"Regardless of what internal opinion of the Atom processor is at Intel, the roadmap for the processor is moving forward and the next stop is the dual core Atom 330 desktop processor. Like its Atom 230 sibling, the Atom 330 is based on Intel's 45nm fab process and will incorporate HyperThreading technology -- in the case of the Atom 330, the processor will appear to have four cores within the operating system. According to Register Hardware, the dual core Atom 330 processors will be soldered onto Intel's upcoming 945GX-based D945GCLF2 motherboard which supports up to 2GB of DDR2 memory."

Normally I'd be excited about this, but just last week I placed a pre-order for the MSI Wind with a 6-cell battery...and now this new dual-core CPU looks like it would be pretty sweet. Although it's hard to say what would happen to the power consumption and pricing of the MSI Wind if it came with one of these CPUs. My personal circumstances aside, it's great to see more performance coming in these ultra-low power processors.

"Announced alongside the Archos 5, the Archos 7 is in the same class of devices, except that it boast an even larger display and storage (320GB max). The display resolution stays the same (800x480), that might be great for those who think that such a resolution is too small on a 5" device. That might make the touch-interface even easier to use as well. Just like its smaller sibling, it supports WiFi and 3.5G, making it a potent wireless device. Other than that, they pretty much share the same capabilities."

Prices range from $350 to $550 depending on the screen size and the drive capacity. If you like the tablet options of something like the Nokia N8xx series, but long for more storage and can live with a little less ability to customize, this could be a sweet device.

Edit: The above quote references 3.5G for some reason when it really appears they mean that it has a 3.5mm headphone jack. Good catch Dyvim. Or them mean 3G. Thanks lobber. Or maybe they mean both!

Taking a play right out of HP's handbook, Dell is now offering a variety of Mike Ming customized notebooks. I'd never heard of Mike Ming before today, but he has some great looking designs. Price wise, it looks like a Studio 15 Mike Ming starts at $819 USD, and the pricing goes north of $1000 when you get into the Studio 17 Extreme edition. Check out the Dell Web site for all the designs - which is your favourite? Video after the break.

"JOBO AG announces the addition of a new ultra stylish and very portable digital picture frame to the growing JOBO family of digital picture frames. Featuring a 3.5-inch screen, the new pocket-sized JOBO S4 Mobile photo Display is the most compact and lightweight JOBO model to date. The new JOBO S4 Mobile Photo Display fits nicely in a pocket or handbag and is especially designed for consumers to use anywhere anytime. It is also available in two popular color choices - black or white."

This product seems a bit...curious to me. Carrying a picture frame in your jacket pocket or purse? You'd have to be really hard-core about your photos to want to carry a frame with you. Most people would just load up images on their mobile phones, or MP3 player, and it would probably be classified as "good enough". There's no word on the pricing either - I suppose it it were quite cheap (perhaps $49?) it might be a fun gadget to use now and then...but I suspect it's not going to be that cheap. Would you use a gadget like this?

"The Washington Post reported (found by way of Engadget) that Vongo, the all-you-can-view movie site run by Starz, has gone belly up. I used Vongo a few times for various feature stories but never got hooked. (If you're wondering, journalists like me often test new services using a press account that expires after some period of time. For services like Rhapsody and Zune, I used them for the press trial and then decided to sign up and pay monthly. Why two music services? Why, one for my Creative Zen and one for my Zune, of course. And then there's my iPod, but we won't go into that redundancy here.) Starz is just moving all the content over to the Verizon service called Starz Play. The catch is that you have to be a Verizon customer. If you're not, the Vongo service will go dark on September 1 and any movies you have downloaded and paid for (via the $10 monthly fee) will no longer be available.

Update: Vongo pointed out to me that you do not have to be a Verizon customer to use Starz Play. You just need a credit card. I agree with them that this means it is not a great example of what happens when a Web 2.0 site goes dark -- Vongo customers can just sign up for Starz Play and the fee is a few bucks less per month. However, they do have to go through that sign-up, re-download any movies, etc. It is not painless -- I would prefer that they do what Yahoo Music does: they just let you switch over to Rhapsody. That said, it is a reminder that sites like Yahoo Music and Vongo will not exist forever."

For all you Vongo customers, if you read the update in the article, it is not quite as bad as it could have been. While you do have to re-download all your videos from a different site, you are not losing access to all your content, at least not as far as I can tell. But the article brings up a very interesting point afterwards in that 'what are web 2.0 sites' responsibilities, or customers' right to their content, when the site goes belly up'? Reminds me of the dot com boom/bust era style debates. What do you think?

"At 7′6″, Yao Ming is one of the tallest Olympians, one of the most revered basketball players across the world, and we’re willing to bet, were there an Olympic competition for aerial photography, he’d score heads above the rest. Puns aside, getting a camera up into the air is no small (or short) feat. We’re not all tall like Yao Ming, and we don’t always have access to a kite or a plane… Plus, tripods and professional monopods are expensive and weigh about a gajillion pounds. So, we made our own Photojojo Sky-Cam, just for you and just in time for your own photography Olympics."

First thought after reading this (maybe even before reading this) - honestly, why would anyone need this? But even assuming there are opportunities that people want to photograph in this manner, why not just get a monopod? They can be cheap, are extendable and properly built so there is no chance you would drop your camera after a potentially poor DIY job. Finally, Step 6 was the real disappointment for me - I was expecting some clever way of engaging the camera trigger than just using the built in timer. Sorry guys, I am just not sold on this DIY guide.

That pile of junk above is what's left of the Maxtor OneTouch external hard drive once I removed the 750 GB hard drive from it. I hate destroying perfectly working hardware, but I didn't have much choice: Maxtor made the enclosure completely user-inaccessible, and they decided to bring this product to market without an eSATA port. I had a 400 GB drive in a drive enclosure with an eSATA port, but I wanted to use that big 750 GB drive in there instead...and so I had to get messy. My primary tool? The claws on the back of my hammer - I use them to crack, bend, and break the enclosure. It's quite ridiculous that Maxtor would made the drive so difficult to remove - what are they afraid of? That users might want to remove the drive and put them into their computers? Or move them to another, non-Maxtor enclosure? The new drive is purring along nicely in the eSATA enclosure, and average transfers speeds are slightly more than doubled over the original USB 2.0 connection. It's hard to say no to that, even if things had to get ugly...

"Why is DRM so contentious? Surely it's designed to protect the rights of artists and record companies in a climate where, as one international music industry body claims, illegal downloads swamp legitimate music store downloads by a ratio of 20 to 1? The problem is DRM doesn't affect the pirates, who upload and download DRM-free files often ripped directly from CD. Instead, it affects legitimate buyers in a range of deeply irritating ways. The first roadblock comes down to Gates' talk of "simplicity" and "interoperability", or rather the lack of both"

I think most people who know anything about DRM hate it. They hate dealing with the limitations of the technology, both intentionally built-in or as a direct result of poor technical planning/implementation. Unlike a good protection scheme which is invisible to the end user, DRM is too limiting to the average customer, and does nothing to stop hardcore music pirates. Plus, when a store goes down and its licenses stop renewing, the customer is the real loser. Sure you can burn your songs to a CD and re-rip them (or do it virtually), but the process is time-consuming and you lose audio fidelity. Another option is to free your purchased music using tools like FairUse4WM (above) or Hymn, or just buy DRM-free in the first place. Check out the article if you need yet another reason to hate DRM.

"Apple® today announced that movies from major film studios including 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM), Sony Pictures Television International and Lionsgate are now available on the iTunes® Store in Australia (www.itunes.com/au) and in New Zealand (www.itunes.com/nz). Movie purchases and rentals feature iTunes’ legendary ease of use, which makes discovering and enjoying movies as simple and easy as buying music on iTunes has always been. The iTunes Store in Australia and New Zealand feature over 700 films for rent or purchase, with new release titles available for purchase on the same day as their DVD release, including favorites such as “National Treasure 2,” “Jumper,” “27 Dresses,” “Cloverfield,” “Vantage Point” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.” “Movie fans in Australia and New Zealand can choose from a great selection of over 700 films for purchase and rent on the iTunes Store,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services. “iTunes provides an incredibly easy and fun way for people to discover and enjoy movies, and has quickly become the world’s most popular online movie store with customers renting and purchasing over 50,000 movies everyday.”"

Apple extended its reach just a little further today by offering movie service to New Zealand and Australia.

"Intel finally announced the availability of the draft specification for the USB 3.0 host controller. Intel dubbed the specification the Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI). The USB 3.0 architecture is also known as SuperSpeed USB. The USB 3.0 specification promises to increase performance by 10 times what USB 2.0 is capable of. USB 3.0 or SuperSpeed USB promises bandwidth in the 600 MB/s second range. Products utilizing USB 3.0 are expected to arrive in 2009 or 2010. USB 3.0 is also backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and USB 1.1."

As always, faster is better and 10x faster will sure make for some lightning fast data transfers. I'm curious how quickly the standard will be picked up once available. I remember jumping on USB 2.0 and installing a card to add it to my desktop and laptop so I could make quicker backups and such, but at this point, I don't know that I'd make the switch until it came built in on my next machine.

Last August, almost a year ago, I purchased a Dell XPS M1330 notebook. I was really excited when I got it, which was good because I paid $2736 for it and expected it to last me for at least two years. I sprung for the extended warranty, and got every option there was on the laptop. For the most part, I've been quite happy with it over the past year - there have been a few glitches here and there, but no really serious problems. I sent it back for cosmetic repair last month - the top part of the screen bezel (the black bar where the webcam is) rubs on the bottom part (near the trackpad) and as a result it gets scratched. This is just bad design by Dell, and after talking to a tech I convinced him it should be repaired. They repaired it, but it's starting to scratch again - I need to get some small and thin rubber "feet" (those little nubs) to put on the top part of the screen to stop it from happening again.

The more serious issue though is the squealing (or whining) sound I hear when I connect it to power. It's intermittent, so it comes and goes, but when it's happening the notebook is frustrating to be around. There are 500+ search results on Google for "M1330 squealing", so I know I'm not alone. I've wondered about this issue in the past, so today I decided to call Dell and find out what the issue is, and if there's a known fix for it. The answer I got back really surprised me: "Jay", the technician (badge # 160882, Case # 617611296), informed me that this sound was the slot-loading optical drive. I asked him how that could be since the laptop was closed, in sleep mode, and there was no disk in the optical drive. He explained that the issue was highly technical, but that all notebooks with slot-loading optical drives would have the same problem. I was rather suspicious of this, asking him if Dell's new Studio laptops all had this problem, and he said he didn't know. I informed him that while this is the first slot-loading laptop I've owned, I've been near many a Macbook and I've never heard this sound. He insisted, and this is a direct quote, that my XPS M1330 was "working as designed".

I pushed back on this issue with him for a few minutes, but he was absolutely adamant that this behaviour was normal for any laptop with a slot-loading drive. I refuse to believe that's true. Any XPS M1330 or M1550 owners out there seeing this issue, and did you manager to convince Dell to fix it for you?

"Fujitsu Siemens Computers on Wednesday announced the release of the world's first monitors to draw absolutely no power when in standby mode, or what the company calls Eco mode. The two SCENICVIEW ECO range monitors, the 20-inch P20W-5 ECO and 22-inch P22W-5 ECO, feature a power supply that automatically switches off when in the power-saving mode. The company claims the technology allows the monitors to draw zero watts during the state, in comparison to between one and six watt draws from competitors."

Sounds like it is using the small amount of power in the signal from the attached computer to control flipping the main power switch. One to six watts might not sound like a lot, but multiply it out by all the monitors out there and it really adds up. Very cool and I hope other manufacturers are able to implement the technology.

"Dell today launched the new Latitude line, ushering in a significant refresh of its business systems. The new models have a new streamlined design with the choice of multiple shell colors and take cues both from recent PC designs like the Studio as well as the MacBook Pro; the new systems now have backlit keyboards, a magnesium shell designed to be strong, and an extra-thin design. The mainstream models are the thinnest ever in the mid-size class, the Texas-based company claims, while its ultraportable E4200 model weighs as little as 2.2 pounds. The company also claims to have set a record for battery performance using a combination of proprietary software as well as Intel's Centrino 2 platform. The mid-grade Latitude E6400 with an extended 12-cell battery can last up to 19 hours on a single charge, according to Dell. A standard nine-cell battery also manages 10 hours. The company also promises a revamped power brick that can recover as much as 80 percent of the charge in one hour, and USB ports that will charge phones and other devices even when the system is completely turned off."

I tend not to pay that much attention to Dell's Latitude notebooks because they're usually as ugly as sin, but this new generation looks pretty good. The battery life claims of 19 hours really caught my eye - it seems that Dell is doing this with battery slice technology. Meaning these new notebooks have a power port on the bottom that a thin battery snaps into. This is similar to what HP has done with some of their business-class notebooks, but this technology has yet to make it into any consumer-grade notebook that I can think of. That's a real shame, because as a consumer I really care about battery life - and giving me a big-ass hump battery isn't much of a solution. After the break, there's a video with some Dell staffers talking about the new notebooks and how they compete against the Macbook Air and other ultra-portable laptops.

"Use with any audio source that uses a 1/8"(3.5mm) headphone jack-iPod, Sansa, Zune, portable CD players, you name it. Recharge iTrip universal's internal battery in any USB port (no more replacing batteries!), then connect to your player with the included stereo audio cable. Three user-programmable presets save the best frequencies so you can access them quickly later. User selectable stereo/mono output. Wherever you go, iTrip Universal is the perfect partner for your portable audio."

If you want to broadcast the audio from your MP3 player, phone, or anything with with a 3.5mm headphone jack to a nearby FM radio, this looks like a great solution. The battery in the iTrip Universal is only 180 mAh though, so I take their statement of being able to broadcast for "hours" to mean "more than one hour". It's a bit surprising they don't have an actual rating for the battery life.

[click through to YouTube to see it in higher quality]

My first impressions of the hardware design are very favourable - all except with the colour. If I had watched this video I would have realized that the shell is semi-transparent, so it doesn't have the rich gloss red I was hoping it would have. It doesn't look bad, but it's not what I expected. I'll be connecting it to a monitor and firing it up next.

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Purolator just delivered my Dell Studio Hybrid a few minutes ago, so watch for an unboxing and first impressions video later today!

I was a Carbonite user for a couple of years, but last year I discovered something quite ugly: Carbonite filtered out EXE files, ISO files, and a few other file types. I have a few small ISO files I keep in my documents folder; these are boot CDs I might need to duplicate in the future. And as for EXE files, I purchase digital software quite often, and these EXE files are required if I need to re-install the software. I consider both ISO and EXE files to be part of my data - things that, if I lost, I'd be very upset because they'd be difficult to get back or re-create.

Carbonite considers these types of files non-user data. Shouldn't the user decide what constitutes the data they want to back up? I understand why Carbonite might automatically filter those types of files out - clueless users might try to back up their entire Programs directory thinking it would help them if they had a hard drive crash - but ultimately the user should have the final say over what they want to back up. I still recommend Carbonite for most of my friends and family, because I know they don't have ISO and EXE files to back up, but it was no longer the right solution for me.

I had experimented with Mozy [Affiliate] last year, and liked what I saw, so I signed up with them for a two-year plan, using the coupon code of the month (it's just the name of the month) to save 10% off the total. That works out to only $3.89 per month - tough be beat that! The screen shot above shows the beginning of my 180 GB backup from a few weeks back...as of today, I'm about 40% through the total backup. Backing up 180 GB of data at 1 Mbps upstream is a slow, slow process - and I have a technical cap of 100 GB total transfer per month with my ISP. Once it's finished though, I'll be comforted knowing that all of my photos, documents, music, and software is safely backed up off-site. I still user FolderShare to shuffle my files around and maintain multiple backups of my documents/pictures, and I have a local backup running to an external hard drive, but Mozy completes the circle by offering me off-site protection for my data at a very low monthly rate.

If you're not backing up your data on a regular basis, I'll leave you with a quote to think about from my review of the HP SimpleSave Photo product:

"I encountered one such woman recently: she came to me quite upset because Windows XP on her computer had become corrupted somehow, and a technician re-installed it for her, but she was missing several years worth of pictures of her child when he was a baby. She'd never run a single backup in four years, and despite my efforts using undelete software I was only able to recover a fraction of the photos she'd lost. It was heartbreaking to have to tell her that several years worth of photos were lost forever."

Even if you have a great backup solution yourself, what about friends and family? Don't let them suffer the heartache of losing their digital memories - help them implement an easy to manage off-site backup solution.

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys photography, mobile devices, blogging, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his mostly obedient dog.

"The impending launch of Intel's Nehalem processor in Q4 2008 already has the hardware community buzzing. Nehalem has already shaped up to appear quite the performance beast. With the power of eight logical cores (four physical, doubled by hyper-threading) built on a 45 nm process to leverage, it's shaping up to be a strong offering. The new processor will feature QuickPath, Intel's answer to AMD's HyperTransport, an on-chip memory controller, SSE4 instruction support, and an 8 MB cache pool. Chips have already been demoed running at 3.2 GHz, so early indications are that Intel has had relatively little process problems."

These new processors look great, but the hard truth is that even with four hyper-threaded cores rocking eight threads, unless software breaks through the current barrier of being coded for a single core (or maybe two if you're lucky), performance isn't going to go up by very much. Leveraging multiples cores matters the most when it comes to media encoding, and the problem is that most developers don't seem to be able to code their applications to take advantage of multiple cores. I've read that it's difficult to code applications to encode in parallel, but software developers have had a few years to figure this out - and I'm consistently disappointed with almost every piece of software I try. If Intel wants people be excited about their muti-core CPUs, they might need to take a few million dollars and develop a truly kick-ass multi-threaded encoder - then give it away for free so it can be adopted by all of the companies who make video editing software.

Don't you just hate it how, over time, hard drives fill up? I'm pretty strict about my data, keeping a tight reign on it (I should sit down with John Dvorak and give him some tips, he needs them). On my workstation and media editing station, I have 150 GB Western Digital Raptor hard drives - very fast, but not especially spacious in comparison to the 500 GB drives that ship in even the most humble desktop PC sold today. Normally this isn't a problem, but this morning my workstation PC report that I only had 11 GB of storage space left. Normally I hover around 30 GB or so of free space, so this was rather surprising. I did a disk cleanup, after deleting everything in the Foldershare Trash folder, and got back up to 16 GB of free space. But where was the rest of it?

The first thing I did was to try to get a handle on where the 139 GB of actual storage available on my drive was going. The Users folder? 55.1 GB. Not too surprising given that there's 35 GB of photos in there, 9 GB of documents and files, and 1 GB of files on my desktop. Figure the other 10 GB or so include my Outlook OST file (I use an Exchange server) and other assorted user files. What about Program Files? 13.3 GB in total - and the biggest folders in there are two games, totalling 9 GB. The Windows directory? 13 GB. There are no other folders on the hard drive any bigger than 100 MB outside these three directories. So where is my other 42 GB of storage?

In the XP days there were some little freeware programs that would help you visualize where your storage space went to, but in my searches this morning for something similar that worked on Vista, I could only find shareware programs costing $25 to $35. Is there really no generous soul out there that has created a free tool to do this job? I feel like there's almost no good free or cheap indy software out there any more - all the free tools are Web-based, and no one wants to develop applications for the desktop any more.

So where should I look for my missing 42 GB of storage? Suggestions welcome - although I may have already tried it. ;-)