If you’re still doubting the Zune HD’s gaming capabilities that was briefly showcased in a commercial of it, doubt no more as Microsoft themselves have indirectly admitted in their latest press release that the Zune HD will indeed be an app and gaming platform with the announcement of these upcoming apps: “Later this year, Zune plans to release free applications such as Twitter for Zune and Facebook for Zune, in addition to fun 3-D games such as “Project Gotham Racing: Ferrari Edition,”

Ross Rubin ( @rossrubin ) contributes Switched On , a column about consumer technology. For many celebrities, 2009 continues to be a year of endings, but at least two handset pioneers have pinned their hopes on rebirths this year. Following Palm’s return to its roots with a homegrown operating system earlier this year, Motorola has committed to a new smartphone direction with Android and its Blur social contact architecture.

Ross Rubin ( @rossrubin ) contributes Switched On , a column about consumer technology. read more

And with that, Google has released the SDK for Android 1.6, a.k.a. read more

From the outside, the new Lenovo T400s touch doesn’t look all that exciting — unless you’re the sort to get excited over ThinkPads, in which case you’re probably quite stoked that it looks exactly like the non-touch T400s . But it’s actually a pretty crazy product — it’s a regular laptop with a high-end four-finger capacitive touchscreen. Not a tablet, not a convertible, just a laptop. And a ThinkPad, so you’ve already got both a touchpad and a TrackPoint to get around.

And with that, Google has released the SDK for Android 1.6, a.k.a. “Donut.” Developers can go nuts over the fine-tunings of it, but the takeaway for the consumer is that it allows Android devices to run on CDMA and in different resolutions and screen sizes — should help to vary up the options currently available . Additionally, the update will add QuickSearch à la webOS for scavenging through contacts, apps, and the internet in one text field, as we saw back at Google I/O , a text-to-speech API with translation capabilities, and that revamped market we spied earlier this month.

So were poring through the Zune HD’s various manuals and documentation, like you do, and we noticed this little line in the A/V dock’s quick start guide: An HDMI cable (included) and a high-definition TV are required for high-definition viewing. read more

So were poring through the Zune HD’s various manuals and documentation, like you do, and we noticed this little line in the A/V dock’s quick start guide: An HDMI cable (included) and a high-definition TV are required for high-definition viewing. Zune HD and other touch-screen Zune players also work with the composite A/V cable (included). Now, that’s pretty interesting, since, you know, there aren’t any other touchscreen Zunes out there.

From the outside, the new Lenovo T400s touch doesn’t look all that exciting — unless you’re the sort to get excited over ThinkPads, in which case you’re probably quite stoked that it looks exactly like the non-touch T400s . But it’s actually a pretty crazy product — it’s a regular laptop with a high-end four-finger capacitive touchscreen. Not a tablet, not a convertible, just a laptop. And a ThinkPad, so you’ve already got both a touchpad and a TrackPoint to get around.

As content sites on the web mature, they continue to blur the line between straight news sites, social hubs, and references for structured data. No longer are these sites just home to editorial content — many of them have created databases of the products they cover (take for example TC sister site CrunchBase offers a comprehensive directory of companies and people in the startup community). Unfortunately, content management systems and databases that run these increasingly diversified sites don’t always play nicely together.