It appears that Microsoft has found yet another way to dominate the market as they are starting their own line of retail stores.

Some of you are probably looking at the picture here and can’t help but compare it with Apple stores. I mean, look at the minimalist décor, and the company logo emblazed in the glass. Should we have any problem with Microsoft stealing a page from Apple’s playbook? It wouldn’t be the first time.

Ooooo, that was below the belt with that cheap pot shot at Microsoft. I suppose that I could take a lot more, because a company like Microsoft is too big not to hit. So let’s get all the Microsoft cracks out of our system.

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Sounds like a dream? Well, that offer is only available to business broadband customers, so make sure you’re part of that group before you take advantage of it. This is incidentally the first business broadband package from BT to offer free public Wi-Fi hotspots, offering a competitive advantage to virtually any business that signs up. Visitors are now able to use Wi-Fi a free service or purchase BT Openzone vouchers as another revenue stream for the business – something worth looking into in these economically challenging times. The target market? Firms such as restaurants, hotels, cafes, doctor and dentist waiting rooms. If your business plans on picking this up, do take note of the following.

The Free Blackberry BIS Email subscription excludes any additional services e.g. Satellite Navigation, Internet Calling or BT Business Email (charges apply). Offer extended until 31.3.09. Normal bolt-on price £5. BT Talk Time Subscription from £20.25 a month. Excludes Roaming. Requires 24 month term. Customers taking this offer can also take Satellite Navigation for the reduced rate of £5 a month. Conditions apply.

Press Release

Stantum Technologies is not a name that is known to all, but they are one of the pioneer developers where multi-touch sensing technology is concerned. Hence, it is no surprise to see them at the Mobile World Congress with a new finger-pressure detection capability which features their patented PMatrix, a “resistive multi-touch detection platform” which enables users to move an unlimited number of fingers, fingernails or utensils (such as styli) on a screen – simultaneously. This feature is able to tell the difference between three levels of pressure, ranging from soft to medium and hard. Depending on how strong you decide to “poke” the screen, the device will also react differently. Guess touchscreen technology has just gotten much more complicated by making our life easier, so it will be interesting to see what kind of application such technology can be applied to.

Press Release

It’s not to want a piece of the wireless market when there’s one cellphone for every 2 ½ people on the planet. That amounts to a lot of people with a cellphone. Course, if Steve Jobs had his way, they’d all have iPhones. But Apple doesn’t have global domination yet and there’s plenty pieces of the cell phone pie. So who wouldn’t want to break them off some of that. And Lego, with their new partners Digital Blue, see the handwriting on the wall. Digital Blue is no stranger to electronics, having created some fantastic low-cost kid gadgets for Disney which include mp3 players and low res digital cameras. And now, it looks like they’re designing a really cool Lego Cellphone with wireless carrier Alcatel.

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After many months of leaked photos and rumors, Amazon.com’s CEO Jeff Bezos finally unveiled the Kindle 2 today. Like the famous upgrade of the iPhone, the Kindle is slimmer as it is 0.36 inches thick (half as thick as the old one).

Another upgrade of the Kindle 2 is the battery life. It is approximately 25 percent larger than before, and good for two weeks without charging. The memory has also been increased at 2GB instead of the 256MB from the old Kindle.

One of the most outstanding features is the text-to-speech feature that literally allows the Kindle to read to you. Yes, the voice sounds very artificial, so you might not want it to tell you your favorite story for very long.

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Listening to the sage words of the wise one, Congress has stepped up and voted heed the Obama Administration’s council and delayed the proposed digital TV transition. Originally scheduled for next week, the digital TV transition in the United States would shut off most analog broadcast signals (except those from stations that are so small they can’t afford to make the switchover) and go completely digital. The plan, which has been in place for several years and prompted a multi-million dollar ad and voucher campaign to help viewers make the switch, drew concern from the incoming administration as there are still thousands of people waiting for digital converter vouchers and no money to pay for them. It seems that the free $40 voucher, which is meant to help absorb the cost of a digital to analog converter box, was so popular that the entire program funding was depleted with a month to go, leaving thousands in the lurch until the more then 40% of unused vouchers were recycled and reprocessed for redistribution. And that’s where the perceived problem came.

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NOT the computer, just an example

With great fanfare, the Indian government announced their $10 laptop, now known as the “Sakshat” and stated that the laptop would sell for twice the planned cost … $20. Still, not to bad. And although there’s no picture of this price breaking design at the moment, here’s an overview of what’s under the hood:

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We all know that no two fingerprints are exactly alike, which is how biometric scanners can identify the correct user. However, did you know that people can be positively identified by their finger veins?

This is exactly what the mofiria is designed to indentify. It uses near infrared LEDs on the side of the user’s finger, and then CMOS sensors can capture the scattered light inside the finger veins.

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