Samsung’s WiFi-Only Galaxy Tab Up For Pre-Order In The UK

During CES, Samsung said the WiFi-only Galaxy Tab (P1010) would come out Q1 of this year. Well, Q1 is almost over and we haven’t heard, nor seen anything about a price or shipping date. Those across the pond have recently found the P1010 up for pre-order on Amazon UK with an estimated ship date of March 31 and price of $477.

As for the US, we are being told that prices should be around $400 with a ship date of April 4.

Considering all the new Honeycomb tabs on the way, Samsung may be too late at this point.

Samsung Galaxy Tabs 8.9 and 10.1 Are Official

Samsung just announced their two new Galaxy Tabs, the 8.9 and the 10.1. Both are just 8.6 millimeters thick and support 4G and WiFi. Click through to watch the live video launch of these two Honeycomb tablets (with TouchWiz on top).

The new tablets have “HD displays” and Samsung is moving into more services like something called ReadersHub, an ebook solution for the Gal Tabs, and MusicHub, a music solution. It has 3 megapixel rear camera and a 2 megapixel and supports Adobe Flash 10.2.

Both have WXGA 1280×800 pixel displays (compared to the iPad 2s 1024 x 768 display). The GalTab 10.1 is available in 16GB and 32GB for $499 and $599, respectively. The 8.9 will cost 16GB for $469 and 32GB is $569, both in Wi-Fi. The 10.1 is available June 8 while the 8.9 will be available in early summer. It looks like the Xoom has a competitor.

Google Brings Back The ChatBot: Google Talk Guru

Remember back in the early days on instant messaging when people figured out that they could set up chatbots that users would interact with? Yeah, they were fun for like 20 minutes. But don’t tell Google that — they’re bringing one back today!

Google Talk Guru is an “experimental” Google Labs service that allows you to chat with a bot to get information you’re looking for. What kind of information? Sports results, weather, definitions, translations, etc.

Again, this is nothing new, but Google does tend to have more information at their disposal than just about anyone else on the planet. So perhaps this chatbot will be more useful than the ones I used in 1997. To try it out, here are the rules:

1. Sign into a chat client that supports Google Talk

2. Send a chat invitation to guru@googlelabs.com or click the “Invite myself to chat with Guru” link below.

3. Find guru in your contact list and send chat queries to guru

Remember too that just about a year ago, Google bought Aardvark, a startup that also used chat to answer questions. I assume this is more like doing a traditional Google Search query, but still, something to think about. Related: what the hell is Google doing with Aardvark? Anything?

Apple Announces The iPad 2: A5 Processor, Front And Back Cameras, And Available March 11th

After selling 15 million iPads in 2010 and gaining 90% market share in the tablet market, Apple is ready to take the next step. Apple’s latest iPad, the iPad 2, is official. The new tablet has a A5 processor for a 2x faster CPU speed and 9x faster graphics speed with the power consumption of the original A4 chip.

It has front and back cameras as well as a built-in gyroscope. It 1/3 thinner than the iPad – 8.8 mm thick from 13 mm – making it thinner than the iPhone 4. And It comes in white and will be available on Verizon and AT&T’s cellular networks. It starts at $499 for the 16GB Wi-Fi model.

The price has been a point of contention but Jobs said during his presentation today:

“When we introduced the iPad, we said it was our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device. People laughed at us for calling it magical — but it’s turned out to be magical. People didn’t necessarily agree with the price — but ask our competitors now”

The new models will cost the same as the old, starting at $499 for the 16GB Wi-Fi only model. The new iPad supports Facetime video calling and Photobooth self-portraits. It also supports HDMI-out via a $39 video dongle. It weighs 1.3 lbs, .2 pounds less than the original iPad.

The new iPad will ship on March 11 in the United States and on March 25 in other countries including Poland, Belgium, Canada (!!), and the Czech Republic.

Apple’s iPad 2 Announcement

This morning’s Apple press event has come and gone, and as you likely have noticed, we covered just about every aspect of it. The iPad 2 itself, the new features and apps coming with iOS 4.3, the 100m and 15m iPhone and iPad sales numbers, even the new device’sfunky magnetic case. That said, the announcement was conspicuous for its lack of truly major announcements. Rumors have been flying left and right about potential new features, but virtually none actually manifested.

Did our little online echo chamber make us expect too much, or did Apple, in the face of powerful alternative devices like the Xoom, deliver too little? Here are our opinions on the announcement and what’s yet to come.

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Greg: It’s here! It’s here! It’s finally here! And it’s… about what we expected — you can find our full hands-on with video here. The rumor mill’s whispers on this one ranged from fairly obvious (cameras!) to fairly absurd (touch sensitive back!), which seems to have set a lot of people’s expectations unreachably high.

The iPad 2 isn’t a complete overhaul; it’s the result of polishing up the first generation. It’s insanely thin (almost shockingly so, in person), crazy light, and runs like butter. If you held off on buying the first-gen knowing this one was right around the corner, there’s no real harm in buying now; even if the rumors of #3 being months away pan out, that just means you’ll feel out of date in 6-9 months rather than 9-12. (Update: Added the last 1/3 of Greg’s input. WordPress ate it.)

John: We kind of expected this. As with the iPod Touch, the iPad is more a “device” than a “cellular device” and as such follows Apple’s standard upgrade procedure. It’s almost silly the way we’re able to read the Kremlinology of Apple upgrades these days, but that’s what you get for sticking to a working formula.

As for the rest of the tablets out there? Tough luck. While I love the Xoom and can still get behind the new Galaxy Tab, it would be hard to recommend either of those over the iPad 2 to the average user. Apple knows how to make tablets and everyone else is just learning.

Devin: The new industrial design is great, but that’s pretty much the only change that happened here. The new processor is mainly necessary for iMovie and processing video from the camera, the rest of the apps and interface probably won’t show much difference. And 4.3… well, there’s just not a lot to it. To be perfectly honest right now I’d say the best deal on the market is a refurbished original iPad, which you can get for only $349 right now. Until the Android devices start driving each other’s prices down and/or the iPad 3 hits at the end of the year, you’ve got a solid and now fairly cheap tablet to hold you over. As for that cover? It’s very clever, but sliding things along glass carries a great risk of sliding other things… like grains of sand or crumbs. I’ll be interested to see whether it’s as effective as they claim.

Nicholas: So, the iPad 2, eh? I guess it’s a solid device—Apple knows how to make a shiny piece of kit—but it’s hard to get too excited about it when you know the iPad 3 will be available in just a few months. That’s what the rumors suggest, at any rate. Not everyone is going to be happy with the iPad 2 (Real Madrid player Alfonso Arbeloa wants to know why there’s no USB or Flash support), but what are you going to do? Remember: no one’s forcing you to upgrade just yet. Besides, if you need features like that there’s plenty of options for you at this point. In short, I’m reasonably keen on the iPad 2, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to let this whole tablet craze pass me by. I will cling on to my giant desktop PC (and regular MacBook) till they disintegrate into dust.

Kyle: The iPad 2 is just an evolution. Other than a few features (dual-cameras, dual-core A5 chip, and mirrored HDMI), there isn’t much to cause one to line up — I’m waiting for a high-rez display. Apple will certainly sell a bajillion, but I think I’ll hold off for iPad 3 and see if it gets a lower price. One thing that’s nice, but still evolved, is the new thin form factor; it’s pretty amazing to fit everything in while keeping battery life and features intact.

Matt: The iPad is evolving away from what I personally want. The iPad 2 announcements reaffirmed that I’m an Android user. iOS is simply too constrained for my taste. It feels curated and one dimensional. That’s great for some users, but not me. Oh and that’s a sweet iPad pool cover, Apple.

WordPress.com Suffers Largest DDoS Attack In Its History

You have no idea how hard it was to get this post up, as WordPress.com, our blog host, is currently under a denial of service attack. It’s been almost impossible to access the TechCrunch backend for the past 10 minutes (everything seems to be stable now) and users have been receiving a “Writes to the service have been disabled, we will be bringing everything back online ASAP” error message.

From the VIP blog post:

WordPress.com is currently being targeted by a extremely large Distributed Denial of Service attack which is affecting connectivity in some cases. The size of the attack is multiple Gigabits per second and tens of millions of packets per second.

We are working to mitigate the attack, but because of the extreme size, it is proving rather difficult. At this time, everything should be back to normal as the attack has subsided, but we are actively working with our upstream providers on measures to prevent such attacks from affecting connectivity going forward.

We will be making our VIP sites a priority in this endeavor, and as always, you can contact us via xxxxx@wordpress.com for the latest update. We will also update this post with more information as it becomes available

WordPress did not mention the origin of the attack (DDoS =! Anonymous) and I have contacted founder Matt Mullenweg for more information. WordPress.com currently serves 30 million publishers, including VIPs TED, CBS and TechCrunch, and is responsible for 10% of all websites in the world. WordPress.com itself sees about 300 million unique visits monthly.

Update: Automattic and WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg tells us that this is the largest attack WordPress.com has ever seen, and is likely to be politically motivated:

“There’s an ongoing DDoS attack that was large enough to impact all three of our datacenters in Chicago, San Antonio, and Dallas — it’s currently been neutralized but it’s possible it could flare up again later, which we’re taking proactive steps to implement.

This is the largest and most sustained attack we’ve seen in our 6 year history. We suspect it may have been politically motivated against one of our non-English blogs but we’re still investigating and have no definitive evidence yet.”

You can check here for the latest status updates.

Image via: blogohblog

Update 2: Looks like everything’s back to normal.

Apple, Google, Amazon, And Microsoft Make Up 4 Of The Top 10 Most Admired Companies

Every year, Fortune magazine (where I started out as a reporter) comes out with its list of the Most Admired Companies in the world. In truth, it doesn’t really change much from year to year. Apple, once again for the fourth year in a row, is No. 1, as it should be. The company single-handedly created an entirely new class of touch computing with the iPad last year, and is on it’s way to becoming the most valuable company in the world.

Google is No. 2 (although, confusingly, it’s overall score of 8.22 is higher than Apple’s 8.16—it turns out that those are their industry scores not their separate Top 50 scores, a spokesperson explains, even though they are labeled “overall scores”). And Amazon comes in at No. 7. Microsoft hangs on at No. 9. So four of the top 10 companies are from the technology industry. And IBM is No. 12. After that, the list becomes a mixed bag, and even a little questionable. Cisco, Intel, Netflix, eBay, Sony, and Oracle also made the list. Netflix totally deserves to be there and maybe Cisco, but the others just seem to grandfathered in. Where’s Yahoo?

Actually, before you put too much credence into this list, however, Goldman Sachs also made the list at No. 25. Yes, that Goldman Sachs, the one that turned out to be too big to jail for its culpability in the financial crisis and is spending $3.4 billion in legal fees just to defend itself this year alone.

Here are the Top 10 Most Admired companies according to Fortune:

1 Apple
2 Google
3 Berkshire Hathaway
4 Southwest Airlines
5 Procter & Gamble
6 Coca-Cola
7 Amazon.com
8 FedEx
9 Microsoft
10 McDonald’s