NetFlipper.com

Apple has been busy this week. The Cupertino-based company rolled out the newest generation of its iPod shuffle, but the device is getting mixed reviews.

With its $79 price tag, the new iPod shuffle is still inexpensive compared to other iPods, but it is even smaller than the last version.

The AA battery-sized iPod shuffle measures 1.8 inches long and less than an inch wide, and weighs only .38 of an ounce, according to Apple’s specs on the device.

Manufacturers moved the controls from the actual device to a play button found just below the right earbud. By pressing the control button, users can play, pause, adjust volume, switch playlists and hear the name of the song and artist.

The iPod shuffle comes in only two colors, and includes a stainless-steel clip and a built-in rechargeable lithium-polymer battery. When fully charged — a process that takes three hours — the iPod shuffle can be used for up to 10 hours.

The new anodized aluminum design may be smaller, but it comes with 4GB capacity and holds 1,000 songs — double the amount of the previous iPod shuffle version.

Talk to Me

Aside from increasing its song capacity, Apple added a completely new feature to the device: a voice feature that turns the iPod shuffle into “the first music player that talks to you,” according to Apple.

Apple added voice-over technology, which allows the iPod to speak to its owners. The feature — a male or female voice, depending on whether the user has a Mac or PC with which to sync songs on iTunes — names the song and its artists as well as the playlist names.

Voices come in more than a dozen different languages, including Chinese, French, Italian, Portuguese and Swedish.

“Imagine your music player talking to you, telling you your song titles, artists and…

Mozilla has unleashed its third beta release of Firefox 3.1 to testers. Available in 64 languages as well as separate builds for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 includes several new features and enhancements for boosting browser performance, Web compatibility, and speed.

The sheer volume of work that has already gone into the development of Firefox 3.1, which is code-named Shiretoko, makes the new browser feel like much more than a small, incremental improvement over Firefox 3, said Mike Beltzner, Mozilla’s director of Firefox development.

For this reason, Beltzner noted, a proposal was put forward at last week’s Firefox/Gecko delivery meeting “to change the version number for Shiretoko to Firefox 3.5.” If Mozilla decides to adopt the proposal, “the following fourth beta will be numbered Firefox 3.5b4a,” Beltzner said.

New Features

The browser’s developers have continued to make improvements to the Tracemonkey JavaScript engine, which they say is more stable and faster than previous beta releases. Furthermore, they have added a new capability to the private browsing feature that will give users the ability to select Forget This Site from the application’s history sidebar.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 also marks the completion of developer changes related to an enhanced scripting feature called “Web worker threads” that gives Web site builders a way to move extensive JavaScript computation to a background thread. This allows the user interface to remain responsive to commands even as the JavaScript engine churns away. Moreover, navigating away from the Web page pauses the computation.

Other notable improvements include a significant upgrade to the Firefox Gecko layout and rendering engine. The plug-in previously required for video and audio elements has been eliminated by adding support for some aspects of the forthcoming HTML 5 spec, which is expected to remain a work in progress for years…

North American Wii owners got an early holiday present today: Confirmation from global game manufacturer Capcom that it is releasing three versions of its multi-million seller franchise “Resident Evil” for the motion-based game system.

The first, “Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles,” is promoted as a sequel to “The Umbrella Chronicles,” the first of the RE titles to be released on the Wii. The other two titles, “Resident Evil” and “Resident Evil Zero,” are re-workings of Nintendo GameCube releases, and are being billed as part of a new RE Classics line.

“We are very excited to be bringing the sequel to Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles to the Wii, as it’s the perfect fit for the platform,” said Mona Hamilton, vice president, marketing, Capcom Entertainment. “We are always looking for new ways to give Capcom fans a chance to experience our games. Umbrella Chronicles was a huge success for us, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles includes a more in-depth co-op experience, and we are excited to bring this exclusive content to the Wii audience.”

Prices for the games are expected to be approximately $30 per title.

Cooperative Mayhem

The Resident Evil games are being designed to take advantage of the motion-sense capabilities that have made the Wii gaming system so popular. In single mode, as in most games, players can take advantage of the assistance of an A.I.-controlled character.

With two Wii Remote controllers, however, players can play simultaneously and cooperate with each other as they try to survive wave after wave of hostile zombies. The games will also introduce a new “Evade system” that Capcom says “will utilize the Wii Remote for a more intense experience when fighting enemies.”

Controversy Looms

The announcement about the pending release of Wii versions comes on the eve of Capcom’s major event for 2009, the release of “Resident Evil 5.” The game,…

They’re busy dusting off the chairs and sweeping the stage in the big auditorium on Apple’s corporate campus. Around the country, iPhone-geek journalists are getting ready to descend on Cupertino, Calif., lured by Thursday’s e-mail announcement of an “Apple event” on Tuesday, March 17. Details are scant, but the company is promising “an advance preview of what we’re building” for an upcoming iPhone 3.0 software release.

The event is scheduled to get under way at 10 a.m. Pacific time in Building 4, Town Hall, and a number of tech Web sites have promised live blogging and Twittering.

Feature Speculation

Despite the lack of substance in the Apple invitation — or perhaps because of it — tech journalists spent much of Thursday speculating about what Apple might talk about.

At the top of nearly every list are some basic iPhone usability improvements, including such items as copy/paste from one application to another, the ability to send multimedia text messages, expanded Bluetooth capabilities, or even the ability to tether the iPhone to laptops and provide a cellular data connection when there’s no Wi-Fi available. There is also widespread expectation that Apple will announce the introduction of a true global search capability, perhaps off an icon on the iPhone home page.

Another popular theme is more extensive and better use of push services, not only for e-mail messages and other online services, but also for application updates. Currently, all updates have to go through the Apple’s App Store, which introduces an often-frustrating delay for new versions. Apple may be willing to loosen the reins slightly to allow developers to push updates directly onto the phones of their subscribers.

SDK and Store Changes?

There was at least one specific hint in Apple’s invitation: Journalists will have a chance to “learn about the new SDK.” There have been growing complaints in recent…

A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered a new way to store electrical energy and a paper on their research was published this week in Nature.

Gerbrand Ceder, an R. P. Simmons Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and his team at MIT’s Computational and Experimental Design of Emerging Materials Research group have found a way to demonstrate how batteries, which obtain high energy density by storing a charge in the bulk of a material, can also reach super-high discharge rates.

What they have developed are battery cells that charge up in seconds. The rates are similar to those of supercapacitors, which are similar to regular capacitors with the exception that they offers a very high charge in a small package.

Technological Breakthrough

Nearly five years ago, Ceder and colleagues made a surprising discovery. Computer calculations of a well-known battery material, lithium iron phosphate, predicted that the material’s lithium ions should actually be moving extremely quickly.

The researchers, whose work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, began experimenting with how lithium ions move in and around lithium iron phosphate, a material used in lithium-ion batteries. Through computer calculation of lithium iron phosphate, the researchers predicted the material’s lithium ions would move more quickly from one area to another.

Their discovery of a way to charge and discharge batteries in seconds instead of hours may lead to new technology applications, according to Ceder and MIT graduate student Byoungboo Kang.

Storage of electrical energy at a high charge and discharge rate is significant for several technologies and could change the landscape of batteries produced for laptops and other technological devices. One technology that would benefit, but with limitations, is green technology. The high charge and discharge rate will enable hybrid and plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles and…

Nintendo reports it has sold more than 100 million handheld gaming machines since its late 2004 launch of the Nintendo DS, which inaugurated a new era of portable gaming by introducing touchscreen and voice-recognition capabilities.

The second-generation Nintendo DS Lite, which is backward compatible with the Nintendo DS and arrived in North America in June 2006, features touch input from a stylus and Wi-Fi connectivity. Both handhelds are popular among gaming aficionados worldwide.

As of year-end 2008, 83 software titles for the two devices have shipped more than one million units globally, and seven have topped the 10 million mark, Nintendo said. The company hopes to keep gamers flocking to the platform by releasing its third-generation handheld early next month in North America and Europe.

A Pair Of Eyes

Called the Nintendo DSi, the new device sports a number of improvements, including the ability to record, manipulate and play sound files, and even allows gamers to personalize their portable playing experiences. However, the most noticeable change comes from two new cameras that serve as the DSi’s eyes: One on the outer shell and one inside that becomes active when the user opens the case.

“The outer camera is there so you can take pictures of other objects or persons as you usually would with a digital camera,” said Masato Kuwahara, a member of the Nintendo DSi engineering development team. “The inside camera is for taking pictures of yourself while you play. That’s why there are two.”

The new cameras only feature 0.3-megapixel resolution, but Kuwahara says that’s equivalent to 640×480 pixels, sufficient for the gaming tasks at hand. “You can capture images at a resolution 2.5 times that of the length and width of the DS screen,” he said.

Recession Resistant?

The sound quality of the DSi has received a boost in comparison with…