Todays & Tomorrows Technology

We're actually surprised we didn't make the connection earlier, but word on the street today is the the rumored Samsung Omnia Pro will actually be a renamed Louvre B7610, a set's which been popping up a lot lately. Makes sense -- the Louvre's 3.5-inch WVGA AMOLED screen, 800MHz processor, and 5.1 megapixel camera match up nicely with the Omnia line. It's running Windows Mobile 6.1 right now, but we wouldn't be too surprised if the rumored August release date is held back to September or October to coincide with WinMo 6.5. One more pic after the break, couple more at the read links.

Pioneer isn't going for subtle here: the company just unleashed a flurry of in-dash navigators, with a considerable amount of accoutrements on display. The units range through the flagship AVIC-Z110BT (pictured), "midrange" AVIC-X710BT and X910BT, and the AVIC-U310BT for rich people on a budget. Seriously, with a starting price of $599, none of this is suited for the cheap-and-simple set, but at least Pioneer backs up those pricetags with serious functionality. In the high end, the Z110BT includes an tilt-out XGA 7-inch touchscreen, MSN Direct tuner (for traffic and other live info), 4GB of internal storage, CD and DVD playback, and Bluetooth. Comforts include both voice recognition ("Find the nearest Starbucks") and text-to-speech ("I wouldn't do that, Dave"), along with iPod control and support for optional rear seat monitors and wireless headphones. Of course, all those perks aren't cheap: the device retails for $1,600. The other units include smaller screens and subsets of the specs, on down to the 4.3-inch U310BT.

Sure, once you get Doom onto a device there isn't much stopping you in the homebrew department, but we thought the implementation of an NES emulator on webOS outside of the Classic environment was worth noting -- even if it happens to be astoundingly easy to pull off. All it requires is a quick trip to root on the device a compile of the FCEUltra NES emulator for Linux and bam, it's good to go. Hit up the read link for instructions (we're sure we're simplifying things just a tad) -- and no, the incredible appropriateness of using a Contra ROM to kick things off hasn't escaped us.

Are you fully prepared to live in one company's most likely inaccurate and yet still totally awesome vision of the future? If not, check out the video after the break. ASUS tossed together its ideas into a "Seamless Experience" showing at its Computex 2009 booth. Apparently the future involves a lot of interactive countertops -- a sort of pervasive Surface-lite, which presents interactive, relevant info for objects placed on it. The tech also facilitates interaction between devices placed near each other, and can even capture data from a plain ol' piece of paper and integrate it into the system. Sure, it's been shown before, but we're sure once enough companies come up with this idea independently they'll be able to form two warring factions and fend off consumer adoption with a format war for years to come.

A whole new day is dawning for the never-ever-a-netbook Sony VAIO P -- those new processor and drive upgrades apparently have the little PC churning through benchmarks at twice the pace of the original. Most of the benchmark help comes from the SSD drive, but the Atom Z550 doesn't hurt. Meanwhile, Japan is getting a WiMAX version to churn through stereotypically Japanese websites in record time. We'd be jealous if only we lived under 1,000 miles from the nearest WiMAX signal.

There's nothing particularly offensive about this DAP, but we can't imagine it changing anyone's life -- and really, is that too much to ask out of a portable audio player? After catching wind of this upcoming YP-R1 from Samsung, the fine folks at DAP Review did a bit of sleuthing to pair up the specs with a photo, and it's all pretty traditional: 8GB of flash storage, a 2.7-inch 400 x 240 touchscreen display, a good amount of video and audio codecs, TV-out, Bluetooth, FM, e-book reader and even some games. Supposedly it'll be out in the UK on July 30th for £109.99 (about $181 US). Like we said, pretty standard stuff, but who knows, maybe Samsung will surprise us all with a new UI theme or something.

We've already seen a bit of guitar in DJ Hero, but apparently it might not just be a one way street: Neversoft (developer of the Guitar Hero franchise for Activision) hinted to Eurogamer at E3 that they're interested in bringing the DJ Hero turntable to future versions of Guitar Hero. They also aren't ruling out the possibility of bringing drums to DJ Hero -- which seems to us an even more exciting prospect -- and we're sure in a few years time you'll be able to direct wire Activision to your bank account and fill you living room to the brim with more-or-less interoperable pretend instruments.

These days, Shuttle's particular brand of small form factor PC isn't as exactly stunning as it once was, but it's still fun to see just how much they can cram in there. Shuttle has taken its barebones SX58H7 Core i7 kit and is now offering it preconfigured with Core i7 Extreme processors, 6GB of RAM and GeForce GTX 285 graphics (With support for SLI or ATI CrossFireX). Unfortunately the base price for the H7 5800 is a silly high $2,149, and once you actually get to any of those previously mentioned trimmings, you're looking at around $4k for a computer. It might be slight technical feat, but we can't imagine Shuttle burning up the sales charts with this one. The barebones kit retails for $719.

We've already gotten word of some of the specs for MSI's new X-Slim X600 ultraportable, and gotten up close with the laptop itself, but those few remaining details has now finally been revealed in full, along with some fresh new pics of a hereto unseen black model. According to Notebook Italia, there will be two variations of the laptop available: one packing a 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Solo processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive, and the other sporting a slower 1.2GHz Intel Celeron processor, 3GB of RAM, and a 320GB hard drive -- the latter also ditches the built-in Bluetooth. Otherwise, you'll get ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 graphics on each, along with HDMI out, three USB ports, a six-cell battery and, of course, that 15.6-inch 1,366 x 768 screen. Still no official word on a US release, unfortunately, but it looks like these will sell for €799 and €949 (or roughly $1,120 and $1,320) when they hit Europe at the end of June.