Sony Xperia P Approved by FCC, Heading to Various Carriers

Sony has already confirmed it will introduce its entire Xperia NXT lineup of phones in the United States in Q2 2012.

However, the official announcement doesn’t mention anything regarding the carriers that will offer the Xperia smartphones. 

There’s also no info on the exact release dates for any of the three devices that are expected to hit shelves in the US: Xperia S, Xperia U and Xperia P.

The only thing that we know for certain is that Brightstar will bring these Xperia NXT devices to various carriers and authorized retailers in the country.

Until more details on the upcoming availability of these smartphones emerge, the folks at Engadget report that the Sony Xperia P has just received FCC’s (Federal Communications Commission) approval, which suggests that we’re closer to an official announcement than we might think.

Unfortunately, there is still no additional carrier-related information available, so this one might be released by more than one operator in the States.

Unveiled back in February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Sony Xperia P will be shipped with Android 2.3 Gingerbread platform at launch. 

Although the Japanese company confirmed all smartphones in the Xperia NXT series will be upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich soon after launch, there’s no telling when exactly these updates will be pushed.

Hardware-wise, the Xperia P is less-featured than the Xperia S, but can still be considered a powerful device. The phone embeds a 1 GHz dual core processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal memory, but no microSD card slot for memory expansion.

The phone’s 4.0-inch LED-backlit LCD capacitive touchscreen display integrates Sony’s new “WhiteMagic” technology, which makes it perfectly visible under strong sunlight.

Last but not least, Xperia P boasts an impressive 8-meapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash, 3D sweep panorama, image stabilization and full HD (1080p) video recording. There’s also a secondary VGA camera for video calls.

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Script: Wookmark

Wookmark is a jQuery plugin created by the Wookmark.com team to power up their website's main page, a resizable multi-column grid layout.

The plugin works by automatically shifting objects from one column to another, so they perfectly fit with one another.

Also, if the width of the viewport (browser visible area, screen) is modified, so is the entire layout, by adding and removing columns, and implicitly moving objects around again.

To better understand this effect, either go to Wookmark.com and take a look at it, or download the plugin and play with the included demo. A similar effect can also be seen on Pinterest as well.

Wookmark is available under the MIT License, so you can use it any way you want. Development is done on GitHub.

Download Wookmark here.

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New MacBook Airs Prepared for June Launch, Chinese Paper Says

A Chinese newspaper is dishing out information about the upcoming laptop releases from Apple, Sony, HP and Toshiba, mentioning that a MacBook Air refresh from Apple is expected this June.

Hit-and-miss publication DigiTimes is citing a Chinese-language Apple Daily report as saying that “Taiwan-based notebook ODMs expected ultrabooks to contribute 10% of their shipments in the second quarter as notebook vendors such as Apple, Sony, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Toshiba are all set to mass produce or launch new ultrabooks in the quarter.”

The report continues, specifically mentioning that “Apple's new MacBook Air reportedly will launch in June.” The sources are unnamed.

Sony's ultrabooks are to ship this month, the paper said, while HP’s and Toshiba’s are set to enter mass production any day now.

DigiTimes is not at its first report citing Chinese sources with alleged inside information regarding Apple’s products refreshes.

In fact, the Taiwanese trade publication churns up these reports on a daily basis, and while sometimes it presents facts with pinpoint accuracy, there are just as many times that the opposite occurs.

With that out of the way, there is good indication the Apple is, in fact, refreshing its notebooks this summer. Whether it’s the MacBook Pro gaining an Air-like design, or the MacBook Air getting Pro-level specs, it’s all going to be geared towards the Ivy Bridge processors coming from Intel.

Howtoarena.com quoted a “reliable tipster” this week as saying that Apple is ramping up production of thinner 15-inch version of the MacBook Pro with Core i5 and Core i7 Ivy Bridge processors. The laptops are said to ship as early as this month.

The same report said the new processors are also making their way inside the company’s all-in-one desktop solution, the iMac. The 2012 models are expected to arrive “in the June-July time frame,” the report said.

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Nokia 808 PureView Gallery and Guide Unveiled

Nostalgic Nokia fans who are still into Symbian smartphones will have to wait one more month for the Nokia 808 PureView. The smartphone is expected to arrive sometime in May for no less than 450 EUR (590 USD) outright.

Until then, the Finnish company decided to sweeten the wait by releasing a Nokia 808 PureView gallery for those who want to take a closer look at the phone before it arrives on the market.

The main selling point of the smartphone is the 41-megapixel rear camera, which Nokia claims is the best on the market.

Featuring Carl Zeiss optics and Nokia’s new pixel oversampling technology, the phone’s camera can combine up to seven pixels into one “pure” pixel, hence the name of the device.

In addition, Nokia claims that the 808 PureView is the world’s first video recording device that allows users to capture clips without any audio distortions whatsoever. Check out the pictures below for a closer look.

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Eurocom Panther 4.0 Notebook Gets Xeon E5-2690 8-Core CPU

There was a time when describing a laptop as a desktop replacement meant it was as powerful as it could get, but Eurocom seems to have gone beyond that level.

The Panther 4.0 mobile computer is a machine that we have already described as simply the best notebook there is.

One would think that it would take a while before the company managed to outdo itself, but that does not appear to be the case.

Seeing that it reached the top, more or less, allowed by consumer-oriented components, Eurocom simply went into server territory.

The result is a Panther 4.0 that uses the 8-core Intel Xeon E5-2690 processor (20 MB cache, 2.9 GHz clock speed)

As if that wasn't enough on its own, the company also tossed in massive storage and random access memory capacities.

“Now supporting Universal Extensible Firmware Interface, the Eurocom Panther 4.0 can surpass the limitations of the 2TB install/boot disc and fully take advantage of its 4 hard drive configuration. Putting 4 x 1TB HDD into a RAID 5 configuration to get a redundant 3TB boot disc,” said Mark Bialic, Eurocom president.

“Also worthy of note is the possibility of 4 x 600GB Intel SSD 540 series drives, adding up to 2.4TB or using Seagate’s latest iteration of its Momentus XT hybrid drives, you can get up to 3TB of blazing fast speed.”

Really, the only thing not part of the beast is a discrete graphics adapter, but it's not like a server actually needs something like that (and there are doubtlessly such options anyway).

“With such massive amounts of RAM, storage, redundancy and processing power available, the Panther 4.0 is a great tool for virtualization and server class environments. This is the ultimate tool for Engineering Companies to combine with our Mobile Workstations to create mobile engineering teams that can be deployed on customers sites. A desktop component-driven mobile server offers many advantages to traditional laptops” said Mark Bialic.

The Eurocom Panther 4.0 measures 419 (W) x 286 (D) x 57.9-62.1 (H) mm (16.76 x 11.44 x 2.31-2.48 inches) and will sell for a massive amount of money, probably more than $3,500 / 2,687 Euro.

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You Can Watch All High-Quality YouTube Videos in 3D Now

3D video is somewhat of a gimmick, but movies that leverage the technology properly can really be enhanced by the new "dimension." Of course, 3D has come out of theaters and made it onto regular TVs and even online.

YouTube has had support for 3D videos for a while now, but it's important to realize that not all 3D videos are created equal. For example, few videos are "true" 3D videos, shot with stereoscopic cameras.

Many though are converted, from regular videos shot with regular cameras. 

That's the way most Hollywood "3D" movies are made, the bad ones in particular and, if you've been unfortunate enough to see one you may have noticed that there is a clear difference between a true 3D and a converted one.

Still, if done with care and, importantly, science, even a converted video can have a noticeable and pleasing 3D effect.

YouTube has been enabling users to convert their videos to 3D, if they so wanted, in a beta program. The program is now open to all YouTube users. Any short-form video that's uploaded in 1080p can now be converted to 3D, meaning you can enjoy quite a lot of videos on your 3D TV.

"You can select 3D viewing in the Quality settings (click on the gear icon) on the YouTube player, then pop on your 3D glasses and see YouTube in another dimension. Here’s one of our favorites," YouTube explained.

YouTube explained how it's able to convert any high-quality video on the fly. For one, it's got the processing power to do it, but that's just part of the equation. The more important part is the algorithm used for the conversion.

YouTube boasts that it's been working on improving the quality of the algorithm. For example, YouTube analyzes all the true 3D videos available to determine how to extract depth from a monoscopic video. The site is confident enough in the technology at this point to enable it for all videos.

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HUD Glasses Project Also Confirms Google[x] Lab for Advanced Research

Google revealed that it's working on augmented reality glasses partly to put an end to the leaks around the project. Info was still getting out and, as the team moved to the next phase of the project, testing the glasses in real-world situations, it would become impossible to keep it quiet anymore.

Of course, the positive PR effect is certainly nice, especially after the last few months in which Google has been getting hammered.

But along with the glasses, Google also confirmed another widely spread rumor, its Google X lab, which we now know is called Google[x]. The division is tasked with experimenting with wild technologies and houses all shoot-for-the-moon projects at the company.

The augmented reality glasses are the first project to be made public, but they’re hardly the only thing Google[x] is working on. Self-driving cars is another of these projects, but it predates Google[x] even though it's a part of it now.

But Google[x] is rumored to be working on things as far-fetched, or "long term" as space elevators.

The Google[x] Project Glass announcement is signed by Babak Parviz, Steve Lee and Sebastian Thrun.

Babak Parviz is an expert on bionanotechnology, self-assembly and nanofabrication. His expertise is what will make the display on these glasses a reality. He recently built a contact lens with an integrated display.

Steve Lee is a Google product manager formerly associated with its location app Latitude, but he now works on Google[x]. Finally, Sebastian Thrun is a world expert on robotic vehicles and is the one responsible for the self-driving cars.

While his name is not part of the announcement, Google cofounder Sergey Brin leads the Google[x] effort and was heavily involved with the HUD glasses project. After a string of copy-cat and me-too products, it's nice to see Google do something no one else is doing, for a change.

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Colorful Officially Intros iGame GTX680-2G Kudan Graphics Card

Last week we spotted the most powerful rendition of the GeForce GTX 680 graphics card that Colorful had come up with and, now, that very product is ready and waiting to be bought.

The name of the video controller is iGame GTX680-2G Kudan and the price was not specified, although we guess it will be higher than $499 / 499 Euro.

We also aren't sure why companies seem to be putting that “i” before their product names nowadays. Imitating Apple probably, for better or worse.

We'll get the specs out of the way first: the board is a dual-BIOS beast.

One of the BIOS chips runs the card at 1,059 MHz (GPU) / 6,008 MHz (2 GB memory), while the other one drives everything higher, to 1,110 MHz / 6,208 MHz. A switch on the card toggles between them.

For the sake of comparison, the reference adapter operates at 1008 MHz and 6,008 MHz, respectively.

Colorful based its monster on the Silver Plated Technology, which gives the PCB (printed circuit board) an 8-phase native VRM and, after installing the Power-kit, an extra six phases.

The power provided by two 8-pin PCI Express connectors is needed to make it work, which means that host PCs will require very powerful PSUs.

For those who want even more info on this matter, the VRM has a modulation range of 0.1MHz to 1.5MHz and is controlled by an uP6208AM PWM chip.

Something stands out more than all the above, though: the cooler, a three-slot creature made of ten 6mm heatpipes, multiple heatsinks, three fans and a 3mm steel plate for the back of the PCB.

Finally, there are three sets of accessories to go with the Colorful iGame GTX680-2G Kudan.

One of them, Air-Kit, is held together by five detachable heatpipes, which can be installed for the main heatsink. The second one, the aforementioned Power-Kit, is the one the power users will like best.

Finally, there is the Color-Kit, which is essentially a collection of acrylic paints and brushes. It lets users paint the shell of the cooler.

Sales will start in Asia at first, with other regions following later on. Just how late is something we'll have to wait and see.

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Three New 450 Mbps Wireless Networking Products Released by NEC

This week will mark the arrival of the Aterm WL450NU-AG, the Aterm WR9500N and Aterm WR9300N in stores, in Japan at least.

Resulting from a collaboration between NEC and Access Technica, the three devices are meant to enable wireless connectivity at the speed of 450 Mbps.

The Aterm WL450NU-AG is an 802.11n USB network adapter that transmits 450 Mbps over the 5 GHz band, although 2.4 GHz is supported too (different speeds though).

The Aterm WR9300N is a bundle between a 2.4 GHz 802.11n/a/b/g-compliant router and the Aterm WL450NU-AG.

As for the Aterm WR9500N, it is a bundle of the Aterm WL450NU-AG and a 5 GHz / 2.4 GHz 802.11n/a/b/g-compliant wireless router.

The Aterm WL450NU-AG will sell for 6,000 JPY ($73 / 55.66 Euro), while the Aterm WR9500N has a price of 10,000 JPY ($121 / 93 Euro). The WR9300N is a bit cheaper than the latter.

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Weaker NVIDIA GK104 Chips Used in GeForce GTX 670 Ti

We've seen more of the GeForce GTX 680 graphics card than most people probably need, and now we get to learn something about the second Kepler-based adapter(s). 

The GeForce GTX 680 is the high-end video card powered by the GK104 GPU (graphics processing unit). 

As it happens, the same GPU will be used in the making of the GTX 670 and GTX 670 Ti, a pair of upper mainstream video controllers. 

For those wondering why NVIDIA would waste fine GPUs instead of pushing them to the max, the answer is simple: the company actually doesn't. 

What is really going on is that not all chips come out of the assembly lines fully functional. 

As such, by fusing off the parts that don't work, the GPU can be given a new brand and role. 

Really, it isn't all that different from how Intel (and Advanced Micro Devices for that matter) salvage flawed CPUs. 

What we have here is a report stating that the GTX 670 Ti will use recycled GK104 unit clocked at around 900 MHz. 

Seven SMX clusters will be available, instead of the maximum 8 (192 units per cluster), as well as 112 texture units (TUs), 32 raster units and four graphics processing clusters (GPC). 

As for the rest of the card assets, GTX 670 (Ti) will possess 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM at a frequency of 1 GHz QDR (5 GHz effective) and a memory interface of 256 bits, leading to a video memory bandwidth of about 160 GB/s. 

Keep in mind that the clocks are speculation only. NVIDIA may very well settle on different final numbers. 

The GeForce GTX 670 and GTX 670 Ti will battle AMD's Radeon HD 7950, and will have prices of about $50-100 lower (38-76 Euro). That means that buyers will have to part with $349-399 (266-304 Euro according to exchange rates). Announcements should happen this May (2012).

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