Toshiba has hinted this week that it may be leaving the LCD production business, a way to curb ever-increasing losses.
Corporate senior executive VP Fumio Muraoka says the strong yen, steep price declines in the units, and shrinking demand may lead to Toshiba needing to leave the business.
Toshiba Mobile Display posted an operating loss of $211 million USD for the months of April to December 2009, which followed losses of $180 million and $110 million for the division for the same periods in 2008 and 2007.
The division used to be a partnership with Panasonic but Toshiba bought out the entire stake in March.
Result for: exec
According to Microsoft marketing executive James Halton, XBL users will soon have access to Facebook and Twitter via their Xbox 360s “before Christmas,” in line with expectations.
“A lot of the background work’s been done for a lot of the applications that are coming,” says Halton, via Eurogamer. “It will be before Christmas.”
The exec did rule out that the services could be integrated into the upcoming August dashboard update, but said they would be available afterwards, and separately.
The functionality was first showed off at the E3 event earlier this year.
Says GI.biz, “the services will enable users to link Xbox Live friends with their Facebook profiles, share photos ad status updates and capture in-game moments to upload instantly to a Facebook application.”
Result for: exec
Apple has introduced the updated Safari 4 browser today, taking it out of public beta.
A few of the new additions, taken from the full updates page are as follows:
Full-Page Zoom
Zoom in or out on web content using keyboard shortcuts, Multi-Touch gestures, or the Zoom toolbar button for more comfortable reading. Images and graphics scale up while your text remains razor sharp, keeping the web page layout consistent as you zoom. To add the Zoom button to your toolbar, simply choose Customize toolbar from the View menu and drag the button onto your toolbar.
Speculative Loading
Safari loads the documents, scripts, and style information required to view a web page ahead of time, so they’re ready when you need them.
Nitro JavaScript Engine
Safari 4 introduces the Nitro JavaScript engine, an advanced bytecode JavaScript engine that makes web browsing even faster. In fact, Safari 4 executes JavaScript up to 6 times faster than Internet Explorer 8 and up to 4 times faster than Firefox 3.1.
Cover Flow
Using Cover Flow, you can flip through websites as easily as you flip through album art in iTunes. Cover Flow displays your bookmarks and history as large graphical previews, so you can pick out a website instantly.
[More]>>
