Samsung’s Watch Phone, the S9110, Gets Official
The thinnest wristwatch phone in the world

Samsung S9110 gets officially unveiled as the company’s watch phone

South Korean mobile phone maker Samsung has announced today the launch of its first watch phone, the S9110. Proving to be the thinnest wristwatch handset in the world, the new device comes to the market with a full-touch display, but it seems that its feature list is a quite long, considering the form factor.

The new Samsung S9110 was spotted on the Web only yesterday, when it was reported to have received Bluetooth SIG approval. As stated in our previous story, the phone proves to be a luxurious device. Moreover, it comes to the market in direct competition with the LG GD910, another watch phone developed by a South Korean company.

When compared to the LG device, the Samsung S9110 shows a slimmer body, at only 11.98mm (2mm slimmer than LG’s GD910). In addition, the new handset also features a larger touchscreen display, measuring 1.76 inches, as well as Bluetooth connectivity and speech recognition capabilities, the same as its competitor.

On the other hand, it lacks some of the features present with the LG GD910, including the 3G connectivity support, which means that this little guy won’t make video calls. Even so, it sports Outlook sync capabilities, as well as a built-in speakerphone, which might prove useful in case you are not fond of the Bluetooth headsets that can work with it.

Other details on the device include the fact that it has been crafted from stainless steel, it comes with a scratch-resistant glass that is meant to protect its display, and it features a leather strap. The looks of the S9110 are rather stylish, and it should appeal to a lot of users out there, although the slimmer body came at the expense of 3G functionality.

The new Samsung S9110 is expected to become available for purchase in France starting this month, while its price tag has been set at 450 Euros. Considering the fact that the LG GD910 costs three times as much, it will be interesting to see how the two will go along on the market.

Need For Speed Nitro Set to Be Released on November 17
Exclusive to the Wii and DS

The game will arrive soon enough

Racing games make a lot of money these days, as every gamer wants to unwind by pushing a virtual car to its limits and eventually come out on top and beat his opponents. Without a doubt, one of the most exciting racing franchises is EA’s Need For Speed, which is preparing to receive three new titles in the following months.

We’ve already talked a lot about NFS Shift, and how it will combine both simulator elements but also multiple levels of difficulty, so that everyone can enjoy. Now though, EA talks about NFS Nitro, a purely arcade racer that will be heading to the Nintendo DS and the Wii this fall.

The game, which will see players race through five exotic cities filled with cops, tracks and other opponents, will be available on store shelves come November 17, according to Electronic Arts. Complete with support for a wide variety of controllers, from the Wii Remote to the racing wheel or DS stylus, the title will be a great addition for any Nintendo fan who got bored of Mario Kart.

“Need for Speed Nitro offers fun and intense competition for every type of gamer, “said Joe Booth, senior producer, EA Montreal. “The varied track designs, deep controls, and intuitive drift and nitro mechanics give players something to come back to for months on end. We wanted to fuse together attitude with car culture and the best of arcade racing, to create a new and unique racing experience for the Wii and DS this November.”

But even though Nitro will appear on these slightly underpowered platforms, the amount of visual customizations that can be added is quite large, EA says. The story will also be quite important and will play a big part in combining together the interesting circuits and events from the real-world locations that will be featured in the title.

All in all, NFS Nitro is coming together quite nicely and looks to really adapt the franchise to the Nintendo platforms. Stay tuned for more details as we approach its release date in November.

Windows 7 Build 7600.16385 Is RTM
The leaked build is already available for download in the wild

Windows 7

Microsoft has officially confirmed speculation indicating that Windows 7 Build 7600.16385 was the final development milestone of the next iteration of the Windows client. July 22nd, 2009 is the date when the Redmond company announced that it had released Windows 7 to manufacturing. At the start of this week I was telling you that 6.1.7600.16385 was the RTM Build of Windows 7, and Larry Osterman, Microsoft Principal SDE, provided confirmation of this aspect. Microsoft will offer the successor of Windows Vista to the public on October 22nd. However, the finalized milestone of the operating system will be served to various customer segments
long before the public general availability date, starting with this month, when Microsoft will offer the platform to OEMs.

“RTM officially happens only after sign-off occurs. What happens is a build gets designated as a RTM contender after going through significant testing and meeting our quality bar for RTM. Then, it goes through all the validation checks required for RTM including having all languages of that build completed. If all the validation checks have passed – sign-off for RTM can occur. [On July 22nd] after all the validation checks were met, we signed off and declared build 7600 as RTM,” revealed Brandon LeBlanc, Windows communications manager on the Windows Client Communications Team.

Although Microsoft revealed that Build 7600.16385 RTM’d on July 22nd, the fact of the matter is that reports in the wild already pointed out that the development milestone was the gold release of Windows 7. Furthermore, both the 32-bit and the 64-bit flavors of Windows 7 Build 7600.16385 have already been leaked and made available for download from various third-party sources, all of them illegal, including torrent trackers and warez websites.

“Not only is RTM an important milestone for us – it’s also an important milestone for our partners. Today’s release is the result of hard work and collaboration with our partners in the industry to make Windows 7 a success. We delivered Windows 7 with a predictable feature set on a predictable timetable that allowed OEMs to focus on value and differentiation for their customers,” LeBlanc added.

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Google Wave to Welcome 100,000 More Users This Fall
As the service is getting closer to a releasable state

Wave to be released to a wider audience on Setpember 30

Since Google Wave was announced at the Google I/O 09 Conference in San Francisco almost two months ago, there hasn’t been that much new information on the communication system that aims to replace email, instant messaging and just about any other form of communication and collaboration online today. Development is moving along behind closed doors at a fast pace, though, but only a handful of outside developers have been accepted to the sandbox version available now. But, if you aren’t one of the lucky developers, you may just get your chance soon, as 100,000 more testers will be accepted in fall.

“[We] plan to start extending the Google Wave preview beyond developers on September 30th. This will take place on wave.google.com rather than the separate ‘sandbox’ instance we are currently using, and we plan to involve about 100,000 users. In addition to the developers already using Wave, we will invite groups of users from the hundreds of thousands who offered to help report bugs when they signed up on wave.google.com,” Dan Peterson, product manager, Google Wave, wrote.

Only about 6,000 users have been accepted in the private sandbox, most of them developers working on various Wave apps, with a further 20,000 expected to be invited over the next month. Most of the development since announcing Wave has been on stability and performance, but also on offering a solid set of APIs that will be crucial for the service. Up to the September launch, the focus will continue to be on the basics, speed and stability, with very little work on new features in true Google fashion.

Meanwhile, the developers that do have access to the sandbox are hard at work taking advantage of the Wave APIs with creations like a WordPress plugin that allows users to embed an entire Wave in a WordPress post to provide an interactive experience to their blogs. There is even a RickRoll app, aptly called Rickrolley, which embeds a YouTube video and then automatically reposts it to the Wave if other users delete it. Many apps are mostly tech demos for now, but, as the date Wave becomes available to a greater audience nears, we’re bound to see much more polished apps.

MySpace to Launch New E-Mail Service Today
Some MySpace users will have access to their own e-mail address starting today

MySpace to launch MySpace Mail Service

MySpace will launch its own e-mailing service today, according to PaidContent. Already some users of the social networking giant have been granted access to a personal “@myspace.com” email address, and today’s launch is expected to be very low-key, since the service is still being tested.

It is not yet known when and how the service will be available for all users, but it is expected to be fully functional by this year’s end. Further details regarding inbox size, imap/pop3 capabilities, user interface or anti-spam policies have not yet been disclosed to the public, officials at MySpace refusing any comments on this subject.

With more than 70 of its 130 million users in the United States, it’s not clear whether the service will be available to US members only, or as a standard account package for everyone. Though nothing is sure, it’s a general consensus in the web community that MySpace has great chances of becoming one of the top ten e-mail providers on the Internet, given its very large user base.

After being overtaken for the first time by Facebook in social networking rankings, this last move from MySpace stands out as a counter-punch in the constant fight for users. It could be interpreted as a direct response to the introduction of vanity URLs in Facebook’s services, but few people actually know that this has been well planned during the last couple of months in MySpace’s offices.

This project is so old and had such a momentum swing that even the change in management leadership couldn’t affect its roll-out this week. The developing team that worked on MySpace Mail (unofficial project name) is comprised of renowned experts like Rajit Marwah (former contributor to Microsoft’s Messenger and Hotmail projects) and Jason Hirschhorn (former Sling Media Exec), who were described as “a bunch of ex-Hotmail guys” according to PaidContent.

MySpace is hoping that this new expansion will stop the decline in visitor numbers, something that was quite visible in the last few months. Execs are anticipating that users will rush on the website to reserve their preferred usernames, as did Facebook users in May after the launch of the vanity URLs, doubling the site’s traffic.

No official statement has yet been released from NewsCorp, the official operator of MySpace, nor from MySpace itself.

Google Maps Adds Multiple Searches
A small but very useful feature

Google Maps get a small update

Google Maps can be a very useful tool and for some it has become a daily necessity. But like any other product in the world it isn’t perfect and one of the most common features people were asking for was the possibility to do several searches at the same time. Finally, Google listened to its users and introduced the feature, allowing them to plot several locations in the same search.

“Suppose you would like to drive the famous Road to Hana while you are on vacation on Maui. You search for directions to Hana from where you are staying in Wailea. Since it’s a long drive, you also search for gas stations, so you know where you can fuel up on the way, and supermarkets, so you can pick up snacks for the trip. After the second search, you’ll notice a blue bar at the bottom of the left panel. Click on it to expand the widget, which allows you to turn on both searches as well as your route to Hana,” Nhu Vuong, software engineer, writes, exemplifying the feature.

The different searches are color-coded so they can be easily identified. However, the feature isn’t that easy to spot if you don’t already know about it as it is tucked away in the lower left corner. Still, once you start to get used to it, it will be hard to think how you got along without it. There are more uses for the multiple search feature, for example with local searches. You can now get directions, either by car, walking or even for the transit system where available, and then look for several restaurants or other places in the area to see which one would be closer to your path.

It isn’t a major feature but the sheer functionality and time saving it brings do make a rather important one. Of course, we’re bound to see other small updates like these coming in frequently for Google Maps, judging by the pace at which it has added new features in the past, having just recently added new geolocation capabilities as well as a “What’s here” feature.

Facebook Introduces Email Photo and Video Uploads
To supplement the already comprehensive mobile upload options

Facebook provides a unique email address to upload photos and videos

Photos are a big part of the Facebook experience and the photo sharing service is one of the most used features on the site. There are already a number of ways to upload those photos to the site either directly or from mobile devices or remote locations using MMS or Facebook apps for Blackberry, iPhone or other devices. And now the social
networking site is adding a new option, allowing users to upload photos with email.

“[The personal upload email] is a unique email address where you can send photos and videos from anywhere you have email access,” Sameer Moidu, software engineer for the mobile team at Facebook, wrote. “After you attach your photos or videos to an email, you can include a subject line that will be used as the caption for the photos or videos you upload. If you’re uploading more than one photo or video in the email, the captions will be the same for all of them. You can always edit the captions later by logging into your Facebook account.”

Facebook may be the largest social network in the world but its size allows it to compete in areas where it doesn’t necessarily have a direct interest or presence in, like photo sharing. When you think of photo sharing services, names like Flickr, Picasa or Photobucket come to mind but, in actual numbers, Facebook is the biggest photo hosting and sharing service in the world with more than 10 billion photos uploaded and a significant advantage in the number of visitors. And this without even trying as Facebook’s photo service isn’t a separate product.

Flickr recently introduced a similar option, giving users a special email address to upload their photos to the site. Facebook doesn’t have any limitation to the number of photos or videos you can upload with email but says that email providers may impose size and number restrictions. Files uploaded with email will go to the “Mobile Upload” album.

Firefox 3.0.12 Available for Download
From Mozilla

Firefox

The past week, Mozilla released the first patch for Firefox 3.5 concomitantly with the candidates for version 3.0.12 of the mid-2008 release of its open-source browser. As of July 21st, 2009, Mozilla wrapped up Firefox 3.0.12, and the security and stability update is currently available for download. End users running version 3.0 of Mozilla’s open-source browser can grab the refresh manually via the links at the bottom of this
article, or as an update through the automated infrastructure that delivers patches to Firefox.

“As part of Mozilla’s ongoing security and stability update process, Firefox 3.0.12 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free download,” revealed Samuel Sidler, Quality Assurance engineer at Mozilla. “We strongly recommend that all Firefox 3.0.x users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3.0.x, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.”

According to Mozilla, version 3.0.12 of Firefox is designed to deliver resolves for several security and stability problems. At the same time, there are also specific bugs that have been fixed with the release: “Fixed an issue introduced in Firefox 3.0.11, where Firefox would occasionally freeze when accessing the Java plug-in on Windows XP. Fixed an issue introduced in Firefox 3.0.11, where Firefox would not save data properly when a user stored their home directory on a remote location using AFP. On Mac OS X, fixed an issue where certain AppleScripts failed to return the proper information,” Mozilla noted.

Firefox 3.5, the successor of Firefox 3.0, was released to web at the end of June 2009. In under two months the browser was downloaded more than 35 million times, according to Mozilla. As far as Firefox 3.0 is concerned, the company is planning the next stability and security update for August 2009. August 4 is the proposed date for Firefox 3.0.13 code freeze.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5.1&os=win?=en-US