Dell's plans for Alienware and the XPS line are getting a little clearer, even as rumors swirl -- a post on the company's Direct2Dell blog today says that the XPS and Alienware dev teams are going to be integrated, and that the XPS line will go in "new directions," hinted at by the m1330 and XPS One. Furthermore, you can now buy the Area-51 m9750 gaming laptop direct from the Dell website in addition to the Area-51 m15x, which doesn't seem all that wild to us -- we're more interested in why Dell picked the super-geeky XPS brand to be its "premium" line. Ever heard of friendly, guys?

[Via CNET]

Those of you dying to get your QWERTY on with RIM's hot new Blackberry Bold can start marking your calendars and stashing cash under the cushions -- release dates and pricing info have hit the tubes this morning. As expected, AT&T will get the Bold first in July for $300, while Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile customers will have to wait until September. Oddly, T-Mo subs will have to cough up an extra $50, which seems a little unfair. Of course, these aren't official dates and prices, so things are likely to change, but we'd say everything seems in the ballpark, wouldn't you?

Update: We got in touch with InfoSync World, where these numbers were published, and they told us that they were making estimates based on pre-release info. So nope, these aren't close to official -- but it's always fun to dream, right?

Getting power to disaster-affected areas is always a tough task, but Andrew Leinonen's undergrad industrial design thesis (and recent first place entry in the 2008 ACIDO Rocket Show) might be able to solve the problem in an efficient and clever way. Dubbed Solarial, the idea is to use small unmanned airships made out of materials embedded with CIGS solar cells to autonomously deliver clean power to disaster sites by deploying anchored "power boxes" that have 12 total 120V outlets and 2 240V sockets. Obviously this is just a concept, but it's a clever one -- let's hope someone with the cash to make it happen finds out about it.

We're not certain what's up with the sudden rash of news about EU- and EC-funded robotics research, but we're not going to turn down robotic kitchen assistance either, so say hello to the Cooperative Human Robot Interaction System (CHRIS) project, which aims to build a service robot capable of working safely with humans. According to the researchers, the plan is to "to develop the rules we need to introduce this level of sophistication into service robots who are working closely with people," and to that end they've already built several prototypes and started testing specific scenarios, like how a bot should react to accidentally splashing a human worker with hot soup, or how to read facial expressions and tones of voice. That's fine by us -- we're pretty certain an army of deathbots can't do too much damage with soup -- but let's make sure we leave the chopping to the people, k?

[Via Primidi]

Okay, this is pretty much for the crazy keyboard aficionados out there, but the crew over at Laptop says there's a distinct difference between the keyboards on the black and white Eee PC laptops. They compared the 'boards on a white 701, black 4G Surf, and white 900, and while the two white Eees had identical keys, the black unit featured different switches with deeper keypresses and more tactile feedback, smaller spaces between the keys, and rougher plastic. (Of course, if you actually use any keyboard for long enough, the plastic eventually wears smooth, so that's probably not an issue.) We doubt the difference is going to really sway anyone's purchasing decision -- the tiny Eee keyboard isn't exactly ideal for hardcore typists, after all -- but if you're looking for a tiebreaker between the black and white 700s, well, now you have one that will bore the pants off people at parties.

We've had a little love affair going on with storage vendor Mtron ever since we saw that "battleship" SSD RAID array, and it looks like the company is after our hearts once again, this time with the Pro 7500 series of SSDs, which it says are the fastest around. That's really only half-true -- while the 120MB/s write speed is definitely the fastest we've seen, the 130MB/s read speed is the same those Greenhouse DH-SSDGD drives we just saw a couple days ago. Still, that's mighty fast -- too bad these are probably going to be priced into the stratosphere like Mtron's other SSDs.

Chicago residents are no strangers to the city's many CCTV cameras by this point -- if anyone knows exactly how long to stop at Roosevelt and State to avoid the red-light cam there, you let us know, okay? -- but it looks like this summer is going to bring a new twist to the city's surveillance racket: automated camera monitoring. Video from the several thousand cameras in Chicago's Operation Virtual Shield project currently comes into the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communication's ops center, but starting this summer, it'll also be watched by an IBM-developed autonomous system that can be programmed to watch for specific activities or objects, like certain cars or unattended backpacks. Since the video is stored on a 60TB storage array for 30 days, law enforcement can also do retroactive searches using the tech. That's a huge step up from San Francisco's useless CCTV system, sure, but we've never really believed any of this stuff is actually effective at deterring crime -- hopefully we'll be proven wrong. Check out the full news vid at the read link.

[Via Boing Boing]

It's been a controversial decision, but it looks like the OLPC XO has completed its transition from revolutionary education project to just another tiny Windows laptop with a useless keyboard -- albeit one with a pleasantly whimsical design. Yep, it's official: Microsoft and OLPC just put out a joint press release saying that XP-loaded XOs will be available starting in August or September, with some countries to get the machines as soon as next month. Users will get all the regular functionality of XP -- it's basically the same build as on the Eee and other ultraportables -- but Microsoft's spent over a year developing specialized drivers for the XO's various features like e-book mode, the writing pad, and camera. (We're pretty certain that doesn't include mesh networking, but WiFi is supported.) XP is too big for the built-in 1GB flash chip, so it'll come preloaded on a 2GB SD card, leaving just about 1.5GB free total for apps and media. It seems like Microsoft is thrilled about this partnership, but it's a not going to make NickNeg's search for new vision at the top any easier. As for Sugar? You'll still be able to get it, but we have a sinking feeling about its future. Demo video after the break.

See, it's not all dour news in the wireless industry -- oft-overlooked carrier Alltel just announced that it added over 1M gross wireless customers in the first quarter, and that it's committed to LTE in the next three to five years. The LTE news isn't particularly surprising, since Alltel's got roaming agreements to maintain and both Verizon and AT&T are committed to LTE, but the company did specifically say that it was picking LTE over WiMAX. (Oh, and if you're keeping score, that pretty much puts the final, final nail in the coffin for Qualcomm's UMB -- good thing it's got those LTE-compatible chipsets in the works.) Alltel's actually growing pretty fast -- this is the second quarter in a row it's added over 1M gross customers, probably due to those sparkling call-quality survey results -- but we still have our doubts when the company claims it's "America's Largest Network." Should be interesting to see how this all shakes out as 4G gets built out, no?

Read - Alltel Q1 results [Warning: PDF link]
Read - Alltel commits to LTE

We've seen the Splashtop instant-on OS demoed on ASUS gear in the past, and now it looks like the company is making the love official: it's going to start shipping it on all its motherboards. ASUS is calling the platform "Express Gate," but it's the same instant-on, ready-to-browse environment we've known about since October: an embedded Linux distro that runs Firefox and Skype off a memory chip linked directly to the BIOS. You might want to hit that link and check out the screenshots, actually -- with ASUS set to ship over a million mobos a month with the feature, chances are it'll be on a machine near you relatively soon.

Although RSA's SecurID two-factor authentication system is pretty solid (except for when the keys go out of sync), it looks like organizations with even more stringent security requirements might be interested in UPEK's new Eikon To Go RSA key, which adds a fingerprint reader to the mix. Yep, nothing really too wild -- but it's definitely one of the cooler-looking SecurID keys we've seen out there.

We'll let you read the hed again -- nope, it's not a joke. Apparently millions of tiny swarming ants called "crazy raspberry ants" are causing quite a ruckus down in Houston after they accidentally arrived on board a cargo ship and started busily invading homes and offices, where they are attracted to electrical equipment. So far they've messed up sewage pumps, cause fire alarms to go haywire, destroyed computers, and taken out at least one gas meter -- and since they're resistant to over-the-counter ant killers and each colony has multiple queens, they're nearly impossible to kill. Worse, those that do die are used by the remaining ants as bridges over pesticide-treated areas. Yep, that's insanely creepy. Anyone in Houston got any horror stories to share?

[Thanks, David]

Microsoft is making some noise today about the Xbox 360's sales numbers -- it's the first of this generation of consoles to top 10M sales in the US. That's well ahead of the Wii, which stands at 8.8M, and the PS3, which has under half the 360's installed base at 4.1M units sold. Worldwide, the 360 is also doing quite well: Microsoft says it's moved 19M consoles total, and that 12 million people are signed up for Xbox Live. That's behind the Wii's global sales of 25M units, but Microsoft isn't exactly content with second place -- it's making a point to say that the 360 has the " largest global install base of any current gen, high definition gaming console." Take that, Mario. Meanwhile, the PS3s doing quite nicely for itself as well: in addition to outselling the 360 in both the US and Europe, Sony says worldwide sales were up an astounding 156 percent last year with a total of 9.2M units coming off shelves, and that it expects to sell another 10M consoles by March 2009. Looks like the console race is hitting the next level -- any bets on how things will shake out in a year?

[Via Joystiq]

Read - 360 sales
Read - PS3 sales

It was just yesterday that the official announcement of the Atom-based MSI Wind's pricing prompted us to wonder where ASUS's promised Atom Eee 900 was, and would you look at that -- here's the Eee 901, looking radiant in white. Of course, the major changes are internal, so the exterior looks pretty much the same -- apart from some extra buttons and the relocation of the power jack -- but it's good to know this thing is inching closer to release. Now if we could just get some benchmarks and pricing info, we'd be all set. Check the read link for tons more pics.

[Via jkkmobile]

We weren't too thrilled with the Touch Diamond's resistive touchscreen when we got a chance to play with HTC's new hotness, but if you're envious of that updated soft keyboard, you're in luck: the Diamond's ROMs have already been pulled apart and the .cab files are just a click away. Installation is said to be slow and you'll have to jump through some hoops to switch the default language from Italian, but things will eventually work out for you -- although we doubt anyone's going to be nearly as impressed as if you had a real Touch Diamond.

[Via MobilitySite]