"MORE than 1 million Chinese mobile phone users have unwittingly sent spam messages, costing them around 2 million yuan (US$300,000) a day, after their phones were recently infected by malware.

Source: Shanghai Daily

" ... the Samsung Orion's got a dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 CPU and a quad-core Mali 400 GPU on board. We spotted it at the ARM Technology Conference this week where it was pimping "Linaro" Linux middleware, as well as some stock Android 2.2. Unfortunately, the development boards still have a few kinks, so representatives couldn't show it pumping all those pixels to nearby HDTVs -- though we did get a butter-smooth demo of Futuremark's old Cyber Samurai benchmark running on the smaller screen. There are still rumors of this chip hitting some products late this year, but next year is much more likely. Either way, we're expecting some pretty impressive benchmarks from this thing when it inevitably winds up in the next Galaxy Tab or a flagship phone of some sort."

Source: Engadget

"Pegatron Technology has obtained orders for tablet PCs from Hanvon Technology, the largest China-based vendor of e-book readers, by out quoting its competitors, according to component makers.

Hanvon has extended its own-brand business operation from e-book readers to tablet PCs and has launched a few business-use models including Touchpad B10 and B20 in the China market, the sources indicated.

Hanvon's executives earlier came to Taiwan to seek ODM partners for its tablet PCs, with First International Computer, Clevo, Quanta Computer and Wistron regarded as candidates, the sources pointed out. Hanvon originally selected Clevo, but Clevo gave up the opportunity because Hanvon asked for too low prices, the sources indicated. Finally, Pegatron won by quoting the lowest, the sources noted."

Source: Digitimes

"The ATI name might be dead, but Radeon graphics cards are only growing bigger, bolder and better. AMD's recent financial analyst day has made official what many of us already knew or suspected: there'll be three new high-end GPUs forthcoming in the first quarter of 2011. The slides explicitly describe the recently launched HD 6870 / 6850 as mere refreshes, aiming to bring HD 5800 series performance in a more efficient package, but peek beyond them and you'll see an armada of HD 6900 chips just itching to bring the fight to NVIDIA and its newly crowned GTX 580 king of the single-GPU hill. No specs yet, of course, but at least we now know there'll be some fireworks to greet us early in the new year. Oh, and if the mobile realm is more your thing, we've got a shot of AMD's plans on that front waiting for you just after the break."

Source: Engadget

"US TV network Fox has joined its rivals in blocking Google TV from airing its programmes to viewers. Fox held out after CBC, ABC and NBC refused to let full shows air on Google's new platform - where users can view the web and video on home TV's.

The networks are concerned they will suffer because online advertising is less lucrative than TV commercials. The Fox move will come as a blow to Google, which needs the backing of the major media companies to thrive.

Google TV was launched at the end of October and is available embedded in a Sony TV and also through a set top box made by Logitech. Speaking at a TV conference in San Francisco, NewTeeVee Live, Google remained upbeat about the future."There are many content owners who are not blocking Google TV,'' said Rishi Chandra, product manager for Google TV."

Source: BBC

Apple rolls out the latest update for Snow Leopard. Apple has just released OS X 10.6.5 for Mac computers. This latest update for Snow Leopard includes a wealth of security updates.

• Here's a list of what's new in OS X 10.6.5:
• improve reliability with Microsoft Exchange servers
• address performance of some image-processing operations in iPhoto and Aperture
• address stability and performance of graphics applications and games
• resolve a delay between print jobs
• address a printing issue for some HP printers connected to an AirPort Extreme
• resolve an issue when dragging contacts from Address Book to iCal
• address an issue where dragging an item from a stack causes the Dock to not automatically hide
• resolve an issue with Wikipedia information not displaying correctly in Dictionary
• improve performance of MainStage on certain Mac systems
• resolve spacing issues with OpenType fonts
• improve reliability with some Bluetooth braille displays
• resolve a VoiceOver issue when browsing some web sites with Safari 5

You can download OS X 10.6.5 from the Software Update menu in OS X or download it directly here.

SALT LAKE CITY – November, 2010 – Xi3® Corporation today announced its Xi3 Modular Computer™, a truly new approach to personal computing.

Showcased last night for the first time to journalists and analysts at the CES Unveiled@NY Showcase and Networking Reception in New York City, the Xi3 Modular Computer was named by the Consumer Electronics Association as an Innovations Award Winner in the Computer Hardware Category for the 2011 International CES trade show.

"During AMD’s 2010 Financial Analyst Day, the chip underdog spent a lot of time talking about Intel, and claimed that customers re still scared of Intel.

AMD president and CEO Dirk Meyer isn’t convinced that the damage done by Intel which ultimately led to a $1.25 billion settlement a year ago has been fully undone yet.

We opened the door to the potential of a more free and open competitive environment … I think that’s the right mindset, in that this is an industry that developed a set of expectations, a culture, given the way, frankly, Intel ruled the roost … And that mindset and culture isn’t going to disappear instantaneously."

Source: ZDNet