Beautiful isn’t it? The new Blackberry PlayBook is RIM’s foray into the growing tablet market. And on paper, it looks like it might give Apple a run for their money.

It runs on a new BlackBerry Tablet OS for an optimized tablet experience like how iPad does it. Nothing like Android’s sloppy implementation. It comes packed with a Cortex A9-based, dual-core 1GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM. It’s no wonder why RIM claims that the PlayBook is the “fastest tablet ever.”

Outside that raw horsepower is a 7-inch, 1024 x 600, capacitive multitouch display, a 3-megapixel front-facing camera, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, a HDMI port, as well as a microUSB jack.

The OS rounds up all that hardware with familiar finger gesture support, multitasking, and ability to handle Flash content and Adobe AIR apps via Flash 10.1.

Feature list:

• 7-inch LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
• BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
• 1 GHz dual-core processor
• 1 GB RAM
• Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
• Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
• Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
• HDMI video output
• Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
• Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, Java
• Measures 5.1″x7.6″x0.4″ (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
• Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)
• RIM intends to also offer 3G and 4G models in the future.

Check out the Blackberry official website for more pictures.

Check out the 9 minutes live video demo of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab below. Time will tell whether it will really shake things up for Apple in the tablet market. But so far, it’s looking great!

We finally get a first look at the upcoming Microsoft Windows 7 as it gets unveiled at the All Things Digital Conference yesterday. But still, little is known about the highly-anticipated OS that is to be the successor of Windows Vista come 2010.

From the video above, we can see that there are lots of emphasis on touch interface support. Multi-touch gestures in photo galleries like two-finger zoom, flicking, and panning, multi-touch paint program where you can draw with 10 fingers, Multi-touch piano software, application that pulls from Microsoft Live Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth with, again, support for touch.

There will also supposedly be an OSX-like dock. Ha, the copycats are in action again. Time will tell if this will be an innovative breakthrough, or a lackluster offering like the Vista.

For those familiar with Mac, we all know how useful Exposé can be. With the click of a button, it elegantly displays all your open windows in one screen, making it really easy to find a particular window that you are looking for.

Long have Windows users yearned for something like this. There have been several offerings for Windows that tries to do the same, but neither has been particularly successful in emulating the original. And with the birth of Windows Vista, there is now Windows-TAB that does something similar, but still not as good.

But now, we have something new called DExposE2 Reloaded. This one seems really promising in becoming a worthy substitute for Exposé on Windows. It even features a handful of extras such as interactive previews, hot corners, and multi-monitor support. Why not give it a shot?

Download: 05-08-2008 Build

Alternatively, download via the developer’s site.

Has anyone tried their hands yet on Adobe’s new web image-editing tool, Photoshop Express?

I took a test drive and found it stylish, intuitive, social, and equipped with the very necessary image-editing functions. Completely appealing.

Just like Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom, it neatly organizes and tells you in a glance how many photos you have in your library and the respective albums they are in.

Intrigued but skeptical as I am, I logged in to my Facebook account from Photoshop Express, half expecting something totally inconvenient that will prompt me to end my test drive. But I was pleasantly surprised at how easy I was able to access to my photos on Facebook.

I moused over one of my recent favorites to find options to edit, download, or embed it on my blog. Intuitive.

The editing options were less than power-packed, but definitely comprehensive enough for the purpose of image-editing on the web. It’s not meant to replace serious image-editing anyway.

The Gallery is another neat way to share your albums with the community and your friends.

I like the convenience of it all. Definitely worth recommending to your Facebook, Picasa friends.

Dive operators, dive guides and seasoned divers may soon have a new “toy” to play with – contributing details of diving hot spots around the world right down to the water conditions and maybe, just maybe to the species of corals and the residents living there.

Rumor has it that Google is brewing an exciting 3D ocean map with the help of marine experts and in selected areas, providing us with high-resolution pictures.

Google’s foray into the ocean comes as no surprise really – with the (Google) Earth and (Google) Sky already covered, it’s probably the next best extension of the project.

I’d say the guys behind Asia Dive Site would definitely have plenty to contribute. So would many, many other websites.

And for those who do not fancy descending 70 feet into the deep blue sea, it’s time to get ready to take a tour underwater – all dry.

On first glance, the keyboard on the new Dell Vostro 1310 looks perfectly fine. But stare closer, and compare it to your own keyboard. Notice any difference?

Hint: The ‘Z’ key.

The ‘Z’ key should be below ‘A’ and ‘S’, not below ‘S’ and ‘D’! This is going to make typing absolutely frustrating for most.

This seems to be a problem only for UK customers. But if the Vostro 1310 is on your list of purchases, please check the keys before whipping out your credit card, James Bond style. Or at least, make sure you are perfectly comfortable with this key layout.

Microsoft finally releases its highly anticipated Service Pack 3 (SP3) for Windows XP today. But not without some hiccups.

SP3 was found to be incompatible for users running Microsoft Dynamics RMS, hence, an official release on Microsoft Download Center and Windows Update is not available at this time.

But, you can still grab the service pack from their download.windowsupdate.com domain:
Chinese (Hong Kong), Czech, English, French, German (Deutsch), Hebrew, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Simplified (Chinese), Spanish, and Traditional Chinese.

As long as you are not running Microsoft Dynamics RMS, it is perfectly safe to install SP3 now. But, beware of undiscovered bugs that often haunts any major software updates.

Windows XP SP3 Overview

SP3 includes the hundreds of updates and fixes released since SP2. And it includes four features that are backported from Windows Vista. Nothing too exciting for the average consumers though.

• NAP is a policy enforcement platform meant for enterprise use that blocks systems attempting to access a network until they meet whatever security criteria the corporation has in place.
• “Black Hole” Router Detection helps detect and protect end users from a router that drops packets without returning the specified Internet Control Message Protocol response.
• Microsoft Kernel Cryptographic Module incorporates cryptographic algorithms in a single module other kernel mode drivers are capable of hooking into and accessing.
• The new Product Activation module allows users to install XP without entering a product key at installation.

Other new features include:

• A more descriptive Security Options control panel user interface.
• Enhanced security for Administrator and Service policy entries.

For more in-depth details on SP3, download Overview of Windows XP Service Pack 3.pdf from Microsoft.

Now’s the perfect time to get a Mac desktop. Apple has updated its iMac line of desktop computers today, giving it more power than ever.

The US$1,199 20-inch model now sports:

• 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Penryn processor
• 128MB ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT graphics
• 1GB of memory
• 250GB 7200RPM hard drive

The US$1,499 20-inch model sports:

• 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Penryn processor
• 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO graphics
• 2GB of memory
• 320GB 7200RPM hard drive

The US$1,799 24-inch model sports:

• 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Penryn processor
• 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO graphics
• 2GB of memory
• 320GB 7200RPM hard drive

Finally, the top-of-the-range US$2,199 24-inch model sports:

• 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Penryn processor
• 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS graphics
• 2GB of memory
• 500GB 7200RPM hard drive

Available immediately from Apple Online Store.

What’s more romantic than a pair of connectable Cat 5 ethernet rings!

A wedding set for the unconventional! The female ring has a choice of four opaque colors: turquoise, white, orange or black. The male ring stands tall and dramatically transparent. Switch-up the sexes! Order two of the same! The world is your technological oyster.

Each ring is currently priced at US$7.00.