Google has finally stepped up to the plate to offer a support phone line for Nexus One owners. It's a necessary move, given the volume of customer complaints, but it's also turned out to be a lackluster one.

Nexus One owners can call (888) 48NEXUS between 4am and 7pm PST to speak with a real live person. Unfortunately, though, they'll only be able to get information on the status/shipping information on your existing order. For technical support or repairs and returns, you'll still need to contact HTC customer care (1-888-216-4736). For billing/service support, you'll still need to contact T-Mobile (1-877-453-1304).

Google doesn't have to be its partners' keeper, and if I were a Nexus One owner I'd rather have Google support than not. But it's still got to be terribly frustrating to have three distinct places to turn when you've got a Nexus One issue. [Google via CNET]

At CES, we determined that if you insist on buying a 3DTV this year, Panasonic should be on the very short list. Now, the company has priced a 3DTV for the first time—$5,900 when converted from yen.

Though Panasonic announced that they'd be selling 3D plasmas in the US starting this year, they'd never spoken of price until a recent press conference in Japan where they stated that their 54-inch, 3D-capable Viera TH-P54VT will run the equivalent of $5,900.

That's a lot of money. However, the TH-P54VT won't be the cheapest model available from Panasonic this year, as Panasonic promised 3D models as small as 50-inches.

CrunchGear notes that Panasonic seems to be pricing 3D as an $800 upsell over their premium 2D plasmas, though from piecing together prices, even that estimate may have been a bit conservative.

In truth, there's no way 99% of the population will drop $5k on any TV when you can finally score a decent quality, 46-inch LCD or plasma for well under a grand. If Panasonic wants glasses-based 3D to take off, they need to price the tech to sell. [Panasonic via CrunchGear]

Gadget lust can get in the way of romance—like when your dinner date checks her email over dessert or live-tweets the entire encounter. We've got our share of these stories, but we really want to hear yours.

Maybe your spouse's reaction to your 18 TB video collection of bendy redheads wasn't all that positive. Maybe you drunk dialed your ex on Skype. Maybe you learned that power cords aren't the best idea when it comes to kinky restraints. Maybe your date rudely checked her email in the middle of dessert and proceeded to pull out a second phone to continue reading after you teasingly confiscated her first. (I'm sorry! Won't do it again. Call me?)

Whatever the details, I want to hear about how gadgets or technology interfered with your love life. So send your stories to me with the subject of "Bad Valentine Tales" and we can share the horror.

Picture by sunshinecity

Say you've got an aging laptop that would be perfect for playing WoW or Star Trek Online on your television...if only it had HDMI out—that's where the Atlona AT-HDVieW comes into play.

Running off mere USB power, the Atlona AT-HDVieW takes VGA and 3.5mm audio, combines the signal and outputs it all at 1080P through HDMI. Plus, the scaler/converter communicates with your TV, ensuring the proper output resolution in case 1080P isn't just right.

The Atlona AT-HDVieW will be available later this month for $120. In the meantime, those Klingons will need pay for what they've done on a 13-inch screen. [Atlona via SlashGear]

This is not a rainbow. It's a moonbow, an extremely rare atmospheric phenomenon caused by the near-full moon that it's extremely hard to catch. So hard, in fact, that you can only see its colors thanks to long-exposure photography.

It was captured by Wally Pacholka last January 20, at the Haleakala Crater on the Island of Maui, Hawaii. The moonbow—or lunar rainbow—is caused when the near-full moon at less than 42 degrees in a dark sky. The colors are so faint that the human eye color receptors can't be excited enough for the brain to identify them. Therefore, they appear as white arcs to the naked eye. Only by using long-exposure photography you can reveal the diffraction of the moonlight through the microscopic water droplets suspended in the air.

By the way, that red thing shining on the sky? It's Mars rising. Check out the rest of Wally's amazing images at [Astropics]

We've seen a ton of Core i5 notebooks recently, all loaded with Intel's impotent integrated graphics, which are part of the chip. Now, Nvidia's Optimus enables PCs to switch automatically between Intel's crappy integrated graphics and Nvidia's beefier graphics cards.

Optimus is a new technology that allows Intel's integrated GPU to coexist with a discrete Nvidia GPU in a new way, seamlessly alternating between the two depending on the task at hand. It works with GeForce 200M series, GeForce 300M series, next-gen GeForce M, and next-gen Ion GPUs, as well as Intel's Core 2 Duo, Core i3/i5/i7, and Atom N450 processors.

At the most basic level, Optimus is similar to the switchable graphics that Nvidia pioneered a few years ago. But switchable graphics as currently conceived are a pain in the neck: You have to switch manually, there's generally a 5-10 second delay, your screen flickers, you have to shut down certain applications. Optimus still includes a manual option, but otherwise automatically decides what can run on integrated graphics (regular web browsing) and what needs an extra boost (games, Flash video, etc), making the switch for you behind the scenes. It makes the change so quickly by letting the Nvidia GPU handle the processing duties while still employing Intel's IGP as a display controller, as in the diagram above.

One drawback is that Optimus relies on the software to tell it which graphics to employ. That'll be done through an Nvidia verification process and accessed through automatic online updates, but there may be instances where your PC doesn't recognize a software and won't know whether to use the IGP or the Nvidia GPU. You can still switch manually in those cases, but it's an unfortunate extra step.

Performance hasn't been confirmed yet by a third party, but Nvidia posits that Optimus is up to an 8x improvement across apps and games than Intel's integrated solution. And because it only kicks in when needed, there's purportedly not much of a battery drain, depending on how often you use intensive graphics.

Nvidia says there will be more than 50 notebooks packing Optimus by this summer, although today it's launching only on a few Asus notebooks like the UL50Vf, an ultraportable which houses both a Core2Duo SU7300 and a GeForce G210M.

What we don't know—but what we strongly suspect—is if Optimus is the solution Apple has been waiting for before refreshing its Macbook line. The hiccup: currently, Nvidia says that Optimus is only compatible with Windows 7. But with the Macworld just around the corner, we may be seeing Optimus Macbook Pros sooner than later. [Nvidia]

It's been a long time coming, but Apple's latest pro photo software, Aperture 3, is here. Apple's claiming over 200 new features, pulling in iPhoto stalwarts like Faces and Places, and new slideshows with HD video.

Faces and Places work just like iPhoto, using face detection and tagging, so you can organize photos by people or by where you took them, though now it uses thumbnails of photos that you can actually drag-and-drop photos onto a map. It's the same Faces engine, but you can restrict face recognition to particular projects, instead of having it scour your whole library. With Places, it works with GPS trackers in a pretty neat way: When you import your tracklog, all you have to do is tell it where the first photo was taken, and then using timestamps, it'll automatically plot the rest.

Also like iPhoto, you can now upload directly to Facebook and Flickr. Since they're heavily targeting the hardcore iPhoto user who now wields a DSLR, not only have they streamlined the interface to make it a more natural transition, when you import your iPhoto library, it preserves all of your image adjustments, events, places and faces.

Brushes brings non-destructive painting effects to Aperture, with 15 Quick Brushes for effects like dodge and burn. You can actually apply or remove any adjustment—like contrast or saturation or curves—using brushes. With its new edge detection tech, you can, for example, boost contrast over the whole image, and then use the brush + edge detection to cleanly wipe the effect off of the sky. Adjustment presets are radically improved too—you can save combos of adjustments, like boosted sharpness and saturation with a cooler white balance, and they can be imported and exported.

One of the new things for pros is that they've rewritten the way the database works, so you can now sync and merge libraries. Which means you can take a self-contained library out on the road, do a bunch of imaging work, and then merge it back to your master library, and it'll sync just the changes you made while you were out.

Perhaps the most interesting bit from the creator standpoint are slideshows that integrate photos, audio, text and HD video that can be exported to iTunes and work with the iPhone and iPod touch, though we'll have to see how powerful it really is.

Apple doesn't mention it, but the thing I'm really hoping they added a lot of? Speed. Speed. Speed. Speed. Especially after using Adobe's Lightroom 3 Beta. Since Aperture 3's fully 64-bit on Snow Leopard, I'm pretty hopeful, actually. The bad news is that's restricted to Intel Macs only, it looks like. It's available today for $200 for the full version, or $100 to upgrade, with a 30-day free trial here.

Apple Releases Aperture 3

New Features Include Faces, Places & Brushes

CUPERTINO, Calif., Feb. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple® today introduced Aperture™ 3, the next major release of its powerful photo editing and management software, with over 200 new features including Faces, Places and Brushes. Building on the innovative Faces and Places features introduced in iPhoto® '09, Aperture 3 makes it even easier and faster to organize large photo libraries. Aperture 3 introduces new tools to refine your photos including Brushes for painting image adjustments onto parts of your photo, and Adjustment Presets for applying professional photo effects with just one click. Stunning new slideshows let you share your work by weaving together photos, audio, text and HD video.

"Millions of people love using iPhoto to organize, edit and share their digital photos," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Aperture 3 is designed for both professionals who edit and manage massive libraries of photos and iPhoto users who want to take their photos further with easy-to-use tools such as Brushes and Adjustment Presets."

"Aperture 3 gets it right," said National Geographic photographer, Jim Richardson. "The image editing tools are exactly what I have been asking for, they're so easy to use and give me a level of control that I never even thought possible."

"I chose Aperture because it was the most powerful archiving application around, but it's now an unbelievable imaging tool as well," said Bill Frakes, Sports Illustrated staff photographer. "I am beyond impressed with the massive changes made in Aperture 3."

Aperture 3 allows you to organize large photo libraries with even more flexibility using Projects and the new Faces and Places. Faces uses face detection and recognition to find and organize your photos by the people in them. You can view faces across your entire photo library or view just the faces that appear in selected projects. In a new view that speeds up the organization process, Aperture 3 displays faces that have been detected but haven't yet been named. Places lets you explore your photos based on where they were taken, and like in iPhoto, Places automatically reverse geocodes GPS data into user-friendly locations. In Aperture 3, you can assign locations by dragging-and-dropping photos onto a map or by using location information from GPS enabled cameras, tracking devices or your iPhone® photos.

The new Brushes feature allows you to add professional touches to your photos by simply painting effects onto the image. Aperture 3 includes 15 Quick Brushes that perform the most popular tasks like Dodge, Burn, Polarize and Blur, without the complexity of layers or masks. Brushes can automatically detect edges in your images to let you apply or remove effects exactly where you want them. Aperture 3 includes dozens of Adjustment Presets that apply a specific style or look to the entire image with just a click. You can create your own custom presets or explore the techniques of other photographers by importing theirs.

Aperture 3 makes it easy to share your work with stunning slideshows that weave together photos, audio, text and HD video. You can select one of six Apple designed themes or choose your own transitions, background, borders and titles, and even add your own soundtrack. You can export your slideshows directly to iTunes® to take with you on your iPhone or iPod touch®. You can also share photographs as beautiful prints, create custom-designed hardcover books and publish to online photo sharing sites like Facebook and Flickr, right from Aperture 3.

Pricing & Availability

Aperture 3 is available through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) and existing Aperture users can upgrade for a suggested retail price of $99 (US). A downloadable 30-day trial version is available at http://www.apple.com/aperture/trial. Aperture 3 runs as a 64-bit application on Mac OS® X Snow Leopard® on Macs with Intel Core 2 Duo processors. Full system requirements, online tutorials and more information on Aperture 3 can be found at http://www.apple.com/aperture.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

© 2010 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, Aperture, iPhoto, iPhone, iTunes, iPod touch, Apple Store and Snow Leopard are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

[Aperture]

The Seagate Savvio 10K.4 is an enterprise storage HDD, which means you're likely not going to just go out and buy one. But it's notable for just how much information it can fit into one tiny disk drive.

Its 600GB capacity is twice what's currently available on the market, and Seagate's asserting that it's 25% more reliable than any other drive, with an annualized failure rate of just .44%. And while it'd be nice to have one of my very own, at least I know that it's about to make some IT manager out there very happy.

SEAGATE® SHIPS WORLD'S HIGHEST-CAPACITY, MOST RELIABLE

SMALL FORM FACTOR ENTERPRISE DRIVE: THE SAVVIOÒ 10K.4 HARD DRIVE

Enterprise storage systems can now move to 600GB capacity, 2 million hour MTBF solution

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. - February 9, 2010 - Seagate (NASDAQ: STX) today announced worldwide shipments of its Savvio® 10K.4 hard disk drive (HDD), the world's highest-capacity and most reliable 2.5-inch enterprise-class drive. Built for the demands of enterprise servers and to enable new levels of data density in external storage arrays, Savvio 10K.4 doubles the capacity of its nearest competitor to 600GB. It is also the first HDD to achieve an unprecedented 2 million hours Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) reliability rating.

As the industry's only fourth generation, field-proven, 2.5-inch HDD designed for the enterprise,
Savvio 10K.4 also features Protection Information for enhanced protection of data-in-flight, a self-encrypting drive (SED) option for the ultimate protection of sensitive data-at-rest and PowerChoice™, which allows the Savvio 10K.4 hard drive to deliver improved power savings during idle.

"Our customers face challenging storage needs requiring the most efficient use of space and power while maintaining the highest performance possible," said Howard Shoobe, senior manager, Dell Storage Product Management. "The new 2.5-inch 10K-rpm 600GB capacity point allows a doubling of capacity within the same rack space of current 3.5-inch 15K 600GB drives while increasing overall system-level performance and decreasing power usage."

The combined features of Savvio 10K.4 deliver greater overall value and can reduce the total cost of ownership to IT organizations and administrators eager to optimize their data center's power and performance efficiency. Leveraging the enterprise 2.5-inch small form factor as its platform, Savvio 10K.4 serves as a powerful storage building block when compared to 3.5-inch based systems.

"A transition to 2.5-inch enterprise-class HDDs by server and storage system OEMs is building momentum," said John Rydning, IDC's research director for hard disk drives. "There continues to be nearly insatiable demand for digital content accessed via numerous applications and devices, content that is increasingly delivered from storage systems equipped with high capacity enterprise-class HDDs such as Seagate's Savvio® 10K.4."

No longer do you need to fantasize about buying a Tesla, now that Trexa has released pricing details of its "scalable lithium-drive platform," (aka the base for building your own electric car).

$15,999 is a fair price to pay for the starting block of your new car, when other electric cars can set you back more than $100,000 (for a Tesla, anyway—Nissan's Leaf costs around $30,000.) Still, who hasn't dreamed of building their very own car? And as it's electric, you'll be saving the planet, and your wallet.

The starting price is for the base model, which has a top speed of 100mph, an acceleration of 0-60mph in 8 seconds, charge time of four hours and a 105 mile range. [Trexa]

Gasp! Whatever could it be? I'm hoping for new MacBook Pros, what about you? [Apple - Thanks assorted tipsters!]

A few leaks here and there, and voila—Samsung's Monte S5620 is revealed ahead of MWC. Running the TouchWiz 2.0 Plus OS, it has full HTML browsing and the usual array of social networking tricks.

A 3.0-inch capacitive WQVGA TFT touchscreen, 3.2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, A-GPS, Bluetooth 2.1, and Google Maps 3.0 seems to be the crux of it, with memory listed as 200MB, expandable via the microSD card slot. Yes, it's a budgetphone, but it's the first that we've seen using TouchWiz 2.0 Plus, (with the Jet, Omnia II and Tocca Ultra being some of the phones using TouchWiz 2.0), so hopefully we'll see a few new UI features when we catch a glimpse of it next week at MWC. [Samsung]

Not only has Navigon added a bunch of new features to its iPhone app, the price is $20 cheaper—although if you want Traffic Live and 3D maps, it still adds up to $100. Nonetheless, it sounds worth it.

The update has a few nifty angles—there's the connection to your Facebook or Twitter accounts for updating friends on your current position, destination and time you're due to arrive; the aforementioned Panorama View 3D views (which use NASA height and terrain data) and personalized route delivery, called MyRoutes.

The addition of NASA's data is a nice touch, meaning you'll be able to find out more about the location you're in, such as elevations and shadows. Discover a hill before you reach it—and maneuver around it if you're not keen on heights.

MyRoutes, on the other hand, collects data on your preferences and habits, giving you customized routes along side the fastest/easiest ways to reach your destination.

Here we come to the price. I mentioned before that it'll cost $100 if you want the full service for your iPhone or iPod Touch, with the actual price of the MobileNavigator app being lowered by $20 to $69.99. The Traffic Live has also been discounted slightly, from $24.99 to $19.99 (only available until the 15th of February), and the Panorama View 3D will cost $9.99. Those who bought the app before will get the update for free, according to Navigon.

Yes, it's pricey. Yes, it's not far off what you'd spend on a stand-along satnav. But as our iPhone navigation battlemodo deduced last August, the MobileNavigator is the best money can buy. And that was before all these new updates.

Flash, a longer battery life, outputting video at 1080p, a $1m app competition—these are just some of the ways Notion Ink is hoping its Android-powered Adam tablet will be able to win customers over.

The tablet has gone through several different guises since renders were unveiled in December. From the slick silver-edged device, to the roll-topped plastic prototype at CES, the latest renders suggest the final design will be more in keeping with that cheaper-looking prototype, although much slimmer. They're reportedly considering launching two different models, with the key difference being how thin they are—either 12.9mm or 11.6mm, which suggests different displays being used.

Pitting it against the iPad, CEO Rohan Shravan told SlashGear that due to the Nvidia chip and Pixel Qi screen, the Adam will have a battery life at least two times longer. Plus, it'll be able to output 1080p video whereas Apple's tablet can only manage up to 576p, AND they're exploring the use of Flash, which will apparently be shown off next week.

Recognizing that despite offering more spec than the iPad they still have a battle on their hands, they're encouraging development for the Adam with a $1m bounty being put up for creating apps. They haven't officially announced the competition yet, but as soon as we hear we'll let you know how you can put your creative genius to work. [SlashGear]

This LG Mini GD880 is so good-looking it makes my brain hurt at the injustice of it (presumably) running LG's S-Class OS, and not Android. Still, there's some nice spec to back up this slim 16:9 phone.

Just like the Chocolate phone before it, the display has a 16:9 aspect ratio, in this case at 3.2-inches. LG hasn't released many details about the internals just yet, but we do know it has a 5.0-megapixel camera with face detection, Wi-Fi, and HSDPA 7.2Mbps connectivity.

The lack of buttons, metal finishings and square corners make it look like it'll be part of their more "premium" range of handsets, so expect to pay a pretty penny if you want it PAYG, otherwise it'll most likely go for the usual month contract fees when it goes on sale in March in Europe—with worldwide availability expected shortly. I'm going to harass LG for confirmation of the OS, but with Mobile World Congress starting this weekend, I'm sure we'll find out a whole load more then. [LG]

Toyota just announced a recall of its 2010 hybrid cars. Four hundred thousand worth. The reason? A change in "brake feeling" caused by faulty antilock braking software. There is no fix for cars on the road yet.

This problem, unrelated to the sticky gas pedal issue that other drivers complained about. But I'm still wondering what exactly is bothering our Prius-loving friend Woz, who claims he has a faulty cruise control issue that is software related, not mechanical.

Remember that old joke about if cars were as crash prone as computers? Yeah, not funny in 2010. [CNN]

The good news first: Adobe's promising Flash 10.1 is going to hit smartphones—Android, WebOS, Windows Mobile—and desktops in the "first half" of this year, a slightly less squishy date. And it'll come over the air. The bad part?

Well it's bad for Android, anyway: You're gonna need Android 2.1. At least. Because it provides some access Adobe needs to make the Flash magic happen. So, sorry everything but the Droid and Nexus One, at least for the moment. The "over the air" thing is also kind of "up in the air" as to what that means: It could come from your carrier, it could come from your phonemaker, or failing all else, it could come from Adobe. Which means, Flash isn't necessarily going to hit your phone at the same time as everybody else's. Depends on your phone. But, they're betting that over half of smartphones—53 percent—will have Flash Player by 2012. Not surprisingly, Adobe says Flash 10.1 is going to be all over some tablets, too, with accelerated performance on Nvidia's Tegra 2, Qualcomm's Snapdragon (like what's in the Nexus One), and Freescale's i.MX515.

Lastly, Adobe would like you to know that this whole Adobe vs. HTML5 thing is silly, since they totally support HTML5, like all web standards. They love them some web standards, they say. But! They would also like you to note that HTML5 standardization is years away, and Flash works right now. And the reason you notice crappier performance on the Mac is sorta the Mac's fault, they say, because they need more access to APIs and they get half-assed crash reports. Plus, Adobe claims, apps tend to run faster in Windows than OS X generally, because performance is about 20 percent worse using OS X's GCC compiler, not to mention performance varies even within an OS, since Flash runs 20 percent faster in IE8 than Firefox, for instance. Either way, performance will be better on Mac with Flash 10.1, since it's shifting over to using CoreAnimation.

Okay, you can resume your "death to Flash!" chants now (even though it's not going anywhere for a while, people!). [Adobe]

The vision of ebooks Google has presented to publishers: allowing people to print copies, cut and paste portions, and paying publishers 63 percent of the revenue. The vision the publishers presented in return: Go eff yourself.

That's right, Google's finally getting around to opening an ebook store too—called Google Editions, and it's been in the works for a while—the idea being that people will be able to read the books on any internet-connected device.

What's incredible is how the Times says negotiations are now proceeding. Now that Apple and Amazon are fighting over publishers and their books—imagine how oh-so-hotly desired they must suddenly feel—publishers have real power to negotiate, and it comes with wondrous effects, like getting an information monolith like Google to actually back down. There will be no printing, no cutting and pasting. And 70 percent, like what Apple and Amazon are now offering, is apparently starting to sound dandier to Google. Another point Google gave in on, surprisingly, is search. Previously, they planned to make up to 20 percent of every book they sold through the store searchable, but that wasn't kosher with some of the publishing execs, so now they can choose to opt out of search.

Google finally jumping into selling ebooks, with the idea of being the ebook seller to everyone—or at least, everyone not toting a special reading device, just your average thing with a screen and internet access—could definitely shake things up even more than they already are. And you know, a Chrome OS tablet with an ebook store would be slightly more interesting as a cheaper iPad rival.

Publishers should enjoy the attention, and power, while it lasts. Because it won't. [NYT]

Sure, Google's Superbowl ad was cute and left us giggling, but how would a French romance powered by Google really go? [UCB—Thanks, Mackenzie!]

If you're a huge space buff, you might not be surprised by anything in this video tour of the International Space Station. But it's still great to just get a simple walkthrough of this incredible project and all its corners.

Anyone else get a bit bit light-headed watching all those twists and turns? [CrunchGear]

Apple's hiring again and this time they're looking for "Performance QA Engineers" in their "iPad Media" department. Based on the description for the job, we might be seeing an increase in iPad camera rumors:

The Media Systems team is looking for a software quality engineer with a strong technical background to test still, video and audio capture and playback frameworks. Build on your QA experience and knowledge of digital camera technology (still and video) to develop and maintain testing frameworks for both capture and playback pipelines.

Based on the demand for someone to work on video capture frameworks for a device which can't even capture video we could presume that Apple's exploring some future options. As if we didn't already think that. [Apple via MacRumors]