Motorola Announces Touch-Screen Mobile TV Device

Motorola announced six new products and technology demonstrations Wednesday that are designed to improve the consumer mobile media experience. The devices include a new mobile TV with a touch-screen user interface.

The new Mobile TV DH02 and the other five products will be shown at the CTIA mobile and wireless conference in Las Vegas next week, Motorola said. The previous version, the DH01, did not have the touch-screen capabilities.

U.S. regulators have not allocated wireless spectrum to allow digital broadcasts for handhelds such as the DH02, but Motorola believes that area will open up later this year or early in 2009, a spokeswoman said. The standard is “far more prevalent” in other areas of the world, she added.

Users of Mobile TV DH02 will be able to click, drag and scroll through icons in menus to reach mobile TV content. For wireless carriers, the device will include support for HSDPA and GPRS networks to allow the carriers to provide interactive services for customers. A few details of the DH02 were released; It has the ability to provide 25 frames per second of digital video and its offers portrait view for navigation as well as landscape view for mobile TV and personal media entertainment. Pricing will depend on individual carriers.

Also Wednesday, Motorola announced a plug-and-play desktop device to support indoor fixed WiMax networks, which are rolling out in some states from carriers such as Clearwire. The new CEPi 150 will likely be sold to consumers by carriers and is designed to provide automatic connections to a WiMax service from a carrier for use with devices within a home. It is also certified for mobile Wimax connections in vehicles. Motorola also will present it during a mobile WiMax demonstration at CTIA.

Analysts noted that Motorola’s product announcements came on the same day that the company announced its intentions to split off its mobile devices division from its other divisions, probably in an attempt by Motorola to show that it still has a robust product line with new innovations.

The other four products are devoted to ways that carriers can improve wireless networks. A new CDMA femtocell will be demonstrated next week, to be installed in a home or small business to enhance wireless voice and data services. Motorola has previously announced a 3G UMTS femtocells. Femtocells are small, low power, self-installed wireless base stations.

Also, The company will demonstrate a single device to be installed in a carrier’s wireless base station that can support both LTE (Long Term Evolution technology) and WiMax, and can be software configurable to support either technology.

In addition, Motorola will provide a separate demonstration of an LTE wireless network supporting high-definition video transmissions, well in advance of the expected rollout of LTE networks in two or more years in the U.S. Finally, the company plans to show at CTIA a network handoff of a voice-over-IP call and a streaming video from a CDMA EV-DO Rev A network to an LTE network.

AMD Intros New Phenom Chips And Triple-Core Processors

Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday announced new Phenom chips, including quad-core chips and its first triple-core processors for desktop PCs.

The company’s triple-core Phenom X3 8000 series processors provide an option to mainstream PC buyers who don’t want to spend on a quad-core processor but are looking for more performance than a dual-core processor, said Pat Moorhead, vice president of advanced marketing at AMD.

The chips could be used for high-definition video playback, casual mainstream gaming and productivity applications, Moorhead said.

The company’s first triple-core processors include the Phenom X3 8400, which runs at 2.1GHz, and the Phenom X3 8600, which runs at 2.3GHz. Both will come with 1.5MB of L2 cache and 2MB of L3 cache.

AMD also launched three Phenom quad-core processors on Thursday — the Phenom X4 9750, which runs at 2.4Ghz; the Phenom X4 9850, which runs at 2.5GHz; and the Phenom 9100e, a low-voltage quad-core processor that runs at 1.8GHz and has a 65-watt power envelope during maximum usage. All the processors contain 2MB of L2 cache and 2MB of L3 cache.

PC makers will ship products with the quad-core processors in the second quarter, AMD said.

The triple-core processors are already shipping in volume to PC makers, AMD said. U.S. vendor ZT Systems will list PCs with the new triple-core Phenoms on Monday, with other “major OEMs” and system vendors shipping products next quarter, AMD said. Many major vendors, including Dell and Hewlett-Packard, have already hinted at including the processors in desktops.

Dell has listed plans to use the chip in its OptiPlex 740 business desktop systems. It will ship the triple-core OptiPlex in the second quarter, a company spokeswoman recently said, but she declined to specify which processor will run the desktop. Hewlett-Packard has also listed a desktop on its Bulgarian-language Web site with AMD’s Phenom Triple-Core 8600B processor.

Mesh Computer, a PC vendor in the U.K., is offering the Matrix XXX Plus desktop with the Phenom X3 8400 processor and the Matrix XXX Pro desktop with the Phenom 8600 processor.

Because the triple-core chip is a new concept–set between the widely accepted dual- and quad-cores–it’s unclear how it will fit in the market, said Dean McCarron, founder and principal at Mercury Research.

“You’re going to get a performance enhancement with the extra core above and beyond a dual-core,” McCarron said. But it also falls shy of a quad-core.

AMD designed the triple-core as a way to produce a cheaper chip. The triple-core processor is built on a quad-core CPU, with one core nonfunctional, McCarron said.

The triple-core chip gives AMD a tactical advantage over Intel, McCarron said. Intel will need to answer the triple-core chip with a product priced in the same range while delivering similar performance. Intel can take a dual-core or quad-core processor, adjust features like cache, and price it similar to AMD’s triple-core processor, McCarron said.

Multi-Touch Trackpad for Asustek’s New Eee PC

The next generation Eee PC laptop by Asustek Computer will come with a multi-touch trackpad in addition to the larger screen, better Webcam and increased data storage, a company representative said Thursday.

The Eee PC 900 boasts an 8.9-inch screen, larger than the 7-inch display on the original Eee PC 701 model, along with a 1.3 MP camera and 12GB solid-state disk drive (SSD). The Webcam on the Eee PC 701 is only 0.3MP and the largest SSD is 8GB.

The Eee PC 900’s oversized touchpad works similar to the Macbook Air. Using two fingers, a person can zoom in and out of documents and photos, scroll up and down, and more, an Asustek representative said.

A picture of the Eee PC 900 can be found on the Federal Communications Commission’s Web site, where details were submitted for approval by the U.S. government regulator.

A few things the Eee PC 900 will not have include a touchscreen and GPS (global positioning system), the Asustek representative said, despite some news reports to the contrary.

The Eee PC 900 will come pre-loaded with either Microsoft Windows XP or Linux OSs, the representative said.

The first devices will likely hit some markets by June this year. Pricing will vary by country, but in Europe, the new Eee PC will cost around $626.

Mozilla Fixes 10 Firefox Flaws, Half Seen as ‘Critical’

Mozilla patched 10 vulnerabilities, half of them marked “critical,” in its open-source browser as it updated Firefox to version 2.0.0.13. The new Mozilla Messaging spin-off, however, was not able to provide a matching update to its Thunderbird e-mail client, which shares five of the Firefox flaws that were fixed.

Mozilla’s six advisories spelled out five Firefox bugs marked “critical,” three tagged “high” and one each “moderate” and “low.”

“There’s a little bit here to interest most everyone,” said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security. “The bulletins claim no favor in the many types of vulnerabilities typically associated with browsers.”

Among the critical flaws were a pair that could be exploited to crash the browser or its JavaScript engine, and perhaps do more. “Some of these crashes showed evidence of memory corruption under certain circumstances and we presume that with enough effort at least some of these could be exploited to run arbitrary code,” Mozilla wrote in the advisory pegged as 2008-15.

Mozilla also patched potential identity leaks, spoofing bugs and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in 2.0.0.13. But the fix that caught Storms’ eye was detailed by 2008-18, a fix for LiveConnect, a feature that harks back to Firefox’s predecessor, Netscape Navigator. LiveConnect lets Java applets call a Web page’s embedded JavaScript, or JavaScript access the Java runtime libraries, and is used by both Firefox and Apple Inc.’s Safari 3 browser.

“Sun has updated the Java Runtime Environment with a fix for this problem. Mozilla has also added a fix to LiveConnect to protect users who don’t have the latest version of Java,” Mozilla said in the advisory.

“Here we have Firefox putting out a mitigation step for a bug in Java,” said Storms. “It’s a welcomed addition when one vendor can help out another.”

Adobe Unveils Free Web-based Photoshop

The long-awaited, Web-based and free version of Adobe Photoshop is now available as a beta, Adobe announced Thursday.

Photoshop Express allows users to store up to 2GB of images, make edits to their photos, and share them, all online.

It is a way for Adobe to compete with free applications like Google’s Picasa, which have emerged over the last few years.

Since it’s to be used by consumers, the company has put a lot of effort on ease-of-use. In a few clicks, users will be able to make standard edits, such as removing blemishes and red-eye, converting to black and white, cropping and resizing. No experience is required, Adobe said.

Users will also be able to integrate with social networking sites like Facebook.

Photoshop Express works with all major browsers, including Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari, Adobe said. It requires an Internet connection and Flash Player 9 to work.

The tool is based on Flex, Adobes cross-browser plug-in technology for multimedia.

At first, Photoshop Express is available only to U.S. residents and only in English. Users may experience slow performance if accessed outside of the US, Adobe warned. Future plans include availability in other languages and countries.

This isn’t Adobe’s first foray into Web-based services. Adobe announced the availability of Premiere Express, an online video editing available on partner sites such as MTV and Photobucket, early last year.