Courtesy of Gadget Lab from Wired.com

Apple's second-biggest event of the year, its Worldwide Developers Conference, is drawing near. That means it's time for the tech media's traditional heap of speculation and wishful thinking, hammered into the constraints of a numbered list. So with no further ado, here is Wired.com's list of the top events to expect at WWDC 2008, June 9-13 in San Francisco.

What's that you say? You'd like to go? Hope you already bought your tickets, because WWDC is already sold out. Fortunately, you can see the future right here on Gadget Lab.

Disclaimer: ninety percent of what is written below (or on any gadget blog) will turn out to be far from the mark or just plain wrong, but hey, if we don't make a guess, we won't get anything right.

1. 3G iPhone

We expect this one at least to come true. The stock of current iPhones has dried up. Even the Mothership has run out, and orders are being filled with by a combination of rationing (AT&T is limiting orders to one per customer) and recycling (AT&T is selling reconditioned handsets). The rumors are whirling around us like trailer park dogs in a twister, and seemingly every telco in the world is announcing deals with Apple, bringing the potential market of the iPhone to 500 million.

What to expect? Well, 3G is all but certain. GPS would be nice, although it isn't a standard part of the Infineon chip (pdf) expected to power the iPhone 2.0. The software we mostly know about because the SDK is out there in use and leaking new information almost daily. A proper camera is essential: The crappy 2 megapixel camera in the current iPhone is not much more than an afterthought; the new one should at least have video.

A month ago we asked you what you would like to see and you came up with some crackers: Radio (never), Bluetooth for headphones (maybe), MicroSD slot (yeah, right) and a real keyboard (never!)

Expect the 3G iPhone to become available right around June 15, which is when AT&T employees have been told not to take a vacation (presumably, to deal with the iPhone demand).

Likelihood: 10/10

2. Proper New MacBook Pro

Up until we broke the news of the MacBook Air (one day before it first slid from a manilla envelope), many people were predicting a new 12" MacBook Pro to replace the beloved 12" PowerBook of old. Apple refreshed the aging pro notebook line in February, but apart from some multi touch love under the hood, there wasn't much change. In fact, the MacBook Pro is almost exactly the same in looks as the original PowerBook G4, announced back in January 2001. It's time for a change.

We expect a big multi touch trackpad, the new chiclet-style keyboard, an almost bezel-less screen (which should bring the overall size down despite still having a 15" screen) and perhaps some 3G connectivity (Apple has so many deals with cellphone networks now that an international rollout of an always-on connection is feasible). We'll probably see a version without an optical drive, too, perhaps with a second hard drive filing the space. And after all the whining about the MacBook Air being a little wussy in its specs, it could be time for Apple to drive home a powerful, well endowed twelve-incher.

Likelihood: 8/10

3. Aluminum MacBook

This rumor has been drifting in the background for a while. If true, expect nothing more than a new case and a multi touch trackpad. White plastic used to be the marker that set the consumer goods apart from the pro gear, but ever since the iMac went all brushed aluminum and the iPod lost its iconic white case, that's no longer so.

Likelihood: 4/10

4. Internet Tablet

Steve Jobs said that Apple would never make a Tablet Mac. He also said there would never be a video iPod. A Kindle-sized iPod Touch would certainly be a great toy, but would anybody buy it? The iPod Touch is popular because it is a regular sized iPod with a slew of killer features, and people are used to the size. But a MacBook Touch would be a whole new product: too big to fit in a pocket and too small to do any real work (not to mention the lack of a real keyboard). But then, if anybody can take a flailing (read: all current tablet PCs) category and make it attractive, it's Apple. Remember the iPod?

Likelihood: 1/10

5. Touch Screen Nano
Why not? Ever since Apple got all touchy-feely with the iPhone, touch is showing up everywhere. We don't expect a full on mini iPod Touch, but an iPod of the current Nano's size which is all screen on one face is certainly possible. Apple could leave out email and Maps (and the Stocks application – who ever uses that apart from Jobs himself?), but Wi-Fi would be likely, if only for buying tracks from the iTunes Store.

Likelihood: 5/10

Anyone up for degree in blogging?

UiTM to start blogging courses

SHAH ALAM: Malaysians interested in blogging may soon be able to take up courses on the subject at Universiti Teknologi Mara.

Its vice-chancellor, Datuk Seri Prof Dr Ibrahim Abu Shah, said the university was ready to help prospective bloggers become more credible in their reporting.

He said blogging was different from traditional media, which required reporters to have academic qualifications.

"Anyone can become a blogger now," he told reporters after a seminar here yesterday.

But this did not mean bloggers could write about anything, as they first needed to master several aspects of writing, such as language, ethics and accuracy of reporting.
Ibrahim said he supported any proposal to offer courses on blogging and that it was the most suitable time to do so.

"We know bloggers are intelligent, but we want to help them be more professional."

Earlier in his speech, Ibrahim said the function of traditional media had changed with the arrival of new media, which he said focused more on the younger generation.

He added that people saw new media as an avenue through which they could express themselves and speak their minds.


**oh my, Singapore has started toilet degree, and now Malaysia has degree in blogging? Soon, we will have Indonesia having degree in............ "u think of anything u want"

Feeding your brain: new benefits found in chocolate

SAN FRANCISCO - As if people needed another excuse to like chocolate, new studies suggest a specially formulated type of cocoa may boost brain function and delay decline as people age, researchers said.

Scientists, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco, presented results from early studies testing the effects on the brain of flavanols, an ingredient found in cocoa.

Funded by candy maker Mars Inc., which provided a specially formulated liquid cocoa concoction for the research, the studies suggest that flavanols increase blood flow to the brain and may hold promise for treating some vascular impairments.

Mars, a private company, has made a study of the health benefits of cocoa. Its CocoaVia line of chocolates, made with a process that retains flavanols, have been shown in clinical trials to have benefits for the heart.

The latest research also suggests benefits for the brain.

Ian Macdonald of Britain's University of Nottingham Medical School, conducted a small brain imaging study on young, healthy women to see whether flavanol-rich cocoa helped boost cognitive function during challenging mental tasks.

Although the beverage did not improve their performance on the tests, it did increase blood flow to their brains for a two to three-hour period, Macdonald said.

He believes more research might show that increased blood flow could benefit older adults and those who have cognitive impairments, such as fatigue or even mini-strokes.

A US study of healthy adults over 50 also found a marked rise in blood flow. It was conducted by Harvard Medical School researcher Dr. Norman Hollenberg, who has studied the effects of cocoa and flavanols on Panama's Kuna Indian population.

Hollenberg believes that, while promising, the brain benefit needs to be verified.

"The only way we can prove something is working is a large clinical trial," he said.

Meanwhile, the researchers cautioned against rushing out to binge on the special Mars line of chocolates.

"It is a modest calorie load but it is a calorie load," Macdonald said. "As long as you are doing something to earn that 100 calories, then that's fine."

- REUTERS

*peAce*

Schoolgirls competing to be No.1 in sex game

A GROUP of female students in a secondary school in Johor Baru are said to be competing among themselves to be the one with the highest number of one-night stands, Nanyang Siang Pau reported.
Each of the 10 students in the group, aged between 13 and 15 years old, would fork out between RM50 and RM100 to be in the game.
The student with the highest number of sex partners within a month would get a “reward”, which ranged from between RM500 and RM1,000, said the report.
Usually, a student would need between 13 and 15 sex partners to claim the “reward”.
It was learnt that the school had expelled some students involved in the activity, but the report added that it was still going on.

p/s: coooL... :P

*peAce*

Internet porn a growing problem for players

Addiction to internet pornography is a growing problem among cash-rich Premiership players with time on their hands according to Peter Kay, the chief executive of the Sporting Chance clinic.


Sporting Chance has been assisting sportsmen and women with addictive illnesses since its foundation in 2000.
Kay revealed that while there have been high-profile cases of gambling, drink and drug problems among professional footballers, an increasing number are now switching on their laptops and accessing pornographic websites to fill their time between playing matches and training.
'When you start going into a porn site it leads on to other porn sites and then maybe more risky material,' Kay told BBC Radio Five Live.
'It must be stressed that if a 21-year-old is scanning a bit of porn and accessing pleasure from it, doing that once then that is not unusual and nor is it a problem.
'It becomes a problem when he is doing it 14, 15, 16 times and then when he stops, he is playing a football game and he is thinking `I can't wait to get back to that site'.'
Five Live also interviewed an unnamed Premiership player who admitted how he had fallen foul of internet sites offering thrills of one description or another.
'You can get hooked on anything, going on one site for two minutes isn't enough,' he said.
'You don't realise how much you're spending until you see it on your bill at the end of the month.
'On porn websites you have got advertisements for the porn and you end up spending more money on there. It's kind of like kids in a sweet shop.
'We finish at lunchtimes with our jobs and you can sit there for hours on end.'