Here we are once again, with a round up of all that is hot in tech in the past few days. A lot has been happening as usual with the year end approaching. The anticipation for the new year is building with so many different companies readying their devices for launches through the first two quarters of 2010. Of course, not all of them are talking about it but the leaks do that work for them, whether they like it or not. So get over to the other side and get updated.

Nvidia ION 2 Confirmed, Not A Figment Of Tech Imagination

NVIDIA has fially confirmed that the ION 2 exists, only they call it the “next generation ION”. They confirmed its existence to Fudzilla a few days back during a conference call.

NVIDIA’s original plan had apparently been to start selling ION 2 by the end of this year. But with the original ION still pretty fresh on the market, manufacturers requested the company to hold off releasing the new version till they have recouped their own investments. So even the CES 2010 date (that was rumored earlier) has been delayed and the new date is some time around Q2 2010. However, CES 2010 will not be completely ION-free. It will have a few devices to showcase the ION’s power.

The new ION will have more than 5 hours of battery life and 5-10 times faster graphics performance as compared to what’s available from Intel’s Pinetrail — according to the company. [read]

Asus’ Latest Netbooks With Pinetrail Go Official

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The Asus Eee PC 1005P and the 1005PE netbooks were leaked quite some time back as the first Asus netbooks to be powered by the Pinetrail platform. Of course, it is not like they were not going to make netbooks with Intel’s new chips. The netbooks have now gotten official shots and you can ogle them as much as you want.

They are both 10.1inch netbooks and come with the new Atom N450 processor from Intel and GMA 3150 graphics. The 1005P comes with 160GB storage and the 1005PE comes with 250GB storage. They both come with WiFi b/g and a 6-cell lithium-ion battery. RAM is standard netbook fare at 1GB. The 1005P costs about $395 and the 1005PE costs about $439. [read]

New Phones from Palm, Motorola and LG Leaked

It seems like Verizon is expecting a whole new roster of phones some time pretty soon. If everything about this is true, then the carrier will receive one new phone for each of three major mobile OS’ — WebOS, Android and Windows. Of course, I won’t blame you if you are only interested in the Android device because frankly, I do not see the WebOS or Windows making a splash right now.

Palm will apparently be releasing a new model called the Palm Pre Plus. It could possibly have some extra features that will differentiate it from the original Palm Pre but why Palm would want to cannibalize its own sales and upset a partner in the process, I don’t know.

Then there is the Motorola Devour A555. They are certainly keeping the ‘scary’ feel of their phones alive. It is is supposed to be the “little brother” of the Droid and is also believe to be the Calgary. It also has the MOTOBLUR interface to top off the insult (of being a limited, wannabe DROID phone). So it is basically a phone that no one will want.

The LG VS750 is a Windows Mobile phone (WinMo 6.5). This is Verizon’s first LG phone. It will apparently support both GSM and CDMA networks and hence be a world phone. I can see this being pushed at business users. [read]

Google’s Nexus One Is Now Confirmed, About Time Too

Because the leaks made it pretty certain that the Google Nexus One phone was anything but a figment of Arrington’s imagination. There have been a lot of hands on pics and some videos (which are no longer available) that show the phone in action. So if you are planning to buy a super phone, hold on for a bit longer.

New reports have claimed that the phone only support’s T-Mobile’s 3G and hence you will be limited to EDGE on AT&T’s network. At least this way you will get more coverage on AT&T!

Nexus One still is an unlocked phone but I guess the US 3G spectrums are just too haywire for one phone to support all networks. [read]

DoCoMo Prepares For LTE

Whilst the rest of the world is still struggling with 3G connectivity, DoCoMo has started its operations to start LTE service by this time next year. They are currently in the process of upgrading and changing their base stations to support the new service.

LTE stands for Long Term Evolution and it is the new standard that is basically 3G on steroids. It is ‘technically’ not 4G but it gives speeds that are unimaginable on current 3G services. [read]

Nook Updates to 1.1, Nothing Ground Breaking

We’ve all been talking about the Nook having a lot of potential in the right hands and have been expecting the update to fix issues. Well, the update is here and users have not reported anything significant so far. Even if it is all under the hood, they should’ve at least fixed the bugs that had been uncovered earlier. There have been no reports of such things happening, although there are scattered reports of better performance. If you have a Nook and have updated it, we would love to hear from you. Tell us about your experience, what do you think? [read]

XPERIA X10 On  the FCC, Again

Sony Ericsson’s latest and greatest phone — the XPERIA X10 (also their fist ever Android phone) — has appeared on the FCC again. Only this time, the phone has 3G bands that match those used by AT&T. So it looks like another great phone is about to go into the clutches of AT&T. Although Sony Ericsson unveiled the phone (in order to put down the wild speculations probably) some time back, they are still unclear about the exact dates. Their time frame has been early 2010 but whether or not they will make it is a big question. Also, the FCC unit had no brading on it and that has started another round speculations, which I won’t join, yet. [read]

People Have Also Been Looking For:

It’s Monday again and you know what that means – getting back to work, getting over hang over and generally wishing the weekend did not end in the blink of an eye.

Monday is also the day for catching up to what’s been happening since your left your desk on Friday. So here are the important things for you to get updated on. Get to the other side to read about more indications of new (and delectable) Apple products coming out soon and how your tech future is shaping up in terms of GPUs and super-fast wireless data connections that are faster than your wired home broadband.

Super 3G Coming Super Fast To The UK, To Be Faster That Current Wired Broadband

Mobile broadband is about to get a lot faster, thanks to the next generation in 3G networks called Long Term Evolution or LTE. Telefonica, O2’s parent company is testing out advanced 3G data connections that will deliver blazing fast downloads to your mobile phone.

How fast, you ask?  In a demonstration in April in Madrid, Telefonica with Ericsson showed it off with a VoIP call during a Video Call. That would bring currently available connections down on their knees. They also showed off data transfers speeds of around 140Mbps.

If you are still missing out on it – the current fastest 3G connection available in the UK in general is 7.2Mbps with Vodafone covering a few areas with 14.4Mbps. The Digital Britain report intends to roll out 2Mbps connections as the universal standards. The fastest home broadband available is currently at 100Mbps in the UK. That is the current capacity of optical fibre cable connections or FTTH (Fiber To The Home). This can and probably will be upgraded to the full capacity of 1Gbps some time in the future.

Technically, this not 4G because it does not meet the technical specifications of 4G which needs to go up to 1Gbps.

In the meantime, Telefonica expects the service to max out at 340Mbps when it finally goes live in the UK. Now that is insane speed. And to think that UK is currently lagging behind in the global broadband scene! [ThinkBroadband]

NVIDIA’s Fermi Aimed At World Domination

It’s no secret that NVIDIA has been eyeing the supercomputing market and abandoning the gaming market in the process. Ever since they made the Fermi more suitable for supercomputing than gaming, they have had their crosshair firmly aimed at biting off Intel’s market share in the supercomputing segment.

But that does not stop them from reminding people that it is great for accelerating performance in Windows 7 and also in Snow Leopard. In Windows 7 it will support the DirectX-11 while in Snow Leopard it will support something called OpenCL, which basically does a similar job as DirectX.

Also, they don’t want us to forget about the fact that it is still a GPU and hence great at gaming.

So let’s see here – Super Computers, Mac OS and Windows – yep, that’s pretty much every computer in the market barring the tiny (but growing) Linux and Solaris segment.

The Fermi GPU (Graphics Processor Unit) contains 512 processing cores and is currently in direct competition with the ‘Larrabee’ graphics chip that Intel is developing. NVIDIA has declined to comment on the comparison because Larrabee has not come out yet. NVIDIA did however mention the fact Larrabee was started two years back and ATI and NVIDIA have both released new technology twice in the interim.

BlackBerry Desktop Software For Mac Arrives (About Time Too)

After promising to arrive sometime in September, the BlackBerry Desktop Software for Mac is finally available. Or to put it the way the blog puts it, the BlackBerry Desktop Software is now compatible with Mac OS.

It is currently available as a free download from the BlackBerry website. It supports Mac OS X 10.5.5 and above only. So those of you who are still on Tiger, it is time to get upgraded. It also requires iTunes 7.2 or higher and BlackBerry Device Software version 4.2 or higher. Snow Leopard is probably supported.

It can sync playlists with iTunes, sync your contacts, calendars, appointments and also add and delete apps. There also functions for encryption and backup. RIM, the company behind the BlackBerry brand, has always stressed on security and it is good to see them coming through with it. [More images at Inside BlackBerry blog]

Apple Ads Confirm New Mac Real Soon

AppleInsider has done it again. They have been completely on the top of the latest rumors about a new Mac release approaching and it looks like they have newer evidence to share. Apparently, one of the Apple International online stores accidentally released ads ahead of schedule. These ads ended up on the local Google (Google.nl) search results. They got taken down of course but not before everyone saw what sounds like new white polycarbonate body MacBooks, thinner iMacs and faster Mac Minis.

If this is indeed real, it only goes to confirm that Apple is going to release these products soon. Logically, it should be before the holiday season hits and if Apple wants a dig at Microsoft, they can eclipse the Windows 7 launch with an October 22^nd event. That would be sneaky of them.

Apple Bluetooth Mouse And Keyboard Coming (Caution: Might Induce Drooling)

Here’s another Apple rumor and this time it is Engadget reporting. They have spotted a new keyboard and mouse duo arriving at the FCC for their approval. The mouse is rumored to be multitouch, thanks to the patent filings from some time back.

The tech blog then updated their post saying that the images were pulled off the FCC filing and replaced with cropped images.

AppleInsider has been talking about an aluminum housing but says that the production line might as well be in plastic.

I know many people who would love to have a bluetooth keyboard with their iPhone. Would Apple allow that? Why not allow it? This keyboard is smaller than the existing keyboard so it might be more portable. No number pad though.

Sony Transfers 60 Watts Wirelessly Over 50cm

Sony has been testing wireless charging it seems and they are not just talking about induction either. They have been (apparently) successful in transferring about 60 watts of power through the air using magnetic resonance. The only thing that is special here is that they did it over a distance of 50cm, which is equivalent to around 1.6 feet. [Sony PR]