Today, the world mourns the loss of a true visionary and a tech legend. Steve Jobs passes away at the age of 56, only few weeks after stepping down from Apple’s CEO position, leaving 317 Apple patents listed under his name and an amazing cultural experience we will all remember for the rest of our lives. Here are some of the tributes from those who knew him:

President Obama:

Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.

By building one of the planet’s most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity.  By making computers personal and putting the internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun.  And by turning his talents to storytelling, he has brought joy to millions of children and grownups alike. Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last.  Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.

The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to Steve’s wife Laurene, his family, and all those who loved him.

Apple CEO, Tim Cook:

Team,

I have some very sad news to share with all of you. Steve passed away earlier today.

Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.

We are planning a celebration of Steve’s extraordinary life for Apple employees that will take place soon. If you would like to share your thoughts, memories and condolences in the interim, you can simply email rememberingsteve@apple.com.

No words can adequately express our sadness at Steve’s death or our gratitude for the opportunity to work with him. We will honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much.

Please hit the break to read even more tributes, along with Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address video that would truly inspire and motivate one and all.

[Apple]

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Update: Google Pac-Man lives on! Now permanently available at http://www.google.com/pacman

[Google]

Steve Jobs has just posted a defying letter on Apple’s website, where he explicitly explains the reasons why his company has eventually decided to ditch Flash and not to support it on Cupertino devices, such as  iPad, iPhone and the iPod Touch. In general, what Steve Jobs says in here is that the use of Adobe’s most favorable Flash platform is considered in his point of view obsolete and literally belongs to the past. In his words “Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice.” and more about that from Jobs: “the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.”

But that’s just the bottom of the line of Steve Jobs thoughts. If you break them down to very small pieces, they might fall through the grid of pure rational argumentation. In a nutshell, the father of the iPhone claims that Flash technology is not open. In other words, Adobe’s Flash products, even if widely available, are still controlled by Adobe itself and not by any other entities – meaning, Flash is a closed system. As for the lack of “full web” experience allegations in Apple products, says Jobs that the new web is adjusting itself to Apple’s latest standards and for that matter big websites like Youtube, Netflix, Facebook et al already supporting the cause. As for “Reliability, security and performance” Steve thinks that Flash is the main reason for Mac crash and argues that Adobe has never been able to provide good Flash plug-in/add-on for Apple mobile phones. Steve Jobs also refers to the problem of fast battery drain and the pesky multi-tasking issues that Flash can actually cause.

And then there’s “the most important reason” why Apple has given up on Flash. Apparently, Apple doesn’t want letting “a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform”, or in our words, Apple wants to give more freedom and direct access to its unrelenting developers, and willing to do so over Adobe’s personal expenses. So there you go guys, a thorough and sincere letter, containing  Steve Jobs thoughts. Jump straight after the break, read it, and then decide which side to support.

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Hewlett-Packard has just announced that it would buy Palm for a staggering price of $1.2 billion dollars, roughly about $5.70 per share of common stock. The merge and acquisition, which are planned to close by July 31, can give the Palo Alto computer giant a great opportunity to get a bigger slice from the hot and trendy smartphones market, valued at $100bn alone and with annual rapid growth of 20% . HP executive vice president Todd Bradley said that “Palm’s innovative operating system provides an ideal platform to expand HP’s mobility strategy and create a unique HP experience spanning multiple mobile connected devices” and also added that “Between smartphones, slates, and potentially netbooks, there are a lot of opportunities here.” And he’s right, just think about the endless potential  possibilities of having Palm’s stunning WebOS integrated in HP’s future multi-touch devices, whether these are mobile phones, tablets or other portable machines – it’s HUGE and HP, in our opinion, has clearly taken a few significant steps in the right direction, especially now when strident voices, complaining about a sluggish HP Slate performance, start floating around – WebOS can definitely improve speed reaction dramatically -  and someone at the HP headquarters has probably figured this one pretty well. Brian Humphries, HP’s Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development quoted saying “our intent is to double down on WebOS”. That’s very important, considering the months of speculations where Palm was desperately looking for a buyer. And given the fact that HP is getting over 1500 patents that Palm currently owns (that probably has considerable value as well, isn’t it?), along with a very good team of young talented engineers and one relentless chairman and CEO, Jon Rubinstein, who is expected to remain with the company another few years long, this very complex deal that few months back, could easily have seemed impossible, can all of a sudden turn into a nice and promising bargain. PR announcement after the break.

Update: Digitimes says that HP Taiwan VP, Monty Wong has officially confirmed a webOS tablet to go live somewhere around October of this year. Stay tuned for more to come.

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Twitter has just launched its latest Anywhere platform which lets developers start developing their own Twitter apps and install them on their websites right away. First introduced at SXSWi, by Twitter’s founder @EV, the new package provides embedding tools and new integration methods, delivered by Twitter itself, that aims to increase its massively growing traffic with more engagement and more users to take part in the service, sign-in, connect, and share their feeds. It’s literally paralleled to Facebook connect, if you still try to figure out what it means – the more you connect, the more active you are the more buzz created and more publishers are getting happy out of this thing.

You get four features in Twitter’s Anywhere package: Hovercards, Connect, Sign-In, and the Tweetbox, with no special need to open new accounts or sign for a different service – simply use your very own Twitter username and password to log. This way, you will help Twitter to increase interaction between websites and tweet messages in a way that eventually would make the service even stronger.

Twitter says that popular websites such as AdAge, Amazon, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, Disqus, eBay, Foursquare, Gawker, Google, Gowalla, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Hunch, Mashable, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, WSJ.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube have already pledged to the new service and about to install its tools onboard.

We’ve already installed the HoverCards feature into our website. Just move your mouse over the following names and see how it works (feel free to follow as well): @niron, @EV, @Scobleizer, @Biz, @Anywhere.

Whether you do agree with Steve Jobs saying his new tablet machine – The iPad – is “magical” and “revolutionary” or whether you don’t, one thing’s for sure, you can’t argue with numbers – and the numbers, according to Apple itself, are pretty impressive. Apparently, over 300,000 iPads were sold in the US on launch day alone, on April 3rd that is, including both retail sales (Best Buy and Apple Stores)  and pre-ordered deliveries to customers across the States – that’s 30,000 more, compared to iPhone’s 270,000 pieces that Cupertino sold (in first 30 hours). In addition, Apple says that iPad users already downloaded over a million apps from its App Store and over 250,000 e-books were downloaded as well from Apple’s iBook store during first day of launch – that’s an average of…”more than three apps and close to one book within hours of unpacking their new iPad”, says Jobs himself. Can they hold up with those numbers? Time would tell.

Meanwhile, make sure you check out our long list of Free Cool iPad Games.

Update: Now we learn that Apple has sold one million ipads over the past 28 days of existence, with 1.5 million ebooks already been downloaded, joining the 12 million apps that users have snagged. Full PR after the break.

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It looks great, it sports a 10-inch capacitive display, runs a powerful Tegra 2 chipset and called Harmony. That’s pretty much what we  know about MSI’s new Android tablet that recently showed up at the CES show in Vegas. The platform is actually an Android 2.1 and the slate is literally tagged as an E-book machine.  It has both WiFi and 3G WWAN connectivity included, and apparently, wants to be “your office to go” solution.  Check out the videos we’ve added half past the break.

Update: MSI finally gets official with the new 10-inch Android-powered tablet, we’ve recently bumped into at CES 2010 in Vegas. And despite the scarce details at the moment, we do know it would pack a Tegra 2 chipset under the hood, and that buyers will get to choose between different “flexible” configurations. Availability is yet to be determined , but prices are said to be high, around the $500 barrier. Stay tuned.

[via phandroid]

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We’re not used to such big players, the kind that recently announced by Aluratek at the CES show in Vegas, but that’s probably the fun part of discovering new gadgets, isn’t it? Well, maybe, depends who you’re asking and how portable it is. This one, the 8.9-inch Cinepal media player, doesn’t look so handy, especially when it’s hard to determine whether it’s a digiframe, a tablet, a PMP or just an e-reader. The answer probably falls somewhere in between. Anyway, you can get it next month for $179, that will grant you 4GB of internal storage, together with an SD / SDHC expansion slot, a 6 hours of battery time and wide range of codecs compatibility, including DivX DRM, AVI, VOB, DAT, MPEG, H.264, MKV, MP3, WMA and JPEG files support. It would also run your 720p video files wherever you go, but frankly, we can’t imagine ourselves taking it for a journey or a quick short walk. PR stuff after the jump.

[via laptopmag]

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The King of Pop is dead, but his legacy is live N kickin’, and it seems like it’d get even bigger as time goes by. One company that has recognized Jakson’s extremely attractive merchandising potential is Sony Japan that recently announced it would release a limited edition This is it! package of the king that suppose to include a slim PS3 console, boasting a 120GB storage and a nifty Blu-ray drive. This special pack – a result of the collaboration between Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment Japan – is set to go live on January 27, either in Black or White colors, priced at ¥33,500 (about $361), nothing a fan can’t afford these days.

[via SCEJ]

We would like to wish all of our readers a very happy, peaceful and inspiring New Year

Tablets, Androids, portable devices, we keep hearing them a lot, everywhere we go, in/off cyber world. The latest, is from Camagni, a Taiwanese group that brings us the Webstation, an Android-based tablet device which sports a 7-inch 800 x 480 glass touchscreen, paired with a 624MHz Marvell PXA303 processor, 128MB of RAM, 256MB of internal storage, a microSD card slot (expandable up to 8GB capacity) and a nice slick whitish frame, that comfortably fits the palm of your hand. Communication wise, you’ll find the Webstation equipped up to date with 3G WWAN, 802.11b/g WiFi and even a GPS navigation system, that was tucked in order to guide your way out there. Price suppose to stand at $399 in Japan while availability dates are still a mystery – although we do know – that basic white flavor is not alone and Pink or Black hues will hit the shelves as well. Hands on videos were added after the jump, hit them up and catch with the updates.

Update1: Turns out you can pre-order the Webstation Android tablet right now from Camagni’s online store, equipped with that 7-inch glass touchscreen, a 624MHz Marvell PXA303 and 256MB of flash storage, for $389 in case you’re one of those “early birds” or $399 if you decide to do a thorough market research before getting now.

Update2: Looks like Camangi’s Android-based Webstation has finally landed on US shores and the guys at Gear Diary have taken it for a series of unboxing shots. Hit the break to see the results (third video).

Update3: It seems the guys at Laptop aren’t pleased with Camangi’s  performance, stating it’s sluggish and a bit limited at the moment. Design wise, they were very satisfied.

Update4: Apparently, Camagni just pushed down the Webstation price from $399 to only $275. Now, Whether it’s the fear from Apple’s iPad which suppose to come out next month or the growing toll of Android tablets available around, hard to tell – but it’s up to you to decide – we’d like to see some software and hardware improvements before trying it out.

[via engadget]

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While most Nvidia ion-based netbooks are scheduled to go live at the end of this year, HP seems to be the one to take matters into its own hands and be the first to hit the scene with a graphics-boosted netbook device. The model we’re talking about is the Mini 311, which recently showed up on HP’s online shop with an HD compatible 11.6-inch (1,366 x 768) display, Atom N270 processor, an integrated 802.11b/g wireless LAN, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive and built-in VGA and HDMI ports for external image use. Microsoft’s Windows XP stuffed inside to handle this powerful system, while a near-full-size (92%) keyboard, three USB hubs and Altec Lansing speakers are all part of the deal. Starting price looks pretty attractive, at $399, but any add-on will set you back an extra cash. Thus, an Atom N280, Bluetooth and 802.11n will charge you $25 each, while white flavors are listed for another $20 and 3G WWAN connection is set for $125 more. Nevertheless, we still think it’s a good bargain, especially when it runs a 720p flash video flawlessly. See for yourself after the break.

Update1: It’s not that we needed any further proof to make us believe that HP’s Mini 311 netbook is capable handling advanced high-def media files better than others, but just in case, here are some facts – risen from LaptopMag’s benchmark tests – to maintain our claims: on the PCMark 05, the 311 has scored 1,917 points, that’s 500 points above the average, while the PCMark 06 review has given the 311 a 1,386 score, which is  1,200 on top of the ordinary and just about the same score as a MacBook Air. Very impressive, isn’t it?

Update2: If you have any plans on getting one, the guys at MyHPMini discovered interesting details from HP’s service manual. In general, the 311 will soon be out in different Windows 7  versions, including Windows 7 Starter, Basic, Premium, and Professional flavors. Additionally, you’ll also get a chance to upgrade your netbook and stuff inside cool specs like:

• NVIDIA ION, the FULL platform, only with Windows 7
• 1GB RAM (plus 1GB on-board ram), total 2GB
• 2GB RAM (plus the 1GB on-board), total 3GB
• 80GB Solid-State-Drive (SSD)
• 250GB Hard Drive, 5400rpm, only with Windows 7
• 320GB Hard Drive, 5400rpm, only with Windows 7

Now that’s what we’re looking for.

[HP]

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[digg-me]

Twitter Guide for Newcomers

Enjoy reading !

You can find me at  http://twitter.com/niron.

You can also read the PDF version in here.

Remember the Eee PC T91 tablet netbook that showed up at the CES show back in January? Turns out Asus has even a newer version, which was recently introduced in Cebit and answers the name T91GO. This latest tablet device sports a slim and impressive design, together with an 8.9-inch swivel touchscreen, 1GB of RAM, 16GB SSD and Atom Z520 processor. But one thing that distinguish the T91GO from its older version is the integrated quadband 3G HSPA modem that lets you hook up to the internet from any place you want, without the need to be around hotspots. Other than that, you get the same WiFi / Bluetooth connections, battery that can provide up to 5hrs time and Windows XP, combined with a designated Eee PC Touch UI. Still no word on priceor availability, but you can checkout the video from UMPC Portal after the break.

[via Eee-PC.de]

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For many of us, Gachapin (Dinosaur) and Mukku (Bigfoot) are totally strangers, but for the vast majority of Japanese kids they are huge TV stars, that conquer their screens for long hours. To leverage these characters, Kohjinsha and Bandai Creation have decided to bring the two into an ML-based netbook edition, boasting a vivid green chassis, combined with a whitish keyboard. Other than that, it’s just another regular netbook with Intel ATOM N270 processor inside, 1GB of RAM, 160GB HDD, 8.9-inch 1024 x 600 display, a 1.3 megapixel webcam, WiFi connection and the usual outputs. Interestingly, this new device will sport a 1Seg Digital TV Tuner, to let the children watch their heroes on the new lappy, rather than your telly. Still no word about price or availability but we like the idea of teenagers hanging with netbooks, instead of just books.

Update: Shockingly, you’ll have to spend ¥79,800 ($866) in order to get this one for your kids.

[via akihabaranews]

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We know many users who wish to have a simple mp3 player, the kind you take in your bag wherever you go and simply connect whenever you want, without any tricks or complexity, just pure music. For this target specifically, Korean manufacturer MyRacer has launched its latest Lisse S10 player which packs a four lines 128 x 64 OLED display, together with an FM tuner, a microphone, 2GB/4GB internal storage and a four-way pad to navigate the menu. Although we have no details concerning price or availability, this small 46x40x10mm DAP is promised to be released in a wide batch of colors to choose from, so stay tuned.

[via gmp3]

We’re not sure either it’s just a holidays gift or recession circumstances, but Korean company, iRiver, has decided to cut the Spinn‘s expropriated prices and make them more affordable for the audiophiles. Thus, you get a chance to buy the 4GB player for $189.99 ($10 cut) or the 8GB version for $229.99 ($20 cut). Expect changes to take place starting from today.

Update: it seems these price cuts will include the E100 and the LPlayer.

[via Crave]

AMD is expected to announce a break up tomorrow morning, due to growing demand for independent, leading-edge foundry production capabilities and increasing R&D costs. According to sources, the giant chipmaker will be splitting up into two companies, as the first one will be responsible for chips designing and the second, for the manufacturing. Additionally, the company has issued a PR release, saying:

“AMD and Advanced Technology Investment Company of Abu Dhabi to Create New Leading-Edge Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Mubadala increases investment in financially-stronger AMD, which is simultaneously unlocking the value of its manufacturing assets”

The meaning is that Advanced Technology Investment Company will strengthen AMD’s financial position by purchasing 55.6 percent of The Foundry (manufacturing company), for $5.1 billion dollar, and both sides will cooperate together, in order to create a clear stand alone leader in global semiconductor manufacturing, that will be able to equally confront Intel. Stay tuned.

[AMD]

Online digital music market is getting warmed up, as US retail giant, Best Buy, announces it will acquire Napser for an astonishing $121 million price tag. The transaction is set to be accomplished in Q4 of this year and we have no doubt it was carried out in order to try snatching a substantial share from iTunes’ market dominance. Napster allows its 708,000 subscribers to access an unlimited library of music or using the “Napster Mobile” platform, on their mobile phones, for a small monthly fee of $15. Having said that, the company has never turned a profit, during its long years of existence.

Best Buy president Brian Dunn confirms the company’s desire to expand Napster services and to use “Napster’s capabilities and digital subscriber base to reach new customers with an enhanced experience for exploring and selecting music and other digital entertainment products over an increasing array of devices.” Be sure it’s just the beginning and we expect more developments to take place in the near future. We do hope this move will increase the competition and at the end of the day, will be profitable for the consumers.

[via ZDNet]

Although earphones are no stranger to Logitech, the company has announced it’s aquiring US-based company Ultimate Ears, a market leader in custom in-ear monitors for on-stage musicians and iPod or iPhone consumers. The $34 million price tag is fairly reasonable, as it gives Logitech the abillity to strongly penetrate the mp3 players niche with quality in-ear earbuds, and to expand its portfolio of digital audio products. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in August.

[via Ultimate Ears]