There are bad news coming from Apple regarding the Apple TV digital media player. A company spokesman confirmed that Apple TV will be shipped in mid-March: “Wrapping up Apple TV is taking a few weeks longer than we projected, and we now expect to begin shipments mid-March.”

The device, which costs $299, was announced to be available from this month. Apple TV is a wireless device that grabs the digital media from your computer and plays it on your TV. It features a 40GB hard disk to cache content locally. You can check the device on Apple.com .

Samsung came with fresh technology at 3GSM Congress in Barcelona. Samsung launched the new U series: U100 (picture above left), U300(above right), U600 and U700 (below).

The U100 looks very nice. It is only 6mm thin. That’s impressive! The phone has a 3.2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, EDGE, multimedia features. But the main problem is the memory. The Samsung U100 doesn’t have a memory card slot and 70MB are not enough for such a phone.

What about Samsung U300? It is a clamshell about 9.6mm thin and features like U100 3.2 megapixel camera, EDGE, stereo Bluetooth, document viewer and MP3 player. Here the same problem - no expandable memory.

The others, U600 and U700 are some cool sliders. Personally, I find those two more interesting like a clamshell. The U600 has the same features like U100 and U300, but it has a microSD card slot. The Samsung U600 is a quad-band phone and it measures 11mm thin.

The U700 model is a 3G device supporting high speed mobile broadband (HSDPA), so you can download data at up to 3.6Mbps. It also features an HTML browser. The other options are the same with U600.

Advice: If you want good battery life, you shouldn’t expect to much from these thin phones, because the battery life isn’t a key advantage of these mobiles.

*The pics don’t represent the real phones dimensions.

SnoopStick has launched a very simple device to be able to track anything one has done on the internet. Plug it in, install the completely invisible software and voila. You can monitor everything your kid or your employee is doing online, without leaving any tracks. Anywhere in the world, you can now plug the SnoopStick USB flash drive and watch every web site that was accessed during the period, check what instant messages were sent or even see what and to whom the emails were sent. You see all these in real time.

This is a very kinky device, that can store logs for up to 12 months, that would take less than 60 seconds to install and that would do a very good job to keep an eye on those that you need to. It also comes with functions that may restrict the internet access, alert the person breaching the rules, set time restrictions and even turning the computer off. I am already paranoid about this new piece of … software, because someone may install it on my laptop while I am not watching and I might get busted. Hope my girlfriend is not reading this one. SnoopStick price is $59.95.

I’m never smart enough to remember where all the big cities timezones are and every time I need to go online, see the different between timezones and then do simple addition or subtraction to my local time. I can bet those doing international sales have the same problem stammering on those countries around the globe, but there is hope for us.

The 24 hour world time clock, barrel shaped has 24 sides, with 12 on each part of the clock. You just rotate it to the desired city and you get the local time. I think this is the perfect clock for globetrotters or business travelers since they are always on the go. Designed by Charlotte van der Waals this new world time desk clock is available on MomaStore for the price of $74.

[via NewLaunches]

Bluefire announced today their new Mobile Security Professional Edition version 4.0 for wireless devices. It’s intended to protect Smartphones, PocketPC and PocketPC Phone Edition that run on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system.

A study conducted by Bluefire showed that more than 82% of the people taking the survey are using wireless devices to access their e-mail, remote connect to corporate servers and of course web access. Those that use such applications are well aware of mobile security alerts and they demand more and more to be protected. Bluefire understood it and have launched the Professional Edition, version 4.0 which is a stand alone application that features a firewall, intrusion prevention, authentication and encryption. It is also capable of protecting a lost or stolen device, to keep the information residing on your mobile phone (such as email account, address books or personal bank information) confident and it has enhanced security for web browsing.

Compatible with wireless, cellular and wired networks including: WLAN, WWAN, GPRS/EDGE/UMTS and 1xRTT/EV-DO it costs $79 to buy the Bluefire Mobile Security Professional Edition v4.0 and if you don’t trust their service, try it free for 14 days.

The guys with V12 Design from Milan are in charge with the looks of the new Canovo dual-touchscreen tablet/notebook. The concept and the design was developed about two years ago and then addressed to an European electronic manufacture company that started building it in Taiwan. Due to the complexity of the Canovo dual-touchscreen notebook pieces, the project has been delayed since now. You may think, what will these guys bring to the market, that it’s so new? It’s the dual-touchscreen. You get the keyboard replaced by a touchscreen that would allow you to customize it the way you like it, or even have, a double screen display when needed.

It will take some time to get it working and have some samples tested, but this is a great potential new piece of technology. Valerio Cometti is the managing director of V12 design and he gave an interview to the guys of DigitalReviews about it. He also mentioned news about the long waited TV set from Brionvega, the iconic electronic manufacturer of the 60s and 70s. It will be presented in April at the Design Week - Salone del Mobile in Milan. It’s supposed to be the best design product of the year.

We should wait and see it, because we are already waiting for the Canovo dual-touchscreen which is going to make us wait. No other specifications are available for it now, but we promise to come with the news as soon as we know more.

See V12design for more design concepts.

Webcams are widespread nowadays and there are many models available on the market. For today’s post I’ve chose a Logitech product that has better specifications than you average webcam.

The beautifully designed USB 2.0 webcam has a 1.3 MP imaging sensor and it allows picture taking with the press of a single button (1280×960 pictures than can be enhanced with a special software to reach 4 MP). Just like for professional cameras a special light will allow to see when you are “live” and by a single button press you can also see a preview of what your camera shows. Speaking of that you might want to know that the device is able of resolutions up to 640×480 in live video and the maximum frame rate reaches 30 fps.

All these features and more are available if you are willing to pay $129.99.

Apparently Sony has learned nothing from the mistakes it made with the PlayStation 3 launch in the US and Japan as they are continuing the line of bad decisions with the European launch as well. Sony changed its opinion on the backward compatibility and the support for PS2 titles will not include as many titles as in the US and Japan.

How is that possible? Well the PS2 compatibility can be achieved in two ways:

• software emulations - creates a virtual PS2
• hardware -a special hardware component is included for compatibility

On the US and Japanese market the PS3 included this hardware component. But, as it is needed just to allow PS2 titles to be played on the PS3, Sony must have thought it can reduce the manufacturing costs by removing this part. So console will only use software emulation for compatibility with older games. However, the number of titles available will not be as high and the details (performance) in that games will certainly not be the same as with the PlayStation 2 (even if the newer PlayStation 3 has a superior hardware).

Although we understand that Sony loses money with every console it sales, we don’t like the way they try to make up for this money. Maybe if Sony would have shipped a cheaper version of the PS3 without the Blu-Ray drive then the console would not have been delayed as much and it could have been available in larger numbers at the launch.

I really like smartphones because they often try to mimic the performances of today’s computers for portable devices. However a more interesting fact is that some of them manage to do that… at least to some extent. It is my opinion that the S710 is one of those devices and I will try to convince you of this fact in the following paragraphs.

When searching for any device, the first thing you look is the design, and the small (101.5 x 50 x 18.6 mm ) S710 will certainly impress you. Even if the device has a full QWERTY keyboard, that is not visible at first because it only slides out when needed. The only disadvantage to the design is in my opinion the regular number keypad that simply takes out space which could have been filled with a larger display. I also think HTC should consider using the dual slide out keyboardsfor their upcoming products as competitors already begun including this in their new smartphones. However, even with the normal keypad, I find the 2.4” LCD display sufficient for most tasks although I would have preferred a slightly larger one.

Moving out to the hardware features I must confess I really like what this device packs. First of all we have a TI’s 201 MHz processor accompanied by 128 MB of RAM and 64 MB of SDRAM that provide the computing power of the S710. A 2 MP camera, a microphone and a 3-in-1 speaker were also added to the list of mutimedia features. For receiving a boost in storage capacity HTC included a microSD slot to accommodate appropriate memory cards as customers may want to take your pictures, music or any other files on the mobile phone. As for the mobile phone part rest assured this phone will function almost anywhere as it is compatible with the GSM/GPRS/EDGE Quad-band (850/900/1800/1900MHz) mobile telephony networks.

As for the software, the HTC is a Windows Mobile v6 phone and it has all the features of that OS (operating system). It includes both multimedia features like playback for the most common audio formats (AMR/AAC/WAV/WMA/MP3) and office tools like email, browsing and calendar functions. All in all I must say a very useful and cool device suited for both work and entertainment.

The French mobile phone manufacture, Sagem, has launched a very thin tri-band and 3G capable clamshell with EDGE. It comes with a 262k colors TFT display with QVGA resolution, a 2 external megapixel camera and a VGA camera for 3G calls, built-in music player with support for several media files, microSD card capabilities and 16MB built-in memory.

I should also mention that it comes with Bluetooth and that it has a mirror-effect vertical strap. The phone weights 95 grams, has the dimensions of 96×49x16mm and will cost about 300 euros. It was already officially released at 3GSM 2007, but we just wanted to remind you that you will be able to buy it, depending on your country, from the second quarter of 2007.

Check it up in stores and on SAGEM for more specs.