Microsoft is delving into music software with SongSmith, a program that lets anyone sing into their computer and see what it would sound like with musical accompaniment.

I’m a frequent flier to England and a longtime fan of Yelp, the gloriously verbose and opinionated user-generated review site, so this is doubly good news: Yelp now has a UK page, for finding good restaurants and other services across all the major British cities. According to Yelp’s publicist, the site already attracts 100,000 monthly visitors from UK, even before this launch. I can’t wait to read heated, British-slang-filled arguments over the service at Gordon Ramsay’s new place.

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centera href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/zoom.php?dir=2009/1/clcs116/" target="_blank"img title="Case Logic CLCS Security Friendly Laptop Briefcase" style="MARGIN: 0px" alt="Case Logic CLCS Security Friendly Laptop Briefcase" src="http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2009/1/clcs116-1.JPG" border="0" /br /img src="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/img/photo-gallery.gif" border="0" //a/centerbr / p[CES 2009] Want to get through security checkpoints at the airport in a speedy manner so that you can continue with doing something else that is more important? The Case Logic CLCS security friendly laptop briefcase ought to do the trick, as it was specially designed to conform with TSA guidelines, allowing you to get through the screening process in a jiffy. It features a simple Grab 'N' Go design that makes it a snap to exit security after screening, while Smart Organization helps you keep all the other technological knick knacks well organized. Made from durable 1680D nylon with leather accents, the Case Logic CLCS-116 makes us reminisce fondly of Henry Ford and his original Model T as it comes in only one color - black. It is able to hold notebooks of up to 16" in size, retailing for $99.99./P pPermalink: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2009/01/case_logic_clcs_security_friendly_laptop_briefcase.html"Case Logic CLCS Security Friendly Laptop Briefcase/a from Ubergizmo (a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com"US/a, a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/fr"FR/a) | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a | Hot: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/events/ces/"CES/a 2009, Jan 6-11/p pmap name="google_ad_map_090108000000" area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/090108000000?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/ area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"//map img usemap="#google_ad_map_090108000000" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=9684588219amp;output=pngamp;cuid=090108000000amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2F15%2Farchives%2F2009%2F01%2Fcase_logic_clcs_security_friendly_laptop_briefcase.html"//p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/xXn1o-Gj3khwQoxJaQV7JbhMsQM/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/xXn1o-Gj3khwQoxJaQV7JbhMsQM/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=Fm6BSVro"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=VyAc8GWg"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=VyAc8GWg" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=iqPjf6mP"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=ZZrZNiPa"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=ZZrZNiPa" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=cXF0TMJ3"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=cXF0TMJ3" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ubergizmo/~4/rqHdPyWpicI" height="1" width="1"/

pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/pc/" rel="tag"PC/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/online/" rel="tag"Online/a/pdiv align="center"img width="490" vspace="4" hspace="0" height="276" border="1" align="top" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2009/01/grid_topper_racing.jpg" alt="" /br //div a href="http://joystiq.com/tag/gametap"GameTap/a drives in its first update of the new year with the addition of span style="font-style: italic;"GRID/span. Fans of Codemaster's span style="font-style: italic;"DiRT/span might find it worth their time to check out the high-speed arcade style races found in a href="http://joystiq.com/tag/grid"span style="font-style: italic;"GRID/span/a.br / ul lia href="http://www.gametap.com/play/gameDetails/000604050"emGRID/em/a (Windows) - There's something magical about playing this game while sitting in a cardboard box with the top open. We also recommend turning off the TV sound and making your own car noises.br //li liema href="http://www.gametap.com/play/gameDetails/131006150"Magic Academy/a /em(Windows) - It's a hidden object game. The digital version of a span style="font-style: italic;"Where's Waldo /spanbook.br //li /ul This week, GameTap adds span style="font-style: italic;"Just Cause/span to the free games list. Why? You know, just 'cause. Ouch! We sprained a finger forcing that joke through. Check out the full gratis list after the break.pa href="http://www.joystiq.com/2009/01/08/gametap-thursday-on-the-grid/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emGameTap Thursday: On the GRID/em/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2009/01/08/gametap-thursday-on-the-grid/"GameTap Thursday: On the GRID/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.joystiq.com"Joystiq/a on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:00:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./pp style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href="http://www.joystiq.com/2009/01/08/gametap-thursday-on-the-grid/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1422319/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2009/01/08/gametap-thursday-on-the-grid/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/cuqOVCgK90TRgSwKcDhY9OBw5s8/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/cuqOVCgK90TRgSwKcDhY9OBw5s8/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=ZiPV3fWt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=ZiPV3fWt" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.joystiq.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=jd7LNHmA"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=jd7LNHmA" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/uMQoLQ_a21A" height="1" width="1"/

Windows goes Live; Dish get Sling; LG stream Netflix; and more.

Our sister site JkOnTheRun reports on the proliferation (and large presence) of the netbooks at the CES 2009:

Netbooks are still a hot ticket item and we are keeping our eyes peeled for anything new that might come along. … More models, Atom inside, 8 - 10-inch screens, etc., etc. Asus is pushing the limits a bit with the touchscreen convertible T91 we spied last night but no word is being shared on pricing for this little netbook.

“The most crowded tables at CES Unveiled last night were all netbook vendors. And unlike last year when I was one of the few covering the show with Asus Eee PC, netbooks are being used everywhere I turn,” Kevin Toefel emailed from Las Vegas.

These little machines have caught the imagination of many and sold millions of units this past holiday season. Personally, I am staying on the sidelines, happy with a Macbook Air and the touchscreen joys of an iPhone; but the trend continues unabated, as more and more devices come to market. The growing popularity of these low-cost netbooks, which are now mimicking regular laptops, is a scary prospect for PC component makers, especially Intel.So far, Intel is holding its own in the category, but it has two worries: the success of ARM-based netbooks and whether such devices will steal sockets from gear powered by its higher margin chips. When it reports earnings on Jan. 15, analysts are sure to ask if Atom is cannibalizing sales of Intel’s higher-end processors, such as Celeron and Pentium Dual Core.

In its third-quarter earnings call in October, Intel said that the margins on its Atom chips are equal on a dollar basis to the margins on its Celeron chips used in lower-end computers and laptops and actually are higher on a percentage basis. But if consumers choose a netbook over a higher-end notebook, then cannibalization becomes a real concern.

Sales of these devices have increased from 1 million units in 2007 to an estimated 14 million in 2008, according to research from DisplaySearch. Still, that’s just a small fraction of the 80.6 million total PCs (including netbooks) Gartner estimates were sold in the third quarter of 2008. However, with the recession in full swing, netbooks could be gaining ground.

Mika Kitagawa, principal analyst for Gartner’s Client Computing Markets group, said in his October report on third-quarter PC sales, “In the North America market, the economic crunch created more interest in the sub $500 segment. Because the mini-notebook is still a new segment, it is too early to determine if the emerging segment created new market opportunities, or if it cannibalized lower priced systems.”

Such cannibalization is easier when computer manufacturers link their netbook branding with the names of their more powerful notebooks. C’mon, even Toyota keeps its luxury Lexus brand far away from its everyday Toyota Camry and Corolla brands. In its “Netbooks are the Third PC Form Factor” report, Forrester Research warned:

Consumer products strategists at key vendors have mistakenly named their netbooks as extensions of their laptop lines: The Dell inspiron mini is closely linked in nomenclature to the inspiron notebook line. Similarly, lenovo’s S10 is an ideaPad, while Acer’s one is an Aspire. Even HP’s mini-Note suggests a “miniature notebook.” This branding strategy is dangerous — it cultivates consumers’ confusion about whether netbooks are, in fact, laptops or something else. Craft a completely new sub-brand to market these devices appropriately.

Of course, Stacey made the very same point about consumer confusion months ago. The recent introduction of 12-inch models is only going to accelerate the cannibalization of the notebook market. For someone like Intel, that is a prospect scarier than the 20 percent decline in quarterly revenues.

Additional reporting by Kevin Toefel and Stacey Higginbotham.

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HYDERABAD, India (Reuters) - India vowed to strengthen laws to prevent corporate fraud after Satyam Computer, the country's fourth-largest software company, shocked investors by revealing profits had been falsely inflated for years.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=oh7BBc03"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=p927bJoO"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=p927bJoO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=bJ42IAIc"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=bJ42IAIc" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/reuters/topNews/~4/KL8Tf_ofje8" height="1" width="1"/

It was a struggle getting it "officially" out the door, and the reviews are already lackluster, but AMD's 45nm, quad-core Phenom II has finally arrived. It's available in two flavors, the 2.8GHz X4 920 and the 3.0GHz X4 940 Black Edition, going for $235 and $275, respectively. AMD's naturally touting the ostensible cost savings of the chips -- they're supposed to split the difference between Intel's Core 2 Quad and Core i7 processor -- but in reality they seems to trail Intel's offerings pretty soundly on the price / performance curve. The accompanying Dragon platform includes a Phenom II proc, 4800-series Radeon HD graphics and a 790-series motherboard, all of which should combine for low power consumption -- up to 40 percent compared to Phenom processors. Where the Phenom II definitely wins is the fact that some AMD folks will be able to drop in the chip to existing motherboards, but otherwise it looks like value hounds and performance junkies aren't being served by this new chip -- at least until unreasonable overclocking activities make all the pain go away.

Read - AMD PR
Read - PC World review

Filed under: Desktops

AMD finally launches Phenom II and its Dragon desktop platform originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 02:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As I mentioned perhaps all too subtly in my Ballmer keynote post, Windows 7 Beta is now available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers, with wide availability on Friday, January 9. [Microsoft]

J Sainsbury, the UK supermarket chain, today bucked the gloomy trend in the retail sector by reporting a 4.5 per cent rise in sales over the Christmas period in what it claims is its best-ever performance over the festive season.

divp style="text-align:justify" a href="http://www.akihabaranews.com/news-17300-iRiver+get+Crazy+at+the+CES+with+5+stunning+new+products.html"img src="http://www.akihabaranews.com/news_pics/17300/b.jpg" width="128" height="83" border="0" alt="iRiver+get+Crazy+at+the+CES+with+5+stunning+new+products" title="iRiver+get+Crazy+at+the+CES+with+5+stunning+new+products" align="left" hspace="5" vspace="5" //abr / Well the little guys over at Iriver out performed themselves this time again with :br / br / WAVE-HOME multimedia communication Device, which is a Hybrid between a VoIP Phone with Video Conference capabilities and easy to access multimedia device.br / Featuring a nice 7” (800x480) touchscreen, a 1.3Mpix Camera, Ethernet port, SD slot, Radio, USB... the Wave-Home is the ideal companion to anyone who desire to get the latest updated information (News, Weather, Stock...) and place calls in a pretty stylish way, as well as being capable to surf the web... If only it could also be an Alarm clock I would love to get this on my desk or next to the bed.br / The P7, a high-end PMP with a 4.3” WQVGA touchscreen, and available on 4/8/16GB of Memory, microSD slot, SRS WOW HD, FM Radio, Voice recorder...br / WAVE WIFI Phone, not pretty new, but here you are the Iriver Wifi Phone, with its 3” QVGA touchscreen, 4GB of memory, FM Radio, Web Broswer...br / P35 PMP, with a 4.3” WQVGA Screen, mic and speaker, TV out, 16GB of Memory, MicroSD SLot, Wifi, DMB...br / And finally the D50N, a compact, keyboard-based networking and multimedia device that offers full Internet browsing and Instant Messaging in Wi-Fi environments. Featuring a large 4.8" TFT LCD (WVGA 800*480) with full touch screen interactivity, the D50 lets you enjoy multimedia on the fly, including Video, Music, Photo viewer, Office viewer, FM Radio, Voice Recording, and Dictionary. It provides 16GB Nand Flash (Micro SD Slot) and USB2.0.br / br / ...br /br / a href="http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news-17300-iRiver+get+Crazy+at+the+CES+with+5+stunning+new+products.html#comments"Reader Comments/a/pbr clear="all" //div div id="partners_feeds" ul lia href="http://www.dannychoo.com" target="_blank"dannychoo.com/a - Your portal to Japan (a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/dannychoo_com_main_article_feed_eng" target="_blank"Subscribe/a)/li lia href="http://www.japanprobe.com" target="_blank"Japan Probe/a - Japan news and entertainment (a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/JapanProbe" target="_blank"Subscribe/a)/li lia href="http://www.kirainet.com" target="_blank"Kirainet.com/a - A geek in Japan (a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/kirainet-english" target="_blank"Subscribe/a)/li /ul /div script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~s/Akihabaranews_en?i=http://www.akihabaranews.com" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"/script pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/Tbn8FTlY2ottok5UMO1lV2ySP4Y/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/Tbn8FTlY2ottok5UMO1lV2ySP4Y/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Akihabaranews_en?a=G8XfWzWs"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Akihabaranews_en?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Akihabaranews_en?a=ZiYb2VyC"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Akihabaranews_en?d=43" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Akihabaranews_en?a=X1D1MpEv"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Akihabaranews_en?i=X1D1MpEv" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Akihabaranews_en?a=AVccUXbt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Akihabaranews_en?i=AVccUXbt" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Akihabaranews_en?a=OUoZCDyp"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Akihabaranews_en?i=OUoZCDyp" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Akihabaranews_en?a=IUGSrd5h"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Akihabaranews_en?d=54" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Akihabaranews_en?a=Lw5rgfCj"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Akihabaranews_en?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Akihabaranews_en?a=JW4O0o1D"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Akihabaranews_en?d=42" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Akihabaranews_en/~4/NjxQWV5ZKPE" height="1" width="1"/

Hello all,

I have a friend that has jailbroken several iPhones so he's familiar with the process. However everyone he's done been for people that have Windows PC's. And he of course is running Windows on his laptop.

I on the other hand have a Mac. If he JB's my phone, will I then have any trouble syncing back up to iTunes on my Mac?

Any finally, we both work nights and he will probably do it at work. He says it takes about 15 minutes to complete. Upon completion am I able to use the phone immediately or will I have to resync with iTunes before the phone will work?

Thanks
David

MOSCOW/KIEV (Reuters) - The two top gas executives from Russian and Ukraine held talks in Moscow on Thursday, in the first face-to-face contact since their row choked off supplies to EU countries in bitter winter weather.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=3D3ofxca"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=rYp2tYda"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=rYp2tYda" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=iP4jnYaw"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=iP4jnYaw" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/reuters/topNews/~4/k9prFRNqk48" height="1" width="1"/

Hi all,

I just tried to install the Photoshop Extended Edition trial on my iMac running 10.5.6.

I get this message when I try to install it:

"This software cannot be installed because the file system of the OS volume is not supported. The OS Volume should be local, writable, and should have a non case-sensitive file system."

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,

Don

I have no idea what is being sold in this Danish ad, but it#8217;s still rather captivating. Best. Commercial. Evar? pmap name="google_ad_map_PEY8AAQtYXAPkOtfUQuwSbx7ALM_"area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/PEY8AAQtYXAPkOtfUQuwSbx7ALM_?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"//mapimg usemap="#google_ad_map_PEY8AAQtYXAPkOtfUQuwSbx7ALM_" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgclient=ca-pub-6584740881855541output=pngcuid=PEY8AAQtYXAPkOtfUQuwSbx7ALM_url=http%3A%2F%2Fdontlinkthis.net%2Farchives%2F3806"//p

One Laptop per Child: "We are streamlining our operations this month, cutting staff by roughly 50% and laying out broad targets for the coming year. Here is Nicholas's announcement on the upcoming changes:"

I've just finished watching the video of Bre Pettis's riveting presentation on Rapid Prototyping at 25C3, the annual Chaos Computer Congress in Berlin. Pettis is one of my favorite makers in the world, and this presentation covers every aspect of rapid prototyping, desktop fabbing, 3D printing (and whatever else you want to call it). From the technology underpinning it to the history of the form to the practicalities of clubbing together to buy expensive machinery to the philosophy, economics and emotional satisfaction of decentralized making, Pettis runs the whole gamut, with humor, humility, and a thoroughgoing knowledge of the subject. From automated knitting machines that go from "I'm cold" to "I have a scarf" in fifteen minutes to sugar-based 3D printers to papercraft CAD to laser cutters and robotic Dremel tools, Pettis paints a picture of a future where something can go from your head to the real world with the fluidity of a blog post. Prototype Your Life MP4, 437MB, Prototype Your Life MP4, 437MB (Coral Cache mirror) (via Bre Pettis)...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=cb29382e0da2d47130ad6bcd50983124p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=cb29382e0da2d47130ad6bcd50983124p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=cb29382e0da2d47130ad6bcd50983124" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

has anyone installed an aux converter in their car? and if you have, what kind was it and did you run into any problems?

i have a ford fusion 06 and i do have the aux button but in need of the input. i have been searching for days for a device and there are so many out there that i dont know what will work for my car and for the touch 2.2. im just confused i guess and in need of some advice on what to do. ive also searched through some car forums but i haven't had much luck with any clear answers.

if anyone has experience with this sort of thing please give me ur feedback on what to do. thanks!

h4Can you wait a year?/h4 pstrongMacworld Expo/strong a href="http://www.microvision.com/" target="_blank"Microvision/a, the Redmond-based creator of mobile display systems, chose Macworld Expo to unveil a prototype of its latest - and smallest - laser-based projector..../p

h4Can you wait a year?/h4 pstrongMacworld Expo/strong a href="http://www.microvision.com/" target="_blank"Microvision/a, the Redmond-based creator of mobile display systems, chose Macworld Expo to unveil a prototype of its latest - and smallest - laser-based projector..../pa href="http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/jump/reg.rss.4159/hardware;sz=468x60;ord=123456789?" target="_blank" img src="http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/ad/reg.rss.4159/hardware;sz=468x60;ord=123456789?" width="468" height="60" border="0" alt=""/a

Sri Lankan troops say they have taken more territory from Tamil Tiger rebels in the northern Jaffna peninsula.