound cool? It is.

Here’s a rundown of what Qnext is capable of:

• Universal Messenger – Qnext is the world’s most advanced Universal Instant Messenger, allowing you to send and receive messages with buddies on all of the most popular networks.
• Voice Chat – Just get a microphone or a headset and you’re ready to host Voice Conferences with up to eight Qnext Friends. Qnext is cross-platform. This means, you guessed it, finally Mac, Windows, and Linux users can all jump on a Video or Voice call together!
• Video Conferencing – Just plug in a webcam and a headset, and you are ready to go! Since Qnext video and audio conferencing is completely integrated into your Qnext friends/ buddy list, initiating a video conference is straightforward and easy. All you do is select a user from your ‘friends’ list and start a live video conference with right clicking on a Qnext contact and selecting Conference > Video.
• Photo Sharing – Qnext Photo Sharing is the easiest way to share an unlimited amount of photos with anyone, even if they don’t have Qnext. Just choose your photos, choose your Audience and you’re done; your friends will receive a link that lets them view or download (with permission) your photos from any web browser. They can browse through thumbnails, zoom into photos, and run custom slideshows too!
• File Transfer – Qnext enables users to send or receive files from other Instant Messenger protocols including Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Google Talk, Jabber, iChat, and ICQ. When you Transfer Files between Qnext users you can take a file (s) or folder (s) of any size from your computer and drag it onto a contact name. This initiates a secure P2P file transfer. A file can be 1 MB, 1GB, or your entire C drive!
• File Sharing – Qnext File Sharing is the easiest way to get those huge files where they need to go fast. Put an unlimited amount of files or folders of any size into a File Zone and select your Audience; your specified recipients will get a link in an Email or an Instant Message and be able to download any or all of your shared files at top speeds, from any web browser in the world!
• Remote PC Access – Qnext MyPC is a Remote Access and Application Sharing service included in Qnext. Basically, it lets you give yourself or anyone you specify access to your computer or specific applications from any standard web browser.
• Music Streaming – Qnext Music Streaming is the only way to listen to your entire music Library from anywhere in the world. Choose up to 700,000 songs and select your Audience; we will Streaming your tunes instantly to whoever you want. Whether you want to share with yourself or with your friends, this is the only way to stream your music to any web browser on the planet.

The downside to a messenger like this? Well, it’s Java based which is something I’m typically not a huge fan of. Putting that aside the memory usage is rather high, and ranged from 90MB at startup to somewhere around 150MB after some normal usage. That’s a big number, but given the amount of memory available these days that may not be a concern for you. Netbook users, however, may need to be a bit more conscious with how much memory their applications are using.

Here are a bunch of screenshots from different areas of Qnext:

There is also an iPhone version of Qnext in the works that is working to bring many of these features right to your phone… including the streaming music capability from what I’ve read. The desktop version is free though, and can’t really hurt to give it a try.

Qnext Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Continue reading G-Technology demos dual-drive 8TB G-RAID HDD, with a dash of Thunderbolt

G-Technology demos dual-drive 8TB G-RAID HDD, with a dash of Thunderbolt originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Sep 2011 19:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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During a sitdown with reporters yesterday, NVIDIA Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang discussed his company’s near- and long-term financial outlook, while providing some insight into the chipmaker’s quad-core future. According to Huang, NVIDIA expects to rake in between $4.7 and $5 billion in revenue during fiscal year 2013, with revenue from its mobile chip unit projected to mushroom tenfold by 2015, to a whopping $20 billion. Huang acknowledged that these predictions could be affected by external factors, including the ongoing patent wars between tablet and smartphone manufacturers, but didn’t seem too concerned about their immediate impact. “At this point, it looks like it’s much ado about nothing,” he said. In fact, Huang foresees rather robust growth in the mobile processing sector, estimating that there are about 100 million devices that will need chips this year — a figure that could soon rise to one billion, on the strength of more affordable handsets, efficient ARM processors and the rise of ultra-thin notebooks. And, despite his recent disappointment, Huang expects Android tablets to comprise a full 50 percent of the market in the near future, claiming that NVIDIA’s Tegra chips can currently be found in 70 percent of all slates running Google’s OS, and about half of all Android-based smartphones.

In the short-term, meanwhile, NVIDIA is busy developing its quad-core mobile processors — which, according to the exec, should appear in tablets during the third or fourth quarter of this year (quad-core smartphones, however, may be further down the road). Huang also sees room to develop wireless-enabled, Snapdragon-like processors, thanks to NVIDIA’s recent acquisition of Icera, but he hasn’t given up on GPUs, either, predicting that demand for graphics performance will remain stable. The loquacious CEO went on to divine that Windows 8 will support apps designed for Windows 7 (implying, perhaps, that Microsoft’s Silverlight platform will play a major role in future cloud-based developments), while contending that smaller, “clamshell devices” with keyboards will ultimately win out of over the Ultrabook strategy that Intel has been pursuing. For the moment, though, Huang seems pretty comfortable with NVIDIA’s position in the mobile processing market, citing only Qualcomm as primary competition. “We’re the only people seriously on the dance floor with Qualcomm,” he argued, adding that companies without a solid mobile strategy are “in deep turd.” You can find more of Huang’s insights at the source links below.

NVIDIA CEO sees major growth in mobile processing, quad-core tablets coming this year originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Sep 2011 03:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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