Don't be surprised to see a couple of new Samsung Blu-ray players on the shelf at local or online retailers while shopping, as it's rolling out new 3D capable models in the BD-C5900, BD-C6800 and BD-C7900. The $399 (MSRP) BD-C7900 updates the older BD-C6900 with two HDMI outs, useful for those with an older receiver that isn't HDMI 1.4 compatible, while the $279 BD-C6800 seems to have all the features of the BD-C6900 except for that porthole on top, and comes in at a lower price. Last up is the BD-C5900 with an MSRP of $229 which puts it within reach of two bills at retail, but means losing the 1GB of internal storage featured by the other two players. The product pages aren't all fully updated on Samsung's site yet, but the BD-C5900 has already arrived at Amazon and Best Buy and the others shouldn't be far behind. Of course, if 3D's not your thing, we'd still keep an eye out for their arrival -- a price break on the older 2D-only models that were released earlier this year shouldn't be too far behind.

When we met with Finnish startup Aava Mobile today, they pulled out the same old prototype phone... then, to our great surprise, dropped a brand-new device right alongside to show us how their Moorestown-based ambitions have grown. This is the Virta 2 reference design, which will ship to developers soon, with the same basic hardware inside but a few important tweaks. First of all, you'll note that's MeeGo on this screen, not the droid we were looking for, but that's because the development kit can switch between operating systems by merely swapping out the microSD card.

Whereas the original prototype had a thin, flimsy shell, the Virta 2's gone downright rugged, ditching the iPhone chrome for a more durable gunmetal frame, and there's a full compliment of sensors (compass, accelerometer, ambient light and proximity) alongside quad-band radios, WiFi, Bluetooth and a pair of cameras for your video chat testing needs. At €1900 (roughly $2393) per unit, the dev handset isn't exactly cheap, but where else are you going to get an Atom Z600 to play around with? Devices ship late August or early September, and Aava expects the platform (but not this exact handset) to see commercial availability next year. Find preorders at our source link.

...or can they? In case Apple has somehow managed to perfect the art of selective disremembrance across a wide population, here's a refresher: Consumer Reports has thrown down the gauntlet, stating that it "can't recommend" the iPhone 4 until the antenna issues are fixed, issues that its labs and ours have verified quite substantially. Apple apparently isn't happy about that, and has taken to deleting threads about the Consumer Reports article from its support forums. Now, Apple deleting threads from its support forums is nothing new; outside of "regular" moderation, the company routinely deletes discussion of hardware flaws that it's not ready to 'fess up to, or just generally negative lines of thought about its products. Good thing the internet's a big place, and if Apple's not going to admit the antenna issue, there are plenty of ways to gripe about it. Feel free to express yourself in the comments below, for instance!

Lockheed Martin has announced that it's completed a critical design review for a system that enables submarine communication while below periscope depth. Part of the US Navy's Communications at Speed and Depth Program, buoys are launched by the sub, which can then connect nearby to military networks or satellites. The 40-inch long buoys can either be launched from the sub itself, shuttling data back and forth via miles-long cables, or dropped from aircraft. If the latter, communications is established using an acoustic messaging system similar to SONAR. Now that the review is complete, the team will begin producing hardware with an eye toward delivering engineering design models early next year. PR after the break.

You might expect a product with as much enterprise street cred as BlackBerry to offer the best lineup of options for dealing with a lost or stolen phone, but not quite -- devices in a controlled BES environment can be wiped from afar, but for non-enterprise consumers, the options are a little more limited. That's where RIM's new BlackBerry Protect software comes into play, combining a host of services into one product; on top of being able to remotely message, lock, and wipe a misplaced phone, you can locate it on a map and take regularly-scheduled wireless backups that make replacing the handset (if it comes to that) as painless as possible. It's going into an invite-only beta period later this week, after which it'll move to a wider-scale public beta "later this year" at no charge. Considering that MobileMe's similarly-styled features do less than this for $100 annually, the word "free" has an especially sweet ring to it, doesn't it?

Stuck on the Toshiba Portege R705's magnesium alloy palmrest is a shiny sticker celebrating the company's 25 years of "laptop innovation." Now, we're the first to hate on the plethora of decals that festoon Windows laptops these days -- and this one also deserves to be peeled off and tossed into the garbage -- but the sticker actually happens to speaks volumes about why the $800 R705 is such a big deal. We promise to keep the history lesson short, but for years the Portege series has been Toshiba's top-of-the-line ultraportable brand, featuring the latest CPUs while usually setting the standard for portability, and always been attached to seriously hefty price tags. Take the Portege R500, which was the worlds lightest laptop in 2007, and cost two grand.

The Portege R705, which is exclusive to Best Buy for now, changes that formula. And in celebration of the big two-five, Toshiba's put out a 3.2-pound, Core i3-powered stunner that's less than half the price of past Porteges. Oh, and did we mention it has an on-board optical drive, 500GB of storage, Intel's wireless display technology and promises 8.5 hours of battery life? We won't beat around the bush -- it's impressive. But did Toshiba maintain the same Portege standards when creating the R705, or did it cut quality along with the dollar signs? That's been our main question, and we'll answer it and others after the break in our full review.

The World Cup may have just ended, but whether you're into football or not, there must have been a point over the last five weeks where you or someone you know moaned about missing a live goal. This is where SlingBox comes in -- in case you didn't know already, it's a little networked box that piggybacks on your set-top box's AV and IR ports, thus stuffing your TV experience into your computer or cellphone via WiFi or even 3G. Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian, BlackBerry and iOS have been mingling with the SlingPlayer Mobile app for some time now, and for the same $29.99 tag, Android users can now also join the party. But is the app worth the money? Does it get on with our green bot? Read on to find out.

Early versions of the tools Windows Phone 7 developers will use to craft their wares have been floating around since Microsoft's MIX event in March, but it looks like things have finally gotten robust and feature-complete enough this week to bless the kit with a beta label. In fact, Microsoft is coming out and saying that this release "represents the near final version," which we take to mean you can develop with some confidence that your world won't be turned upside down when the time comes to prep your apps for shipping devices and firmwares. The actual API has been tweaked and Expression Blend is now fully integrated with the tools, though there are apparently still a few controls that aren't ready for primetime and will be added over the coming weeks. Oh, and if no emulator is enough to satisfy your intense cravings, you might be excited to learn that more developer devices are slated to ship next week -- so keep an eye on your mailbox and your porch if you signed up to get one.

It looks like Fring's recent decision to block Skype access to its iPhone 4 video app was the final straw for Skype, who charges that VoIP network was in breach of the Terms of Use and EULA for the Skype API. "Over time," writes General Counsel Robert Miller, "Fring's mis-use of our software was increasingly damaging our brand and reputation with our customers." Although they've "been talking with Fring for some time to try to resolve this amicably," Friday's action is being called "disappointing [for] our customers, who have high expectations of the Skype experience." He goes on to say that "Skype will rigorously protect our brand and reputation, and those developers that do not comply with our terms will be subject to legal enforcement." Meaning, presumably, that in the case of more Fring shenanigans there will be some sort of red-hot legal action. For its part, Fring CEO Avi Shechter had this to say: "We are disappointed that Skype, who once championed the cause of openness, is now attempting to muzzle competition, even to the detriment of its own users." Which is all well and good, but we can hardly see how Skype is the problem here when you were the ones who locked out its users in the first place.

Oh sure, you love gadgets -- but do you have the chops to write about them? We'd love to know if you think you do, because we're looking to actually pay people to do this stuff. Professional writing experience isn't necessary (though it doesn't hurt), but what we really care about is that you can write skillfully about gadgets with wit, concision, and authority. And being obsessed with Engadget is good, too. We're looking for an editor in the San Francisco area.

Want to apply? Read on.

Bringing broadband to everybody is certainly an admirable goal, but at least some US Senators are apparently starting to question if the new National Broadband Plan is ambitious enough. In written questions submitted to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski recently, Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI) pointed out that other nations already have 100Mbps fiber-based services and are beginning to roll out 1Gbps residential services, which would only be required for a "single anchor institution in each community by 2020" under the National Broadband Plan" -- something Inouye says "appears to suggest that the US should accept a 10- to 12-year lag behind the leading nations." That's a sentiment echoed by Senator Mark Begich (D-AK), who asked Genachowski why the plan settled for the minimum download speed of 4Mbps by 2020, and added that "it seems a bit modest for a goal." For his part, Genachowski insists that the 4Mbps targets are "aggressive," and he notes that the plan recommends reevaluating that target every year, so it's possible it could increase over time. Hit up the PDF link below for the complete Q&A.

Speaking at MobileBeat in San Francisco today, HP's Phil McKinney chatted up the company's flexible display tech, which uses rugged Mylar-infused sheets similar to those found in solar panels and can display video while still being bistable the same way E Ink is -- in other words, it'll hold an image without power. Thankfully, this seems to be more than a pipe dream sitting in a lab somewhere, because McKinney went on to say that "these are the kinds of display technologies that will change what we think of in form factors, both in products from Palm with flexible displays, and with HP." In other words, it's entirely within the realm of reason to imagine a bendy webOS device that gingerly sips battery juice -- or stops sipping it altogether -- while you're reading the morning news. We wouldn't expect it any time soon, of course, but it's encouraging to hear a conservative industry behemoth like HP start to talk like this. In the meantime, can we just get a new Pre, guys?

Although there's never been any question that there's something going on with the iPhone 4's fancy new antenna system, we really haven't seen any rigorous testing confirming that the issue is real, severe, and affects every phone. That just changed: Consumer Reports tested three iPhone 4s and several other AT&T phones in their RF isolation chamber that simulates varying levels of signal from every carrier, and found that the iPhone 4 was the only handset to suffer signal-loss issues. What's more, CR directly says that its findings call Apple's explanation of a miscalculated signal meter into question since the tests "indicate that AT&T's network might not be the primary suspect." CR found that simply putting duct tape over the bottom-left corner is enough to alleviate the issue -- we're guessing that's Jony Ive's worst nightmare -- and says that while the iPhone 4 has the "sharpest display and best video camera" of any phone its tested, it simply can't recommend the device until Apple comes up with a permanent and free fix to the antenna problem. Ouch.

Of course, we couldn't sit around waiting for someone else to test the iPhone 4 in a more controlled way, so we actually asked our good friend Erica Sadun from TUAW to write us a bespoke signal strength app for iOS 4. Obviously we couldn't submit it to the App Store, but we've been running it on all of our phones here at Engadget and we can independently confirm Consumer Reports' finding that there's a serious signal attenuation issue with the iPhone 4's antenna -- every phone we've tested displays dropped signal when held with the bottom left corner covered. Now, what we don't know is whether that signal attenuation consistently affects call quality and data rates, which we suspect is more directly related to the network in the area; some of our iPhone 4s drop calls and experience low data rates with alarming frequency, while others -- like our review unit -- have almost never dropped a call and have had no data problems. However, now that we've confirmed and clarified that the antenna issue affects every iPhone 4, we can take on the next step, which is sorting out exactly when and where the issue is most severe. Either that, or Apple can do something to actually fix the issue -- we'll just have to wait and see. For now, check our app in action after the break.

Update: To clarify, "here at Engadget" is a virtual location -- our iPhone 4s are actually located across the country in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, and we saw the app respond that way regardless of location. Dropped calls and other effects weren't as consistent, however, and we're still testing to sort out when the effects of the antenna issue are the most severe.

Computerized chess has been around for at least a few centuries now (okay, so maybe "score" is more accurate), but if you thought an IBM supercomputer dominating one of the planet's brightest humans was gnarly, have a gander at this. One determined modder has whipped up what may very well be the most impressive way to engage in online chess ever, as the DIY Internet Chess Table turns an on-screen opponent into an on-table opponent. Put simply (or as simply as possible), the multitouch table uses a projector to beam a chessboard onto an opaque surface, and moves are captured via webcam and sent back to an internet server. The human's moves are recognized and countered, and then that same human is told where to move the computer's piece via on-screen arrows. Trust us -- it's worth your while to hop on past the break and mash play for a video demonstration.

Update: To clarify, the table syncs up to play matches over freechess.org, but as far as your Feng Shui is concerned, it's still a single player in your room.

Timely, no? Just as the 2010 back-to-school season really gets rolling (and that dreaded Fall semester arrives to pester you to death), Barnes & Noble is looking to become your go-to place for eTextbooks, study tools and pretty much anything else in the related field. Up until now, there have been few all-encompassing eTextbook delivery method, and the options that are out there are generally poorly thought out, spartan or simply not marketed well. 'Course, B&N isn't coming right out and saying it, but why else would you create a comprehensive application suitable for Macs and PCs that not only puts digital textbooks into the hands of students for up to 40 percent less than conventional books, but also a full library of study aids, test prep guides, periodicals, and hundreds of thousands of trade and professional titles. Moreover, the app "provides students access to all of their materials -- eTextbooks, lecture notes, syllabi, slides, images, trade books and other course-related documents -- all in one place, so their digital library goes wherever they go." Oh, and did we mention that it also supports highlighting and notes, both of which are searchable? Yeah. Currently, Nook Study is being used in a smattering of universities, with an August rollout pegged for universal use. Lookout, used bookstore -- the end could be nigh.