New EEE announced

Tech

The Guardian has details of new eee pcs that will be launched in the UK on May 1. It seems that all of the gripes that I have heard from various people who have slobbered over my one at work has been answered by this release. Availability is going to be very tight!

ASUS Eee PC magic continues with its next generation dubbed ASUS Eee PC 900. It offers several stunning updates and improvements. The screen size grows from 7″ to 8.9″; the RAM size grows from 512MB to 1GB, all supported with larger storage of up to 20GB. All the new models are Windows ready and come with a built in webcam (growing from 0.3m to 1.3m pixel), 4GB of SSD and a superb battery life of 3.5hrs. Finally, the weight stays below 1kg making it the ideal fusion of mobility and computing.

iPhone shortage

Tech

Silicon Valley Insider points to a commenter called Tantrum responding to a story in the New York Times about the current shortage of iPhones in Apple’s US shops. It seems that among the factors driving incredible demand in emerging markets is that the US $ price of the iPhone compares favourably compared to the local price of high-end Nokia and Blackberries.

Demand for iPhones outside the United States, particularly in emerging markets, is out of control and has reached the point where it has started to impact Apple’s normalized supply chain projections.

Follow either link for the full analysis which makes very interesting reading.
The conclusion:

Apple has produced a product that is promising but short of the mark in 3G Western Europe, reasonably good for the US but a smash hit in emerging markets.

Nokia ties into Siebel

CRM, Tech

The Motley Fool reports that Nokia has revealed details of a new phone that will be able to access Oracle apps including Siebel.

The E90 and its antecedents will connect to corporate databases through the Oracle Database Lite framework, with two separate applications for accessing Siebel-based customer management data. An Oracle spokesperson says that the collaboration has been five years in the making, so Finland’s finest has seen a need for tighter business integration for quite some time. For Siebel, that timeframe goes back beyond Oracle’s acquisition of the business-intelligence specialist in 2006.

Stuff White People Like

Thought Provoking, Web

Stuff White People Like, more like Stuff White American People Like is terrifically funny if you have any understanding about American culture (which most people do through television or cinema).

It is a known fact that white people believe that they can bring spring early by wearing a pair of shorts on any day that is above seasonal temperatures. This myth runs so deep that they will often wear shorts the following day when temperatures drop, at which point they will refuse to recognize that it is cold.

When you encounter a cold white person in shorts it’s best to say “I can’t wait until it’s warm enough to go windsurfing.” They will likely give you a high five.

Apple on the march

Tech

Now this is interesting. In the announcement of the new SDK, Apple also announced business class capabilities in the next release of the iPhone software. The FT reports that Blackberry owner RIM shares have dropped 3% on the news. I have a friend who has an iPod touch and a Blackberry, I’m going to ask him if he is going to switch when this capability becomes available.

The iPhone’s new business capabilities will allow business users to receive emails, contacts, and calendar information from Microsoft Exchange, one of the world’s most popular business communications software suites.

Combined, the announcements represent a raising of the stakes in the mobile handset market by Apple, which has set a goal of selling 10m iPhone handsets by the end of the year.

TripIt is awesome

Tech, Travel, Web

Brilliant tip from Joel on Software about a new travel service called TripIt. I just tried it myself and the only issue I can see is that it doesn’t show dates in non-US format. I was surprised that it managed to parse a pdf attachment from Lufthansa and get all of the details right.

Joel explains very succinctly how it works.

It’s kind of magical. You don’t have to fill out lots of little fields with all the details, because they’ve done a lot of work to parse those confirmation emails correctly… it worked flawlessly for my upcoming trip to Japan.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Automatic geotagging of photos

Photography, Tech

DP Review reports that a new geotagging device that adds geotagging to photos taken while carrying it around. I have thought about adding geotagging to my photos but every solution that I have considered takes some effort. This would be very nice to sync with Google Maps on my fotolog site.

The pocket-sized receiver keeps track of where you go and, so long as you’ve synchronized your camera with the clock on the Photo Finder, will match up your photos with where you were when you took them. Inserting an SD, SDHC, MMC or Memory Stick PRO Duo card allows the device to embed this location information into the EXIF metadata of the images on the card.

Powered by ScribeFire.