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Sonos S3 / Play:3 all-in-one speaker system pops up at Amazon for $300, gets yanked post-haste
Sonos has proven to be quite the tease in its handling of the Sonos S3 (or is it the Play:3?). The wireless all-in-one speaker system made its first clandestine appearance at the FCC earlier this month, but gave little in the way of details, and now it's popped up in an (already pulled) Amazon pre-order page. This latest lift of the curtain hasn't given us much more to go on, but at least now we have a price -- $300 -- and confirmation that the speaker system is indeed rocking a "trio of drivers and amplifiers," as we previously speculated. Specifically, it's got one tweeter, two mids, and a single bass radiator on board. Amazon lists the system as PLAY3US1BLK, leading us to believe that we were also right in assuming that the S3 will come in the traditional black and white. As of now, we don't have anything confirming a shipping date, but you can bet we'll blast it your way when Sonos finally decides to give up the details. [Thanks, Charlie]
HTC acquires S3 Graphics and its prodigious patent portfolio, dares you to sue
Flush with cash, but not a fan of spending it on litigation? We hear you, and apparently so does HTC. The Taiwanese firm announced today it'll purchase S3 Graphics and its patent portfolio from VIA for a cool $300 million, giving the smartphone maker 265 new weapons in its IP arsenal. Also part of the deal is a perpetual license to the patents' former owner, so that the chipset manufacturer can keep cranking out silicon without fear of legal reprisal. Given HTC's competitors recently went on a giant patent shopping spree, we'd surmise that strengthening its warchest is, dare we say, quietly brilliant.
Sonos S3 / Play:3 wireless all-in-one speaker system leaked by the feds
Look what the FCC dragged in: it's a brand new, unannounced all-on-one speaker for inclusion in your Sonos wireless audio system. A mini S5, if you will, that goes by the name "Play:3" according to the black and white FCC labels -- a hint at black and white offerings just like the S5. Curiously, the FCC docs also refer to the Play:3 as the "S3" in keeping with Sonos' S5 nomenclature. Our friend Dave Zatz speculates that the diminutive size and name is a good indicator that the S3 / Play:3 will feature a trio of drivers and dedicated digital amplifiers, akin to the S5's five (two tweeters, two mids, and a subwoofer). And you know what? We'd have to agree. Now, given the S3's size and Sonos' proven ability to use software to perfectly synchronize audio across dozens of Sonos boxes, you'll have to forgive us for wondering if Sonos has a wireless 5.1 home theater solution up its sleeve. Well Sonos, do ya? Evidence of the Play:3 vs S3 naming conventions can be found after the break.
Ovi Store follows the pack with integrated app updates, charms us with refined algorithms
Sure, the Ovi Store may be getting a name change, but this week Symbian^3 users will get an upgrade to the familiar storefront complete with application updates and more relevant suggestions. After signing in, the client queries Nokia's servers and then notifies users of relevant new versions with a green flag inside the account button. It's certainly not revolutionary, but it's nice to get a feature that's otherwise taken for granted. Additionally, the S^3 crowd will be treated to Top Free and Best Sellers lists that are specific to their device and locale. For example, if E72 owners are especially fond of reeling in Fishing: Off the Hook, these downloads won't affect the results for N8 handsets. The same logic is applied to application suggestions, where Ovi Store provides recommendations based on the habits of similarly situated users. In other words, it looks like we'll soon learn who loves Angry Birds most of all. Any takers?
Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me upload my stuff to Amazon Cloud
Dear Auntie TUAW, Amazon gave me a free 10 GB in their cloud to upload my music. It won't all fit since I have about 15 GB of music, so I was wondering if there was a way to upload just certain playlists without have to go to each folder and upload all the songs separately. Perhaps an automator action? Thanks and kissies, Patrick
Apple countersues S3 Graphics in patent dispute
AppleInsider is reporting that Apple has countersued S3 Graphics after the company, a maker of graphics-visualization technologies for the notebook and desktop markets, originally sued Apple last June for patent infringement related to a number of Apple's devices, including the iPhone, iPod touch and MacBook computers. The original complaint stated that Apple has violated four S3 patents relating to image processing systems and "fixed-rate block-based image compression with inferred pixel values." AppleInsider notes that at this time it is not clear why Apple is countersuing S3 Graphics. The details of their complaint, filed this month, remain unknown. Apple's complaint in a US District Court in the Northern District of California is currently classified as an "oversized document," which means that no one can download it (yet) to find out what it contains. The countersuit does appear to be related to patents. However, it is not currently clear whether Apple is accusing S3 Graphics of patent violations itself, or if Apple is seeking to invalidate the patents S3 is suing it for violating.
Panasonic intros Lumix DMC-S3, DMC-S1, DMC-FH25 and DMC-FH27 compact cameras
More Lumix goodness? You betcha. Hot on the heels of Panasonic's CES unveiling of the FP5, FP7, FH5 and FH2 ultraslim compact camera comes this: even more Lumix compacts. Per usual, we'll tell you exactly what you need to know below, and those hungry for more can peek the full releases after the break. Up first we have two new folks joining the S series: the DMC-S3 and DMC-S1. Both of these are designed for up-and-comers looking for ease of use, with the S3 having a 14.1 megapixel sensor and the S1 dipping to a 12.1 megapixel sensor. Both of 'em tout a 720p movie mode, refreshed designs and a 4x optical zoom lens. Panny admits that they're both "entry-level," though you'll still find optical image stabilization, face detection, an intelligent scene selector and the Venus Engine VI image processor. There's a 2.7-inch LCD on the rear of each unit, and while the S3 will ship in blue, red, black and violet, the S1 will arrive in black, gold, blue, pink and silver. Mum's the word on a price and release date, sadly. The DMC-FH27 and DMC-FH25 point-and-shoots are both aimed at the fashionistas in the crowd, with the pair touting a 16.1 megapixel sensor, 8x optical zoom lens and a 720p movie mode. There's also an advanced Intelligent Auto mode for those who detest fiddling with settings, and the Venus Engine VI image processor promises to speed up just about everything dealing with operation. Face detection, optical image stabilization and an intelligent scene selector are all present, though the FH27's 3-inch rear LCD one-ups the 2.7-inch panel that's on the FH25. Per usual, Panny's keeping its trap shut when it comes to a price and release date. %Gallery-112601% %Gallery-112598%
Olympus XZ-1 and other pre-CES camera rumors from Sony and Panasonic
It's no secret that CES is the stage from which camera companies unleash more compact shooters than you can shake a tripod at -- and preceding those come a glut of rumors, naturally. 4/3 Rumors has heard Olympus will unveil the XZ-1 (pictured), which boasts the LX5's 10 megapixel sensor and a none-too-shabby 28-112mm f/1.8-2.5 lens. The site also heard that a few Panasonic model numbers that at this point really don't tell too grand a story: DMC-S1 and S3, DMC-TS3, FH2, and FH5. Meanwhile at Sony Alpha Rumors, the eponymous company will reportedly launch a number of compact cameras (go figure) including a Cybershot DSC-HX1 successor, some new Bloggies, and new 2D and 3D video recorders... and though no Alpha and no NEX models will be on the show floor, the site is also suggesting the future NEX-7 and Alpha A77 models have 1080p60 AVCHD and a 0.1-second autofocus. Latter tidbit notwithstanding, we'd wager by mid-January everything else here will be either confirmed or forgotten.
Klipsch issues first on-ear headphones, Image S5i Rugged and bargain Image S3 earbuds
It's been awhile since we sashayed through Klipsch's world headquarters back in December of last year, but the company certainly hasn't let off of the pedal. Today at IFA, it managed to introduce no fewer than three new headphones, including the outfit's very first on-ear set. The Image One was built to bring Klipsch's signature sound to folks who'd prefer cans over 'buds, and it's also amongst the first to have an Apple-centric mic and three-button remote for controlling music playback on iPods, iPads and iPhones. Travelers will be pleased to hear that the ear cups fold flat for portability, but you'll need $149.99 to call 'em yours when they ship this November. Moving on, there's the Image S5i Rugged (shown above) -- essentially, you're looking at the same sound quality we lauded last year, but with a rugged slant. These feature the aforesaid three-button remote / mic as well as a "safety case" that touts a built-in flashlight. We're expecting a demonstration of their toughness at IFA tomorrow, but in the meanwhile you can start sacking away $129.99 for their November debut. Finally, the October-bound Image S3 is the company's new low-end set, priced at just $49.99 but still shipping with a trio of oval ear tips, a carrying case and a choice of gray, red, pink or green hues. The full presser is after the break, if you're into that type of thing. %Gallery-101306%
Nokia N8 up for official €469 pre-order in Italy, available in September
Nokia's Symbian^3 flagship -- the 3.5-inch N8 with 12 megapixel camera -- just went up for pre-order on Espoo's Italian storefront showing an end of September availability. Now before you get up in arms about the €469 price tag (about $610), remember, the €370 estimated retail price announced was pre tax and pre carrier subsidy. That's just how Europe does things, deal with it. We're not seeing the preorder available elsewhere but we'll update you if that situation changes. [Thanks, Faisal]
Symbian^3 C7 with nHD display confirmed on Nokia's own site
If Nokia's N8 is just too much smartphone for you then perhaps you'd like to take it down a notch with the C7. As part of the C-series of Nokia devices, you can expect it to trim some of the specs off the N8, but not much as the flagship device of the family. You know, something very similar to the apparently leaked image and specs (pictured above) we saw a few weeks back. Parsing the XML posted on Nokia's own site reveals an ARM-based Symbian^3 C7-00 device with a Nokia favorite 360x640 nHD pixel display resolution and 3G UMTS/HSDPA, WiFi, and Bluetooth radios. Obviously no pricing is available but you can expect it to be fairly inexpensive for what you'll get. [Thanks, Glen]
Nokia N8 fights back with heavenly HD video sample (updated)
Nokia is doing its best to rewind the negative spin placed on its flagship N8 after one of its children went missing. As part of the effort, it just published the first un-retouched 720p video captured by a pre-production N8's Carl Zeiss lens as followup to the first sample images released yesterday. We downloaded the H.264 video's .MP4 container to view natively (that's a 600 pixel wide screencap above) and sure enough came away impressed -- though we're curious to hear the original audio that was replaced by a dramatic soundtrack. Now, we're not saying it's better or worse than other similarly equipped smartphones shooting well-lit video -- without seeing side-by-side video of the same footage it's difficult to tell. But Nokia, a company known for using decent optics, sensors, and flash units in its N-series devices, certainly won't be disappointing impromptu photogs making their first jump into Symbian^3. Just imagine what Nokia hardware coupled with a killer user experience could do. Could do. Embedded video sample after the break. Update: All About Symbian has a marvelously detailed breakdown of the N8's camera that dives deeply into the phone's optics, mic, flash, and more.
Snow Leopard Services in practice: Amazon S3 uploader
I stumbled upon a great example of the Snow Leopard Services that I've been drooling over. The S3 Upload Service by August Lilleaas is available as a workflow which can be opened in Automator, so you can examine its inner workings. It uses AppleScript and Ruby, easily passed back and forth thanks to Automator's building-block-style workflow. It lets you upload a publicly-accessible file to an S3 bucket, and copies the URL into your clipboard upon successful upload. The workflow requires that you at least have RubyGems installed, and have an Amazon S3 account set up, but it will handle the rest. It asks for your S3 credentials with an AppleScript popup, which has the unfortunate side effect of not being able to be forced to the front very easily and tends to get lost behind other windows. There are workarounds to that, but no way to keep it on top once it's up. It looks possible to build custom nibs for your services, so I might play around with making a general-purpose utility panel popup to fill the void in my own projects. In the process of rolling my own Services in Snow Leopard, I've definitely found some limitations, but I'm having fun working around them. This one is a great example of passing results -- returned from different languages -- and processing them, all within Automator. It's not super-polished -- your mileage may vary -- but a big thanks to August for putting it out there for the rest of us to play with!
Samsung doles out 640GB S2 portable, 2TB S3 Station HDDs
Whatever Toshiba can do, Samsung can do... um, equally well? Evidently that's the game being played over at IFA, as the latter company has issued a 640GB portable hard drive of its own nary 24 hours after Tosh did likewise. The unspeakably cute S2 portable is getting a much-needed capacity bump, making the largest drive in the line 640GB. In related news, the company's 3.5-inch S3 Station external HDD has seen its maximum storage level creep north to 2TB, though storage freaks will have to wait patiently until "early next year" in order to take one home. Prices for both remain a mystery, but if we had to guess, we'd put the MSRPs about a penny under whatever Toshiba settles on. Call it a hunch.[Via HotHardware]
ExpanDrive 2.0 expands to Amazon S3
I had to do some extensive testing before I got too excited, but after a conversation with the developers I'm pleased to announce that ExpanDrive 2.0 is out. We've mentioned it before, but to recap: ExpanDrive allows you to mount remote servers as drives directly accessible in Finder. With a completely rewritten (again) SFTP layer, the existing FTP support and new Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Solution) support, it's even more useful than the last time we mentioned it. One of the developers, Jeff Mancuso, mentioned to me back at the last WWDC that the S3 support was in the works; it's great to see it come to fruition. In my testing, I found that a previously-existing S3 option, JungleDisk, can cause conflicts with ExpanDrive's S3 support. JungleDisk users should note that there are some issues, but they seem to clear up if you create vanilla buckets in your account and use those with ExpanDrive. I personally found that I was willing to give up JungleDisk entirely at this point, preferring this direct-mount with all of the perks, including a contextual menu in Finder for quickly setting public read/write permissions. I can attest to the fact that it's faster, and that the S3 support is working (wonderfully, without JungleDisk). ExpanDrive 2.0 is a $39.95 purchase (well worth it if you deal with remote UNIX systems or S3), and a $19.95 upgrade for existing users. There's a free trial available.
S3 crams DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI onto $70 Chrome 540 GTX
While the future seems bright for DisplayPort, it's still tough to find a GPU out there with a DisplayPort socket -- and the search becomes increasingly difficult when hunting one down that's affordable. Enter S3, who is expanding its Chrome 500 series with the Chrome 540 GTX. Hailed as the "world's most connected high-def card," this PCI Express card boasts 256MB of GDDR3 memory, compatibility with DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.0, support for Blu-ray playback and a trifecta of interfaces: DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. The best part? It comes bundled with WinDVD 8 for BD playback and can be procured today for the low, low price of $69.95.
S3's Chrome 500 graphics processors handle Blu-ray, HD video
Movin' on up in the world, are we S3? Just a month after the VIA-owned S3 Graphics returned to the scene with its Chrome 400 line of discrete graphics cards comes this, the predictably named Chrome 500 series. The new line is capable of handling Blu-ray / streaming HD video playback and provides support for DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.0 applications. You'll also find a built-in Dolby 7.1 digital surround sound processor, GPGPU (General Purpose GPU) technology, ChromotionHD (which offloads video processing from the CPU) and compatibility with DisplayPort / HDMI / DVI (with HDCP). The first off the blocks is the 512MB Chrome 530 GT (pictured), and the bargain-bin-styled $44.95 should work wonders given the economy.
VIA-owned S3 Graphics crashes the GPGPU party
We know the past couple years haven't been kind to VIA-owned S3 Graphics -- market share has declined, and NVIDIA and ATI keep introducing fancy new technologies, making it tough to keep up. That said, we're inspired by S3's ardent attempts to stay relevant in an industry that won't easily make room for small competitors. The latest case in point: the company has released a photo-editing app to demonstrate the newly-programmed GPGPU (general-purpose computing on graphics processing units) functionalities of its DirectX 10.1 Chrome 400 line of discrete graphics cards. S3 claims its hard work has produced an HPC environment that can be used to reduce processing time for scientific and other applications from days to seconds -- we'll believe it when we see it, but you've gotta admire the tenacity.[Via CustomPC]
QKfone S3 is big on tacky, almost a Mercedes Benz SLK
Yeah, we know at first glance this might look like some hellish giant out of your worst nightmare crushing the life out some poor, unsuspecting Mercedes, but fear not, it's just a phone. The QKfone S3 is a dual-band set with a touchscreen, dual-SIM, Bluetooth, FM radio, and memory expansion with microSD. OK, enough with that business, the fun begins under the S3's top where you'll find the battery, both SIM cards and the memory card. Charging is done through a hole in the trunk, and -- this is actually clever -- one of the mirrors is actually the stylus for the set. So if you're looking for Benz style on a budget you'll likely wanna look elsewhere, but if you need a weird handset that will barely work over here, this might be it.
Raidon's STARAY S3 Series Data Encryption Box now available
Psst... hey you. Yeah, you. Tired of having to sleep with one eye on your HDD? Enter Raidon's STARAY S3 Series Data Encryption Box, which enables the drive within to be partitioned into public and private parts. There's also talk of S-Codes and X-Codes in order to ratchet up security, and the keypad-based password entry ensures that data snatchers will have to extract strings of thought from your brain before they can tap into your collection of 1980s-era R&B videos. Get yours sent to an undisclosed underground location for just $69, but don't forget to order up a hard drive while you're at it.
