Panasonic Announces 17,000 Job Cuts

Panasonic has announced a decision to cut 17,000 of its employees.

Japanese consumer electronics giant Panasonic has said it will cut five percent of its workforce as part of efforts to restructure and streamline the company and recover losses from Japan’s March 11 earthquake. The cuts, expected to take up to two years to complete, will reduce the company’s numbers to 350,000. Currently, Panasonic’s headcount is just shy of 367,000 people. Also on the cards is the closure of up to 20 percent of Panasonic’s manufacturing facilities. 

Next Snapdragon CPU: 2.5GHz, 75% Less Power

Qualcomm has said its next Snapdragon processors will bring console-quality gaming to mobile devices

Samsung made headlines last week when it promised a 2GHz smartphone CPU for 2012. It wasn’t long ago that such a thing didn’t even seem possible, and the news sparked plenty of conversations about how fast the industry is moving. However, it seems Samsung’s lofty promise has already been outdone by Qualcomm, which is planning new single, dual and quad core Snapdragons that will reach clock speeds 2.5GHz.

Next-Gen Internet Launched at USC Stevens Inst.

The next-generation Internet will be a decentralized, universally accessible, open platform.

While the current world wide web is migrating over to IPv6 before surfers finally come to a screeching halt at The End of the Internet, the next generation Internet has reportedly launched on Wednesday at the University of Southern California's Stevens Institute for Innovation. The launch took place during Aram Sinnreich's TEDx presentation at the Institute.

YouTube to Launch On Demand Movie Rentals

Google-owned video sharing site YouTube will soon launch an effort to take on the likes of iTunes and Netflix.

With the arrival of web-connected TVs, and Google TV in particular, it’s no surprise to hear that YouTube wants to expand its reach in the living room beyond funny cat videos and the odd viral hit. Though the company has been offering a limited number of movie rentals for a while, a report over on the Wrap indicates that the company will next month expand that service to include titles from major studios including Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Brothers and Universal. Also on board are several independent studios, including Lionsgate and Kino Lorber. Still on the fence are Paramount, Fox and Disney.

Apple Testing iPhone on T-Mobile USA (Photos)

Already available on AT&T and Verizon, it seems the Apple iPhone could soon be making its way to T-Mobile.

When the iPhone launched four years ago, in June of 2007, it was exclusive to AT&T. That exclusivity was supposed to last for five years, but it ended earlier this year when Verizon announced that the iPhone 4 was arriving on Big Red’s network. However, it seems Verizon’s run as ‘the other iPhone provider’ may be short-lived as pictures surfaced over the weekend to suggest the Apple smartphone could soon be headed to T-Mobile.

Samsung Returns Fire Against Apple Lawsuit

This could get nasty.

Last week, Apple opened its lawyers up against Samsung, alleging that the Korean company copied the iPhone and iPad for its Galaxy products.

Apple to Beat Google to Cloud Music Service

Forget that leaked version of Android Music, Apple is read to rock and roll.

With the launch of Amazon’s music locker service, Cloud Drive, it seems there’s only a matter of time before competing products by Google and Apple are unveiled. In fact, these two companies were rumored to be working on their own cloud music services before we heard anything about Amazon’s Cloud Drive. So who’s up next?

Yahoo! Ups Data Retention Period to 1.5 Years

Yahoo! has announced that it is extending the period for retention of user data from 90 days to 18 months.

On Wednesday, Anne Toth, Chief Trust Officer at Yahoo!, announced that the company would be extending the period of data retention in order to provide customers with a more “robust, individualized experience.”

Battery Concept Features USB Interface

Designers create a rechargeable AA or AAA battery concept that also allows USB charging via the interface on the side.

This extremely simple design by Hairno Bao, Hailong Piao, Yuancheng Liu and Xiameng Hu is just a regular set of AA or AAA batteries with a USB interface embedded into the side. Dubbed Continuance, these batteries are fully rechargeable and are capable of giving some power to your usb gadgets as well.

As the world becomes more and more engulfed in its technology and gadgetry, there is always a need for alternative battery and energy sources. The Continuance concept is perfect for those of us who require USB charging for our products as well as the classic AA or AAA batteries for other tools and devices. Killing two stones with one battery!

Samsung Challenges Intel For Chip Leadership

It appears as if the chip industry had a much better 2010 than 2009, as the global semiconductor business is estimated to have gained about $70 billion in sales last year.

 Gartner reports that global chip sales surged to $299.4 billion.

"The industrywide upturn was due to the combination of pent-up demand that had built in the wake of the worldwide economic recession, and rebuilding of semiconductor inventories that were significantly depleted during the recession and early recovery," said Peter Middleton, principal analyst at Gartner.

Asus: Yes, We're Planning an Oak Trail Tablet

After all this talk of the Tegra 2-powered Transformer, Asus is also working on an Intel-based tablet.

In the height of the netbook craze, it seemed Nvidia’s Tegra chipset couldn’t catch a break. Compared to the ubiquitous Atom processor, Tegra was in only a small percentage of devices. Fast forward a year or so and things have changed completely. We saw numerous Tegra 2 devices at CES, tablets and smartphones alike, and it seems there’s a new one launched every week.

Bill Gates Didn't Understand Gmail

What do you have in your email that's not email?

Google's Gmail is one of the very best in free webmail services. Originally thought to be an Fool's Day joke when it was announced on April 1, 2004 with its 1 GB of free storage (massive for email at the time), Gmail today has grown its storage quota for its free accounts to nearly 8 GB.

H2O Force-Field Keeps Your Fruit Fresh

Fruit bowl concept keeps your fruit fresh via water powered force-field.
If you thought force-fields were a reality reserved for futuristic sci-fi flicks and television series, think again. Here's a real life application of a water-powered force-field to keep your fruits fresh and delicious. Okay maybe it is just an idea that hasn't come to fruition yet, but this is probably the most beautiful fruit bowl idea out there.

Asus O!Play Mini HD player [Preview]

You bought an HDTV, but chances are you were disappointed because your local cable channels or DVDs just didn’t look as spectacular as the videos they were playing at the display centers. Or maybe you are just tired of the video quality of the content that you watch on your TV.
What you need is a HD media player. Until now, most good media players from reputable companies were around the Rs. 10,000 mark. But that has just changed. Because the Asus O!Play mini HD media player just rolled out.
Price:
Priced at a extremely reasonable Rs. 5,700, (may vary according to your location). Its one of the (if not THE cheapest) HD devices to be unveiled. Its simple and barebones, without the additional features on the expensive models that you don’t use anyway.

T-Mobile Cuts Unlimited Plan to 2GB

So this is what happens when AT&T has its way.

There is a 2 GB data cap on the plan, which will not result in overages, but attempt to slow your data downloading habits down by slowing the connecting to a crawl until the next billing period starts. This unlimited plans is priced, including unlimited voice calling, at $80 per month. T-Mobile said that this plan is only offered for a limited time: There is also an unlimited voice plan with 200 MB of data that is priced at $80 as well as a 1000 minute plan with unlimited data for $90.

Windows 7 Finally Tops Windows XP in the U.S.

It’s been 18 months since Windows 7 hit retail availability and Microsoft will this week be celebrating the fact that it’s finally the most popular OS in the United States.

Thanks to low confidence in Windows Vista, many Windows users opted not to update from Windows XP, which meant the 10-year-old OS remained on top. However, according to statistics from StatCounter (via Royal Pingdom), Windows XP has finally been dethroned. 

As of April, Windows XP accounts for 31.56 percent of the market, while the newer Windows 7 accounts for 31.71 percent. When Windows 7 launched, Windows XP accounted for nearly 50 percent of the market while Vista accounted for over 35 percent. Vista has since dropped to 19.07 percent. In fourth place is OS X, with 14.87 percent, while Linux comes in fifth with just .7 percent of the market.

X360 Getting Free-To-Play Apps in 2012?

Microsoft is beefing up its microtransaction model on Xbox Live to support free-to-play games and apps.

Given recent reports that Silverlight 5 is heading to the Xbox 360, rumors have surfaced that free-to-play games are coming to Microsoft's Xbox Live platform. The news is based on an unnamed source who claims that a more robust microtransaction system will be established on Xbox Live next year, allowing players to purchase content such as weapons, experience points, in-game currency and even perks

Windows 8 to Have Built-in PDF Reader

No more need for Adobe Reader or even Fox It

WinSuperSite and Within Windows have another new Windows 8 feature to share. Soon, you may no longer need to install any extra software to view that ever popular PDF format, thanks to an integrated PDF reader called Modern Reader that will ship with Windows 8

While almost everyone running Windows these days has Adobe Reader, or some equivalent, Microsoft is building that functionality right into the next OS. Hopefully it will be a lightweight alternative.

Modern Reader also appears to be an early example of the new AppX application package for Windows 8. AppX is a packaged application model for Windows 8 that is much like the one used in Windows Phone 7.

Firefox 5 Scheduled for June 21

In order to get its new release system on track, Mozilla adjusted its release schedule for the final version. Version 4.2a1pre, which is version 5, will be leaving mozilla-central on April 12 and enter the new "aurora" channel (previously called experimental) as version 5.0a2. The beta version (5.0) will follow five weeks later and the final version is now scheduled to be released on June 21.

We aren't quite sure whether is versioning system will be entirely applied to version 5.0, but it appears as if Mozilla is planning to use it for version 6.0, which will hit mozilla-central as version 6.0a1 on April 12. Earlier today, Mozilla also discussed a versioning system that resembled Google's system and would have resulted in a version number like this: 5.4.55.123 (version 5, 4 beta releases, 55 experimental (aurora) releases and 123 mozilla-central releases.)  There may still be changes - the only thing we know for sure now is that Mozilla will drop the "pre" tag for its preview versions.

Google's Cloud-based Music App Leaked

Last week Amazon launched Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, a cloud-based storage and media player that allowed users to access their music from anywhere, including their Android devices. Now it looks like Google is stepping up to ensure it’s not outdone by the etailer.

The newest version of Android’s music app has been leaked and it seems Google is taking things to the cloud. The folks over on Tech from 10 recently found themselves looking at the developer’s Android Test Market, as opposed to the regular Android Marketplace they’re used to seeing on their Galaxy S Vibrant.

Microsoft to Show Silverlight for Xbox Next Week?

Silverlight 5 and Xbox 360 support should be the topic of Microsoft's keynote during the MIX 11 conference next week.

Tuesday brought reports that Microsoft may finally announce Silverlight support for the Xbox 360 console, thus completing its circle of cross-platform development currently featured on the PC and Windows Phone 7 OS. The announcement is due to take place at the MIX 11 conference next week.

Amazon Exploring NFC Payments System

You too, Amazon?

NFC has been a bit of a rumor-mill buzzword as of late. It seems like each of the major players in the smartphone OS market is working on an NFC solution. Gradually, reports of Google, Apple and Microsoft’s plans to incorporate NFC technology into their respective OSes hit the web last month. However, makers of cell phone OSes aren’t the only ones interested in NFC, and when you look beyond that market, it’s obvious who else would be.

Windows 8 to Get Time Machine-like History Vault

Windows 8 could make backups easy.

Keeping a backup of your data is a hugely important rule to almost all sorts of computing. While cloud computing through something like Chrome OS helps take care of that for casual applications, until everything is cloud-based users will need to take care of things for themselves.

According to winrumors, a new feature that might make it into Windows 8 is something that will potentially be called History Vault. The new feature will supposedly make use of the Shadow Copies that Windows makes when files are modified.

TWC Pulls Channels From iPad App Lineup

Time Warner was forced to pull networks owned by Fox Cable, Viacom and Discovery from its iPad lineup.

For consumers who had both an Apple iPad and a subscription to Time Warner Cable's TV service, the launch of the TWCable TV App seemed like a gift from heaven. Although the actual channel lineup was limited, TWC customers could watch a number of their favorite TV shows anywhere in the house. It became an immediate hit, crashing TWC servers and forcing the company to throttle back its channel offerings until it could handle the high demand on a hardware level.

Xbox 360 Gets Upgraded DVD Spec for 1GB More

Almost the full DVD!

When looking on paper, one of the big advantages of the PlayStation 3 over the Xbox 360 is the Blu-ray drive. Not only can it play Blu-ray movies, but it can hold much more data than the plain DVD-9 – except that the Xbox 360's disc capacity isn't even at the same level as a DVD-9.