Google services on LG Mobiles

LG Electronics and Google has tied up for a global collaboration to pre-install Google’s services on millions of LG mobile phones. Mobile users around the world will now be able to easily search for information, find locations, update blogs and manage email while on the move.

Second quarter of year 2007 will see select LG handsets, pre-installed with Google™ products and services shipping globally including North America, Europe and Asia. These handsets will create a more dynamic user experience, including one click access to Google search through an icon in the application menu.

More features of LG-Google handsets include:

• Google Maps™ for mobile, an application that enables users to view maps and satellite imagery, find local businesses, and get driving directions
• Gmail™ for mobile, a Java-based application that brings more speed, convenience and functionality to the mobile Gmail experience
• Blogger™ Mobile, an application to upload/download images and text to blog from mobile devices (www.blogger.com), keeps avid bloggers upwardly mobile.
  

In words of Deep Nishar, director of product management, Google. “Users around the world now have more options for accessing information while on-the-go through search and Gmail. With applications like Blogger, users are now free to express themselves from wherever they are in the world.”

Through this new partnership, LG and Google will jointly market LG-Google handsets, then further extending their collaboration to develop digitalized home in the future. LG plans to launch mobile handsets pre-installed with Google and products and service for the next few years with at least ten new handsets in 2007.

Samsung announces silent and speedy S series hard drives

Samsung has announced its new SpinPoint S166 Series of ultra silent and high-speed hard disk drives. The 3.5” SpinPoint S166 hard drives are currently shipping in 80GB and 160GB capacities and will be available worldwide in April.

The new SpinPoint S Series of hard drives are 15 percent silent and faster than the earlier versions using improved SilentSeekTM and NoiseGuardTM technologies to accelerate operational speed while reducing noise. This significant fifteen percent noise-level reduction makes the drives ideal for use in office computers, as well as in home consumer electronics such as DVR/ PVRs, or any other hard drive equipped products intended for use in a quiet environment.

According to Samsung, three breakthrough technologies are implemented in the new S Series to enhance performance and reliability. An improved fly-height control technology ensures better read and write sensitivity by dynamically lowering the fly height in read or write mode while maintaining a consistent and high fly-height across the disc in standard mode; an optimized actuator assembly for single-disk mechanism reinforces the reliability of the disk’s mechanical functions and improves the non operating and operating shock characteristics of the drive; and an upgraded system-on-chip (SoC) controller provides significant thermal, disk data transfer speed, and power consumption enhancements.

The S166 Series has a spin speed of 7,200rpm and provides an 8MB buffer. The Series features the SATA 3.0Gbps interface and includes Native Command Queuing (NCQ). The drives are also available with a PATA interface for customers who require this application.

Intel's next microarchitecture "Nehalem"

Coming in 2008 is Intel's next brand new microarchitecture codenamed "Nehalem."

According to Intel, Nehalem is a truly dynamic- and design-scalable microarchitecture. It will deliver both performance on demand and optimal price/performance/energy efficiency for each platform.

Nehalem's dynamic scalability includes:

• Dynamically managed cores, threads, cache, interfaces, and power
• Leveraging leading 4 instruction issue Intel Core microarchitecture technology (Intel Core microarchitecture's ability to process up to 4 instructions per clock cycle on a sustained basis as compared to 3 instructions per clock cycle or less for other processors)
• Simultaneous multi-threading (Intel Hyper-Threading Technology) to enhance performance and energy efficiency
• Innovative new Intel® SSE4 and ATA instruction set architecture additions
• Superior multi-level shared cache that leverages Intel® Smart Cache technology
• Leadership system and memory bandwidth
• Performance-enhanced dynamic power management
  

Nehalem's design scalability will enable optimal price/performance/energy efficiency for each market segment through:

• New system architecture for next generation Intel processors and platforms
• Scalable performance for from one-to-sixteen (or more) threads and from one-to-eight (or more) cores
• Scalable and configurable system interconnects and integrated memory controllers
• High performance integrated graphics engine for client platforms