Hybrid cars, we’ve seen plenty coming these days, but hybrid projectors? Is this a joke? Well not really, Casio has announced two new projectors, and they have hybrid light source technology.

Alright, the word ‘hybrid’ might be overused here, but it is indeed hybrid. The projector is equipped with a Laser and LED hybrid light source. Dubbed as the XJ-H1650 and H1600, both projectors achieve high brightness without the use of a high-pressure mercury lamp, by projecting three colors through a DLP chip: red emitted by a high-lumen red LED, green converted from blue laser light with a phosphor, and blue emitted by a high-lumen blue LED.

The Casio XJ-H1650 and H1600 deliver 3,500 ANSI Lumens and have a lifespan of 20,000 hours, reducing maintenance and cutting operating costs.

SOURCE via DCView

While Futuremark launched 3DMark11 earlier this year, the update for PCMark Vantage is expected to follow too. However, the upcoming computer benchmark software will instead be named PCMark 7, and is expected to come in these few months.

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The world ‘app’ wasn’t widely used until Apple’s iPhone introduction, which made the short form ‘app’ a new trend. If you look back at history, Apple is already engaged in a heated battle with Microsoft for the protection of its “App Store” trademark, and Amazon’s happy-go-lucky launch of their new “Amazon AppStore” is serious asking for trouble. Apple has today filed suit against Amazon for its “improper use” of the same word pattern.

Amazon’s Android Appstore seems to have been intentionally contracted to a single word to differentiate its name, but that difference isn’t enough for Apple, which has asked a California court to grant a ruling preventing Amazon’s use of the moniker and asking for unspecified damages.

Apple claims it reached out to Amazon on three separate occasions asking it to rename its software download offering, but when faced with the lack of a “substantive response,” it decided to take things to court.

In a related news, Amazon’s new ‘AppStore’ is now live.

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Just before March ends, RIM has secretly put their long waited PlayBook up for pre-order for a cent less than $500. The 16GB WiFi-only PlayBook is now up for pre-order at BestBuy and is coming to a wide list of other retailers soon. US data carriers AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon will also have them, though T-Mobile is not listed for obvious reasons.

SOURCE via BestBuy

Image shows a third-party metal back for iPhone 4, not an actual image of iPhone 5.

9to5Mac has source from inside of Foxconn that says the next iPhone prototype has surfaced. The source claimed that the next iPhone will retain the same shape, but screen size will be slightly bigger, believed to be 4-inch. It’s said that the Retina Display has also been improved, though no screen resolution was mentioned.

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Apple isn’t very happy about the idea of jailbreaking their products, and while they lost in the court to the hackers, they’re still trying to stop jailbreaking in their own ways. After news of iOS 4.3 jailbreak coming soon, Apple has started working hard to release iOS 4.3.1 which will bring some minor bug fixes and also patch the vulnerability used to jailbreak the newly released iPad 2 on iOS 4.3.

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iPad and auto-align as if it were a magic, all thanks to the 21 magnets built-in the iPad 2. What about the 1st gen iPad owners? They’re left behind by Apple and doesn’t get the magical treatment, but that’s about to change.

“To place the magnets, I stuck them first to the magnetized hinge of the Smart Cover. I slid them around until they became locked into a position. This ended being asymmetrical, but I didn’t mind. I then lined up the cover with the iPad and used masking tape to mark where the magnets should be placed. I wanted this to be a somewhat permanent solution, so I used super glue to affix the magnets to the iPad. If you are not so daring, or want to test it out to make sure you like it, just use transparent tape. Even though the super glue keeps the magnets secure and in place, they are actually pretty easy to remove by just “chipping” them off with a flathead screwdriver and a very light tap of the hammer.“

Of course, the auto-wake function of the Magic Cover on the new iPad 2 doesn’t work on the first gen.

SOURCE via The Russians Used a Pencil