By Agam Shah, Jun 23, 2010

Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday announced a new family of microprocessors for cloud computing servers, including one chip priced at US$99. The chips belong to the Opteron 4100 family and come in six-core and four-core variants. Previously code-named Lisbon, they draw less power than their predecessors while achieving the same levels of performance, said Brent Kerby, senior product manager at AMD. The processors include the $99 Opteron 4122 processor, which is AMD’s first server chip priced under $100. The quad-core chip operates at a speed of 2.2GHz, includes a total of 8.6MB of cache and draws 75 watts of power. By comparison, Intel’s cheapest server processor is priced at $167, according to a processor price list issued on June 20. There’s a movement toward having huge arrays of cloud computing servers with cheap chips that can quickly scale performance, said Dan Olds, principal analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group.

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By: Larry Seltzer 06.23.2010

After some delay, Mozilla has finally released the bits for Firefox 3.6.4. Users can download the new code with the Check for Updates feature or by downloading it from here. According to the release notes the main change in 3.6.4 is a stability enhancement which keeps the browser up and running when a major plugin crashes. Other stability and securityenhancements are also noted. This page in the Mozilla wiki describes this new plugin protection as “Crash Protection.” Mozilla estimates that “…as many as one in three browser crashes are currently caused by problems with various third-party plugins.” Crash protection runs plugins out of the Firefox process, making it easier to close the tab on which the plugin is running. When it crashes, the plugin goes away and content controlled by it is disabled. Reloading the page reloads the plugin.

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By Harry McCracken, Jun 23, 2010

As of Sunday night, the Kobo e-reader sold by Borders was a $150 gadget that dramatically undercut the $259 pricetag on Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. Then B&N; cut the Nook’s price to $199 and introduced a $149 model, and Amazon responded by knocking the Kindle down to $189. The Kobo is still a cheap e-reader, but not strikingly so-especially considering that it has neither a 3G connection nor Wi-Fi. So Borders has taken action, but not in the form of a straight price reduction: It’s including a $20 gift card with purchase of the Kobo, reducing the effective cost of the e-reader to $129. I don’t think Kobo matters enough (at least not yet) for Amazon or B&N; to feel forced to react to this price cut. But I suspect that before all the product introductions and price reductions are done with, we’ll see three standard price points for e-readers: $200 or thereabouts for 3G models, $150 or thereabouts for slightly less fancy ones, and $99 or thereabouts for basic models that you might still plausibly want to own.

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By Thomas Claburn June 23, 2010

Microsoft on Tuesday introduced a series of significant changes in the way that its Bing search engine presents search results for entertainment-related queries, which account for about 7% of Bing searches. Searches for songs now return results that include links to Bing-hosted lyric pages and to full-length song streaming for over 5 million songs in the Zune catalog. Users can play songs all the way through once, with subsequent plays limited to 30 second previews. Users who want to buy the songs are provided with links to Amazon, iTunes, and Zune. Searches for games return detailed information on over 35,000 games, including reviews, cheats and walk-throughs. For almost a hundred games associated with Microsoft Games, Microsoft is allowing Bing users to play the games from within Bing.

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By Chad Berndtson, Jun. 21, 2010

Barnes & Noble Monday debuted a low-cost, Wi-Fi-only version of its Nook e-reader and cut the price of its original Nook. The Nook Wi-Fi will be available immediately for $149, according to Barnes & Noble, while the original Nook, which offers 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity, will be priced at $199, down from $259. Both prices undercut Barnes & Noble’s most direct e-reader rival, Amazon, whose Kindle retails for $259. According to Barnes & Noble, the Nook Wi-Fi offers many of the same physical features as the original Nook, including color touch screen for navigation and E-Ink display, as well as the LendMe technology for sharing content with other Nook users. Barnes & Noble also confirmed a software update, version 1.4, that it says provides both Nooks with better connectivity. Nook Wi-Fi will begin shipping for online orders this week, Barnes & Noble confirmed, and will be available in some Barnes & Noble and Best Buy retail locations by the end of the month. General availability is expected in a few weeks.

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By KOREA IT TIMES, June 21st, 2010

Every minute, more than 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube indicating that image quality is an increasingly important part of the PC experience.[1] With this in mind, AMD today announced improvements to its ATI CatalystTM 10.6 driver suite that further strengthen the company’s leadership position in image quality as measured by the HQV® Benchmark, Version 2.0. AMD scored 48 percent better than the competition in discrete graphics and up to 87 percent better than the competition in integrated graphics.[2] In addition, AMD supports the newly released Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1 technology for more seamless video playback from popular online video sites. “Through advancements in AMD hardware and software, we are helping people have a richer online experience,” said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics Division. “Whether you plan to stream games during the world soccer event, watch last night’s episode of your favorite show or play online video games, having the right hardware and software can make a big difference in achieving the best possible image quality.”

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By Matt Peckham, Jun 21, 2010

Recalibrating the rumor clock, Kotaku claims Microsoft will offer a $199 version of its new piano-black, slim-style Xbox 360 this fall. That’s based on a marketing Q&A; document that reportedly answers the question “Will you sell a $199 version of the new Xbox 360?” with a pretty unambiguous “We will offer a $199 Xbox 360 this fall.” You probably heard Microsoft was discontinuing its older $299 Elite and $199 Arcade Xbox 360s, and that it was fire-selling them for $249 and $149 respectively. But even at $299 with integrated WiFi and a 250GB hard drive, the entry-level Xbox 360 asks newcomers for a lot of upfront cash–especially potential casual-grade Kinect players, who’ll pay upwards of $100 extra for a Kinect bundle, or $150 for the controller-free motion-sensing add-on standalone.

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By Juan Carlos Perez, Jun 16, 2010

The string of outages, malfunctions and bugs that have hobbled Twitter for the past week and a half prompted the company to issue another apology and explanation for its technical woes on Tuesday afternoon. In an official blog post, Twitter identified key factors that have contributed to the problems, such as a spike in usage caused by the World Cup and the discovery of bugs while performing both short-term and long-term system enhancements and upgrades. “As we go through this process, we have uncovered unexpected deeper issues and have even caused inadvertent downtime as a result of our attempts to make changes. Ultimately, the changes that we are making now will make Twitter much more reliable in the future. However, we certainly are not happy about the disruptions that we have faced and even caused this week and understand how they negatively impact our users,” the post reads.

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By Ed Oswald, Jun 16, 2010

The issue of privacy has been nagging Facebook for quite awhile now, and it looks like advocacy groups are still not happy with the company’s progress in the space. In an open letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and eight other groups are asking the site to do more. “?We are glad to see that Facebook has taken steps in the past weeks to address some of its outstanding privacy problems,” the letter begins. Among the recommendations is to give users more control over exactly which applications may access their information, as well as more control over how their information is shared with external sites. Facebook’s “Like” button gets some of this ire, especially the site’s new offering to place it off site (which you see here on Technologizer). For those of you logged into Facebook, even if you do not click the button the site still knows you were here. While any data is anonymized after 90 days, the groups argue it should be anonymized completely if you do not interact with it at all. “If Facebook wishes to retain aggregate or anonymized information for other purposes, as it states, it needs to make its anonymization procedure public so that its effectiveness can be evaluated,” they argue.

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By David Zeiler,Jun 16, 2010

Preferring to err on the side of caution, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted 10-1 to require cell phone makers to post notices in their stores with details on the level of radiation each model emits. The ordinance requires retailers to post information on what is called the “specific absorption rate” (SAR) of its products. The SAR rates measure the amount of radio wave radiation absorbed into the user’s body tissue. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who supports the ordinance, is expected to sign it into law. It would take effect in February, with a $300 fine for those found in violation. Other jurisdictions, including Maine and California, have considered similar legislation, but it appears San Francisco would be the first to enact it

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