In a call with the media yesterday, The FCC became the latest federal entity to pile on AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile America, when Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that the agency would be reviewing aspects of the proposed deal that appear to run afoul of the public good. The decision follows directly on the conclusions of an FCC committee that found the deal would harm consumers, by establishing what is euphemistically referred to as a ‘overly concentrated’ phone market, which would likely lead to higher unemployment.

Genachowski confirmed he has asked the other the other FCC commissioners – two Democrats and one Republican – to approve a plan to refer the issue to a judicial hearing, and that AT&T will be required to show that it is in the public interest. This follows on the U.S. Justice Department’s recent filing of anti-trust charges intended to block the deal outright. Any judicial oversight approved by the FCC would have to wait until the Justice Department’s anti-trust trial has concluded. That trial is scheduled to begin in the Washington, D.C. district court in February 2012.

Naturally, AT&T is not pleased by the development. In an official statement, Senior Vice President for Corporate Communications Larry Solomon reached into a bag full of business-speak cliches, saying that the decision “is yet another example of a government agency acting to prevent billions in new investment and the creation of many thousands of new jobs at a time when the U.S. economy desperately needs both. At this time, we are reviewing all options.”

While the final outcome is far from certain, particularly given the uncertainties of an election year in which the current administration seeks to curry favor from American business while addressing the concerns of consumers, expressed most famously in the Occupy Wall Street movement, the fact that two federal agencies working independently from one another does not bode well for the deal. Those of us opposed to the establishment of monopolies run by companies with an established track record of providing weaker services at higher prices can be excused for feeling slightly more optimistic than a year previous.

Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang believes that pricing of Tegra 3 tablets will drop quickly. Jen-Hsun Huang expects at least some of those tablets to be on sale for $299 within “a couple quarters,” according to a post on Engadget. That remark was made over lunch and there is no explanation why the price could drop so dramatically from the current figure of about $500 – a price point that has been pretty stable for the basic models of high-end tablets for more than a year and a half.

Of course, Huang’s note makes you think about whether it is sensible to drop $500 or more on a high-end tablet for Christmas if you could get the same tablet, with a possibly newer version of Android, for nearly half the price by mid-2012. However, if Huang is right, tablets could suddenly make much more sense for those who have the desire to own a touch entertainment computing device and haven’t bought an iPad or Android tablet yet. A full-featured Android tablet for $300 sounds much more enticing than the $800 Motorola wanted for its original Xoom.

However, we also know that the prices of low-end tablets will also fall. $150 or even $100 for a next-gen, entry-level Kindle Fire is more than realistic – and there are plenty of rumors that suggest that a future Kindle tablet could be offered free of charge and may simply be cross-financed via cloud services.

SOURCE via Engadget

The hotly-anticipated Galaxy Nexus last week made its worldwide premier in the United Kingdom. However, while the rest of us were green with envy, it soon transpired that a huge number of British early adopters were having a problem with their new purchase. According to a poll conducted by XDA Developers shortly after launch, 60 percent of Galaxy Nexus users were seeing the volume on their phone go up and down of its own accord, a bug they soon dubbed the Self Aware Volume Ghost (SAV-Ghost). Though the cause of the problem is unknown, users have figured out that it happens most often during phone calls, or when the radio is being switched from 3G to 2G, or in areas of poor signal, and only on phones that use 900Mhz for 2G coverage.

Google today responded to the many complaints it received regarding the issue. The search giant confirmed that it was aware of the volume issue and said it had already developed a fix that it planned to roll out as soon as possible. The company didn’t provide much else in the way of information regarding the issue, such as the cause, but the company’s statement suggests that this is not a hardware issue, as the folks at XDA initially thought. With any luck, this means early adopters have avoided the inconvenience of a recall, however, we still have no time frame for a rollout of the fix.

Google’s statement: “We are aware of the volume issue and have developed a fix. We will update devices as soon as possible.”

SOURCE via The Verge

Various reports are indicating that Lenovo is currently working on a 5-inch dual-core IdeaPad/LePad tablet to take on the Samsung Galaxy Note and the Dell Streak 5. Very little is known about the tablet at this point save for photographs revealing a micro-USB port, HDMI output and a front-facing camera.

As for an operating system, the images show Android-type physical buttons on the face, indicating that it may use Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” rather than v3.0 “Honeycomb” or v4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich.” There’s also no indication that the device will sport voice call capability although, let’s face it, a 5-inch device would be rather large next to your ear.

News of a 5-inch Lenovo tablet follows reports of a larger 10.1-inch Ice Cream Sandwich Lenovo tablet powered by a 1.6 GHz Tegra 3 SoC. The device is slated to arrive before the end of the year, and will include 2 GB of 1,600 MHz DDR3 RAM, a standard USB host socket covered by a pop-out flap, a back-facing camera of unknown resolution, and a “special fusion-skin body.” A fingerprint scanner will also be mounted on the back that will double as an optical joystick.

Nvidia officially announced the Tegra 3 a few weeks ago, a quad-core SoC that promises to bring PC-class performance levels, better battery life and improved mobile experiences to tablets and phones. It provides up to 3x the graphics performance of Tegra 2, and up to 61-percent lower power consumption. However unlike the 10.1-inch model, it’s safe to bet that Lenovo will use the current Tegra 2 SoC in its unannounced 5-inch tablet to keep the price tag low.

Galaxy Nexus users might be having a spot of trouble when it comes to consistency in volume but they’re definitely not experiencing any problems when it comes to speed. AnandTech has been busy benchmarking the phone, which has yet to make its U.S. debut, and found that, while the Samsung Galaxy Nexus came out on top for browsing speed, rendering web pages faster than any other phone on the market right now, but the phone lost out to the iPad 2, the iPhone 4S and the Samsung Galaxy S II when it came to graphics.

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Facebook, it seems, has become the official spokesperson of the internet, or the symbol of the World Wide Web (at least for Americans, anyway). In the daily newspaper, the logo is seen printed with almost every ad. On television, they’re spotted on TV commercials along with a link to the advertiser’s Facebook page. A good number of websites require a Facebook login, and even chat clients like the recently upgraded AIM (which has thoroughly pissed off recent and long-time users) offers Facebook chat connectivity.

Skype is just as guilty. It integrated Facebook features into the Windows and Mac client some time ago adding items like news feeds, instant messaging and status updating. And back in July, actual Facebook video calling — powered by Skype — was launched on the social network. The feature isn’t exactly out in the open like all the other links lined up and down the Facebook page, but rather appears as a small video camera in the chat window of a Facebook friend when they’re online.

But web surfers who use both Facebook and Skype can now conduct Facebook to Facebook video chat right within the latest Skype beta client for Mac (5.4) and Windows PC (5.7). Users simply double-click on the Facebook user listed in Skype and select the new “Video Call” button within the pop-up IM window — the friend receives the video call request directly in Facebook. If video is not supported, then the Facebook friend’s window will only feature the typical “Call Phone” or “Call Mobile” number. Both video and normal Facebook calls can be placed directly from the news feed in the Skype Home window as well.

“This new feature lets you maintain social connections with your Facebook friends and compliments previously announced features such as being able to see when your Facebook friends are online, read their status updates and IM them all from Skype,” the company said in a blog.

In addition to the Facebook video calling feature, the new Skype beta includes video rendering for a smoother video experience for Mac users, and group screen sharing for Windows users with a Premium subscription — this latter feature is already available for Mac users. Those who are chatting it up one-on-one will also be able to screen share with live video streaming. Unfortunately, Skype still has problems maintaining a constant connection to Facebook’s chat server, leaving users staring at the circling “connecting” symbol.

Skype is just one client of many that will connect with Facebook and allow users to chat with their Facebook friends without the need for logging onto the social network in the browser. Has Facebook become the America Online of the new millennium?

SOURCE via Skype