A New Year … A New Look. That’s what Intel is hoping for as they’ve announced that they will be dropping their 37 year old logo and their successful “Intel Inside” motto. In place of the logo will be a new one showing an oval swirl surrounding the company name. As for the motto? Well it’s now “Leap Ahead”. Why the change? Well it’s to reflect the changing business of Intel as they move away from the PC business and into consumer products. As part of the name change, Intel will also be rebranding the Yonah processors as Duo (for dual core) and Solo (single core). You can probably attribute these marketing changes to Eric Kim – the Chief Marketing Officer at Intel and the man credited to Samsung’s revival. I’m sure this was no small feat to change the logo. Having worked at Intel for a few years myself, it was engrained into you that everything you created or showed to the outside world had to have a consistent look. Whether you wrote a application note or created a webpage or new drivers, things had to go through legal and the marketing dept to make sure they stayed true to Intel’s marketing look…. and to that end, it’s remarkable that something like this was even accomplished. Think about how much has to change for Intel in order to make this happen. All the online materials, documents, drivers, pamphlets etc etc. Wow.. big changes – let’s see if this helps Intel going forward.

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Phew – we just upgraded our Wordpress engine to version 2.0 and there doesn’t look to be any problems at all. Wow.. that was a bit scary there but I have to admit, the Wordpress upgrade path is pretty easy. If you haven’t tried Wordpress out yet and you’re interested in blogging, you owe it to yourself to look at the engine. You can find more information on Wordpress here. Good job guys!

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SlashPhone.com is reporting that the new Samsung i830 Windows smartphone will be made available starting on January 10th for businesses and January 24th for consumers. The i830 will apparently support both CDMA and GSM networks but is otherwise nearly the same as the current i730 being offered by Verizon Wirelss. The only noticeably absent feature is WiFi support which Samsung apparently removed for the i830. Oh yeah, this smartphone isn’t cheap at all. It’ll cost ya around 800 bucks for a new phone without a contract. OUCH. I just hope that the new Treo 700w won’t be ridiculously priced also.

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Let’sGoDigital has managed to scrounge up some more information on the upcoming Kodak EasyShare V570 Digital Camera and it’s definitely a very interesting point and shoot beauty. The V570 looks to incorporate two lens and two CCD image sensors inside – one lens will be a 3x optical zoom lens with a focal length of 38-117mm, while the other lens will be a wide angle lens of 23 mm. Both will have CCD image sensors capable of 5 megapixels. I got my fiancee a V550 for Christmas and I must say that I’ve been quite impressed with the camera thus far. The V570 will probably retail for around $399.

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Video Without Boundaries has announced that they are expanding the capabilities of their MediaREADY Digital Media Center products to include support for a wide variety of service and content providers. The Linux line of MediaREADY Digital Media Center systems will include support for Apple iTunes, Yahoo! Music, Google Video, and AOL Optimized 9. There will also be support for voice calling as well as direct support for the Apple iPod. VWB will demonstrate these features at the upcoming CES convention to be held in Vegas.

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Nissan and Microsoft have teamed together to create a concept game with an integrated gaming system inside. The new concept car is called the Nissan URGE and it comes equipped with a Microsoft Xbox 360 console inside. When your car is parked (and I stress PARKED), you can play video games such as Project Gotham Racing 3 using your car’s steering wheel, brakes, and gas pedal. The video game is displayed on a 7 inch flip down LCD screen. This screen also doubles as a rear view mirror when the car is in motion. The new Nissan URGE will make it’s world debut at the 2006 North American International Auto Show on Jan. 9th, 2006. What I want to know is – how the heck did they manage to score themselves a Microsoft Xbox 360? I kid, I kid…

Oh yeah doesn’t the URGE look like a souped Z?



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[Pictures of the concept car]

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A Chinese company called EverE has announced a new Bluetooth audio dongle for the Sony PSP called the A375 Bluetooth PSP Audio Dongle. With this dongle connected to your Sony PSP, you can wirelessly transmit stereo sound over Bluetooth to a Bluetooth Stereo headset. There’s also a 3.5 mm plug which means you can use the dongle for other portable audio devices as well. The A375 supports Bluetooth 1.2, has a listening time of over five hours, measures 126mm x30mm x20mm and weighs only 20 grams.

[Check it out via I4U.com]

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DesignTechnica reviews the Denon S-301 home theater system here. This 2.1 speaker setup simulates surround sound by using Dolby’s Virtual Speaker technology. The centerpiece of the S-301 is the integrated DVD player, AM/FM tuner built into a receiver like chassis which powers the speakers and connects to your television set. It’s a pretty compact setup but you do pay for it – the system retails for $1599 which seems a bit expensive if you ask me. What does DesignTechnica think of it?

With its attractive silver and black finish, the S-301 can stand next to any flat-screen TV on the market..

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Imation has announced the new Imation 4GB Micro Hard Drive and yes it looks like a padlock if you ask me. Actually the top portion of the drive houses the USB dongle which can open up to connect to a PC or laptop. You can then bring it back down to lock into place thereby securing it around objects such as your belt buckle or bag. Imation also includes the Imation Security Manager software which adds password protection, file encryption, and file synchronization, compression, and version control to the product. The 4GB Micro Hard Drive will be available for $189 on the Imation website here. The device is compatible with Mac 9.x or greater, Windows ME or higher, and Linux 2.4 or greater.

[Check it out via MobileWhack.]

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Mustek has announced a new portable DVD player called the MP1000 featuring DivX support and a whopping 10 inch widescreen LCD display. The MP1000 supports DVD and CD/R/RW media and plays back DVDs, MPEG4 videos, DivX video, and MP3 music files. There’s also a MMC/SD card reader built right in so you can take a look at pictures taken with your digital camera on the M1000.

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