Nintendo launched it’s new Wii video game console in New York last night at midnight, meeting more than a thousand eagerly awaiting fans. Some fans had been in line for days awaiting the launch in the hopes of being one the first to get their hands on the new console. Surprisingly, the US launch was done prior to the launch in the companies home of Japan. This was done, according to Nintendo, in order to take advantage of the earlier holiday shopping season in the US.

This bold launch by Nintendo comes only two days after the launch of the PS3, and puts the two gaming giants in a head to head battle in this seasons gaming console wars. The Wii game system does not have near the processing power or graphic capabilities of the it’s PS3 and Xbox rivals, and has a price that …

If you are one of the many that would like to be able to take great photos with the performance of a digital SLR camera, but never wanted to invest the money or take the time to learn all the features involved, Nikon has come out with the right camera for you. This digital camera could very well bridge the gap for many amateur photographers from the popular point and shoot compact cameras to a little more serious but manageable photographing instrument.

One significant features of this offering has nothing to do with the camera specs, but is the price. At an estimated $599, consumers can get a pretty nice, lightweight and SLR camera for less than most similar models. Another nice feature is the 2.5″ color display. Nikon has made a more novice, user-friendly display on the screen with a few different layouts to …

Microsoft and Sprint have announced an alliance in which the companies will develop and deliver a range of mobile search services for Sprint’s business and consumer customers.

The initial offering enables Sprint customers to use Windows Live Search for mobile on their wireless phones to search location-based content from the Internet. The new mobile search service based on Windows Live aims to provide a single access point to relevant online content based on a keyword or phrase. The search will include the Sprint catalog of offerings such ring tones, games, and screen savers as well as nearby stores and restaurants.

Windows Live Search for mobile offers features such as maps and directions but requires users to input their location by entering their ZIP code, address, or city and state. Future versions of the service are planned to enable consumers to give permission to automatically locate them …

Tuesday at the Industrial Physics Forum in San Francisco, Marin Soljačić, assistant professor at MIT, along with colleagues presented an approach to power and/or charge electronic devices wirelessly from a couple of meters away.

The idea is that there would be some type of base station that the devices would need to be in proximity of to receive the transfer of energy through the air. The base station would be plugged into a regular electrical outlet, or “holes” to you old Seinfeld fans. The base station would then emit some low-frequency electromagnetic radiation around the base. The radiation would be at a specific frequency that would need to be matched by some type of circuitry component inside the gadget that would receive the power, and when the base and the component get close to each other resonating at the same frequency, the component could …

GM has released plans to introduce a upgrade to the common key fob for their higher end SUV style vehicles such as the Cadillac Escalade. The new key fob will be the first to offer two way communication between the device and the vehicle, as well as offering a liquid crystal display.

The remote gadget will be able to lock and unlock the doors and set of a panic alarm as most key fobs would, but the difference lies in what it gets back from the vehicle. The key fob will be able to display that status of the vehicles door locks, tire pressure, odometer reading, fuel level, radio settings and more, according to an article in USA Today.

Vehicle makers have been adding more features to the remote access of vehicles, such as unlocking doors when you get close, associating seat and mirror settings, …

MovaMail recently announced that it has released version 2 of its J2ME-based mobile email application. The new build of MovaMail allows consumers to access their WebMail, POP, and IMAP email services from their java-enabled mobile phones.

Building on the success of Version 1.0 which was first released to the public in October 2005, MovaMail V2 adds new features and performance enhancements that maximize the capabilities of today’s MIDP 2.0 mobile phones. New features include:

Phone Address Book Synchronization - complete synch and server backup
Complete Email Synchronization - including email status
Attachment Support - view images, forward attachments
Camera Phone Integration - email pictures from your mobile phone
Multi-lingual support - support for any language in the end users mobile phone
Optional XHTML interface - for users that can not or choose not to access via java client.

MovaMail’s Compression and Optimization engine has been completely reengineered to give users their email nearly …

Vodafone and Yahoo! have formed an alliance which pools their collective expertise to create a new advertising service for mobile devices. The partnership names Yahoo! as Vodafone’s exclusive display advertising partner in the UK.

Yahoo! can leverage its sizeable sales force and technology team to drive the most benefit from Vodafone’s unique mobile advertising opportunities. Yahoo! will use its ample advertising prowess to provide a variety of mobile advertising formats across Vodafone’s varied content services.

The new service is planned to be initiated in the UK in the first half of 2007. Certain plans are structured to give savings on certain Vodafone services to customers who agree to accept carefully targeted display advertisements. This service could extend to other Vodafone mobile assets including the Vodafone live! portal, games, television and picture messaging services.

While no one can accurately predict how the Zune will fare this holiday season, one can guarantee that it will take a piece of the considerable market share now enjoyed by the iPod.

Microsoft is currently in the midst of celebrating the U.S. launch of the Zune digital media player and Zune Marketplace music service. The celebration consists of six free concerts in public parks and plazas in urban centers across the country.

At the inaugural concert in Seattle, Gates outlined the Zune vision of creating new ways for people to connect, discover and share music. Gates demonstrated that through Zune-to-Zune managed wireless sharing, consumers are empowered to promote and sample tracks, thus increasing exposure for artists. The service logs the music that people have shared, making it easier to purchase the songs they like the next time they synch up their player. Consumers …

Intel has made significant jumps over the past year, and on Tuesday they have officially launched their Quad Core Chips which Intel says are more energy efficient, have better utilization and are more reliable and then previous generations of Intel processors as well as the competition. This chip offers the equivalent processing strength of four separate processors in one chip. This is the second major release this year after Intel announced the Core 2 Duo in August and now the Quad Core, doubling the offered processing power twice in a year.

“In one year, we’ve achieved a four-fold increase in performance. That is stunning,” Pat Gelsinger, head of Intel’s Digital Enterprise group, told the Financial Times.

The Xeon 5300 and the Core 2 Extreme are the first two chips being released with the Quad processing power and are intended for …

Cingular and Samsung have finally released the SGH-i607 BlackJack Smartphone in time for the holiday season and to have it in the race along side the Motorola Q and the Dash. The Blackjack fills a void for mobile phone users in the US with a Smartphone that has supports GSM along with EDGE / UMTS / HSDPA. The phone also supports Bluetooth, but unfortunately is without any built in WiFi support.

This phone comes with a slightly awkward looking QWERTY keyboard, a 320×240 screen resolution and a built in 1.3-megapixal camera. The Blackjack weighs in at only 3.5 ounces and is about a half an inch thick. The included battery gives it 5.5 hours of talk time and up to 11 days of standby, which is a nice jab to it’s main competitor the Q, which has some shorter battery life …

Tokyo, Japan - Sony released the much anticipated PlayStation 3 game console to Japanese in-store sales on Saturday, and the results were good news for the bean-counters at Sony.

Online advanced orders of the PS3 were available through Amazon.com for Japan in October, but people lined up overnight at participating stores throughout Tokyo hoping to be one of the limited numbers of people able to purchase the new game console. At least one person was reported to be in line for the purchase even before the store closed the previous day. According to the New York Times, online auctions of the new Playstation 3 went quickly and as high as $1,100. This is more than double the cost of the basic PS3 model with a 20 GB hard drive at around $425.

The Washington Post reported that so may people were lined up …

Trekstor GmbH, which designs and manufactures many consumer entertainment and storage devices, has recently released the Trekstor vibez MP3 player. The new MP3 player is the first media player offered in the US from Trekstor that uses a hard disc to store data, and it’s a tiny 1″ hard disc at that.

The vibez MP3 player comes in three different hard disk capacities of 8, 12 and 15GB, and measures only 4 x 2 x 0.7 inches to easily fit in the palm of your hand. Navigation through a magnetically mounted, rubber covered scroll wheel manages menu options on a 1.5 inch color TFT screen, and the sleek looking player is able to play music for up to 20 hours off of a rechargeable battery. The battery can be fully recharged for use again in about 3 hours.

Trekstor has plans going forward for expanding the …

Microsoft has announced that Windows Vista will be available to the general consumer on January 30th, 2007. This release comes shortly after the release of Vista to business users at the end of November, 2006. After January 30th, the Windows Vista operating system will be availabe as both a stand alone purchase and pre-installed on new PC’s.

Windows Vista is coming in 4 different editions:

Home Basic: This looks like a real scaled down version that is stated for use in basic home needs such as emailing and surfing the internet.
Home Premium: This version looks to still be a truely a home version of the application, but has some added features including the Media Center and integration with Xbox 360, as well as enhanced desktop navigation and Tablet support.
Business: The business edition is designed for small and mid-sized organizations, and does not have the …

Apple has just announced the release of it’s new line of Macbooks with the Intel Core 2 Duo Processors, giving the new versions up to 25% faster processing speeds than previous versions. To keep up with the faster processing, the new notebooks will also feature double the memory offering up to 2 GB and more storage than previous models making hard drives of up to 200 GB available for the heavy hauler.

The 64-bit processor architecture of the Intel Core 2 Duo allows it to handle data and process more decisions double time (64 bits versus 32 bits), giving the Macbook more processing power. Apple states that this additional processing speed equates to 6 times the performance over the iBook and 12-inch PowerBook. The Apple web site boasts the performance enhancement with the Core 2 Due by showing examples demonstrating a …

Panasonic has come out with the latest in small AVCHD camcorders which will record High-Def video. The video is recorded onto a 4GB SDHC memory card that can hold between 40 and 90 minutes of video depending on the Mbps that the video is recorded at, and it has a battery that allows continuous recording for up to 65 minutes.

Using the 3CCD sensor the HDC-SD1 camcorder can record in full HD 1080i (1920 x 1080) and provide digital and optical zoom at 12X and 30X, respectively. You can watch the video you are recording with the 3″ LCD flip-out monitor and record sound in Dolby Digital 5.1 format with 5 separate microphones built into the camera that adjust based on zoom.

The attention-getter with this camcorder has got to be it’s size, though. At only 490 …