The chief executive of Intel Germany has revealed that Apple is developing a touchscreen device similar to an iPhone, but larger, and with a bigger touchscreen.

Hannes Schwaderer made the statement at an event held in Munich, Germany that this alleged tablet-device-phone-pda-something will be using his company’s new Atom processor for mobile devices. This supports rumors circulating the net that Apple is indeed developing a tablet gadget for general computing that may or not be a new iPhone model. Whether this announcement is based on fact or on one too many brewskis is yet to be determined.

Can you say Newton 2.0?

(Via Electronista)

The geek version of the saying “You can never be too thin or too rich.”  is “You can never have too much RAM or harddrive space.”

MCE Technologies took this to heart and is now offering the MCE OptiBay Harddrive, a 500gb 2.5″ harddrive replacement for the optical drive of the 17″ MacBook Pro. This, along with another half-TB for the factory-installed harddrive of the lapzilla, you can conceivably have a full terabyte in there and fulfill your lifelong dream of keeping every single file you ever owned or made with you at all times.

Sure, like a MacBook Air, you’ll be optical drive-less, but heck, think of the bragging rights!

And if you’re worried about the displaced Apple-issued hardware, MCE thoughtfully includes external enclosures for both the optical and the hard drive. (For the US$799 tag, they’d better! Add US$149 for a quick MCE overnight install, or US$99 for more leisurely shipping back and forth.)

The iTunes Store has just begun selling shows from cable company HBO, starting off with episodes from six shows: The Wire, Flight of The Conchords, Rome, The Sopranos, Deadwood and Sex & The City.

Most shows sell for $1.99 an episode like episodes from other sources, but in a departure from the norm, iTunes is  instituting variable pricing on the HBO shows, asking a dollar extra for episodes of Rome, Deadwood and The Sopranos, which is a first for the US iTunes market.

Previously iTunes UK started selling NBC shows with variable pricing as well. Along with the HBO precedent, this is a sign that Apple might be selling NBC shows on iTunes once more, since the pricing issue was one of the bones of contention involved in the Apple-NBC split earlier.

Two pieces of great news for my country, the Philippines! One is, I’m back, and the other more important one is that Engadget reports that Globe Telecom is releasing the iPhone in the Philippines!

Well, apparently not all credit goes to Globe. According to Engadget’s EIC Ryan Block, it’s actually Singapore Telecommunications which secured the rights, and is releasing it through it’s partly-owned subsidiary Globe.

According to Engadget:

Singapore Telecommunications (aka SingTel) announced that it’s secured agreements to distribute the iPhone in Singapore (on SingTel Mobile) and its partly-owned subsidiaries in Australia (on Optus), India (on Bharti Group), and the Philippines (on Globe Telecom). Vodafone’s also distributing the iPhone in India and Australia though, so we’ll have to wait until later this year to find out who gets to shoot first.”

No news as to when though, nor any other details yet, but knowing it’ll actually happen is the important thing. I’m hoping it’ll be announced at the WWDC next month.

(Thanks to Jason for the heads-up!)

UPDATE: Globe Telecom has made the announcement (tersely though; Engadget had more to say) on its website. Question now is, what’s longtime rival Smart going to do? I don’t think they’ll take this sitting down.

Hey gang. I’ll be in Bali, Indonesia for the next few days (business trip), and I don’t know my net situation there yet. So if I don’t get to post anything here until the weekend, you’ll know what happened. I hear bandwidth and availability there is worse than Manila’s (deliberately so, if my source is to be believed), but I’m hopeful.

Consider it a short break if you don’t hear from me. Then again, after last month’s long posting hiatus, you guys are probably used to it. In the meantime the signal is amazingly good here at the Centennial Airport while I wait to board for my flight to Jakarta.

Anyway, catch ya later.