Intel readies Penryn chips, may release Silverthorne early

Following the launch of Intel’s quad-core Xeon 7300 processor on Wednesday, the company’s efforts are now focused on preparations for the rollout of its first Penryn chips later this year. And there are signs the company is planning an early 2008 release of its Silverthorne chip for ultramobile PCs and handheld devices.

Intel confirmed plans to release a server version of Penryn before the end of this year, but the company is releasing little information about its plans for mobile and desktop versions of the chip. Penryn will offer better performance than Intel’s current processors, and the company is counting on them to hold off any gains rival Advanced Micro Devices makes with the release of its quad-core Barcelona chips next week.

“So far what we’ve said is that we intend to ship a broad family of 45-nanometer processors by the end of the year,” said Nick Jacobs, an Intel spokesman in Singapore, referring to the technology used to produce the Penryn chips.

Strong Playable PS3 Line-Up At TGS

A list of 36 PS3 games that are playable – yes, playable – at this year’s Tokyo Game Show has been released by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan.

A lot of the games are Japanese and some may not make it over to the UK. The list shows that Sony are close to a big run of games for the system. It includes playable versions of LocoRoco, LittleBigPlanet, Assassin’s Creed and White Knight Story.

In the face of competition from Microsoft and Nintendo, the system has so far struggled to make an impact. The full game list is as follows:

Record of Agarest War (Idea Factory)
Spiderman 3 (Activision)
Transformers (Activision)
Pirates of the Caribbean World End (Disney)
FIFA 2008 (EA)
NBA Live 08 (EA)
Need For Speed Pro Street (EA)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (EA)
Railfan Taiwan Koutetsu (Ongakkan)
Devil May Cry 4 (Capcom)
PixelJunk Racers (Q Games)
Unannounced Title (Q Entertainment)
G1 Jockey 4 2007 (Koei)
Dynasty Warriors 6 (Koei)
The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion (Spike)
Tony Hawk Project 8 (Spike)
Sega Rally (Sega)
Imabikisou (Sega)
Oideyo LocoRoco!! Buu Buu Cocoreccho (Sony)
Eye of Judgment Biolith Rebellion (Sony)
echochrome (Sony)
Go! Sports Ski (Sony)
Heavenly Sword (Sony)
LittleBigPlanet (Sony)
Rise From Lair (Sony)
Warhawk (Sony)
Uncharted (Sony)
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (Sony)
Mainichi Issho (Sony)
Ratchet & Clank Future (Sony)
White Knight Story (Sony)
Ratatouille (THQ Japan)
Dark Sector (D3 Publisher)
Time Crisis 4 (Bandai Namco Games)
Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft)
Ghost Recon Advance Warfighter 2 (Ubisoft)

No iPhone unlock for you

One of the groups that claims it has developed an unlock hack for Apple Inc.’s iPhone is now saying it will only offer the software to resellers, not to individuals, a popular technology blog reported Monday.

According to an e-mail message sent to interested volume sellers — and posted by Engadget yesterday — iPhoneSIMFree said it would not sell the unlock directly to iPhone owners. “iphonesimfree.com is a wholesale only company,” read the e-mail. “Although we could, we do not and will not sell directly to end users, because we want to work together with our valuable resellers as a team and not interfere in their business.”

Late last month, iPhoneSIMFree said it had created software which would let iPhone owners make calls on mobile networks other than AT&T, the smart phone’s official, and exclusive, carrier in the U.S. Unlocking the iPhone is contrary to Apple’s intent; according to the company, iPhones must be activated only with AT&T, and buyers must subscribe to a two-year AT&T calling plan. Even so, Apple has made no public announcement about iPhoneSIMFree or any other of several unlocking schemes that have been publicized.

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Microsoft Exec Hints at iPhone Rival

An executive in Microsoft’s entertainment and games division today hinted that Microsoft may be developing its own rival to Apple’s iPhone, based on Windows Mobile OS.

Speaking at Citi’s annual Global Technology Conference in New York on Tuesday, Mindy Mount, corporate vice president and CFO for Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division, said it’s not “unreasonable” to think that Microsoft will integrate photo, music and touchscreen features into a Windows Mobile product in the future, though she declined to comment on the specifics of when or what that might look like.

Microsoft’s idea with Windows Mobile has been to move every-day business capabilities, such as accessing e-mail, from the PC to the mobile device. However, most people “tend to have one phone for personal as well as work [use],” Mount said. “Being able to do pictures and music is something that consumers are going to want, so it’s a natural thing for us to want in our product roadmap.”

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Evidence of GDrive in Google Apps

Rumors of an online storage solution from Google have been circulating for years. These rumors became stronger in July last year when references to Platypus and GDrive were accidentally made available on the writely.com domain. A few months later, Google’s internal Platypus client was leaked and people started to question whether GDrive would ever be made available publicly – especially when it was suggested recently that the GDrive release may have been delayed or canceled.

Earlier today, I stumbled across some more evidence which may further support rumors that GDrive will be made available publicly, possibly as part of Google Apps, though it could just mean that Google uses GDrive internally as part of Google Apps.

Anyone familiar with my previous Google-digging will know that I try to keep track of Google service names used by both Google Accounts and Google Apps. By changing query string parameters on various pages, it’s possible to get a glimpse into what Google might be working on. Many of the service code names I’ve discovered in the past have been released several months or years later, while others are still unreleased or remain to be a complete mystery.

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Corel to Integrate Office With Word Perfect Lightning

Corel said Tuesday that it had created a new module for its WordPerfect Lightning product that would allow users to import the information they have collected into Microsoft Office, and vice versa.

Lightning was first introduced in February as a free compact version of its regular word processing product and is only 16MB in total size.

The program is made up of four modules: Navigator, which helps users assemble and organize their content; Viewer, which can open documents in Word, PDF, and WordPerfect; and Lightning Notes, which is a small word processing and note-taking utility.

Now with the new functionality, users would be able to aggregate information from Word documents (as well as WordPerfect, PDF, images, and Web content) into Lightning Notes, and would be able to export to the Microsoft format directly. The company is marketing it as an inexpensive alternative to Word for simple word processing.

“Adapting WordPerfect Lightning to work with Microsoft Office is an important development for Corel and for the millions of Microsoft Office users worldwide who can now benefit from WordPerfect Lightning within their existing workflows,” Corel graphics and productivity head Nick Davies said.

Those who download WordPerfect Lightning starting Tuesday would receive the module as part of the download. It comes with a 30-day trial, although those who plan to use it after that period would have to pay $49 to register it.

Google Gains More Power

Some popular news agencies, like the Associated Press, now require Google to link to them directly (and pay a fee). That’s just fine with Google, but it’s bad news for the newspaper industry in general.

Google isn’t big enough. Right. So, now the dingbats who run some of the big news services are making it bigger. How? Well, they reckon it’s okay to make Google “take” their feeds rather than link to their very own customers, thus screwing those customers and further benefiting Google.

Let me try to explain

The Google News site robotically scans hundreds of news sources and provides a faux front page of popular news items, with hundreds, if not thousands, of redundant links to those stories (as they are carried by local news outlets). Google links to these outlets, and this is where the reader then goes to read the story. If the story is from the Associated Press , then the local outlet pays the AP for the content.

Until now

The AP, among others, saw this as some sort of vague copyright violation. It demanded that Google pay a license fee and link to the story directly from the Google site. So, Google said okay. Now, the newspapers—who collectively “own” the AP—lose a link and a potential long-term customer.

So can someone explain to me why the newspapers would stand by and let this happen? No wonder they’re dying. They’re run by idiots. The newspapers obviously encouraged the AP and others to do this, or they would have squawked when the idea came up.

The other three organizations that now require Google to take out a license and keep the content on the Google site are Agence France-Presse, the Press Association in the United Kingdom, and the Canadian Press. The argument is that Google is somehow violating their copyrights by running the short summaries, despite the fact that many of these summaries are voluntarily thrown into the public domain by RSS feeds and other mechanisms and should be considered fair use anyway.

Since paying the licensing fees is cheaper than a legal battle, Google took the easy way out. The bonus for Google is that it gets even more page views and people stay on the site longer. The old way Google was handling the news was actually doing the varied news outlets a favor. But, hey, no favor goes unpunished.

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Sixth generation iPod anticipated

Apple is gearing up to announce the sixth generation of iPods tomorrow, prompting fervent speculation about how the technology giant will develop its market-leading MP3 player.

The company is expected to reveal a touch-controlled, more video-centric iPod with a 3.5″ wide screen, similar in appearance to the much-hyped mobile phone it launched across the US in June, but could also include a new digital radio component for the first time.

Apple’s new iPod is likely to use more energy-efficient Flash-based storage, and wireless connectivity that would allow users to buy music directly rather than going through the iTunes store on their computers.

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Sony May Start Movie Download Service

Sony may soon compete directly with Apple and its popular iPods and iTunes, producing its own movie download service and products, company officials said Tuesday.

“Music and video downloading has been available through networks, and we are looking into the area as a possible business,” said Sony spokesman Shigenori Yoshida.

The Japanese pioneer of personal music players fell behind Apple Inc. and its market-leading iPod. It also got a late start on flat-panel TVs, forcing Sony Corp. to cut jobs, shut plants and shed under performing divisions under the guidance of Chief Executive Howard Stringer, who took over in 2005.

Last week, Sony revealed a new Walkman video player that comes with Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Media Player 11 that is capable of managing digital libraries in the U.S. and Europe. The LCD-mounted players, which will also be compatible with MPEG-4 encoded video and AVC, are already available in Japan.

Sony said in late August it would phase out operations at its struggling Connect digital music store in favor of a new breed of digital media players open to more formats.

Sony also said it was shifting its emphasis to other network services, specifically one for users of its PlayStation game consoles.

First DX10.1 silicon is unexpected

During this year’s Siggraph, Power VR held a presentation in which Kristof Beets, a known technology evangelist for the company outlined the current and future plans by PowerVR.

One of those products is SGX, a next generation 3D IP chip that marks coming of OpenGL ES 2.0 in silicon, optimised for OpenVG 1.1 and supporting Direct3D Mobile, 9L (Longhorn) and 10.1, industry’s first announced part to do so.

Its features include fifth generation Tile Based Deferred Rendering, Universal Scalable Shader Engine – one word for scalable architecture (1-8 pipelines), Vertex, Pixel and Geometry Shaders. This was joined by programmable Anti-Aliasing, internal 32-bit IEEE FP unit(s), Parallax bump mapping and Shadow maps.

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