14-inch and 17-inch versions of MacBook Pros by HP are in the works. Source: HP Fansite via Engadget

For a while that was what AT&T believed. If you tried to order the iPhone online with a New York City zip code (or even nearby ones) you couldn’t. Your city wasn’t ready. But after a while something must have changed: New York City is now ready for the iPhone. This must surely be near the top of “The Stupidest Things Companies Did in 2009″ list. Source: The Consumerist

Microsoft paid Verizon US$500. Why? So BlackBerry users are forced to use Bing. No more Google, Wikipedia, etc. Just Bing. What a stupid way of making customers furious; way to go Verizon, and Microsoft. Source: The New York Times, The Register

Global Mixed-mode Technology (GMT) and AU Optronics (AUO) have formed a joint venture to develop LED and analog driver ICs. Raydium Semiconductor’s analog IC production assets maybe transfered to the new joint venture. AUO will invest NT$20M while GMT will put in NT$10M. GMT’s competitors including Advanced Analog Technology (AAT) and Richtek Technology will likely see declining future sales into AUO. Source: DIGITIMES

Compal Electronics expects notebook PC shipments to hit 3.8M to 3.9M units in December thanks to strong demand for Acer and Toshiba netbooks. Monthly peak was reached in November at 4.5M units for Compal. Q1’10 shipments are expected to drop 10-15% Q/Q. Source: DIGITIMES

MacRumors: Apple has owned the iSlate.com domain since 2007 according to MacRumors. Here’s Bill Keller, executive editor at the New York Times who mentioning the all important product at a presentation to the company’s digital staff:

We need to figure out the right journalistic product to deliver to mobile platforms and devices. I’m hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate, or whatever comes after that.

Three critical words: “impending Apple slate”. Combine this with Apple’s ownership of iSlate.com and the result is a rumor that Apple will call its tablet iSlate.

USB 2.0-based DisplayLink supported a maximum pixel format of 1600 x 1200 or 1680 x 1050: not good enough if you were running a display with 1920 x 1200 or 1920 x 1080. USB 3.0 changes all of that because there is plenty of bandwidth, more than 10x compared to USB 2.0. Maximum pixel format should exceed 2560 x 1600 or even Ultra Definition at 3840 x 2160. DisplayLink will probably showcase a USB 3.0-based display solution at CES 2010. I hope there is a dongle that has connections for all varieties including: VGA, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. Source: PC World via Engadget

AMOLED: Samsung’s CL80 is a 14MP digital camera that packs a 3.7-inch AMOLED display with capacitive touch and haptic feedback. OLED, capacitive touch and haptic: what a potent combination. I hope the experience is just as good as the hardware combination suggests.

WIFI: One of the biggest challenges of sharing pictures is to get it online. Samsung makes it easy by integrating WiFi into the CL80, which can also record movies at 720p encoded in H.264. Use the “Instant Upload” feature to get your pictures up on Facebook, Flickr, Photobox and Picasa. Vidoes? Uploads to YouTube. Just make sure you’re patient and have a lot of time to wait for the videos to upload, ditto for pictures.

CAVEATS: I’m impressed with how the CL80 looks on the back; it is completely filled with a 3.7-inch AMOLED. But realistically, OLED displays are not known to be all that great when both you and the sun are out. Another thing to watch out for is the high-resolution 14MP image sensor: packing so many pixels into a small sensor means not-so-great images when the sun goes down. And that’s just one of the reasons why I decided get a Canon S90, more on that in a later post. Source: Samsung via Photo Rumors, Engadget

According to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) the total number of 3G subscribers in China will surpass 10 million by the end of 2009. It has only been since early 2009 that China has granted three 3G mobile communication licenses. These three licensees will have invested a total of CNY143.5 billion (about US$21 billion) by the end of 2009 to establish the 3G infrastructure that includes 285,000 base stations in China. At this rate, China will become the largest, by far, market for 3G and faster mobile devices. Source: DIGITIMES

Not really. HP’s MediaSmart has a facial-tracking software that requires a certain level of foreground lighting. So light faces are easily detected while darker faces aren’t. There’s a video titled “HP computers are racist” on YouTube showing how the MediaSmart prefers White Wanda to Black Desi when tracking faces. Funny but could be a PR nightmare for HP. Source: Wired

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