Cable Spies

Microsoft hopes to price Project Natal low enough that virtually every gamer can add it, a major rumor claimed on Wednesday. Alleged sources of MCV’s argue that the Xbox 360 motion controller is being designed with a price target of £50 (about $80) or less with 14 games, presumably mini-games, included in the box. The target is such that Microsoft hopes for “impulse buy” customers and may even drop to £30 ($50). The same tips reinforce rumors that at least some Xbox 360s will come bundled with Natal and have as many as 5 million of the add-ons shipping for a release sometime in November 2010.
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Vimeo on Wednesday announced plans to extend its movie service onto the iPhone and Android platforms, according to CNET News. All of the site’s content from the staff picks and HD video showcase have already been converted to formats optimized for mobile handsets.
“We’ve been working on it for the last few weeks. This is sort of the prelude of offering Plus members iPhone support; and in the future, an app,” said Vimeo director Blake Whitman.
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The “look and feel” of the Windows 7 interface borrows from Macs, according to a Microsoft partner group manager, Simon Aldous. “One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it’s very graphical and easy to use,” explains Aldous in an interview. “What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 — whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format — is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics.”

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Despite stereotypes, Mozilla’s Firefox is significantly more vulnerable to web attacks than any of its rivals, a Cenzic study (PDF) claimed late yesterday. About 44 percent of the 3,100 exploits tracked by the researchers attacked the open-source browser where only 15 percent of them would work in Internet Explorer. Safari is notably much closer to Firefox in vulnerability as 35 percent of exploits could affect the platform, while Opera’s small market share left just 6 percent of attacks putting it at risk.
The Safari share is partly affected by Cenzic’s inclusion of the mobile Safari browser on the iPhone and iPod touch, which triggered a “vast increase” in the number of available exploits for Safari as a whole. Jailbreaks for Apple’s devices have sometimes relied on web exploits in the past to run arbitrary code and break code signing requirements for iPhone apps. Apple has only recently been mending some of these exploits and in iPhone OS 3.1 forced jailbreak developers to switch away from a longstanding trick.

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Walmart said on Wednesday that it will offer buyers of the BlackBerry smartphones it carries a $100 gift card to use in store for whatever they want. This promotion will only last one week, and will start at 8am on November 14th. The BlackBerry handsets will also need to have two-year contracts attached to them from either AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile or Verizon.

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Rumors of a dual-network iPhone gained fuel on Wednesday with an analyst report from Northeast Securities claiming to know of the device. Pointing to checks within the parts chain, the analyst group expects an iPhone with both CDMA and WCDMA support to be ready by the summer of 2010. The change would let the phone work on Sprint, Verizon, and a handful of other international networks while still having the WCDMA foundations needed for UMTS and HSPA 3G on AT&T and most worldwide cell providers.

No mention is made of the hybrid Qualcomm chipset that had surfaced in a previous OTR Global analysis. In that report, a single chip would support the competing standards and let Apple sell just one core iPhone platform across all its existing service areas. It hasn’t been confirmed, but the chip would need to support both EVDO and HSPA to provide full 3G service on both network types.

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A basic configuration starts at a high $2,114 but starts with a 1.6GHz Core i7, 4GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive and extras like Bluetooth and a fingerprint reader. Options give it up to two 500GB hard disks or 256GB solid-state drives as well as 8GB of RAM and Blu-ray. Orders placed today should ship in less than two weeks.

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Do you have a tangled mess of wires in that corner electronic outlet in your house for all your various gadget chargers? Well if consortium of companies gets their way you’ll be able to charge all your devices wirelessly and get rid of the mess. The Wireless Power Consortium made up of companies like Sanyo, Philips, Logitech and Texas Instruments wants to make wireless power a universal standard. This new technology uses a plate to power devices by magnetically inducing a electrical charger in a attached device. You charge your cell phone, camera or other mobile gadget by just placing them on a charging plate, it would also avoid any over or under charging of a device caused by conflicting hard ware. The consortium wants to use this new technology to power cell phones and small mobile devices then move on to larger gadgets. Say good bye to wires!

-Ray

[Source: electronista]

Microsoft had originally planned to pull the life plug of the iconic Windows XP by halting the sales of the Windows XP licenses by January 31st of 2009. Well there are reports that Microsoft will be extending the sales of those coveted Windows XP licenses till May 31st, 2009. Some people believe that the reason why Microsoft is extending the life line of Windows XP because of the horrendous experience of Windows Vista. Others believe that Windows XP came back into the limelight when netbooks were introduced into the market. Since these miniature laptops use slower, lower wattage processors, Windows XP is the ideal operating system for these netbooks. But probably the main reason why Microsoft is extending the Windows XP licenses till the end of May could be because they are waiting for the official unveiling of the highly anticipated Windows 7. Whatever the reason may be, you better pile up on those Windows XP licenses before they are extinct.

- Geoff

[Source: Gizmodo]