Author: Amarnath Natarajan

Nintendo has just made an official announcement to drop the suggested retail price of Wii down to $149.99, and includes a copy of Mario Kart and Wii Wheel peripheral with all the purchases of the device. They will replace the current bundle of Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort games. The Steering Wheel, with the Wii Remote Plus and Nunchuck Controllers, matches the colour of the console. Whatever the color (black or white) you can buy separately for a scant $9.99. For more details read the press release

Samsung s 10.1 inch Galaxy Tab hits the FCC, dont mistake it as thicker 10.1v sibling that is gradually rolling out across Europe and Australia. The older Honeycomb tablet bears GT-P7100 code name, this FCC filling and a Wi-Fi alliance certificate show off the GT-P7510 for this Wi-Fi only 10.1incher. The drawing of the backside picture shown in the pictures below is a dead giveaway. The unknown thing here is the 1GHz dual-core processor inside this razor-thin slate, but given the release of this FCC application. Dont forget to check out the pictures

The dual-booting ViewSonic ViewPad 10 with Android 1.6 be damned, we got some good news for these users, this tablet is getting the Android 2.2 Foryo edition update. Now the users can now get updated Gmail, Calendar, Google Maps, and YouTube apps, onscreen keyboard, compatibility with newer apps, and a dose of sorely needed eye candy. New customers can choose one that also runs Windows 7 Home Premium and has 16GB of Flash memory for $599 or with Windows 7 Professional and 32GB of space for $679. ViewSonic is keeping the things interesting by compelling you to download Foryo onto thumb drive and then plug both it and USB keyboard into the ViewPad to install the update. For more details read the Press Release

The company best known for cameras and voice recorders, just brought both together by announcing the new LS-20M, a device with relatively high-end audio specs should help it go toe-to-toe with zoom. In addition to 1080p, this device records 24bit / 96mHz Linear PCM audio using a pair of condenser mics. At $300 it has a small 2-ich screen and no optional zoom, but it got more of the visual effects that make its PEN cameras so fun to use. It will hit the market on sometime in June. For more details read the press release.

Plex has served up streaming video for more than a minute, brings content to Mac, iDevices and a jailbroken Apple TVs. For those who are neither a Apple user and nor a Android user, the company has now rolled out a client that runs on Rokus. It is currently in beta version and only supports video, but Plex plans to provide picture and music management in the future. Plexs XMBC secret sauce paired with Rokus ample streaming content buffet. Dont forget to look at the images.

According to DigiTimes, the media tablet will feature a Fringe Field Switching LCD display and Touch panel from Amazon fave E Ink Holdings, a company better known for the technology behind the Kindles EPD e-paper displays. Quanta has received the manufacturing honours with production expected to peak at about 700,000 800,000 units per month. Amazon Kindle wont be featuring a Mirasol display according to this gossip.

The Samsungs Galaxy Tab8.9 seen at an event in Germany over the weekend. One of the people Johannes went hands-on with the tablet in Frankfurt, and liked what he saw. The version he saw is thinner that the 8.9-incher that we got to smudge up in March, and if this Europe appearance is any indication, Sammy may be on track to launch these sometime in summer. The launch date is yet to be announced. You can see the hand-on of the Honeycomb device on the video.

Lenovos LePad finally made its Chinese debut back in March, and while we may not ever see the tablet stateside not as LePad, – we can get a peek under the hood. The IMP3 tears down the LePad, we are seeing the machine for the first time and there is not much surprise, it is always nice to see what makes things tick. LePad features 1.3GHz Snapdragon chipset with Adreno 205 integrated graphics as well as an internal 27 Wh battery. It got Toshiba flash memory and WolfSon audio processor. We might not have much in the way of revelations here, but you can now know whats under the skin of LePad.

Carriers in the US have started to seriously crack down on Android tethering apps. Go to the Android Market site and try to install an apps that turns your smartphone into a Wi-Fi hotspot, there is a pretty good chance you will be told this item is not available on your carrier. We checked out a number of tethering options, they are blocked by T-Mobile and AT&T. Verizon has also joined the party now, we are sure they will be gone in short order. Sprint has decided against banning such apps for now.

The MSIs Wind Top AE2050 arrived in stateside a month ago, and the company is back with AE2070 now. The 20-incher features 1600*900 display, steps up to USB3.0 and can be upgraded to a 3.1GHz Core i3 Processor and NVIDIA GeForce GT540M graphics. Other specs are 500GB hard disk with 7,200 RPM, two-three watt speakers, a DVD burner, and a 6.1 inch Memory card Reader. It runs on Windows 7 along the latest version of MSIs Wind Touch UI, it includes Facebook and Twitter buttons in the browser, a window for viewing photos and video, sticky notes, weather and time gadgets for desktop widgets. For more details read the press release.

The Nokia announced its new Pink N8, the device already benefited from the widest set of colour options among any smartphone flagships, and ready to add a T-Mobile friendly shade of light red to its anodized aluminium case. The curvy icons on its 3.5-inch AMOLED screen, the Pink N8 will also feature the latest version of Symbian, named as Anna, Nokia unfortunately fail to tell when the phone will arrive.

Qualcomms latest video of its Mobile Development Platform hits the Internet now. The Snapdragons Adreno 220 is seen effortlessly handling in page HTML 5 video streaming, Flash video streaming, and 1080p playback. And as a slideshow, Qualcomm even put its current-gen-single-core QSD8255 with a rival dual-core chipset no doubt Tegra 2 in an LG Optimus 2x easily won the contest. The professional kit will also cost $1,350. For more details read the press release and dont forget to watch the videos

SiliconDusts Cable CARD-compatible HDHomeRun Prime ready to bring its triple tuner TV magic home, having gained CableLabs Certification as of April 28th and subsequently showing up for pre-order on Amazon. It also supports other DVR software like MythTV on Copy freely-market content. HTPC builders dont have to choose between this HDHR3-CC and the Ceton InfinitTV4 just yet, and it hasnt got the shipping date yet. To make your pre-order, click on the source link.

While Samsung has yet to announce the actual date for its new Galaxy Players in the US, their international counterparts are already heading towards. The Galaxy S Wi-Fi 4.0 is said to be debuting in Russia followed by other countries. The Galaxy S Wi-Fi 5.0 will be launched in Switzerland. The specs are same, these 1GHz DivX friendly Android PMPs, and they are going to be shipped with Froyo edition of Android and with a possibility to upgrade it to Gingerbread. For more details read the press release.

HPs diminutive webOS 2.2 smartphone might be on its way to AT&T, and now leaked photographs rocking a panda like colour scheme have further confirmed our suspicions. As in the image, the logo is on the upper-left hand corner of its 2.6-inch display. The HPs smallest webOS smartphone first appeared over at Pocket Now on Friday, just days before the Veers May 2nd (today launch party is scheduled).

Japan has tested two separate 100 terabit per second data links that use single optical fiber to carry their loads. New Scientist reports that the NEC scholars stuffed the light from 370 lasers into 165 kilometres of fiber to achieve a speed of 101.7 Tbps, while NICT researchers set a new record of 109 Tbps using a special fiber with seven cores to manage it.

Gigabytes S1080 tablet landed in Taiwan this month, is getting ready to hit US. The 10.1-inch Windows 7 tablet stopped by FCC, it got cracked open, and had its silicon-packed innards exposed for camera. The specs are still the same; it features dual-core Atom, 320GB HDD, and so on. We havent heard anything about the price drop yet.

If you are looking for biggest, fastest hard drive around, I-O Data now introduced the HDCA UT3.0K external hard drive, offers USB3.0 support and 3TB of storage, as company notes, makes it an ideal companion for TVs with a USB recording mode. It struggles to resist to charm of its blue LED and the possibility of owning more storage that you will ever need. It will be released in mid may, costs $324.