DIVOOM Korea has unveils its new potable pocket speaker which design for use with iPhone, it’s namely the DIVOOM iTour-10. This gadget provides up to 7-8 hour of battery life, ans also comes with only 3.5mm soundjack, power LED, volume control. There wasn’t any mention of its price just yet.

[Aving]

Orange Releases iPad Data Plan Details Mobile network operator Orange has published details about the data plans of the iPad for customers in UK, France, Spain and Switzerland with more to come by the end of the year.

Orange will offer 3G plans for the iPad starting from the 10th of May with pre-registration for the SIM card available here. Customers will be able to choose between, PAYG, daily, weekly and monthly data plans.

The most straight forward offer is the most expensive as well; orange will charge 5p per MB consumed, which translates into a £50 per GB package, seven times more expensive than the cheapest data package on the market.

Orange however has put an upper limit of £40 per month to the maximum cost incurred. Additional data used beyond the bundle allowance will carry an additional 5p per MB.

The iPad daily package will cost £2 and give up to 200MB UK data allowance (that’s 1p per MB) while the iPad weekly bundle will offer 1GB data quota for £7.50 (that’s 0.075 per GB).

via: itproportal

The orchid squad – Regular patrols to protect rare wild flower A wild orchid growing on Silverdale golf course in Lancashire has been given police protection to stop it being stolen. Officers have introduced patrols around the lady’s slipper flower, whose Latin name is Cypripedium calceolus, and are considering installing CCTV. They fear that raiders will try to take cuttings or dig up the flower when it blooms this month or next — the orchid can fetch up to £5,000 when flowering. The plant, which takes its name from its distinctive shoe-shaped petals and is highly prized by collectors, has been security-tagged in a further attempt to deter thieves. Rob Petley-Jones, of English Nature, said: “It is illegal even to touch this plant. You would need a special licence for it.”

Scarcity value – It was once thought extinct; only a few grow wild

The orchid was once widespread across the north of England but its popularity meant that by 1917 scientists believed it had been picked to extinction in the wild. A specimen was discovered in 1930, however; its location was kept secret. The species is considered so important that a panel of botanical experts — the Cypripedium Committee — was set up to discuss how to protect and propagate the flower. Scientists from Kew Gardens, left, in London have begun planting lady’s slippers grown from the seed of wild plants at sites around Britain. At present, the numbers of the purple and yellow orchid remain extremely low and the Lancashire lady’s slipper is officially Britain’s rarest wild flower.

Pollution problem – Nitrogen from fertilisers is killing off plant species

The plant has struggled to survive because of the high levels of nitrogen in the soil from fertilisers used in farming. Earlier this year a survey for the charity Plantlife found one in five of Britain’s wild plants was facing extinction because of climate change and pollution. The Prince of Wales, left, patron of Plantlife, has spoken about the need to protect the orchid. Constable Duncan Thomas, the wildlife officer for Lancashire police, said: “People travel from all ends of the country on what is almost a pilgrimage to view the plant in bloom and are often overcome with emotion at the sight.” In 2004 the orchid was severely damaged when a thief tried to dig up the plant, and last year one of its stems was cut off when it flowered.

Clash over priorities – Locals question use of police time

Critics have questioned the use of police time to guard a plant and some Lancashire residents complain that priorities are skewed. Christopher Brandon, 32, said: “It sounds as if this plant is getting better protection than the Queen. Anyone would think a life was at stake, rather than just a pretty flower.” The law is clear. It is an offence to uproot any plant, bulb or flower on the European protected species list. Wild flowers belong to the owner of the land on which they grow and taking them could be classified as theft. Such is the importance attached to the lady’s slipper that it has been given a log number on the police computer, allowing a speedy response should anyone try to do more than admire it.

via: timesonline

Yahoo chief Carol Bartz sees trouble for Google : Google will have “a problem” if it does not diversify its business, the head of Yahoo has told BBC News.

Carol Bartz said that Google would have to “do a lot more than search” and suggested that it would have to “grow a company the size of Yahoo every year”.

Ms Bartz made the comments when asked if Yahoo’s sprawling network of sites and services had a defined brand image.

Yahoo is one of the largest sites in the world with an audience of more than 200m, according to analysts Nielsen.

It competes with Google in the search market, but has only 17% of the US market, compared to Google’s 65%, according to Comscore. Yahoo recently did a deal to use Microsoft’s Bing to power searches on its sites.

“Google is going to have a problem because Google is only known for search,” said Ms Bartz.

“It is only half our business; it’s 99.9% of their business. They’ve got to find other things to do.

“Google has to grow a company the size of Yahoo every year to be interesting.”
Social side

Yahoo has more than 70 websites and services, many of which are available in 20 languages around the world.

Some have criticised the firm for growing too large, not making use of acquisitions and having too many sites.

Technology blog Techcrunch has said that Yahoo is the place where “startups go to die”.

But Ms Bartz said that its broad portfolio would be its advantage in the long run.
Continue reading the main story Yahoo sign Advert uplift helps Yahoo profit Yahoo ‘talks tough’ about search

Ms Bartz also said that the firm could also hold its own against Facebook, the current poster child of the web.

She described the site, which has more than 400 million users and has stated that its ambition is to be at the heart of the “social web”, as a “frenemy”.

“They certainly are taking people’s attention and time,” she said. “But what is kind of wrong about the conversation is that social just means Facebook.

“Social is interaction. Social is commenting on news stories. It’s blogging. It’s sharing photos.

“So there are social capabilities running throughout all of our sites, including Twitter feeds and Facebook feeds.”

However, earlier, she had told a press conference that she expected that Facebook and Google would overtake Yahoo in terms of the amount of time visitors spent on the site.
Local site

Ms Bartz took over the company from founder Jerry Yang in January 2009.

Since then, she has been trying to reverse the fortunes of the firm by cutting costs and jobs, as well as changing the organisational structure of the company.

The firm recently posted quarterly profits which were almost treble what they were a year ago.

During the interview, Ms Bartz stated an ambition to bolster the firm’s mobile offerings, but said it would not follow Google by offering a mobile operating system.

The firm currently has its mobile application on around 2,000 different handsets from various manufacturers. It recently signed a deal with Samsung to extend its reach.

She also said that she wanted the firm to focus on personalised and “hyperlocal information” for users.

“It’s about what is going on in your local area,” she said.

There has been a lot of speculation in the technology press that Yahoo is about to buy Foursquare, a location-based game that allows people to earn points for visiting locations in the real world.

However, Ms Bartz would not confirm if a deal was imminent.

via bbc.co.uk

Security system company, Secu4 has recently launches their new BlueWatchDog Gadget Alarm. The alarm system has measuring about your credit card that make connection with your phone. If you lose your bag or whatever around 30m you’ll gets an alert on your phone and a 100dB alarm is triggered on the device at your bag that you can see full video above. The BlueWatchDog Gadget Alarm can recharge the batteries with your computer or other device via USB cable. Now this Gadget Alarm available via MindYourIT for prices around £50.

[via Pocket-lint]

QNAP has unveiled their latest more connected storage that designed for SOHO and Prosumer segments, namely the TS-410 4-Bay NAS Server. The NAS Server has support two SATA hard drives specs include 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch, which allow to up to 8TB of storage space. The TS-410 is powered by MHz Marvell 6281 processor, 256MB of DDR2 memory. Other features include 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports, 4 USB 2.0 port and 2 eSATA connectors. The QNAP TS-410 4-Bay NAS Server has already started to become available starting from 588 Euro.

[via TCmagazine]

In the past, you may have seen only book cooking. But here is a new technology from Belling company that will make cooking easier than ever. The Belling Media Chef Digital Frame Cookbook come with a 8-inch digital frame for show up to 48 cooking instructional videos from top chef, Brian Turner. You can use the remote to control to play, pause, or stop the video while you cooking instead of opening cooking books. The digital frame cookbook also come with other features include calendar, an MP3 player and digital photo frame functions for show your photo slide. The Belling Media Chef 8-inch Digital Frame Cookbook is priced at for £170.

[Engadget]

Good news for those who are living in Japan. Because now you can make Pre-Order the new Kohjinsha PM Series via Geekstuff4u.com. Do you know? the Kohjinsha PM Series features a 4.8 inch widescreen touchscreen panel with 1,024 x 600 pixels resolution for only 345g. Its powered by Atom N510@ 1.10 GHz, 512 MB of Ram, 16 GB SSD, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth ver 2.0 + EDR, Built-in Web Camera 1.3 Megapixel.

The Kohjinsha PM Series support 4 operating system including XP Home Edition English, French, German and Spanish. The measuring for 158 x 94.2 x 13.5~22 mm, weight for 345 g.

[Product Pages]

Sony KDL-52XBR9 is the BRAVIA XBR Series, which offers 52-Inch screen 1080p 240Hz LCD display HDTV sold for $3,299.99 at online stores, but now the KDL-52XBR9 LCD HDTV is available for only $2,064.95 (You Save: $1,235.04 (37% off). The Sony KDL-52XBR9 is designed as a center of home entertainment, Its will make you enjoy with a thousands of on-demand movies, television, music and more, and you can also customize your entertainment experience for the selection and placement of widgets with the latest news, weather, sports, and more directly on the TV screen. The Sony KDL-52XBR9 52-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV features an 52-Inch screen 16:9 Full HD 1080p Resolution Panel, Motionflow 240Hz, USB to view photo, music, video. If you’re interested to buy the Sony VAIO VGN-SR410J/B Laptop, click here

HDP460 Projector from Knoll Systems that boasts a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 with accept and display all ATSC HDTV formats including 720p, 1080i and 1080p. It’s has the light output is a stunning 1600 ANSI lumens with a contrast ratio up to 15000:1, your family and friends for fun and tension of Digital Theater High-quality home at any time. The perfect book HDP460 high definition images, the light on the screen. It ‘very easy, just have your local dealer for a demonstration of Knoll.

[Product Page]