Gadget Reviews

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Lightweight Dell Mini-Notebook Featuring 10.1 Inch Screen, Edge-to-Edge Keyboard Will Debut Soon

Cellular South announced plans to offer the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 netbook this summer with built-in 3G high-speed mobile broadband data. With its unique multi-touch and gesture pad, the Mini 10 netbook has a compact 10.1 inch screen, weighs just 2.6 pounds and features an edge-to-edge keyboard.

“This device promises to provide the ultimate in mobile connectivity and freedom through anytime, anywhere access to the Internet,” said Kevin Hankins, chief operating officer for Cellular South. “With superior coverage and 3G high-speed data in more places than any other wireless carrier, our customers can go beyond the confines of wi-fi to achieve truly mobile on-the-go access to the Internet for news, educational studies, information, video content, social networking, shopping and entertainment.”

The lightweight, inexpensive portable computing device will be sold for $199 with a new two-year mobile broadband agreement, according to Wade Smith, director of product development and management for Cellular South. The company will offer customers a $59.99 monthly plan, including 5 GB monthly data allowance and a $39.99 a month plan with a 500 MB monthly data allowance. Students can also get a 20 percent discount off this plan, making the netbook a must-have for the back-to-school season.

Smith said the devices are growing in popularity with elementary age, high school and college students. “All of the research shows that demand is going to steadily increase for netbooks, especially among college students who are searching for a lightweight, more portable alternative to a laptop.”

Social networkers and workers on the go also are embracing the mini-laptops as a preferred method of accessing social networking applications like Facebook and Twitter and remote, web-based access to business networks and databases, Smith said.

Sometimes called a mini-laptop or mini-notebook personal computer, the netbook is one of the fastest growing segments of the portable computing market, according to IDC Research. About 13 million were sold worldwide in 2008 with 10 million of those sales coming in the second half of the year.

Other features include built-in 3G high-speed mobile broadband from Cellular South, GPS, 16:9 display aspect ratio, an 802.11 wi-fi connection, a 160 GB hard drive, 1 GB of internal memory, an Intel Atom Z520 processor, Windows XP Home edition operating system, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser and a full suite of other software productivity tools.

Netbooks also will come with assistance from Cellular South’s industry-leading online and in-store Discover Center, which shows customers how to get the most out of the device’s functionality, features and applications. “Through Discover Center content and training online and in stores, consumers will be surrounded with opportunities for training and discovering personal uses of netbooks enabled by Cellular South’s 3G high-speed data network,” Smith said.

“Consumers, especially students and those interested in social networking, are demanding the freedom to be connected whenever and wherever, more functionality than a smartphone or PDA can offer and more portable connectivity than a laptop can offer,” Smith said. “Netbooks are a perfect fit for them as they are fun and functional - designed as the ultimate in portable computing and access to the Internet.”

Source: Cellular South

Modern Enterprise Portal Platform Delivers Expanded Enterprise 2.0 and Social Computing Solutions for Business Users and IT

As part of today’s Oracle(R) Fusion Middleware 11g launch, Oracle announced the general availability of Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g, a modern enterprise portal platform which will help increase productivity for business users and IT by bringing together people in organizations with the business processes and information they need to access.

New and enhanced features which enable users to build and manage online business communities that help capture and strengthen relationships between people, processes, applications and information to increase insight and accelerate strategic decision-making include: Oracle WebCenter Spaces, Oracle WebCenter Services, Oracle Business Dictionary, Oracle Composer, Task Flows and pre-packaged integrations.

Business users can create portal mashups that consolidate business applications, business intelligence, content, and social computing services on a single screen. This puts relevant communities, information, and the tools to make key business decisions at users’ fingertips.

Developers now have a single, modern portal framework to help businesses adapt to changing markets by simplifying and accelerating the development, deployment, and management of customizable portals, Web sites, composite applications, and communities.

To simplify implementation, Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g bundles leading enterprise content management, enterprise search, business process management, and presence capabilities. As a hot-pluggable component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, it extends and enhances the value of existing strategic investments through certified integrations with Oracle Database, Oracle Identity Management, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Applications and several third-party applications.

New Capabilities for Business and IT Innovation

• Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g delivers significant new functionality:
• Oracle WebCenter Spaces is a personal and team work-environment for business users to create formal and ad hoc Web-based communities to simplify or accelerate completion of projects or business processes.  Oracle WebCenter Spaces is pre-integrated with Microsoft Office, and built to scale out from departments to the enterprise;
• Oracle WebCenter Services provide the following new social computing services: tagging, linking, recent activity, RSS, ratings, people connections, and activity graphs which enable users to integrate these technologies with their enterprise applications and collaborate with others;
• Oracle Business Dictionary is a role-specific library of enterprise applications, business intelligence, business processes, enterprise content and information that IT and business users can easily combine, edit, share and customize to create executive dashboards that enable them to drive innovation;
• Oracle Composer is an extensible and easy-to-use browser-based tool to enable end-users to customize portals and composite applications with
• social computing services. Using Common Metadata Management, personalized settings are stored as a layer on top of the base application, which speeds the work of IT and insulates users from updates and patches regardless of their customizations;
• Task Flows offer more than 50 pre-built components that can be individually exposed as portlets or customized to deliver a full range of user experiences enabling developers to quickly reuse and combine individual portlets into complex yet flexible portals and applications;
• Pre-Packaged Integrations with a variety of content management products and business applications including Oracle’s Siebel CRM, Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise, the Oracle E-Business Suite, EMC Documentum, IBM Filenet, and Microsoft Sharepoint simplify deployment.
• Oracle WebCenter Suite is also integrated with Oracle Enterprise Manager providing comprehensive functionality to deploy enterprise portals, as well as monitor and manage them with mission-critical performance, scalability, and reliability.

“By enabling users to launch online business communities that use a full range of social computing services and pre-integrated enterprise resources, Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g is a comprehensive and customizable portal suite that improves business users’ ability to make strategic decisions and complete daily tasks,” said Rahul Patel, vice president, Oracle Fusion Middleware. “For developers, Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g provides a modern portal framework which helps accelerate delivery of portals and Web sites, as well as composite and transactional applications combined with ready-to-use Enterprise 2.0 capabilities that drive agile business innovation.”

Source: Oracle

Around the World or Around Town, Verizon Wireless Offers a Host of BlackBerry Smartphone Choices

The highly anticipated global 3G BlackBerry(R) Tour(TM) from Research In Motion (RIM) will hit Verizon Wireless Communications Stores on July 12. Verizon Wireless announced today that customers can pre-order the BlackBerry Tour for $199.99 after a $70 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement online at www.verizonwireless.com/tour.

The BlackBerry Tour joins the BlackBerry(R) Storm(TM), BlackBerry(R) Curve(TM) 8330 (available in either silver or pink), BlackBerry(R) Pearl(TM) Flip 8230 and BlackBerry(R) 8830 World Edition smartphones in the Verizon Wireless portfolio. The BlackBerry Tour is a 3G world phone, giving customers the option to make phone calls in 220 countries and to access e-mail and Internet in any of the 175 countries where Verizon Wireless provides data roaming services.

It is also packed with features customers expect from industry leaders, including RIM’s popular push-based mobile solution for e-mail; messaging (IM, SMS, MMS) and social networking; a 3.2 megapixel camera with geo-tagging and video recording; advanced multimedia capabilities; built-in GPS; full HTML Web browsing; and support for Verizon Wireless’ Mobile Broadband Connect tethering service. It supports Verizon Wireless’ V CAST Music with Rhapsody and VZ Navigator(SM) services. BlackBerry Enterprise customers will find the stylish BlackBerry Tour has all the BlackBerry security profiles that make this an efficient business tool. A model of the BlackBerry Tour without a camera will also be available.

Customers can purchase either the BlackBerry 8830 World Edition Smartphone or the BlackBerry Curve 8330 for $49.99 after a $70 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement for a voice plan with e-mail feature or an e-mail plan. The BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8230 and BlackBerry Storm 9530 are available for $79.99 and $149.99 respectively after $70 mail-in rebates with new two-year customer agreements for a voice plan with e-mail feature or an e-mail plan. Customers receive rebates in the form of a debit card; upon receipt, customers may use the card as cash anywhere debit cards are accepted.

Email and Web for BlackBerry plans begin at $29.99 when added to any Nationwide voice plan.

Source: Verizon Wireless