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OCAU News |
It has been a pretty bleak year for many companies, with some going completely out of business and others undergoing some major restructuring in order to avoid bankruptcy. For Polaroid, the inventor of the instant photo camera the news is all bad with the company filing for bankruptcy. "(Polaroid) has filed voluntary petition for reorganisation under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code in order to facilitate the company's ongoing financial restructuring process," the company said in a statement. "The financial structuring process and the bankruptcy filing are the result of events at Petters Group Worldwide, the company that has owned Polaroid since 2005," Polaroid said.
Google Australia employees received Android phones as their Christmas present. Apart from spreading Christmas cheer, having all the employees using the phone would help make Android better, the spokesperson continued. "Giving the Dream phone to Googlers also allows us to once again dog food a product and make it even better."
Samsung is set to release another netbook, the NC20 which will be based on the 1.3GHz VIA Nano U225 processor. Samsung has also decided to go with a 12.1in display and as such the NC20 would be a direct competitor with the Dell Mini 12. The NC20 is also set to get a 160GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, a 3-in-1 memory card reader and a 1.3Megapixel webcam.
Lenovo is set to release a new notebook early next year, the ThinkPad W700ds with the "ds" meaning Dual Screen. The primary display is a 17in unit with 1,920x1,200 resolution while the secondary 10.6in display offers 768x1,280 resolution as it's mounted vertically. The CPU will be a Core 2 Quad Q9100 clocked at 2.26GHz and it will be paired up with up to 8GB of DDR3 memory. The W700ds also has a pair of hard drive bays that can be configured for RAID and there will be SSD options as well. It also has a built in optical drive and a wide range of ports that includes what looks to be five USB 2.0 ports, dual-link DVI and DisplayPort.
EA has just announced that it plans to cut a further 4% of its workforce. More bad news from the additional restructuring plans at EA comes in the form of an additional four percent of employees to be on the chopping block over the next three-month period, as the company continues to refocus its efforts and narrow its product offerings. The additional headcount reductions will be spread out over the company globally and will not be focused on any specific studio or business unit. The cuts will take place over the next three months and are targeted to be completed before the company begins its next fiscal year on April 1st 2009.
It seems that the battle between Intel and Nvidia is intensifying with the rapid rise in popularity of Netbook computers. Though the Santa Clara, Calif. neighbours (only a couple of miles from each other) have never really been on speaking terms, the rivalry is intensifying with the emergence of the Netbook--small, lightweight laptops priced below $500. The competitive backdrop is still the same--Intel's longstanding (and very successful) vision of a CPU-centric universe versus Nvidia's creed that graphics processing matters more and more in a multimedia-intensive world.
Google's Street View service has come under fire in Japan from a group of people who are demanding the Silicon Valley giant to shut down Street View in Japan. The group, consisting of Japanese journalists, lawyers and professors, has drafted a petition that demands that Google shut down Street View in Japan. According to the petition Street View "constitutes violent infringement on citizens' privacy by photographing residential areas, including community roads, and publishing their images without the consent of communities and citizens." The group also feels that the service invades privacy "more easily, widely, massively and permanently than ordinary cameras and surveillance cameras do."
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All original content copyright James Rolfe.
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