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Apparently Apple is in talks with the music companies about adding subscriptoin and all-you-can-eat music to the iTunes Store. According the the Financial Times, an unlimited subscription model could be seen on the iphone, where monthly billing already exists, and the rest of the ipod line-up could see a price hike in return for unlimited music downloads.

The reason we haven’t already seen this scheme is that Apple is offering too little cash for the deal. It wants to pay $20 per device. Nokia, already doing this with its Comes With Music service, is said to be paying the labels $80 a pop. If this is true, it sounds like a great deal, and offers further proof that the iTunes Store is really only there to sell more iPods. And call us cynical, but what is the chance that these tracks will be un-DRMed MP3s? Close to zero.

Apple mulls unlimited music bundle [FT]

MediaCart is coming soon to a supermarket near you. The next-gen shopping trolley has a host of features which are purported to help the shopper: a live, voice controlled guide to help you find what you are looking for (the cart uses WiFi triangulation to locate itself), a barcode scanner to both check prices and allow you to skip the checkout, and a slot for your loyalty card, effectively a log-in which will store your purchase history and preferences.

What it’s really about, though, is advertising. Microsoft provides the software for the MediaCart, but tellingly the company is also handling advertising. In a fit of corporate doublespeak, Microsoft’s Scott Ferris babbled:

[W]e’re continuing to push the envelope in the digital advertising realm to enable new and innovative ways for advertisers and agencies to create brand loyalty and engage with their target audiences in a highly relevant, measurable and targeted way.

The carts are coming to Britain within a year, and to US ShopRite stores soon. The real fun will start, though, when the hackers get ahold of the lithium-ion powered, Windows CE trolleys. There’s something deliciously ironic about the idea of watching “Dawn of the Dead ” on a shopping cart, in a mall.

Product page [MediaCart via Mail on Sunday]

Alienware has re-launched its Area-51 7500 into the Area-51 desktop which now supports the most robust gaming platform in the PC gaming industry. The Area-51 is now packed with NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI-based motherboard and NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 dual GPU single graphics card to deliver high definition PC gaming with high frame rates and smooth Blu-ray disc playback.

The nForce 790i Ultra SLI is the only nForce platform that supports DDR3 memory up to 2GHz. This gives out record-breaking memory speeds that support even the most graphics intensive PC games. The nForce790i motherboard is compatible with 1600MHz FSB Intel CPUs and allows unmatched visual computing through NVIDIA 2-way, 3-way and Quad SLI technology.

The NVIDIA GeFore 9800 GX2 graphics card houses dual GeForce 9800 GPUS that deliver power on a single card. This graphic cards is 50% faster than the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra and is touted as the fastest consumer graphics solutions available in the market today.
Alienware Product Marketing Manager Marc Diana said that “the Area-51 is every gamer’s dream system.”

“With support for PCI-Express 2.0, DDR3 memory, a completely open and higher BIOS overclocking than its predecessor, and now the industry’s most advanced graphics solution, the Area-51 sets the pace for desktop performance. Everyone else is just trying to keep up,” said Diana.

Ujesh Desai, general manager of the consumer GPU business group at NVIDIA said his company is excited with the launch of the Alienware Area-51 gaming desktop as it incorporates PC components that can deliver ultimate visual computing experience to gamers.

“The sheer genius of the GeForce 9800 GX2, which sets new performance records for consumer PC graphics, paired with the extremely overclockable nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard, delivers an unbelievable and unbeatable platform for enthusiasts and gamers alike,” said Desai.

Read [Business Wire] Via [Alienware]

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If you’d like to show the love for someone else in a geek form, the best way to go is with the USB Heart Mouse that costs $12.

As the name suggests, the mouse is shaped as a heart and connects to your computer via USB. Since it doesn’t come with a mouse ball, it doesn’t require the boring cleaning sessions that some of us still have to perform.

Other features include a dpi resolution of 1200, and 3-buttons along with a scroll wheel.

Dimension: 79 x 69.5 x 30.4mm
Weight: 56g

Product Page

via

Posted Mar 18th 2008 3:16PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops
We’re not suggesting you put any stock in rumors, particularly from DigiTimes, but there’s something about the chatter that NVIDIA is in talks to acquire VIA that makes sense — or maybe we’re just blinded by our desire to see all that unnecessary capitalization finally come together. Still, whispers are just whispers, and while we can see NVIDIA trying to bolster its GPU offerings with VIA’s x86 CPU offerings — and perhaps snag some of that Crysis-capable Isaiah thunder — we’ll believe it when we see it. After all, the last we heard NVIDIA was set to buy AMD, remember?

Posted Mar 18th 2008 5:34PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Wireless
Hear that? Yeah, that’s the fat lady — the 700MHz auction is over today, and the FCC netted $19.6B for the 1,099 licenses it put on the block. It’s still not known who placed the winning $4.75B bid for the lucrative open-access 50-state C-block (probably Verizon) but hopefully we’ll find out soon. There was a ton of regional action as well: a package of licenses for spectrum in Chicago went for $892.4M, another set for Newark and NYC went for $884.7M, and LA’s two sets of 700MHz airwaves cost some lucky punter giant corporation $580.3M and $484M — and if you’d scraped together $17K, you would be the king of the airwaves in American Samoa. Sadly, no one met the reserve for the public-safety D-block, so it looks like Uncle Sam’s going to have to toss it in the back of the van and schlep it the old fashioned way. We doubt we’ll know for sure who’s got what until the gray suits manage to verify everything and make sure all the rules were followed, but it’s still an historic day — and remember, we’ve got all the info on what this could mean in the future right here.

Update: The FCC says we’ll know who won what within 10 days — it’s just like waiting for Santa, only instead of a fat man giving you presents, it’s a vast government bureaucracy giving major corporations thin air!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Posted Mar 18th 2008 10:39AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Desktops, Gaming
Not like we needed NVIDIA (of all companies) to tell us that the GeForce 9800 GX2 was more than a figment of our imagination, but nevertheless, one of the worst kept secrets in GPU history is finally “official.” Reportedly, this beast of a card is available today from a number of retailers for upwards of $600 (MSRP), and just in case you’re not absolutely sure such graphical prowess is really worth that kind of change, feel free to take a glance at early tests and the full review listed below before digging into that 401(k).

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read - NVIDIA’s official GeForce 9800 GX2 page
Read - GeForce 9800 GX2 gets reviewed
Read - GeForce 9800 GX2 gets reviewed (again)
Read - GeForce 9800 GX2 gets taken apart on video

Posted Mar 18th 2008 11:53AM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Features, Wireless Well, what can we say? The new 802.11n AirPort Express looks exactly like the 802.11g AirPort Express we’ve been using to stream iTunes and wirelessly print to an el-cheapo USB laser printer since 2004. In fact, if not for the different model numbers (A1264 now, instead of A1084) and the fact that our old unit has some random battle scars, we would have found it almost impossible to tell them apart. Check the gallery for the hot side-by-side action.

Gallery: 802.11n AirPort Express Hands-on

This text-scanning device alleviates you of the stress you have to go through trying to remember a word in the dictionary, or figure out what the heck that science magazine is talking about.

The Unichal Dixau is a text scanning device which has the capacity to transfer the text you’re scanning to your PC screen. On screen, the text is now complete with info taken from Google search results and Wikipedia, so you won’t have to spend the day wondering what a certain term means. For merely 45, the Unichal Dixau is a bargain. Too bad we’re not sure if it works with English, as it’s released in the Korean market.

via

The Dixau text scanner from Unichal of Korea is small enough to snap images of troublesome words, transferring those images to a computer where a pre-loaded software will then apply the term to a variety of Web 2.0 applications such as Wikipedia, Google, or even a dictionary of your choice, whereby the results displayed will then help you with your comprehension of the passage you just read. Sounds like the cheaper way to learn a new language, although the inclusion of a human touch where personal tutors are concerned could work better for different people when it comes to picking up a new language. The Dixau Text Scanner retails for $90 a pop.