Crave

Netbooks continue to soar in sales at the expense of the venerable notebook, according to a new report from DisplaySearch.

Revenues for Netbooks, or mini-notebooks, rose to $3 billion in the second quarter of the year, a leap of 264 percent over the second quarter of 2008, according to the new "Quarterly Notebook PC Shipment and Forecast Report" released Thursday. With those gains, Netbooks now enjoy an 11.7 percent share of the portable PC market.

(Credit: DisplaySearch)

Though traditional notebooks still command an 89 percent slice of the market, their second quarter sales fell to $23.2 billion, a 14 percent decline from the second quarter of 2008.

Measuring 2009's second quarter against the prior year's quarter, sales fell in all subcategories of the portable PC market, including ultraportables and desktop replacements, the report noted. PCs in the 13-inch to 16-inch range managed to eke out a gain, but only measured against the first quarter of 2009.

The low prices of Netbooks appeal to consumers looking for a second PC and to those in emerging markets who don't need the rich and costly features of a large laptop. The market has also been buoyed by cable and telecommunications providers who have doled out Netbooks to customers who sign up for lengthy contracts.

Google made two significant enhancements to Google.com on mobile phones Wednesday.

The first, history sync, now makes it possible to carry over a record of your search queries when you switch between mobile and desktop versions of Google.com. Dubbed "Personalized Suggest," Google will now remember your searches and will add them into the list of search suggestions you see as you type into the search bar. The new feature saves you from browsing through your history to repeat a query.

Of course, you do have to be logged in to Google for this to work, and you've got to have Web History switched on. Enable it on a phone by selecting "save searches" in the Settings menu on Google.com. At launch, the feature is only available in the U.S. on Android, iPhone, and Palm WebOS phones.

Google Local on mobile.

(Credit: Google)

The second addition today similarly gets the mobile and desktop versions of Google.com talking to one another. Google has redesigned local search to make finding places of interest while on the mobile Google site much more finger-friendly. Click or tap "Local" on the mobile browser and you'll see a Start screen with categories you can browse to find restaurants and other businesses nearby, similar to what you can do on Google Maps. You'll need to have the My Location feature enabled.

There's also a category for viewing the points of interest that you starred as favorites on a Google Map. Starring essentially bookmarks the location's Google Place page. Bookmarking isn't anything new, but the browsable layout is relatively new to Google, which generally favors bare links to graphical enhancements. This treatment has the mobile Google site looking like a mobile hot-spot-finding app you might find in an on-phone app store. We have to say, it's a nice change.

The rejiggered Local Search kicks off in the U.S. and China, with support for more regions in the works.

Energized by their widespread use in cell phones, worldwide sales of OLED displays hit a record high of $192 million for the second quarter of the year, according to a report released this week by DisplaySearch.

Second-quarter sales of OLED displays rose 22 percent over the same period last year, and 32 percent over the first quarter of 2009, noted DisplaySearch's latest "Quarterly OLED Shipment and Forecast Report," which came out Monday.

The report said that shipments of AMOLED displays were especially strong thanks to their use in mobile phones, with more than 15 different AMOLED cell phone models released in 2009.

AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) screens use less energy than PMOLED (passive-matrix) displays, making them better-suited for portable devices such as phones and MP3 players.

"AMOLED displays have become an important differentiating feature for high-end electronic products," said Jennifer Colegrove, DisplaySearch director of display technologies, in a statement. "This technology is not only used for mobile phone main displays, but has also penetrated the market for portable media players, digital still cameras, and other applications."

(Credit: DisplaySearch)

Making OLED TVs has been a costly, time-consuming challenge for most manufacturers. Despite demonstrations of flashy new products from several companies, Sony remains the only firm with an OLED TV on the shelves.

Bing's Top iPhone Apps gallery offers a unique way to browse and search apps. But only 500 of them.

There's a new way to search for iPhone apps, and it comes from the unlikeliest of sources: Microsoft.

The new Bing Visual Search engine, announced yesterday, includes a special gallery section that spotlights iPhone apps.

The Silverlight-powered collection definitely lives up to its "visual search" name, relying solely on oversize application icons. When you mouse over one, its name appears in the search field with a brief description below: developer, price, category, rank, and release date.

A click of that same icon produces Bing's standard Web-search results. What you don't get anywhere is a link to the app's App Store page. That's kind of a bummer.

On the other hand, Bing's search filters are really cool. You can look at the full collection of apps (about 500 altogether), the top 10 freebies, the top 10 paid, the newest, the most expensive, and so on.

Within each of those views, you can sort the listings by popularity, price, release date, and name. (Say, Apple: Why can't iTunes do that?)

Meanwhile, Bing also lets you narrow the search by category, price, and even publisher. So, for example, if you want to quickly cull the photography apps from any given batch, just click Category and choose Photography from the fly-out menu.

Bing's presentation is very slick, with icons that drop out and fly around as you modify your search preferences. It's really a fun way to browse and search.

However, with just 500 apps on display, you're getting only a fraction of what's available in the App Store. Granted, these are the "top apps," not the whole library, but it's a little frustrating when you drill into the Business category and find only two items.

In any case, it's interesting to see Microsoft putting any kind of spotlight on the iPhone. And it would be more interesting still if this gallery ramped up to, say, 5,000 apps. Then it would be more than just a fun diversion; it would have some bona fide practical value.

How about it, Redmond?

Free data services? Now you're speaking my language, Garmin.

(Credit: Garmin)

We had our first peak at it when it was leaked by FCC documents back in July, but Garmin has just made the Nuvi 1690 official, clearing up the speculation around its newest connected PND. Here's the skinny:

The Nu Nuvi features a built-in cellular data connection, which allows it to access a service that Garmin has dubbed NuLink. The most interesting bit of news here is that the NuLink service will be free for the first two years of ownership, after which users will be given the option of discontinuing the NuLink service or paying a monthly service fee. At time of publication, we were unable to find out how much that service fee would be, but we'll update this post as soon as we know.

The Nuvi 1690 features a more curvaceous chassis and a smaller microSD card slot.

(Credit: Garmin)

Through NuLink, people will gain access to live traffic updates, weather data, and fuel prices, as well as movie times and airport flight statuses. Additionally, Google and White Pages searches will augment the Nuvi 1690's built-in points-of-interest database. The user can also push destination to the 1690 from a PC over the Internet and download Garmin alerts and updates through NuLink.

Social-networking buffs will be able to take advantage of Garmin's new Ciao position-aware social network that reports your location to the exisiting GyPsii and uLocate services and allows you to find and navigate to your friends.

The 1690 will also be packed with more practical features from the Nuvi lineup, including Bluetooth connectivity, a 4.3-inch color touch screen, text-to-speech, lane assist, and ecoRoutes. Interestingly, the SD card slot that we've come to expect from the Nuvi chassis has been downsized to a microSD slot. We'd prefer to keep the more robust full-size SD card, which stands up better to repeated insertions and removals.

The Nuvi 1690 should give the TomTom GO 740 Live a run for its money when it comes available later this year at an MSRP of $499.99.

Yes, yes. "Arvale: Journey of Illusion" was exactly what I was looking for...

(Credit: Eric Franklin/CNET)

Ever had trouble finding a particular app at the iPhone App Store? Who hasn't? A couple weeks ago I spent like 10 minutes trying to find a game a friend had just shown me. That may have had more to do with me being intoxicated and less about the App Store's search functionality, though.

Still, things may be improving. According to AppleInsider, Apple is now asking iPhone developers to enter 255 comma-separated characters as keywords to iTunes Connect to be used for search in the App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch.

iTunes Connect is the application that developers use to upload and submit their iPhone and iPod Touch apps to Apple.

Definitely a welcome change, and it can only improve sales, so I'm sure most developers will be taking advantage of it. I would not be surprised to see some developers exploit this, though, by entering popular keywords for apps that are completely unrelated just for the chance of added exposure.

Demand for Netbooks has been hot and is likely to get hotter, as sales of their big brother, notebooks, are set to remain steady this year.

Netbooks are projected to grab a 20 percent share of the worldwide market for 2009, according to a report released Monday by researcher DisplaySearch, an NPD Group subsidiary. Consumers are expected to scoop up almost 33 million Netbooks this year, marking a sales gain of close to 100 percent from last year's 16 million.

But notebook sales are set to be flat this year, with 129 million units shipping, virtually the same as in 2008, according to DisplaySearch's Quarterly Notebook PC Shipment and Forecast Report. This would make the first year ever that the notebook market showed no sales growth. DisplaySearch defines notebooks as laptop computers with screens measuring 12.1 inches or larger.

By region, this year's Netbook sales are forecast to jump 260 percent in China, 137 percent in North America, and 88 percent in Latin America.

(Credit: DisplaySearch)

The affordability of Netbooks, which typically have fewer features and are less powerful than notebooks, has fostered their growth around the world, the report noted. Last year, 45 percent of Netbooks were shipped to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), winning a larger market share over notebooks.

The availability of Netbooks has also boosted sales, DisplaySearch said. Telecommunications providers such as AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon Communications have marketed low-cost, subsidized Netbooks to their customers.

The notebook market itself has been hurt by reduced IT spending, stalling purchases on new units. If Windows 7 takes off at the same time the economy revives, notebook demand among enterprises could shoot up next year.

Notebooks also have carved out a large chunk of the global portable PC market, and they are not being replaced by Netbooks at this point.

"It is clear that buyers want a lightweight device but that they also want a bigger display," said John F. Jacobs, director of notebook market research at DisplaySearch and author of the report. "While (Netbooks) have certainly created a new market, our research indicates that they are predominantly used as secondary PCs by consumers and are not replacing notebooks."

Check out the full review of the TomTom GO 740 Live.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET)

When we spoke with TomTom's representatives concerning the new GO 740 Live, the navigation device was described as offering a "God's-eye view" of the road. Now, the GO isn't omniscient, but it puts a good deal of information at the driver's fingertips with realtime traffic data, weather forecasts, live fuel pricing, and Local Search powered by Google.

Additionally, TomTom Map Share is a user-generated map correction system that allows for map data to be updated more frequently, while IQ Routes looks at historical speed data to calculate the fastest route from point to point. Bluetooth handsfree calling and voice command help drivers to keep both hands on the wheel as much as possible.

However, our experience with the GO 740 Live wasn't a perfect one. The experience was marred by sluggish routing and an interface that is less intuitive than the competition's. Overall, we found that the GO's pros outweigh the cons by a landslide, and we're happy to award the TomTom GO 740 Live our prestigious Editors' Choice.

Check out our full review of the TomTom GO 740 Live.