Pioneer Unveils Its Most Powerful BD Writer

Japanese company Pioneer has announced today the release of its new Blu-ray Writer drive, on its official website. The new drive is connected through the classic SATA  interface.

The device is called BDR-2207 and is able to write a single layer BD-R at a speed of 12x.

A double-layer BD-R will be written at a fast 12x, while triple-layer BD-R TL/QL and BD-R LTH discs can be written at a maximum of 6x.

The BD-RE SL/DL/TL discs with four layers will be recorded at a maximum speed of 2x.

The read speed in in general 10x for Blu-Ray discs and 16x for normal DVDs.

The BDR-2207 features PowerRead technology that provides smoother movie playback when a disc is marked with fingerprints or has minor surface scratches. 

When the drive is not able to read through these damaged areas of a disc, it will simply skip to the next available data point, resulting in smoother Blu-ray and DVD movie playback.

PureRead2 technology will help avoid clicking or popping sounds that might normally occur due to minor damages on CDs. The drive will dynamically adjust its optical playback settings through the use of a unique algorithm. 

Another novel technology is Peak Power Reducer. As some systems will not provide enough power to the drive during operation, in the case of a write operation, the Peak Power Reducer will monitor the power and will reduce the drive's peak power to ensure stable operation.

Pioneer also claims it has a “special” technology that will make the drive recognize a disc faster than older Pioneer models, when the disc is inserted.

There’s also the “quiet” tech that will logically and expectedly reduce the disc’s speed when there is no data requested.

The BDR-2207 will also come bundled with the following three different CyberLink software products. These are PowerDVD 10 BD3D, PowerDirector 9 and Power2Go 7.

The drive comes with only a minuscule 4 MB buffer. We wonder why there’s absolutely no ODM building DVD or Blu-Ray drives with 1 GB buffer or something similar. 

It may not be absolutely necessary but why not even try to make something different? We’re sure a talented engineer will be able to do wonders if the manufacturer would accept a truly innovative idea.

Optical drives are probably the most blend and uninteresting component in today’s computers.

The pricing will be 99.99 USD for US clients or around 76 EUR for European buyers.

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Script: Sisyphus.js

Webmasters can feel safe their forms are user friendly when using Sisyphus.js. This jQuery plugin takes advantage of the localStorage system implemented with HTML 5 in most major browsers.

The plugin automatically saves form data to localStorage as soon as the visitor enters it in a field. This ensures that if any navigation problem is encountered, the data will always be on the user's computer.

So let's say the power goes down and the visitor was filling in a 20+ fields registration form, when he re-accesses the form, all entered data will be pulled from localStorage and entered in the proper fields, so he can continue the registration process without filling all the previous fields.

A demo can be tested here. Sisyphus.js development can be followed on its GitHub page.

Download Sisyphus.js here.

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System76 Sells Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Notebooks

System76, a company that manufactures Ubuntu preinstalled laptops, desktops, and servers since 2005, is now shipping its products with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin). 

System76 has two laptops available for its customers called Lemur Ultra and Pangolin Performance. They're are nothing fancy, but the products are interesting nonetheless.

Lemur Ultra has a 14.1" display, comes in two different flavours based on the included processors (2nd generation Intel Core i5 and i7 CPUs), Intel High Definition Graphics, Intel Centrino 802.11 b/g/n, multitouch with two finger scrolling, and 204 pin Dual Channel DDR3 @ 1600 MHz.

Pangolin Performance features a 15.6" display, 2nd generation Intel Core i5 and i7 CPUs, Intel High Definition Graphics, 204 pin Dual Channel DDR3 @ 1600 MHz, multitouch with two finger scrolling, 2.5" 9mm removable SATA II/III, and a built-In 1.3 MP webcam.

More details about the products can be found on the official website.

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Nokia Lumia 800 Receiving 12072 Firmware Update, Fixes Volume Bug

All Lumia smartphones have been plagued by numerous bugs since their launch on the market. Nokia Lumia 800 was no exception to this as owners have previously reported issues with the sound, power management and battery life.

Although the Finnish company delivered a few updates for its Windows Phone device, there are still some problems left unsolved. 

Moreover, some of these issues have been introduced by Nokia’s software updates, which leads us to believe that the company’s poor execution was directly proportional with the time it took to release these updates.

In this regard, the latest 12070 update for Lumia 800 was meant to solve several critical bugs that made the smartphone almost unusable. Nokia promised this update would improve the audio performance and would fix some power management issues and phone lock-ups.

However, the update messed up the phone even more, though some of these bugs have been reportedly addressed such as battery life and phone lock-up issue.

Now there’s a problem with the phone’s sound, which seems to make playing games a torturing experience. There’s some erratic behavior of the volume sound as well. Users have reported that the sound is very loud at first when the phone rings.

Today, the folks over at MobileTechWorld have learned that Nokia plans to put an end to these audio bugs with a new maintenance update that is now being rolled out globally.

Software update 12072 is said to fix this audio bug along with a few more. In addition, the update also refreshes the Camera application with auto detection of 50/60 Hz, as well as its settings.

It appears that Nokia also included an Improved charger detection app. We’re not sure what else is new, but those who do not want to wait for the update to be pushed to their phones can download it manually from here.

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RIM Officially Debuts BlackBerry 10 OS

As expected, Research In Motion (RIM) has just taken the wrap off its new BlackBerry 10 operating system, formerly known as BBX.

Based on PlayBook OS, BlackBerry 10 was unveiled at the BlackBerry World conference in Orlando, Florida. For the time being, developers can download a toolkit for native and HTML5 software development, which will soon be available for download here. 

Although RIM announced the availability of these SDKs, the download links are not live yet, so developers might want to wait a few more hours before they become available. 

According to RIM, the new toolkit offered to all devs who wish to create apps for the newly announced platform, includes the Blackberry 10 Native SDK with Cascades, which allows developers to submit graphically rich and high performance native apps in C/C++ using Qt. 

It is also worth mentioning the Native SDK for BlackBerry 10 comprises a range of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that enables devs to access core device features and a range of BlackBerry apps services, including Push and Payment services. 

With Cascades native application development toolset, developers will be able to easily create visually rich apps without having to write “complex, low-level graphics code.”

Furthermore, this toolkit also includes support for HTML5 application developers with the BlackBerry 10 WebWorks SDK.

Each developer attending to BlackBerry 10 Jam will be provided with a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device that has already been pictured a few days ago. RIM also confirmed that the first BlackBerry 10 devices would be released in the latter part of 2012, probably in October.

“Developers building for BlackBerry 10 will be able to easily create the kind of cutting-edge apps that deliver truly engaging experiences and ‘wow’ customers, whether through integration with native features and other apps like BBM or by leveraging the new signature design elements of this new and powerful mobile computing platform,” said Alec Saunders, vice president, Developer Relations and Ecosystems Development.

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