Loaded: Smell your laptop Video

Loaded: Smell your laptop Video Transcript

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>> Hey there, I'm Mark Licea filling in for the talented Natalie Del Conti. Now, for those of you that tuned in to last Thursday's show, you know that she is on vacation, but just for the week. On today's show, the Kindle goes to college. Rumors of a new nano had leaked, and ASUS smells good. It's Monday, August 25th. I'm Mark Licea and it's time to get loaded. ^M00:00:19 [ Music ] ^M00:00:24

>> Rumors of a new Amazon Kindle had been confirmed. The new version of the electronic reader will be targeted towards college students. And while you might expect a downgrade in size, Amazon may actually go in the other direction. The company plans on going larger with the screen making it more suitable for electronic textbooks. A few other complaints about the interphase and navigation may be improved as well but no word yet on a release day. How great would it be not to have to lag your books to class. Just carry around one Kindle with all of your e-textbooks stored on it. It will save you back pain and save the trees. There may be a new nano hitting the market soon having the [inaudible] of dig says that rumors of Apple preparing to unveil their latest iPod line maybe confirmed in the next few weeks. No confirmation from Apple on this just yet, so details are limited. But from what we hear, the redesign should be similar to the iPhone 3G with tapered edges, a longer screen and the price drop. We're also told to expect software 2.1 for the iPod touch and iTunes 8.0 that will have some new highlights. China has blocked access to apples US iTunes music store just for one little album. The 20 song album songs for Tibet The Art of Peace includes criticisms of China's electronic security system that apparently didn't sit through well with the nation. Users in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen began receiving unknown error messages when they tried to access the iTunes store last week. Amazon.com is still accessible, but the CD and download pages for the same album won't load. The CD features songs from artists including Sting, Alanis Morisette, and John Mayer that support peace initiatives and Tibetan cultural preservation projects. Some news on the upcoming Firefox browser update. The company has big plans for Firefox 3.1 to speed it up significantly using a new technique that'll boost the Firefox JavaScript engine. The method called tracing has increased performance from 20 to 40 times faster in testing and Mozilla is in the works to adapt the tracing technology into the Firefox 3.1 upgrade. No word yet on when the update will be available, but we'll be sure to keep a post on this. ASUS unveiled a ton of laptops this weekend. The company announced this business laptop, the B50A. It supports a 320 gigabyte drive with up to 4 gigs of RAM and the spill resisting keyboard. Another model released, the F8, isn't quite as powerful. It has a slightly smaller screen and comes in 5 colors. ASUS also showed off 2 new gaming laptops named the G17V and the G50B. Both come with NVIDIA GeForce graphics. I think the most noble of the bunch of the new F6 scented laptops [inaudible] come with 4 different graphics designs and scents to choose from that include floral blossom, musky black, morning dew and aqua ocean. As of now, all the laptops will run Windows Vista and pricing and release dates are still on the raps. NBC's coverage of the Olympics came to a close yesterday but the network did not cache in as well as it could have with nbcolympics.com. Analysts believe the company only made 5.75 million dollars in ad revenue from the website. The Wall Street Journal reports that NBC limited its potential for ad revenue when the network chose not to offer live video online for some of the game's biggest events. NBC also did not distribute their video content to other sites like YouTube, ESPN, and Yahoo Sports. One back we mentioned how CBS's coverage of the NCAA's March madness generated 23 million in ad revenue. Now, granted the basketball tourney lasts 3 weeks and the Olympics only goes for 2. MIT has taken another leap forward in nano technology. Engineers from the university are on their way to creating a battery about half the size of a human cell. The batteries could potentially power a variety of micro devices by stamping them on to the surfaces. The virus based micro battery consists of a cathode and an anode separated by an electrolyte. Have you ever waited in line to vote for your candidate of choice only to feel like your vote won't count? Yeah. Well, according to Diebold, it's possible that it didn't. The company finally [inaudible] up after use of accusations regarding a program error with their machines. The error can cause drop to votes when transferring data from the devices' memory card to a central tallying point on both optical scan and touch screen devices. This isn't exactly reassuring considering that elections are right around the corner. The company has re-branded itself as Premier Election Solutions although they may just be at the end of their term. Those are all your headlines for today, but I will be back tomorrow with more news. Thanks for watching. I'm Mark Licea with CNET TV and you've just been loaded. ^M00:04:38 [ Music ]