HTC is continuing to expand it’s markets, and is always looking for something new. The burgeoning tablet market is likely one of their next steps. They see not only a market for tablets, but they have women specifically as their target market.

At the Open Mobile Summit held in London, HTC’s vice president Europe Dr Florian Seiche said “Our study found women social networking while watching television was a likely use for tablets”.

It appears that HTC sees enough of a market to merit getting into the tablet world.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

The company says its open-source PR2 machines are a big step toward all-purpose robots. Now 11 R&D teams from around the world will get a crack at making that happen.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

The San Francisco-based app showcase is now selling out and attracting some of the hottest apps around. Those presenting see a clear benefit.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

Famous author will work with other novelist and the public on a multi-media metaverse known as The Mongoliad.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

RescueTime research indicates that users spent an average of 36 seconds playing the game Google replaced its home page logo with Friday.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

45 Minutes on IM: Former Wired.com managing editor Marty Cortinas is now running WoW’s official magazine. He talks about his transition.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

Early reports are that many people are loving Google’s playable Pac-Man logo on Friday. But are some companies banning the home page?

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

It’s hard to believe, but the iconic game will have its 30th anniversary Saturday. Many in the games industry say its influence is as strong as ever.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

To celebrate the video game’s 30th anniversary, Google created its first-ever playable home page doodle, a functional Pac-Man game–with a logo twist.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

If you want to come to this weekend’s do-it-yourself bacchanalia in San Mateo, California, this could be your lucky day.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

One of the amazing things about the internet is how fast news spreads. The other things that is amazing about the internet is just how slanted major media sources can be. Once again, Matt Drudge and his Drudge Report site lead the way with ignorance and hateful attacks. This is a site now solely dedicated to slamming President Obama and the Democratic party, such that almost any other news is either second place or not mentioned at all.

Today’s big headline? “Whitehouse Blocks Chef Tweets”. That’s right, the most important news of the day in the Drudge universe isn’t the fiery rioting in Thailand, it isn’t taliban claims to have attacked a US base overseas, and it certainly isn’t the sex scandal that has multi-term Republican Mark Souder resigning after being caught in an illicit affair with one of his staff. Nope, it’s all about how the Whitehouse isn’t allowing a guest chef to tweet his every movement leading up to a formal dinner later this week. All this combined with Matt’s wonderful selection of images, always trying to find the one image that shows people off at their worst.

Do you feel informed? You should feel outraged. Drudge claims 30 million visits in the last 24 hours, and means that 30 million people are now more informed about a tweeting issue instead of a Republican involved in a sex scandal. How can that be good or useful? This isn’t the first time that I have mentioned the drudgereport’s tendacies to sit on the conservative side of things, but damn,this is blantant and willfully trying to cover something up. Nasty.

It’s a shame, Drudge use to actually do news. Now he just does one sided slams. Maybe he is angling for a seat as Rush Limbaugh’s side kick or something.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel

From now until Sunday, the two spacecraft can be seen with the naked eye from certain places around the globe.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

Beh Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger Network, publisher of the hit blog I Can Has Cheezburger, sits down for a 45 Minutes on IM interview.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

A $15,000 robot from Anybots called QB is designed to help companies with remote offices save on communications costs.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

CNET News is giving away five sets of tickets for the do-it-yourself extravaganza taking place this weekend in San Mateo, Calif.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

An MIT team has come up with plans for two new airplanes that by 2035 could require 70 percent less fuel than today’s aircraft.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

I found this article from Reuters about the move to lower price smart phones, and found it to be very interesting, especially as it speaks about ZTE, a phone company from China that hasn’t been seen as much under it’s own name in the west. They are aiming for a $100 – $150 smart phone, and many people seem to think this is where the market will end up. The price of the chips is dropping, the price of the screens is dropping, and with cheap or even free operating systems to work from, these phones are now more than possible.

Nokia, which has also been not quite on the top of the smart phone market so far is also agressively looking at this market, and aims to get a smart phone to market before the end of the year at a price well under 100 Euros. That would certainly stand much of the market on it’s ear. It would also potentially put pressure on both Microsoft and Apple. Apple is often the premium price product in the marketplace, and would seem to have the most to lose against a retail market that appears to be above their unit costs.

Read the full story here.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

The foundation has responded to a report that the Wikipedia founder had been stripped of many of his responsibilities.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

In a bit of aerial promotion, Boeing recently put its newest and oldest planes in the skies.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

At a gala event Saturday night, the X Prize Foundation rolls out a vision and a plan for the next half-decade. Will it change the world for the better?

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

Rarely does anyone talk about Google failing. The Mountain View, California company has been very careful to shield it’s less than successful ideas from the public, often hiding their software offerings under Beta tags, such as the widely anticipated and mostly ignored Google Wave product. By keeping them in Beta mode often for years, they can phase them out without admitting failure.

However, when it came to the cell phone business, Google thought it was on the right track by offering their new Nexus One cell phone direct to the consumer, rather than pushing them through selected wireless carriers as Apple has done with their Iphone. Well, the experiment is apparently over, and online sales are set to end soon as Google moves back to the more standard cell phone through wireless company model.

With the prices of unsubsidized handsets still being higher than what the public generally appears to want to pay, at least in the US, Google has little choice but to go down this route to keep their smart phone in the public eye and in their hands. Otherwise, they risk not only failing on a distribution model error, but also by not making a big enough impression in the marketplace at all.

Read the full story here.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

Illegal file sharing fans are in a funk the last little while following the Grokster decision and rulings against major player The Pirate Bay, and now they have more to be concerned about. In a decision handed down in US Federal Court this week, Judge Wood ruled Lime Group, parent of LimeWire software maker Lime Wire, and founder Mark Gorton committed copyright infringement, induced copyright infringement, and engaged in unfair competition.

This decision is a real key for music and movie industry types who have been fighting mostly a losing battle against torrents, file traders, and sharing sites. The Grokster decision from the US Supreme Court pretty much set the scene for this ruling, making it clear that sites or companies that encourage or induce people to violate copyright are themselves responsible. The LimeWire case goes one step further in a sense, making the founder mark Gorton personally responsible, and not protected by his LLC that actually distributes the software.

This is an interesting case also because it confirmed that the Grokster decision can stand next to the original Betamax Decision, which declared VCRs and similar devices legal because they had signfiicant non-infringing uses. While P2P can be uses for non-infringing activities, such as sharing unix distributions and WoW patches, the reality is that pretty much every torrent or P2P gudie site is packed full of obviously infringing materials.

These rulings may also have an effect long term on the outcome of the Viacom v YouTube case. Clearly, YouTube has claimed their stake on the internet with very lax rules regarding use submitted content, but they have also moved (after other cases) to put in filtering and are fairly prompt to handle DMCA notifications from copyright holders. But many also feel that YouTube grew from nothing to the largest video sharing platform by using copyright violating materials, and items submitted to the court shows that YouTube founders were apparently aware of this and may even have encouraged it to grow the site. The use of clips of popular TV shows like Family Guy and other prime time staples were common in YouTube early years.

With a Surpreme Court ruling and now the LimeWire decision in a Federal Court, it appears that the pendulum is swinging back towards rights holders on these issues. Will it stay that way?

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel

On May 16, 1960, Hughes Lab researcher Theodore Maiman built the world’s first laser, even as two Bell Labs researchers got the patent for the innovation.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

Overall revenues were down 26 percent year-over-year in April, while hardware was down 37 percent, according to The NPD Group.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

At E3, Microsoft is turning to the TV network and the hit performance company to help launch its innovative motion-control system.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

45 Minutes on IM: The Boing Boing editor, sci-fi author, and all around big-time Net thinker hits on range of topics from gold farming to NAFTA.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

Ploom aims to make smoking more efficient and greener. The company has a patent pending on their Model One vaporizer.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

The service, which aims to move gamers away from consoles like the Xbox, PS3 and Wii, features games from top publishers.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

As part of the marketing campaign for “Toy Story 3,” the studio puts out at least two videos purporting to have been recorded off TV on a VCR.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

Virtually, that is. A program announced Tuesday aims to crowdsource lunar research by letting the public examine high-res images of the moon.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

After refusing to log out for more than three weeks, the last person in Xbox Live on an original Xbox succumbed. Multiplayer Halo 2 is no more.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

The social gaming giant is apparently at odds with Facebook over the percentage it would have to pay to use Facebook’s currency platform.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

Set to hit shelves on June 15, three days before its namesake Pixar movie, the new video game features both a film-faithful story line and an open-ended “toy box” mode.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

Daniel Terdiman embarks on Road Trip 2010 in June and wants help figuring out what kind of gadgets to bring. This could be your ticket into the Halo: Reach beta.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

45 Minutes on IM: CrowdFlower CEO Luke Biewald talked with CNET about Haiti, building a business on principles of the ancient Chinese game and more.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

Willow Garage is offering 11 research groups use of robots with an open-source platform to push personal general-use robotics rapidly forward.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture

Calling it the largest video game console beta in history, Microsoft and Bungie open the doors to the multiplayer game.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from CNET News – Gaming and Culture