July 10 - 04:35pm EDT   Rockchip Electronics recently announced it is planning on releasing a new chip for use in mobile phones that would support Google's Android mobile operating system. At the same time, the company believes it could seriously undercut competing ARM-based chips used in other Android devices. [full story]

July 10 - 04:20pm EDT   Four new notebook PCs from ASUS have appeared in Italy, including the 15.6-inch K50AB and K50IJ, the 17.3-inch K70AB and ultrathin 15.6-inch U50VG, some of which were shown at CeBIT in Germany a few months back. The official release of the notebooks for Italy also revealed some further specs, including the K50AB's AMD Turion 2.3GHz CPU and 4GB of RAM. Graphics are handled by ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 that sports 512MB of dedicated memory, while users work on an LED-backlight, 1366x768 resolution LCD. [full story]

July 10 - 04:00pm EDT   Canadian wireless provider Bell on Friday announced it is now offering the 3G BlackBerry Tour handset in its lineup. The smartphone can access both local EVDO and global HSPA 3G networks. The handset otherwise sports a 3.2-megapixel camera and a 480x360 resolution screen, and the prerequisite QWERTY keyboard. [full story]

July 10 - 03:45pm EDT   The Plugin Site has released Plugin Galaxy 2, the latest version of its plug-in suite for Photoshop, Fireworks, Photoline, GraphicConverter and Illustrator. The update has been reprogrammed from the ground up, with all effects available from a customizable dialog. A variety of new effects have been added, with a total of 400 presets. [full story]

July 10 - 03:35pm EDT   DataWind has announced details of three upcoming new portable devices capable of accessing the Internet, with its PocketSurfer3 and PocketSurfer3 Lite, which are follow-ups to the company's PocketSurfer2 device, and the UbiSurfer. All three include one year of Internet access, although it's limited to 30 hours per month. The new PocketSurfers sport a 5-inch, 640x240 resolution screen and are powered by Linux. Apart from Wi-Fi and GPRS network access, there is a GPS sensor built-in. [full story]

July 10 - 03:25pm EDT   Squashed Software, formerly Maza Digital, says it has released RAID Monitor 3, a major update to its RAID status utility. The app performs background tracking of drive errors, which are then passed on to administrators through alert messages. Version 3 has been entirely rewritten, and redesigned with a new interface. [full story]

July 10 - 03:25pm EDT   Crucial this afternoon said it should have a major update to its solid-state drive line later this month. The 2.5-inch M225 series will use more up to date multi-level cell (MLC) storage and a new memory controller that significantly improves speed. Estimates put the peak performance of the fastest, 256GB drive at 250MB per second for data reads and 200MB per second for writes. [full story]

July 10 - 03:10pm EDT   Pacific Crest analyst James Faucette today said that Palm Pre sales are still healthy over a month after the phone launched. Referring to his own checks, he estimates that about 40,000 of the multi-touch phones are now shipping each week and that the numbers could hold through at least August. He also expects that sales could improve if Palm can improve its shipments to Best Buy and Radio Shack, which have had short supply ever since launch. [full story]

July 10 - 02:20pm EDT   BenQ on Friday revealed that it was launching a version of its MID S6 with Windows XP in its native Taiwan. The Mobile Internet Device is being launched in tandem with Far EasTone and not only replaces BenQ's custom Linux interface with the Microsoft OS but takes advantage of the built-in 3G as well: besides mobile data beyond the built-in Wi-Fi, it also lands built-in VoIP. Hardware is slightly modernized with an 800MHz Atom Z500 and an 8GB SSD giving it better performance and storage for the more resource-heavy OS. [full story]

July 10 - 02:15pm EDT   Geotagalog 1.4 ($20) is a utility for geotagging photos with a GPS tracklog. The software combines digital photos with location data that has been recorded into a GPS tracklog and shows a live location preview with mouseover thumbnails allowing a user to visually verify that tags are matched correctly. Version 1.4 adds the ability to select individual files instead of just folders and the option to import non-geotaggable items. The photo loading, adjustment and previewing performance has also been improved in this release. [Download - 13.3MB] [full story]