Yahoo! bringing Internet to Samsung television sets

Yahoo! and Samsung on Monday said they will put the California firm's software to work linking the South Korean electronics giant's televisions to the Internet. New Samsung high-density flat-panel television models to be displayed this week at a premier Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas will feature Yahoo! "widgets," mini applications which access Internet services.

Samsung televisions built with an "Internet@TV" content service will let viewers check online news or stock portfolios as well as see videos or pictures on the Web, according to the companies. "Through this partnership, we can combine the Internet benefits of user choice and personalization with Samsung's leading product innovation and global reach to deliver a new experience to users around the world," said Yahoo!'s Connected TV vice president Patrick Barry.

The applications will let Samsung televisions link to Yahoo! properties including Flickr, News, Weather, and Finance as well as to websites such as YouTube, eBay, and Showtime. Samsung already offers "Internet-enabled TV" technology and last year launched an "InfoLink" service that delivers news feeds from the publication USA Today to some sets in its line-up. "The collaboration with Yahoo lets viewers go one step further," said Samsung Visual Display Division executive vice president Boo-Keun Yoon.

"This new interface allows them to interact and connect with many of their favorite Web services on a personal level. It's frankly way beyond just passively watching broadcasts and is no doubt the future of TV." Samsung said it is using an open software platform so that outside developers can build custom applications viewers can install in its Internet-linked televisions as desired.Pricing for the televisions was not revealed.

Samsung HDTVs with the Yahoo Widget Engine are to be available in about four months in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the United States. The Samsung/Yahoo! announcement came on the same day as South Korea's LG Electronics and online movie rental giant Netflix revealed plans to market a broadband-enabled high-definition TV.

LG and Netflix said the "Broadband HDTVs" to go on sale this spring would have Netflix streaming software embedded in the TV, allowing users to stream movies directly from Netflix with no external device.

Speedy USB 3.0 spec to be unveiled

On November 17 the SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0) Developers Conference, hosted by the USB Implementers Forum in San Jose, Calif., will unveil the USB 3.0 specification to the industry, according to a statement Wednesday from the Implementers Forum.

The USB 3.0 specification, a next-generation high-speed connection standard due in 2009, is significant because all future PCs and devices will use connectors based on it. The spec is also expected to offer 10 times the speed of USB 2.0--used in virtually all PCs introduced in the last few years--or roughly 5 gigabits per second.

Hewlett-Packard, Intel, NEC, NXP Semiconductors, Microsoft, and Texas Instruments are all backers of SuperSpeed USB.

Speaking at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Los Angeles, USB-IF President Jeff Ravencraft said he expects the final specifications to be made public on November 17.

Intel and Nvidia had been skirmishing over the standard but resolved their differences.

Pocket Surfer 2: Free mobile Internet, unbelievably fast

In a hot, luxurious room last night, a gathering of media and business professionals were told the next generation of mobile Internet was here. It's called the Pocket Surfer 2 and it's made by a company called DataWind. Sceptical, we certainly were. DataWho? But we also spent the duration of the presentation with our eyebrows continually raising, mouths continually being drawn closer to the ground.

We used the Pocket Surfer 2 and it really is deeply impressive. Why? Because it offers completely free mobile Internet -- the full Internet -- at speeds faster than any BlackBerry, any Nokia, and even the allegedly omnipotent Apple iPhone, even though it uses GPRS, not 3G.

With a full-colour, 5-inch 640x240-pixel screen, it supports full HTML pages, JavaScript, frames (if you're 1999 enough to still use them), ActiveX control, Flash and Ajax. We saw it download a 2MB Adobe PDF file in less than seven seconds -- seriously, over GPRS. You can even download and open PowerPoint files, for crying out loud. As you can see, there's a full Qwerty keyboard, so Web mail and typing URLs is a cinch.

Before you go off your gadget-loving little nut -- or think it's too good to be true -- the Pocket Surfer has some drawbacks. We were sad to see YouTube videos don't play. This is probably to do with the limited processing power under the hood. You wouldn't be able to hear anything anyway, as there's no speakers or headphone socket -- which means no VoIP, of course.

It was launched at the start of August for £179.99 and that includes 20 hours a month for free, but hardcore users can pay £5.99 a month for completely unlimited usage. DataWind has some hefty bulk data deals with the network operators, and as an MVNO, it covers all the costs of your Internet browsing. There's no contract, no minimum usage period and no restriction on what you can browse. There are contextual ads on the built-in search, but you don't have to use it. Pretty sweet, huh? Click through for more info.