SlashGear Week in Review - Week 19 2011

Welcome to this week's edition of the SlashGear Week in Review. We had some interesting things going on in the tech world during the week. One of the interesting stories was the white iPhone and if it was thicker or not. Apple's Phil Schiller insists that the white iPhone is no thicker than the black one, but it does use a different sensor and camera design. The biggest news in the world this week was the fact that Osama Bin Laden was killed. One man unknowingly tweeted about the raid when it was going on mentioning a helicopter hovering, which wasn't usual.

Apple whipped out a new version of the iMac AIO computer this week. The machine gained Thunderbolt, Intel Sandy Bridge processors and FaceTime HD video chatting among other things. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 tablet got some hands on playtime this week and that hands on time landed on video. The new tablet is thinner than the iPad 2 and the smaller screen may make it better for users looking for portability.

We posted up our review of the Asus Eee Pad Transformer tablet this week. There is room for improvement, but we liked the Transformer very well. A geek has decided to permanently keep his Nintendo 3DS augmented reality card with him by having the card tattooed on his forearm. The tattoo shows his Mii when viewed using the 3DS camera.

We went hands on with the new iMac Tuesday. The unit we played with was the Core i5 version running at 3.10GHz, the full review will be coming at later date. One of the big complaints with some organizations for the blind with the iPad is that the tablet has no way for vision-impaired people to use it. A new concept for the iPad called iSense allows the tablet to use Braille.

An artist put a giant wall made from white LEGO bricks on display at the World Trade Center in Amsterdam. The wall took 270,000 LEGO bricks and about six weeks to build. Worked surfaced mid-week that the Aaron's rent to own store was installing software on their rented laptops that allows them to take photos of the people using the notebook webcam. The issue surfaced when a coupe that paid for a notebook at the store had manager show them a picture of them using the machine.

Mass Effect is one of my favorite video game franchises. We learned this week that Mass Effect 3 had been delayed until 2012. A cool and reasonably priced robot for education turned up this week using open source software and parts called POLYRO. The bot is intended to be extended with more features and costs about $2,000 to build.

Thursday, word surfaced that Best Buy had fired an employee for trying to stop a shoplifter. Best Buy policy is to let shoplifters leave and when he worker tired to restrain the thief, he was told to let the crook go. The Sony Ericsson XPERIA mini and mini pro smartphones went official this week. The smartphones will both hit stores in August.

A very cute and cool concept robotic vacuum system turned up late in the week. The concept is the Puppy Vacuum and it has a quartet of robot puppy vacuums that suck up dirt and then dump it into the momma dog where they also get charged. Insiders are claiming that Apple might be shedding the Intel processors in their machines in the future for ARM processors. Apple is said to be looking at mid-2013 for the change.

According to one data security experts, Sony knew the software it was using on the PSN was out of date. The allegation is that had the software been updated, the breach might not have happened. Jaguar announced Friday that it would be building a limited number of the cool hybrid powered supercars called the C-X75. The car will have a top speed of about 200mph and 800bhp.

As of today the PSN is still down for most users with Sony having found more issues. Sony is still saying that it is working to ensure the of the network. Thanks for reading this week's edition of the Week in Review!