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.

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.

Good question. Honestly, if the new Asus EeePC 900 was available some months back, it might have tipped the scales against some folk’s choice of the ‘ultraportable’ Macbook Air. (Me included.) The new EeePC gets launched in my neck of the woods this coming Monday, and the Doodler got an advance review unit (a 12GB Windows XP version - ugh) to tinker with.

The new, truly ultraportable version removes some of the bigger complaints about the EeePC (screen and storage) and makes it an even more attractive alternative to the MBA, at a fourth of the price. But then again, different strokes for different folks.

If you’re at all curious, I have an unboxing gallery and a quick-and-dirty-review over at my EeePC blog. (Yes, I have a life outside of Macs.)

All signs point to a worldwide rollout of the next iteration of the iPhone sometime soon, unlike the previous spotty and country-specific launches since the product was introduced last year.

For instance, the latest releases of iPhone Software 2.0 have included handwriting recognition for Traditional and Simplified Chinese, where drawing a character on the screen with your finger will get you prompts for four possible characters on the side of the screen.

Plans have also emerged for the release of the new iPhone in Japan, Russia, Mexico and Latin America, while Vodafone has confirmed it has won rights to distribute the iPhone in India, Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey. T-Mobile will also release it in Austria and Italy.

No word on the Philippines yet, but hope springs eternal.

(Pic care of Ubergizmo)

If you’re the type who really needs to do everything you can to your gear, here’s something you can do to your jailbroken iPhone - add video wallpaper.

A group of developers called Skrew created an app called vWallpaper, or Video Wallpaper for the the iPhone, which changes your regular pic into a running video. (Hope the developer’s name is all it is - this being an Alpha version, we don’t really know what it could do to your iPhone, so be warned). There are almost a couple of dozen of video wallpapers you can download from within the app.

All you need do is add http://repo.sc/jtizzle to your Installer source list and then check out vWallpaper from the Install/Recent Packages tab. If it’s not there look under the Multimedia category under Install.

Video (complete with totally inappropriate music) of how it looks over here.

Of course the sticking point with the MacBook Air is that it is a closed machine - it is what it is, and that’s it. Well, that’s never really stopped some folk. If there’s a will - plus some dremel tools and a soldering iron - there’s a way.

Take this guy named Jordan Bunnell who added an EVDO broadband wifi card (a USB727 Verizon Aircard) to the innards of his Air, something most people didn’t think possible given the space available. True, he had to sacrifice his wifi and Bluetooth, but he proves it can done. Hm.

Check out the butchery, complete with pictures and discussion here and here.

The Doodler’s favorite podcast - Buzz Out Loud - has morphed into a vidcast for real. Unlike the live Ustream feeds I wrote about before, this one’s a full-bore video, complete with a multi-camera setup and a director!

Other than that, nothing’s changed much as far as content and execution are concerned. Except for the fact that now hosts Tom Merritt, Molly Wood and Jason Howell now have to worry about what to wear and how to look when they do the show. (Molly’s made up! And accessorized too!) And to be mindful of how to act since they’re on cam now.

At least you can now see them as they do the show. Tom and Molly look and act they way they normally do on their other video stuff, but producer  Jason seems a bit awkward. (For some reason, I’ve always thought of him as looking like actor Jason Segel from How I Met Your Mom.) You can also see their hardware prefs - in front of Jason is a Thinkpad, Molly a Dell (?), and Tom a MacBook Pro (and there goes your Mac connect, haha).

It’s not yet on iTunes, but you can catch the first BOL Video on CNET TV here, for streaming or for download.