While Intel's sales were flat in 2008, Taiwan was one of the few geographic regions where sales increased. According to the chipmaker's recently released annual report, revenues from Taiwan increased about 15% in 2008 to US$9.9 billion, while the company's overall sales of US$37.6 billion were down a slight 2%. Leading the way in terms of sales growth in 2008 for all geographic regions was the Americas (outside of the US), where sales were up 16.5%. Japan was the only other sales region that saw growth in 2008, at a slight 1.5%.

Operating revenues for Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, which includes desktop and nettop computers, enterprise computing servers and workstations and embedded applications were down 3% in 2008, while the company's Mobility Group saw its sales increase 7%. However, in terms of operating profits, the Mobility Group saw a drop of 7% from the previous year, while profits were up 22% for the Digital Enterprise Group. The Digital Enterprise Group accounted for 55% of the company's revenues and more than 70% of its profits.

When’s the last time you remember your Gmail being down for longer than one or two seconds? And who’s to say that glitch wasn’t just your router acting up? Today, Google experienced a Gmail outage that was remarkably widespread and lengthy for its standards. It was so “severe,” in fact, that the company actually made the outage public and pleaded for patience as it worked to put things back together. Starting at around 9:30AM GMT today (or really, really early on the East Coast of America), Google’s monitoring

Slowly but surely, Steam has been chugging along and adding partners for years. But this is a big one. Today, Valve Corporation’s online game delivery portal has announced that Square Enix is coming on board, giving PC gamers the promise of snagging The Last Remnant whenever their heart desires. The agreement will enable Square Enix titles to be made available to customers in North America via Steam, which is Valve’s platform for digital content distribution and management. Starting on April 9th, the highly

New ZOTAC FireStorm software adds new features and enables compatibility with all NVIDIA-based graphics cards  HONG KONG – Feb. 24, 2009 – ZOTAC International, an award-winning manufacturer of graphics cards and motherboards, today unleashes the award-winning ZOTAC NITRO hardware-overclocking controller for use with all NVIDIA GeForce based graphics cards. The ZOTAC NITRO is the world’s first hardware-overclocking controller, enabling graphics card overclocking with the press of three buttons.“End users

It’s not a smartphone and it doesn’t run Windows Mobile, but Amazon’s new Kindle 2 wireless ebook reader has our attention; and it’s worth yours, too, if you’re a voracious reader.

The Kindle 2 has an improved E-Ink electronic paper display, more internal memory, better battery life and a new slimmed-down design.  Amazon has also increased the number of converted Kindle books to over 240,000.

Books and newspapers are downloaded over Sprint’s wireless network, the price of which is included in the book purchase price.  Want to read a book on the Kindle? Just purchase the title and have the complete text within a minute, without connecting to a PC.  

Unfortunately, the Kindle 2 has some downsides.  First, Amazon has removed the SD expansion card, although the reader does include more internal memory storage.  Also, the price decrease that many expected didn’t come – the Kindle 2 is still $359.

The new Kindle 2 reader is now shipping from Amazon.  We’ll post a review soon.

Targeting consumers who are looking for an entry-level DSLR with a lot of extras, Olympus announced the new E-620 digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera. The E-620 inherits quite a few in-camera shooting effects previously found on the $1,299.99 E-30 announced in November, but at a much lower price. Some of these creative features include easy-to-use Art Filters and Multiple Exposure mode. With the creative Art Filters, you’ll get Pop Art, Soft Focus, Light Tone, Grainy Black & White, and Pin Hole modes.

Apple today announced the beta release of Safari 4.0, and it’s promising blazing fast browsing, for Mac or PC users.It has a new “Nitro Engine,” that Apple says executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and more than 3 times faster than Firefox 3. (Side note: Firefox is THAT much faster than IE7?) It also loads pages about 3 times faster than either browser, according to Apple.Other new features:• Top Sites: Safari 4.0 tracks your favorite sites based on your browsing history and

The Eee Top ET1602 builds upon Asus’ popular line of Eee-branded products by introducing an all-in-one desktop form factor, complete with a 15.6″ touch screen. Like the Eee PC netbooks that preceded it, the Eee Top ET1602 is built around Intel’s low-power Atom platform, with the 945 GSE chipset. Other features include an integrated webcam and 802.11n Wi-Fi, 4W speakers with SRS Premium Sound enhancement, and a flash memory card reader. At about $599, the Eee Top ET1602 is relatively expensive considering its

Arizona State University (ASU) announced today that its Flexible Display Center (FDC) has created what it claims is the first flexible, touch-screen display. The prototype is a thin active-matrix display with grayscale support, laid out on a “flexible, glass-free substrate.” The display is capable of “real-time user input” via finger touch or stylus. “The breakthrough comes as a result of combining the Flexible Display Center’s low-temperature thin film transistor technology, DuPont Teijin Films’ high-performance

Vudu, a movie and TV show download service provider, has just given us yet another reason why we never need to leave the house. Vudu announced today that it is making high-definition (HD) downloaded titles available for purchase. A number of online movie and TV show sources, such as Apple, Amazon, CinemaNow, as well as Vudu, currently offer HD movie and TV show downloads as rentals, but this marks the first time that HD downloaded titles will be available for purchase.  Some of Vudu’s current, popular HD