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It has always been Leica’s tradition to ‘rebadge’ Panasonic’s Lumix cameras with some Leica paints, and this time it’s the same repetitive process again. Panasonic launched the ZS10 few months ago, and now that same camera has an evil twin called the Leica V-LUX 30. Yes, they intend to let this camera be the successor of the V-LUX 20.

At $749, this is actually one of Leica’s more affordable offerings, but that will still only buy you the exact same guts as its $400 (or less) Panasonic counterpart: a 15.1 megapixel sensor (14.1 effective), 16x optical zoom, 1080i video recording, a 3-inch LCD ’round back, and built-in GPS for geotagging.

If you’re interested in forking extra $400 to buy the Leica brand, then you may need to wait till June. Worth it? I’m not sure…

Ever face a dead battery while you’re in the midst of an important call? Having your phone dead while you need to call mum or boss? Hate that your phone died on you and you can’t check-in your Foursquare at Lady Gaga’s awesome concert because you took too much photos?

Vodafone did a brilliant PR stunt with this new “Waaarrrggghhh” 40-foot truck capable of charging up to 2,000 devices simultaneously. The roller is capable of reviving your iPhones, BlackBerrys, Nokias, and a zillion other Android phones. And the most important thing here is that this charging service is full gratis! Free!

Vodafone says that “it’s our way to say thank you”, and carrier expects to charge roughly 72,000 handsets this summer alone. UK will get 11 chances this year to try it out, with the first public outing coming at the Isle of Wight festival next month.

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Mac lovers rejoice as now there’s another easier, well, hell lot easier and faster, method to seek out for software and games for your Mac machine. Yes, Amazon has launched a new Mac Download Store.

The Mac store boasts a wider variety of titles than Amazon’s Windows download section, including games like Dragon Age: Origins and Civilization V, and applications like Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop Elements. All told, there are more than 250 titles currently available. This might not be able to rival to Apple’s own Mac App Store, but it’s still a good alternative to seek for cheaper offers at times.

And sales, as we say, Amazon always has them. Amazon has kicked things off with two: a free download of Airport Mania, and $5 off your first paid download. Better hurry up!

SOURCE via Amazon

All these while, Xperia Play fans that wanted to play their ported PSP games on the Android ‘mobile console’ couldn’t have a white one to show off to their Apple-fan friends, but now they can. The white color Sony Ericsson Xperia Play has finally and officially landed on Europe after some hiccups. Of course, it’s still exclusive for O2 at the moment.

Earlier this month, the UK carrier had promised to deliver the Play in June due to some issues on Android compatibility, but evidently things have gone better than expected, as we now see “in stock” signage next to both the black and white models of Sony Ericsson’s gaming phone. Pricing is identical for both color variants, starting at “free” when attached to the rather pricey “£34 per month” two-year contracts and peaking at £430 ($702) on pre-pay deals. That shouldn’t be a problem if you’re earning pounds.

Well, probably to compensate the delay, O2 also throws in a matching multimedia dock plus three bonus games to sweeten the deal. Damn, how I wish there’s one over here.

SOURCE via O2 UK

AMD has been busy with its Bulldozer architecture and Ilano Fusion APU, but that is not the only thing they’re playing with at their labs. A leaked slide deck from within AMD is showing quite a bit of the company’s upcoming roadmap, and while few of it has already been made public in one way or another, there’s one term that’s still hiding in mystery.

The chip that we’re referring to is Desna, a Z-Series APU that’s aimed at the tablet form factor. There have only been a handful that reached sampling and prototyping, and thus we still do not know if these chips are able to go neck-to-neck with those ARM processors in the wild, in terms of power and heat requirements.

Based on these sheets — dated this month, for what it’s worth — the Z-Series chip will offer Flash compatibility, DirectX 11 support and IE9 / HTML5 acceleration, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, according to AMD.

SOURCE via Android Community

We’ve seen the Wake Island concept art for the Battlefield 3 multiplayer map, and now DICE has released two more concept arts of the maps which are part of the ‘Back to Karkand’ map pack, which is free with Battlefield 3 pre-orders and will be released as paid for DLC when Battlefield 3 comes out.

The Back to Karkand pack also adds a collection of Battlefield 2 weapons, remade to work in the Frostbite 2 engine. The lead designer on Back to Karkand also developed the excellent Vietnam expansion for Battlefield: Bad Company, which is good news for players who loved the original incarnations of Back to Karkand, The Gulf of Oman, Sharqi and Wake Island.

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Google has updated their Google Map for Android, and it’s now going into version 5.5. So Androidfags, what’s new this time around?

Well, check-ins and ratings have now been added to the Places page, giving you one extra point of access; you also now have the option of changing your home or work address within your Latitude Location History, in case you ever move or just like to roam from place to place. Last but not least, Google Maps 5.5 for Android also offers reorganized transit station pages that now list of upcoming departures, transit lines serving that particular station, and links to other stops nearby.

The list of improvements might not be staggering, but it’s still impressive that Google pushed it out less than a month after 5.4. The new update is available as a free download in the Android Market.

SOURCE via Google