Rumors have been swirling that Apple and its manufacturing partner Foxconn have been looking to bring production for some Apple products to the United States. Currently, Foxconn produces most of the products for Apple in China with some items produced in South America. It remains unclear where exactly Foxconn might set up shop in the United States.

However, the rumor points to Fremont, California as a possible location for the Foxconn facility. According to the rumor, the Apple product will be constructed in the US isn’t the Mac Pro the earlier rumors pointed to, but rather the cheaper Mac mini.

Apple expects sales of the Mac mini to increase significantly to 1.8 million units in 2013. That would be a 30% increase from the number sold in 2012. Building the Mac mini in the ... Read more »

I’m not sure if this qualifies as a holiday gift or not, but Google’s VoIP service in Gmail will remain free of charge for calls within the United States and Canada in 2013.

Either way, it’s nice to be able to call someone free of charge. A note on the Gmail Blog announced the news. This will be the third year of free Google Voice service for US and Canadian customers, through the standard Gmail interface.

Free is always good right? Of course. You can’t beat free. Heck, some people would pay a dollar for this. Thanks Google. Wasn’t even on our list this year.

Source Engadget

That vehicle looks pretty awesome doesn’t it? It comes from designer Daniel Dobrogorsky who envisions a future where no matter where you are or what the emergency, medical teams will be able to get to your location in about 60 seconds. Sounds crazy, but it just might work.

It will be thanks to this single-seater VTOL jet called Skyway. The nose opens up to serve as a stretcher. Dobrogorsky’s Skyway concept already has some real-world counterparts in Life Flight and other air ambulance services. And a helicopter won’t get stuck in traffic, of course, so it can get there quickly. No flat tires, either.

It uses only its six ducted fans to carry it into the air, so no exposed propellers are endangering patients or pilots. It would be amazing to see this in use.

LG’s Google TV lineup in 2012 was just to dip their toes into the market. For 2013, it is going full steam, offering more sizes. The 47 and 55 inch sizes will be joined by 42, 50 and 60 inch models.

They will also introduce some updated designs that come with yearly updates, including newer zero-bezel frames and distinctive stands. All of the new screens will ship with voice-enabled Google TV and OnLive support from the start as well.

The company’s Magic Remote is making its return too. No further details aside from a release date sometime in the first half of 2013. Stay tuned.

Source Engadget

Seems like we’ve seen plenty of new 7 inch Android tablets hitting the market or ready to. So it’s nice to see a new full-sized tablet. That is what the Archos 97 Titanium HD is.

A new website for the tablet went live the other day and judging by the specs, the tablet will have a 9.7 inch IPS display with resolution of 2048 x 1536. That matches the panel on the third and fourth-generation Apple iPad and offers a 264ppi pixel density. There is also a dual-core 1.6GHz processor and 1GB of RAM.

The camera in back is 5MP and the front is 2MP. It has 8GB of storage on board, but that can be bumped up nicely with the 64GB capacity microSD slot. Android 4.1 is installed. Nothing on price yet.

Source Pho ... Read more »

If you are looking for a new ultrabook, check out MSI’s sliding Windows 8 ultrabook, now ready for pre-order. If you have about $1100 to spare.

The MSI S20 Ultrabook looks like a thick tablet at first, until you slide out the keyboard from under the display. Then you have a slim notebook with a screen that has been locked in place at a 45 degree angle. The MSI S20 is up for pre-order from ExcaliberPC for $1099.

Word is that it is being shipped in Europe for around €999. It has an Intel Core i5-3317U processor, an 11.6” 1920 x 1080 pixel IPS display, 4GB RAM, and a 128GB SSD, along with a couple of USB 3.0 ports and a mini HDMI port.

Source Ubergizmo

If you’re a fan of the EA and Visceral Games franchise Dead Space, you will be glad to hear that a new downloadable demo is coming next month. EA announced this week that the demo for Dead Space 3 will be available on January 22.

Xbox 360 gamers will be able to get the demo a week earlier than that date by signing up at the official Dead Space website. If you’re unfamiliar with Dead Space, this is an action, science fiction, horror video game that offers cooperative game play.

Players will fill the space boots of hero Isaac Clarke and his co-op companion Sergeant John Carver. The duo are on the planet of Tau Volantis, which is covered in ice and filled with Necromorphs. The full game will launch in North America on February 5 for the PS3, Xbox, and PC.

We all like to get games for dirt cheap if possible and you can’t beat free right? Tomb Raider: Underworld has been made available as a free-to-play game in a browser, thanks to Square Enix’s Core Online.

There is a catch. The real "price”? Well, you will have to suffer through an advertisement every 20 minutes. I can live with that I guess. Here is one big plus: No need to worry about a bad Internet connection, because Core Online will pre-load the game onto your system instead of streaming it.

These ads will show up three times an hour, and you can remove those ads by paying a fee, or just get through the game. You can pay a larger sum initially so that the entire gaming experience will be ad-free, or you can pay a certain amount of money for some ad-free game time, and once that time is up, ads will begin to show again. ... Read more »

Landlines are almost a thing of the past. Almost. The Center for Disease Control has released some preliminary results from its National Health Interview Survey for 2012 and they report that 35.8% of American households no longer have any sort of landline telephone in their homes.

They rely exclusively on wireless. Just under 16% of American households said they "received all or almost all calls on wireless telephones despite also having a landline telephone,”. So more than half of all American households either have no landline service at all or have a landline service but rely almost exclusively on wireless.

You can expect this trend to continue, since more than 40% of Americans ages 18 and younger have ditched landline service completely, while 34% of all American adults have done the same.< ... Read more »

Apple’s retail stores have been an amazing success, so everyone is trying to emulate it. Especially Microsoft. In 2012, it has been trying to do something similar, with simplistic architecture and ideas that remind people of Apple stores. Now Microsoft has announced that it will expand its retail presence.

The company will open six new retail stores in addition to the existing chain of 51. They will appear at the following locations: The Shops at La Cantera, San Antonio, Texas. Dadeland Mall, Miami, Fla. Beachwood Place, Beachwood, Ohio. Westfield San Francisco Centre, San Francisco. City Creek Center, Salt Lake City. And St. Louis Galleria, St. Louis.

Microsoft fans will be happy about this news.

Source ... Read more »