Shawn Oliver
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Sungale isn't a popular name like Apple, Acer or Archos, but it's making a play for the portable media player market with its Kula TV. Boasting a 4.3" display, a pop-up Wi-Fi antenna and the ability to stream Internet content, this is one of the most interestingly designed PMPs that we've seen to date.The screen is actually a touch panel,...
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As you've no doubt heard by now, Apple launched a new mobile computing device and it's within a product category that is all-new territory for the traditionally tight-lipped company. It's a bit of an odd choice for a company that revels in innovation, and after today's announcement, we're left with more questions than answers on whether or...
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Nokia hasn't really kept up with Apple and HTC in terms of smartphone innovation, but it looks like the X6 is making up for lost time. The original X6 came in a 32GB form and couldn't be purchased without Nokia's own music subscription service "Comes With Music." The new X6 is a 16GB version that doesn't require you to purchase the Comes With...
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Texting and driving is already illegal for citizens in a number of US states, but now commercial truckers and bus drivers are also going to be included on the "do not text and drive" list. The Department of Transportation enacted a new rule this week that bars those classes of drivers from texting while operating...
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DLP-based 3D HDTVs have been around for years now, but those weren't these fancy new advanced sets that were showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show. Now, Samsung is claiming to be the first to mass product 3D TV panels, ones that use "3D Active Glasses" technology.The move marks a bold new step in the march towards making 3D a household...
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Thanks to a loose-lipped CEO, we knew Apple had a tablet device on deck for today's announcement in California. We even spotted a rumored TV spot a few days back, which labeled the device as the "iPad." Turns out, that's exactly what Apple decided to name this.Apple has today entered an all new market, one that...
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For the longest time, gamers have been asked to buy a second mouse pad for use when hanging out at LAN parties. Typically, you'd have one "doesn't matter" mouse pad for use at home, then a more expensive mouse for gaming that reacts more accurately to subtle movements.Razer, who has been known to create gaming-centric pads in the past, has...
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We've got a feeling that this issue won't be going away anytime soon. Shortly after Google made a sudden and an unexpected decision to potentially close its Chinese search engine portal if the Chinese government didn't stop forcing it to censor results, the search company is now in negotiations to maintain its other prescences in the country....
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You couldn't mistake a LaCie drive from a mile away, and even those these newcomers are designed for the enterprise, the classic LaCie look and feel is still here. The Enterprise Class range of storage solutions has been announced, which is made up of the LaCie d2 Quadra Enterprise Class, LaCie 2big Quadra Enterprise...
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Unlimited plans seem to be all the rage these days, particularly with wireless carriers. But we've always viewed them as things that should be treated with skepticism. "Unlimited" sounds great in theory, but the high prices that accompany them mean that you best be taking advantage of that "unlimited" allowance.Over a...
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You've heard of DVD Jon, but have you heard of doubleTwist? The creator of the infamous FairPlay hacking scheme has a rather down-to-Earth media management application, and big time companies are finally coming around to it. Big companies such as T-Mobile. The carrier briefly mentioned that the Fender Limited Edition myTouch 3G would utilize...
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Palm stole the show at CES 2009 when it introduced the world's first webOS-based smartphone, but a year spent on Sprint's network has left it in the shadows of the iPhone and a slew of Android phones. This week, Palm's giving itself a second chance by shipping the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus onto America's most populated cellphone carrier.These...
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The solid state storage market is still in a growth period, with prices slowly falling and mainstream users warming to the idea of using them in place of the hard drives that have been so prominent the past decade. The PCI Express SSD market is just now catching on, but Seagate is hoping to get an early leg-up on the...
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Belkin has been doing quite well in the iPod and iPhone accessory market, and today's announcement should be music to the ears of those who don't feel like installing any kind of sophisticated iPod adapter into their automobile. Sure, many new vehicles have iPod support from the factory, but older models were never...
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Blu-ray is still struggling to gain widespread support by consumers, but it's safe to say the format has a future. If things like Hulu continue to dominate, that future may be short-lived, but it's a future nonetheless. OPPO is looking to deliver somewhat of a futureproof home entertainment deck in the BDP-80. Not only is it a Blu-ray Disc...
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It's a weird company, that Apple. The company has nearly sunk a number of times now, and their current CEO actually left for a period and returned in order to right the ship. They had a huge grip in the education market, and then it couldn't find a market at all for years. Today, the company's portable electronics are far more popular than...
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Apple has a media event scheduled for this coming Wednesday. That much we know. Otherwise, it's all up to rumors, whispers and wild speculation. We have a pretty good idea that AT&T may lose its iPhone exclusivity, and many analysts are suggesting that a tablet/slate of some sort will make its official debut as...
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If you have been looking to free your mind of daily troubles and drift away into Xbox LIVE land, you should probably do it soon. Microsoft is sending out announcements ahead of time in order to let its loyal fanbase know that all Zune Marketplace services will be down for around a day or so, starting this evening...
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In today's computing world, there are just a few things that come to mind when you mention "storage." Flash drives, hard drives, solid state drives and maybe even cloud storage. But that's about the extent of it. Hardly anyone thinks about or recognizes magnetic tape storage any more, but it's obviously still around and kicking thanks to innovations...
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The replacement of the MP3 has been coming forever, or so we've heard, but the ubiquitous file format has yet to really be toppled by anything else. Apple's AAC format is highly popular amongst iPod and iPhone users, but by and large, the de facto music format when it comes to digital is MP3. One has to assume that...
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Oh, boy. Now we've gone and done it. Yes, we've taken the Internet where it has never gone before, and we guess the only logical "next step" is to plant a wireless router on Mars and let the extraterrestrial that live there start tweeting to us. Believe it or not, the World Wide Web is now completely inaccurate in...
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From top to bottom, it's hard to knock AMD's graphics lineup right now. They have some of the most powerful GPUs available at the high-end, and even at the lower-end, their cards are destroying the benchmarks. One area of graphical nature that often gets overlooked is the embedded market, but with GPUs becoming more important in every facet...
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