At one glance, you can tell that the MSI MT-V551 portable media player is pretty much similar to a device that most of us are familiar with - the iPod nano. Heck, it is based on a Rockchip chipset known as RKnano, but won't offer iTunes support for obvious reasons. Meant for music playback primarily, it is equipped with a 1.5" CSTN color display (which won't work well under bright sunight), supporting MP3, WMA, WAV, APE and FLAC audio file formats. While it can also handle MPEG-4 videos, this is not something we would recommend because of the screen size. Apart from that, you are also able to browse images as well as read TXT files, but at that screen size, you might ruin your eyes faster than you might think. No idea on pricing or availability.

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DVDStyler Portable 1.8.0.2 has been released. DVDStyler Portable is the popular DVDStyler program packaged with a PortableApps.com Launcher as a portable app, so you can take your DVD creation tool settings with you. This release updates DVDStyler to the latest version. It's packaged in PortableApps.com Format so it can easily integrate with the PortableApps.com Suite. And it's open source and completely free.

Read on for more details...

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Currently, your contacts live in address books that are distributed all over the Internet and your desktop. Because of this, chances are that you have numerous address books on the web that are often "inconsistent and disjointed." Contacts, a new Mozilla Labs project, wants to put an end to this. The Contacts addon creates a local databases for all your email and Twitter contacts that can then be used by your browser and any website that supports Contacts' API.

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Thanks to this, you can now import all your Gmail contacts to the local database and use this contact info to autocomplete forms anywhere on the web. You can also import data about your Twitter friends and if you are on a Mac, you can import your local address book as well. Contacts will also import avatars from Gravatar whenever they are available.

This email autocompletion feature is really just a first step for Mozilla, though. The real mission of this tool is to give users more control over their own data - a mission that is also very much in sync with what Mozilla considers its own mission to be these days. When you import your contacts database on most websites today to check if your friends are already online or to invite them to the service, you have to trust this service that it will keep this data private. Once more sites implement Contacts directly into their services, however, you will be able to control exactly what data a third-party site can access and retain control over this data.

The current version of Contacts consists of four pieces:

• a browser-based database that syncs with your address books. Contacts uses the Portable Contacts format to represent this data in the database.
• a generic importer system that allows developers to create importers for desktop and web-based address books
• an email autocompletion feature
• a Javascript API that third-party sites can use to access all of your data (with explicit permission and the ability to filter the data)

After installing the addon, you can test both the autocomplete and the tool's export features here.

Google Chrome Portable 4.1.249.1036 has been released. Google Chrome Portable is a web browser that runs web pages and applications with lightning speed. It's designed to be simple and stylish. This release updates Google Chrome to the latest version. It's packaged as a portable app, so you can take your browsing experience with you and it's in PortableApps.com Format so it can easily integrate with the PortableApps.com Suite. It's partially open source freeware for personal and business use.

Read on for more details...

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Si Apple continue à nous bouder le plaisir de voir arriver de nouveaux portables, nous continuons à imaginer et même à espérer qu'ils embarqueront la technologie Optimus de Nvidia, probablement la seule capable de venir en souplesse et sans contrainte suppléer aux carences de la vidéo embarquée dans les processeurs Arrendale. Pour rappel, cette technologie permet d'utiliser une seconde carte graphique (Nvidia bien entendu) afin de lui faire effectuer les calculs vidéo les plus gourmands avant de les afficher, le tout sans avoir à basculer d'une carte à l'autre, la seconde carte fonctionnant alors comme un second coprocesseur.
Lors de l'annonce de cette technologie, une chose nous avait échappé. Si les pilotes Optimus sont censés travailler en toute simplicité en détectant automatiquement le moment où l'on a besoin d'eux, ils ont parfois besoin d'aide. Pour ça, Nvidia a mis en place un système de profiles qui vont indiquer aux pilotes la meilleure manière de dispatcher la charge de travail en fonction de l'application lancée.
Afin de ne pas obliger l'utilisateur à gérer ces profiles, NVidia a mis en place (sur les PC) un système de mise à jour automatique qui à l'image de certains antivirus va aller les récupérer de manière totalement silencieuse sur leur site. Ainsi, ils ont récemment ajouté à la liste des applications 20 profiles dont un pour le futur Starcraft II.
Si le système fonctionne bien, il aura eu toutes les chances de compliquer la mise en place des pilotes sous Mac OS X. Dans son fonctionnement, aucun logiciel (sérieux) ne s'amuse à aller récupérer et à installer des choses sans l'aval de l'administrateur de la machine, même pas Mac OS X lui même, tout passant par une validation volontaire dans la mise à jour de logiciels.
A moins qu'Apple ne fasse une exception dans ses règles de sécurité, la mise à jour de ces profiles sous OS X sera donc un peu plus contraignante. Il est aussi possible que les pilotes Mac fonctionnent de manière radicalement différente et puissent se passer totalement de ces profiles avec un système de détection plus fin basé sur les spécificités de notre système.
Nous souhaitons avoir la réponse à ces questions aussi vite que possible. 

Si Apple continue à nous bouder le plaisir de voir arriver de nouveaux portables, nous continuons à imaginer et même à espérer qu'ils embarqueront la technologie Optimus de Nvidia, probablement la seule capable de venir en souplesse et sans contrainte suppléer aux carences de la vidéo embarquée dans les processeurs Arrendale. Pour rappel, cette technologie permet d'utiliser une seconde carte graphique (Nvidia bien entendu) afin de lui faire effectuer les calculs vidéo les plus gourmands avant de les afficher, le tout sans avoir à basculer d'une carte à l'autre, la seconde carte fonctionnant alors comme un second coprocesseur.
Lors de l'annonce de cette technologie, une chose nous avait échappé. Si les pilotes Optimus sont censés travailler en toute simplicité en détectant automatiquement le moment où l'on a besoin d'eux, ils ont parfois besoin d'aide. Pour ça, Nvidia a mis en place un système de profiles qui vont indiquer aux pilotes la meilleure manière de dispatcher la charge de travail en fonction de l'application lancée.
Afin de ne pas obliger l'utilisateur à gérer ces profiles, NVidia a mis en place (sur les PC) un système de mise à jour automatique qui à l'image de certains antivirus va aller les récupérer de manière totalement silencieuse sur leur site. Ainsi, ils ont récemment ajouté à la liste des applications 20 profiles dont un pour le futur Starcraft II.
Si le système fonctionne bien, il aura eu toutes les chances de compliquer la mise en place des pilotes sous Mac OS X. Dans son fonctionnement, aucun logiciel (sérieux) ne s'amuse à aller récupérer et à installer des choses sans l'aval de l'administrateur de la machine, même pas Mac OS X lui même, tout passant par une validation volontaire dans la mise à jour de logiciels.
A moins qu'Apple ne fasse une exception dans ses règles de sécurité, la mise à jour de ces profiles sous OS X sera donc un peu plus contraignante. Il est aussi possible que les pilotes Mac fonctionnent de manière radicalement différente et puissent se passer totalement de ces profiles avec un système de détection plus fin basé sur les spécificités de notre système.
Nous souhaitons avoir la réponse à ces questions aussi vite que possible. 

Miranda IM is a multi-protocol instant messenger client. By default, it supports AIM, ICQ, IRC, MSN and Jabber. But it has a powerful plugin system where it can be extended to support almost any other protocol you can throw at it, include Yahoo, Gadu-Gadu, Netsend, Skype etc. The plugin system is not limited to protocol support. You can find plugins for almost anything you can think of, including RSS feed reader, weather alert, world clock, etc.

You may also like to check out Miranda IM Portable for a portable package of Miranda IM that is optimized for USB memory sticks.

At the RSA Keynote a few weeks back, Amazon's Security Lead, Steve Riley participated on a panel with other security leaders of the industry. We were impressed with the openness of all of the participants, and particularly excited with the new concepts coming from at Amazon. Riley used a term that is being used within his part of Amazon, the "Think Cloud".

As we understand it from the discussion on stage, a Think Cloud is a "body of knowledge" that is a real-time information base of Amazon cloud that can be pivoted all the way down to the threads and individual data concurrency. It would be an index that acts like a control point that helps define movement of data through a servers and compute tasks. Looking at the journey from the data point of view, including data about the environment itself and how to repair itself when damaged and keep data concurrency in tact.

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Here's the RSA cloud security keynote to get a bit of inspiration to benefits of portable (cloud) computing.

In this 30 minute discussion, there are several notable considerations from the contributors on how cloud security challenge can be thought of as a big opportunity and that perhaps now is time to debunk the myth that security is not a part of the cloud.

We picked out a few of Riley's comments that we believe are leading towards the idea of the Think Cloud and why Amazon may be there first.

Amazon knows it is critical to be able to have good inputs and outputs. And emphasizes ease of use even more than data portability standards themselves.

Riley described a great use case where an un-named customer used Amazon for compute, another cloud provider for data processing, SalesForce for crunching, and then pushed the results to Facebook. Interconnection is happening and applications are already "using all the clouds out there". In this case, all the way down to the consumer.

When we look at this pattern, it we see parts that mimic the history of web in the enterprise. Back-end systems moving data around, optimizing, and passing it to the a web portal. And, the portal demanding "real time" updates for key pieces of data, while relying on batch for others.

We can see that idea of a Think Cloud may come into this pattern to help set boundaries and checks so that when a piece of data passes through an Amazon, it is returned reliably, ever time. Perhaps a Think Cloud is a registry that does part of what a smart Enterprise Services Bus does when registered new applications for master data, that is keeps track of activity.

In a way, we need to solve the cloud-equivalent "floating point" problem in the CPU of generations past in the computer itself.

On the CPU math co-processor, the question was, "Does it know how to do math correctly every-time under all conditions?".

Perhaps the question in the cloud may be "Are all my customers still in the database even though that thread died?", or "Do we have encryption set on every cpu that this user's information is stored in memory or on disk". Solving that problem of interchange the role the concept of Think Cloud might lead.

At least, not as-is. Riley comments that "servers are disposable horsepower, they come, they go".

In other words, Since applications sit on top of servers, and servers are sinking into the cloud, applications will sink or swim based on how they migrate to this model. So, the first movers are "the rats" that have jump ship as it started to sink. Follow the rats, or drown.

The tear-down of the server into the n-resource cloud breaks-or-suboptimizes server based applications in a fundamental way.

Thinking back, this is very similar to web services revolution in the enterprise, where just because an application can export its data model, doesn't mean it is optimized for web services, or API level interaction.

We find this almost a reverse-trend to server virtualization, which has expanded the physical compute space. Perhaps we are finding that there is some new turf to be claimed on where the cloud reaches and virtualization ends.

We like to think of it as "smart service bus" meets "smart application" on infinite resources. Infinite, or course, equaling the credit in your PayPal (or other) form of payment collection required by either, or both parties.

As reported by The Register's Cade Metz, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer recently pointed out that this is a potential opportunity with Microsoft and Azure. Where, instead of "only" focusing on infrastructure clouds, the company is working towards a new programming model, Steve said on March 4, 2010.

When we look at the services recently in our post, Is Amazon's Computing Fabric a New Economy, we noted a series of services outside of core computing that start evolving Amazon quickly down the path of a new development paradigm. Abstracting storage, network, monitoring, and perhaps in future security, in raw terms gives rise to new opportunities to bind them back together.

Security is the topic for RSA. Compliance is the reason to get it right. If the computing model wants to be secure, it needs to know the assets and their relationships. As reported by Search Cloud Computing, Amazon's Riley also tipped the audience at RSA that Amazon is weighing in on encryption as a service offerings. This is another example, where that now Amazon is supporting a new services such as Virtual Private Cloud, it moves one step closer the knowledge point for all the key assets, including their peers within the corporate network.

We find this area, as well as certificate management, to be an area ripe for the type of thinking we see at Amazon. The problem to be solved isn't a better routine, but is how to apply it tandem with the moving assets and data that is ever changing in demand.

We wonder if Amazon's Think Cloud is something new, and if so, is a path towards solving the collision of the major parties in the network. If it joins network, storage, person, and server resources together, perhaps it is the brains of the next generation Internet.

The winner will be the one that makes it simple, because as Devo on Chatroulette is proving, demand is asymmetric, and access control is from the eighties.

Photo credit: RSA, Devo, Inc.

Kigo DVD Ripper for Mac OS X is an all in one DVD to other video formats converter. It could rip DVD and convert to all popular video formats on Mac OS X to play on iPod, iPhone, PSP, Zune and other Portable Media Players and cell phones. It supports all popular video formats including AVI, DivX, XviD, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV, ASF, MOV, VOB, MP4, 3GP, 3G2 or QuickTime into iPod, PSP, Zune, MP4, 3GP, 3G2, AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV, DivX, XviD, ASF, MOV, VOB video files. This video Converter supports iPod, iPhone, PSP, Zune and other Portable Media Players and cell phones.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Another day, another portable media player to hit the market - this time round it would be the ICOO E900P which boasts support for 1280p videos - yup, you read that right. Forget about full HD as the E900P ushers in an even higher resolution, eh? Too bad the drawback would be less storage space due to the larger file size. Features include a 5" display at 800 × 480 resolution, USB on the go, support for popular audio and video codecs as well as a YPbPr port for video output. Funny how there is no HDMI port on this - what a shame!

Permalink: ICOO E900P portable media player from Ubergizmo | RSS Sponsor: Win a Fellowes Microshred Paper Shredder!

[Every week, we sum up sister iPhone site FingerGaming's top news and reviews for Apple's nascent -- and increasingly exciting -- portable games platform, as written by editor in chief Danny Cowan and authors Mathew Kumar and Jonathan Glover.]

This week, FingerGaming covers Capcom's iPhone port of Street Fighter IV and interviews IGF winners Randy Smith, Jetro Lauha and Jani Kahrama.

Also in this set of stories are the advent of The Graveyard on Apple's system, the top-selling and highest-grossing apps, and a number of other notable news and analysis pieces.

Here are the top stories from the last seven days:

- Street Fighter IV Now Available in App Store
"The iPhone version of Street Fighter IV includes eight playable characters -- Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Blanka, Guile, Dhalsim, Abel, and M. Bison. Each fighter retains his or her full move set, including specials, focus attacks, and ultra combos."

- Road to the IGF Mobile: Spider’s Randy Smith
"Having recently won the IGF Mobile Best iPhone game award, FingerGaming spoke to industry veteran and Tiger Style head Randy Smith about the studio’s stunning debut heading into the IGF."

- Top-Grossing Game Apps: Monopoly Overtakes Final Fantasy
"EA’s Monopoly finishes as this week’s highest-grossing game in the App Store. Square Enix’s former chart leader Final Fantasy drops to second place, while Backflip Studios’ physics puzzler Ragdoll Blaster 2 takes third in its debut week."

- Eliss Creator Reveals Faraway for iPhone
"Faraway retains Eliss’s outer space setting and vector graphic style, and introduces a new single-input gameplay mechanic revolving around gravitational pull."

- Top Free Game App Downloads: FingerZilla, Sniper Strike Lead Daily Rankings
"Inert Soap’s destruction sim FingerZilla captures the free app chart’s top spot. Donoma Games’ shooter Sniper Strike finishes at second place, as BayView Labs’ virtual aquarium Tap Fish takes third."

- Road to the IGF Mobile: Stair Dismount Developer Secret Exit
"Taking time out from working on their sequel to Zen Bound, Stair Dismount mastermind Jetro Lauha and cohort Jani Kahrama took time out of their busy schedule to speak to FingerGaming about the development of their IGF Mobile finalist sequel."

- Gameloft Shows Off Splinter Cell: Conviction, Zombie Infection at GDC
"Splinter Cell: Conviction is a third-person shooter built using an upgraded version of Gameloft's N.O.V.A. engine, while Zombie Infection clones the survival horror gameplay of Capcom's Resident Evil 5."

- Top-Selling Paid Game Apps: Alpine Crawler World Debuts in Top Three
"Dimension Technics’ physics-based offroading sim Alpine Crawler World sees fast sales in its premiere week, and finishes behind All-in-1 Gamebox and Doodle Jump in today's chart."

- Indie Art Game The Graveyard Arrives on iPhone
"Indie games developer Tale of Tales has released a free iPhone version of its 'explorable painting' The Graveyard, with a paid edition offering the possibility of a different ending."

Continue reading Hands-on: ModNation Racers PSP

Hands-on: ModNation Racers PSP originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Hands-on: ModNation Racers PSP

Hands-on: ModNation Racers PSP originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Sprint is making the bold first move into 4G smartphone market next week, a Wall Street Journal report said today, when the company is expected to show off the WiMAX-enabled HTC Supersonic.

The Supersonic has been a pretty big blip on the Android community's radar for several months, after a whole list of HTC device names was uncovered in a leaked Sense UI ROM last December. Since that time, a few more details have been discovered, and a few blurry spy camera shots and renders have surfaced; but as far as official specs go, there are none. It looks to have the same massive 4.3" screen that the HD2 has, run on the Android platform, and possibly contain a Snapdragon processor.

Sprint is the only major mobile network operator with a higher-speed "4G" network immediately available to consumers, but it is currently only accessible through USB dongles and portable hotspots like the Sierra Wireless Overdrive, and these are still only available in about 10 markets nationwide.

There are nearly 30 WiMAX networks active in the U.S. now under the Clear brand (a joint venture of Sprint and Clearwire,) and this year Clearwire expects to complete 80 more cities including major markets Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Seattle and Washington D.C.

Since Betanews is headquartered in Baltimore, we've been using Sprint's WiMAX network since it first launched in 2008. I ran a quick test this morning to see how well the WiMAX connection holds up against my smartphones' 3G connections, and the performance was actually only marginally better.

Using the FCC's Ookla network tester three times for each network, Sprint 4G averaged 5.35Mbps/.30Mbps with 130ms latency, Verizon 3G averaged 1.61Mbps/.65Mbps with 122ms latency, and T-Mobile 3G averaged .5Mbps/.45Mbps with 215ms latency. Unfortunately, I didn't have a device handy to test AT&T's speeds in the area this morning.

We will be meeting with both Sprint and HTC at CTIA next week and will be able to give you a crystal clear look at the device if it does, in fact, show up.

Filed under: Car Buying

AOL Autos debuts official iPhone app for new car shoppers originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iLuv is ready to rock and roll with the ISP150 Bar Speaker, where it will turn the rather ordinary iPod into a portable disco - assuming you aren't rocking out in some huge hall, of course. Meant to work in tandem with the iPad, notebook and iPod, its integrated speakers can be powered via USB or a quartet of AAA batteries. Features include a 3.5mm audio jack, USB connectivity as well as a power switch and volume control. At $34.99 a pop, we wonder who would want to lug it around on their travels since it doesn't seem all that convenient.

Permalink: iLuv ISP150 Bar Speaker from Ubergizmo | RSS Sponsor: Win a Fellowes Microshred Paper Shredder!

Un processeur Core i5, c'est ce qu'aurait l'Acer Aspire TimelineX 1830T. Des photos et des détails de ce prochain PC portable commencent à circuler sur Internet, et d'après les spécifications provenant de la fuite, il a l'air pas mal du tout. Le prix n'est pas connu, mais selon la rumeur, Acer l'annoncera officiellement fin Mars. Les caractéristiques de l'Aspire TimelineX 1830T comprennent:

Permalink: Fuites sur les détails et images de l'Acer Aspire TimelineX 1830T d'Ubergizmo FR. Aussi en Anglais

Difficile de ne pas craquer devant le charme dégagé par cette Xbox 360 portable réalisée par un membre du forum Ben Heck, et composée d’une Xbox 360 Jaspet, d’un adaptateur WiFi, d’un écran Gateway 1775W 17″ (entrée DVI), de 2 hauts-parleurs, d’un clavier USB, d’une webcam Xbox, d’une sortie VGA, d’une alim 12.1A modifiée, d’un disque dur 120Go et d’un compte Xbox Live Gold valable 12 mois.

Elle est actuellement sur eBay, au prix de départ de 1950$ tout de même…

Lire la suite..