consumer devices

Today's LCD monitors and plasma displays are a substantial evolution from the monochrome CRT relics of PC antiquity. High brightness, support for more than 1 billion colors and sharp resolution are just a few of the latest improvements.

Color-Critical LCD

AT&T and Nokia on Thursday brought the Nokia 6650 to market to compete against other devices launching in time for the holiday shopping season. The small folding device runs on the Symbian-based S60 platform, which lets users personalize their mobile experience with third-party application downloads, themes and profile settings.

AT&T has a board seat on the Symbian Foundation that oversees development of the open-source mobile-phone platform.

SanDisk has rejected an unsolicited $5.85 billion acquisition offer from Samsung as "an opportunistic attempt to take advantage of SanDisk's current stock price, which is significantly depressed given industry cyclicality," the company's board of directors said.

"Honey, let's see what's on the Widget Channel." That dialog is what Intel and Yahoo are hoping for with their announcement Wednesday of an application framework for TVs and other consumer devices called The Widget Channel.

The companies said the framework is optimized for consumer equipment with Intel architecture. The channel is designed to allow users to access and use rich Internet applications, even while watching TV programs.

Yahoo's Widget Engine

Dell officials told the Wall Street Journal this week that the company has been testing a new MP3 player that could become available to consumers as early as this September.

Like Microsoft and Sony, Dell has traveled down this road before without success. And given the current lack of consumer confidence due to the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis, the market outlook for consumer devices has also diminished considerably of late, according to industry observers.

Having staked out a position on your PC and many mobile devices, Google now has its sights on your living room. Late last week, the search giant announced the release of a free beta version of Google Media Server, a Windows application that seeks to bridge the gap between a PC and a TV.

That gap is between the explosion of TV programs, movies, music and homemade videos on the Web and television sets. A variety of solutions have been launched by Microsoft, Apple and others, and now Google is entering that ring.

Gadgets and UPnP

Having staked out a position on your PC and many mobile devices, Google now has its sights on your living room. Late last week, the search giant announced the release of a free beta version of Google Media Server, a Windows application that seeks to bridge the gap between a PC and a TV.

That gap is between the explosion of TV programs, movies, music and homemade videos on the Web and television sets. A variety of solutions have been launched by Microsoft, Apple and others, and now Google is entering that ring.

Gadgets and UPnP

BlackBerry has gone bold and high-speed. On Monday, Research In Motion (RIM) announced the BlackBerry Bold, a new mobile device that it said will give business users "unprecedented functionality and performance" as the first BlackBerry to support tri-band HSDPA.

In addition to its 3G capability, the Bold is appealing to high-end users with a black exterior, satin chrome finish, "leather-like" backplate, integrated GPS, quad-band EDGE, and Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g).

'Tremendous Step Forward'

IBM and its chip-alliance partners say a breakthrough chipmaking material known as "high-k/metal gate" has been thoroughly tested and is ready to roll on devices manufactured at IBM's 300-millimeter semiconductor plant in East Fishkill, N.Y. Chip designers will be able to use the new technology to realize performance and power savings advantages in their next-generation products, the partners said.