Yesterday we wrote about how the Intel AppUp app store for netbooks went out of beta and was released to the world. While initially we had some issues logging in, those problems have gone away today and now we can provide a first impressions look at the software, how it works and what we think of it at this stage of the game.

When you first launch AppUp (it'll run on most Windows XP and Windows 7 systems as well as MeeGo devices) you are greeted with a basic and lightweight program with a simple white GUI. Keeping in mind that Intel designed AppUp for lower powered netbooks, this is a good sign. You don't want some intensive program running on a netbook at a snail's pace - that would just be an unpleasant experience. First check mark ticked - performance is great. Before you can download and use any apps, you need to register and login to AppUp. Once you have logged in the first time, it saves your details and keeps you logged in even when you close AppUp and launch again.

Now that you are logged in, you are greeted with the main store area as you can see above. It lists some featured apps with a large scrolling image to see what's hot. Below that you also have 'Staff Picks', 'What's Hot' and 'New Releases'. On the right of the screen you can browse apps by category. As AppUp is still new, you don't have the vast selection you do with other stores like the Apple app store, but I was fairly surprised to see even at this stage, there is a pretty good range to try. The concept is the same as other app stores - there are plenty of free apps as well as 'lite' or demo apps, but there are also paid apps for sale, too. I actually struggled to find a paid app, but they are there. It was great to see that many of the apps are free.

I don't like to walk around with fat pocket stuffed with lots of keys and a wallet overflowing with receipts, cards, and other crap. I like to have just my phone and a wallet that is as thins as I can make it. I don't even carry a key ring, my car key has the keyless remote built in so one key is all I carry. A new case for the iPhone 4 has surfaced called the Minimalist 4 that will even let me shed the wallet.

The Minimalist 4 case is designed to protect the iPhone 4 as you expect a case to do and is made from recycled plastic. The hard case will prevent damage if you drop the iPhone and will keep your skin from killing your signal by touching the antenna. The case is also made in the USA.

The controls and ports for the iPhone are left exposed for easy access and use. Measurements for the Minimalist 4 are 4.53" x 2.43" x 0.61" and the case weighs 0.51 pounds. You can have the case in any color you want, as long as that color is black. The coolest part of the case is the slot on the back of the case that can hold three ID cards or credit cards. You can pre-order now for $29.99.

Twitter is holding a small and casual press conference at its offices at the moment and it has been talking about the new Twitter.com. We referenced a story from Mashable in an earlier post today and those rumors have turned out true.

Some of the new features include a new "faster and richer" design with mini profiles, easier to discover related content and of course images and video in tweets. "Now, it's easy to see embedded photos and videos directly on Twitter, thanks to partnerships with Dailybooth, DeviantArt, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, Twitvid, USTREAM, Vimeo, Yfrog, and YouTube."

According to the new Twitter.com promo page, the rollout of these changes will come over the "next several weeks". The folks from Twitter will provide more updates over the next few days.

Yet another app store is ready to rock and roll today and it comes from one of the biggest players in the industry. Intel at IDF 2010 today announced to attending media that its Intel AppUp center netbook app store is out of beta and ready for consumers to use. Intel's app store has been talked about for a while now with careful anticipation around tech circles. But is it going to be a success?

Netbooks have been craving something to make them stand out from being purely just a small and cheaper notebook computer. AppUp should go a long way to helping things. I would hazard to guess that Intel's first aims and ambitions with its app store were to help bolster and cement the netbooks legitimate place in the market. However, take a look at the massive success Apple has seen with its app sales on its iDevices and clearly other incentives come into it, ah like... money. Google of course is also pushing apps on its also popular Android platform.

Intel has written up a deal with Best Buy in the United States (and Dixons in the UK and Croma in India) to pre-install its AppUp software on netbooks sold at its store which should get it off the ground running. Of course as of today you can also download AppUp for Windows XP as well as Windows 7 and Moblin. I was under the impression that it would only work on systems with an Intel Atom processor, but I tried it on my Windows 7 system with an Intel Core i7 processor and it is working just fine, as you can see from the screenshot above.

Corsair has been selling some of the best computer hardware on the market to gamers and enthusiasts for a long time now. The company has all sorts of gear from RAM and power supplies to cooling products and storage devices. Corsair has announced the expansion of its line of PSUs with a new Gaming Series of power supplies with three products.

The new PSUs include the GS800, GS700, and GS600. The PSUs share many of the same feature swill all having a single +12V rail with up to 65A or reliable continuous power. The fan inside the PSUs is designed to produce little noise with a dual ball bearing design and automatic speed adjustment based on cooling needs. The PSUs also have LEDs in the fan on the GS700 and GS800 that the user can turn off completely and set to red, blue, or white.

The GS600 only has blue LEDs inside. All of the PSUs in the series are 80 Plus silver certified for 80% efficient or higher under normal loads. The chassis of the PCUs are matte black and the only difference is the amount of peak power produced as noted by the products names. The GS800 sells for $119.99, the GS700 is $109.99, and the GS600 is $99.99.

Gigabyte has some of the most popular mainboards around for enthusiasts and gamers that like to roll their own computers. The company has been around for a long time and offers a lot more than mainboards. For many enthusiasts what hardware looks like is almost as important as how well that hardware performance.

Gigabyte has unveiled its first mainboards that use black PCBs. The black PCB looks a lot better than the old and boring green I typically see on a mainboard today or the blue Gigabyte usually offers. The new boards are the P67A-UD5 and the P67A-UD7. The boards are the new high-end LGA1155 parts from Gigabyte. To keep with the dark stealth look of the mainboard Gigabyte also uses dark graphite color heat sinks.

Those heat sinks have a bit of blue trim on the UD5 and some gold trim on the UD7. Features for the UD7 include a 24-phase VRM for the processor, four PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, PCI-E bridge chip, and six SATA 3GB/s and a pair of SATA 6GB/s ports. The board also has four USB 3.0 ports, eSATA, and FireWire. The UD5 has a 20-phase VRM, three x16 PCIe slots, two SATA 6GB/s ports, four SATA 3GB/s ports, and a pair of eSATA ports and two USB 3.0 ports.

One of Intel's big announcements at their IDF conference in San Francisco was the unveiling of their next-generation server CPUs, which have been dubbed "Westmere-EX." These will be built using the 32nm manufacturing process, which will allow Intel to include ten physical cores on these CPUs.

Along with the increase in cores, Westmere-EX processors will be able to address 2TB of memory, which is two times the addressable memory of the previous generation. This is useful to large databases which will be able to run solely from memory as opposed to a non-volatile storage device. These CPUs are going to be compatible with the current Xeon 7500 series, which means you won't have to build a whole new system to use these new processors. Look for these to become available sometime in the first half of 2011.

When the iPhone first hit the market the thing that many hated most about the smartphone was the onscreen keyboard. Today the onscreen keyboard is so common that people really don't think much about it. Larger devices like the iPad have onscreen keyboards large enough for users to type just about as well on them as they can a real keyboard.

The success of these tablets have lead to a few devices surfacing that are larger than your typical tablet with a design like a notebook minus a keyboard. Instead of the keyboard, a second LCD is offered. Acer has been spotted testing out a new dual screen notebook that was leaked over the weekend when it was spotted in the wild.

Each of the screens measures 15-inches and either of the screens can be used as the keyboard complete with a track pad. The virtual keyboard is designed just like a normal keyboard on a notebook. The machine is also said to support multi-touch and gestures for specific tasks on either screen. Inside the machine is a Core i5 CPU at 2.66GHz and the rig runs Windows 7. Apparently, the machine is only a test bed and it may not make it to production.

When it comes to charging the gadgets we all live with on a daily basis, none of us really want to mess with wires. There are several chargers on the market today that will charge smartphones using magnetic induction technology, but those chargers require the device to physically sit on the charger plate.

Fujitsu is talking up new tech that it is working on to allow the easy design of chargers that can recharge multiple devices at the same time without having to have a specific position to the power transmitter. The new tech was developed at Fujitsu Laboratories and the intention is to offer a dev kit of sorts to speed getting wireless charging products onto the market.

The new tech includes a magnetic field analysis simulator that analyzes the coil model and a specialized circuit simulator that analyzes resonance conditions. The tech allows the designer to design a charger that can recharge multiple transmitters using different coil sizes. The tech also allows the chage system to automatically match the requirements of the device being charged. Fujitsu hopes to have the tech on the market by 2012.

During the MSI MOA Grand Final overclocking held in Taipei today, the Taiwanese company used the event to introduce its brand new N480GTX Lightning video card to the world.

MSI has had great success with its video cards over the past year or so with its big efforts on producing parts with very good cooling and also the best components you can mount onto their PCB. The new N480GTX Lightning seems like no exception. It comes installed with a massive Twin Frozr III cooler with two large fans that look to be able to take care of cooling rather well. Of course during this event, the cooler was striped and replaced with LN2 heatsink pots for well below sub-zero temperatures.

The winning team from Sweden consisting of Elmor and ME4ME managed to break 1400MHz on the GPU core with this very video card. Clearly overclocking potential is there. Other features include gold plated I/O connectors - you get two dual-link DVI, one HDMI and one DisplayPort connector.

Here in Texas its way too hot most of the year and things are way to spread out to walk most places on foot. In other parts of the country walking is one of the most common forms of travel though with folks in New York City and other major metropolitan areas hoofing it all the time. If you are visiting a section of a city on foot that you aren't familiar with and use an Android device Google has a new way to help you get around.

The new service is called Walking Navigation and is currently in beta form. To use the service you need an Android device running Google Maps for mobile 4.5. The software provides walkers with directions to a location that are more direct using pedestrian walkways that are in the Google database. That means if a sidewalk runs through a park on your way and is shorter than walking around the park the software will route you through the park.

The map automatically rotates to the direction you are walking to make orientation with the surroundings better. The walker can also look at satellite images along the way to get an idea what an area is like or to be sure they are on the right path. The voice-aided direction can be turned off and the phone can vibrate when it is time to make a turn to alert the user.

OtterBox makes some very robust cases to protect your smartphone and offers the cases for a bunch of different models. The company has some cases like its Defender series that are bulky and protect from dust and water in addition to drops and bumps. The company also offers a line of cases in the Commuter series that are not as bulky but don't offer protection for water.

OtterBox has announced that the Commuter series is now available for a couple of the popular HTC Android smartphones. The Commuter series cases now offer protection for the HTC EVO and the HTC Droid Incredible. The Evo case sells for $34.95 and the Droid case is out of stock right now so no price is offered. I would assume the Droid case to cost the same as the EVO case does.

The cases offer multiple layers of protection with soft silicone and plugs to keep dust out of the ports. The cases allow access to all of the controls on the devices and the Commuter series ship with a screen protector to keep scratches off the screen. The cases are only offered in black and can be ordered right now. Commuter cases have a soft silicon sleeve that is enclosed in a molded polycarbonate shell.

The iPad has been crazy popular all around the world with long waits to get the device in stores and Apple selling all that they can build. With the popularity of the iPad, there are a huge amount of accessories hitting the market every day for the tablet. The latest accessory for the iPad comes from a company called Vogel and it lets you mount the iPad in multiple locations.

The Vogel system starts with the Mount and Cover for iPad Starter Kit. This kit has a BaseCover that snaps onto the back of the iPad and sticks to a WallMount to hang the iPad on the wall. The WallMount can be attached to the wall and allows 360-degree rotation of the iPad. The company also has a CarMount that attaches inside the car to the supports for the headrests in modern vehicles.

The CarMount allows the iPad to be used for in-car entertainment and needs no tools for installation. Vogel also has a TableStand that lets you mount the iPad on a table for watching hands free. The products will hit Europe in October and the US in early 2011. US pricing is unannounced, but the starter kit will cost 79.99 euro, the BaseCover alone is 59.99 euro and the WallMount alone is 29.99 euro. The CarMount and TableStand are not priced yet.

Today's smartphones are great for keeping entertained when you are commuting or have nothing else today away from the home or office. You can stream all sorts of TV, sports, and movie content from various online sources. The catch is that if you are in a data roaming area or have a pay as you go data plan, streaming video content can get expensive very fast.

Nokia has announced a new solution that will allow users of Nokia smartphones that run Symbian^3 to watch TV programming on the go with no need for a data connection or WiFi network. That means that users can watch all the programming they want for free. The solution is called the Nokia Mobile TV Headset, DVB-H. As the name suggests the headset has an integrated DVB-H mobile TV tuner.

The headset allows the user to listen to the programming privately and can be used to make and receive phone calls on the Nokia phone. The device will ship in Q4 2010 for €40. The big downside is that the availability of DVB-H programming is still not great in many areas. That means you will want to be sure that programming is available before you ask for the headset this Christmas.

If you're one of the many who have been frustrated by the shortages of stock when it comes to the latest and greatest smartphones, you may know that the culprit has been that fancy AMOLED that they come equipped with and that Samsung can't keep up with demand. Samsung has taken a major step forward in ramping up the supplies with their new facility opens in July; ramping production up from 3 million units per month to 30 million.

Many phones, like the EVO 4G and the Droid Incredible, have faced repeated pushbacks in delivery dates due to the shortage of these screens. With some devices turning to alternatives like Sony's Super LCD screens, Samsung had to make it a priority to start meeting the huge demand for their AMOLED screens. "We've put in a great deal of effort to move up mass production," Lee Woo-Jong, vice president of marketing for the display business, said in an e-mail to the Dow Jones Newswire.

I just got done updating my iPhone 4 to iOS 4.1 and as we mentioned in the previous post, among other things, it brings support for HDR photos.

Basically HDR-enabled photos are brighter and more vibrant because they mix three separate images into one. I can tell you that it now takes longer to save a snapped photo on the iPhone 4 due to the extra images that need to be processed, probably indeed three times longer, which makes sense. You can however turn off HDR if you don't want to use it. The standard non-HDR image and HDR image are both saved in the photos directory.

Above is one sample I quickly snapped around the office. Sorry for not venturing outside, but it's night time here anyway. As you can see, the images are indeed brighter. It almost looks like I quickly went into a photo editor and increased the brightness, but I can tell you I did not. This will be very handy for people in non-perfect lighting conditions who enjoy uploading photos directly from their phone while on the go to places such as Facebook.

Zotac has offered its line of mini-PCs called the ZBox before. These little machines look more like DVD players than a computer with tiny dimensions. The company has announced a new version of the ZBox today that is the first mini-computer in the world to ship with a Blu-ray player inside the tiny machine. The integrated Blu-ray drive is a slot-loading unit.

The new machine is the ZBox Blu-ray HD-ID33 and it has slots for up to 2GB of RAM and supports a single SATA 3GB/s HDD or SSD. Another version of the machine is offered called the HD-ID34 that has 2GB of DDR2 RAM and a 250GB HDD pre-installed inside the tiny computer. Both machines use an Atom D525 CPU running at 1.8GHz.

The machine also uses next-generation Ion 2 graphics from NVIDIA with 512MB of DDR3 memory. Other features of the machine include a USB 3.0 port and a single mini-PCI Express expansion slot. 802.11n WiFi is built-in and the machine ships with Cyberlink PowerDVD 8 included. Pricing on the machines is unknown.

The thing that most of us were really looking forward to when we first heard of USB 3.0 was faster data storage for external hard drives. Waiting for slow USB 2.0 drives to back up lots of data is no fun. One of the first companies to offer USB 3.0 flash drives was Super Talent and the company has announced coupe new and speedy additions to its lineup today.

The flash drives that Super Talent is offering are the new USB 3.0 Express Ram Cache drives that will come in 32GB and 64GB. Super Talent claims that the drives can boost small block random performance by up to 300% compared to drives that don't use the DRAM caching system.

The transfer of 40 MP3 files is used as an example to show the performance of ht new drives. The files would take 13 seconds to transfer on a normal USB 3.0 drive. With the RAM Cache drives, the transfer takes only 5 seconds for a 260% improvement in performance. The performance increase gets even better when the file size decreases and file count increases according to Super Talent. The 32GB drive will sell for $129 and the 64GB version is $209.

Paul Jacobs, the CEO of Qualcomm, spoke at the IQ 2010 event in London, England today and cleared up a few rumors. He stated that the 1.5 Ghz Snapdragon processors will be are available and we should be seeing them in device early next year. There was even a demo of a game called ilomilo running on a device boasting the new Snapdragon processor.

When asked about the dual-core chips, Jacobs replied that they would be ready sometime in the first half of 2011. These processors will be going head to head with devices sporting the Tegra 2 platform from NVIDIA and Intel's Moorestown. Tablets and smartphones should definitely be seeing a huge boost in power from these new platforms, and with them planning to be released so close together, hopefully that means we will see competitive prices as the companies battle for our hard earned dollars.

The gaming computer market is crowded with offerings that run from entry-level machines that many can afford up to high-end rigs that have massive price tags that only the geeky gamers with lots of money to burn can afford. Origin has unveiled a new gaming PC called The Big O that will undoubtedly give you a nerdgasm when you hear the specs of the beast.

The brains of the operation are a pair of Intel Xeon X5680 CPUs that are each overclocked to 4.3GHz. Each of those CPUs has 6-cores and support ECC memory. Origin will cram up to 24GB of ECC Corsair RAM into the rig for you. Those CPUs are liquid cooled to keep things running cool and quiet. The machine can also be fitted with up to four EVGA GTX 480 FTW video cards.

Those cards are in SLI mode and are among the fastest NVIDIA offerings on the market today. The most interesting feature of the gaming beast is that tucked inside that tall, wheeled chassis along with the computer hardware is an Xbox 360 Slim. The Xbox 360 is liquid cooled as well and can be played while the computer chugs away on PC work. The bad news is that the beast starts at $7,669 and the full features version is a testicle shrinking $16,999.