On Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama will deliver his State of the Union speech, which will be broadcast live on YouTube’s CitizenTube channel as well as on The White House’s brand new iPhone app.

Google is stepping up its game, as it will also give YouTube users the opportunity to ask Obama some follow-up questions in video or text.

On Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET, during the live broadcast of the State of the Union on Citizentube, YouTube will be opening up a special Moderator series for citizens to submit their questions.

Evidently, President Obama will not be answering those questions live: the days following the speech, users will be able to submit additional questions and vote on their favorites.

Next week, although Google still has to communicate the exact timing, the top-voted questions will be asked to the president in a YouTube interview from the White House, which will also be broadcast live on Citizentube.

Read more on the YouTube blog and the White House blog.

We’re receiving word from multiple early-bird readers indicating that they’ve received the 4.2 update on their Zunes and that, now that they’re out of that nasty maintenance window, all is right with the world. That said, our tipsters are not spotting any major differences, and neither are we, certainly nothing as exciting as 4.3 brought to the Zune HD. What about you? Have you been granted access to 4.2 yet? If so, let us know in comments if you’ve found anything fresh and exciting. And, if you haven’t, feel free to discuss the weather — it sure has been a little crazy ’round these parts lately.

[Thanks, Brent R. and Bryan]

Zune 4.2 update released, what’s new? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 07:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’ve been a fan of Apple’s Mail.app for quite some time, even though we’ve had our ups and downs, it’s gotten the job done. One of my biggest beefs with Mail.app is searching through past emails. It’s just horrible.

Central Atomics is hoping to fix that problem with Rocketbox. Rocketbox is a new way of searching your e-mail in Apple Mail.app — it’s more advanced than Mail’s search, with the ability to search by person, a search engine that is up to 200x faster than Mail’s, and powerful filters that make it easy to find what you need.

One neat thing about Rocketbox is its search-by-person suggestions.  Rocketbox analyzes your e-mail correspondence and provides a list of important contacts when you search, so you know who you’ve emailed the most.

Also, Rocketbox will show you Inline previews, with highlighted snippets telling you why a message was found, making it easier to scan through emails. The highlighted section then helps you improve your queries and takes the guess work out of using search.

Rocketbox is extremely similar to Xobni, which is the Windows alternative, with a few more features like social network information, and contact information, etc.

Overall, Rocketbox is a great addition to Mail.app, and the entire search experience. You can get a 30 day trial, or buy the full version or $14.95, but the first 100 TechCrunch readers to use the code “TECHCRUNCH“ can get Rocketbox for $9.95, instead of the regular $14.95, when checking out.

Hot on the heels of its first quarterly profit in three years (thanks to Intel, strangely enough), AMD is launching a new pair of desktop processors today that hit for under a buck twenty (amongst a few others). The $99 Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition is the company’s quickest dual-core desktop CPU to date at 3.2GHz, while the Athlon II X4 635 is expected to be one of the least expensive quad-core chips around. Both slabs of silicon hit the test bench over the weekend, and as you may expect, no one was particularly blown away. Of course, AMD never set out to shock and awe with this duo, but the performance-per-dollar ratio was downright beautiful. We’ll spare you the nitty-gritty details (all the bar charts you can handle are just below), but suffice it to say, these two are certainly worth a look if you’re fixing to build a low-end, low-cost tower for… um, your mother. Yeah, her.

Read – Hot Hardware
Read – AnandTech
Read – Computer Shopper
Read – Tom’s Hardware
Read – Overclocker’s Club

AMD launches new Phenom II and Athlon II CPUs right onto the test bench originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s not the first N900 KIRF we’ve seen but it’s definitely the truest fake physical reproduction of Nokia’s flagship “mobile computer” to date. Not necessarily a good thing since its the raw power and OS that makes the N900 such a compelling handset — not its looks. Nevertheless, the industrial design, port placements, and QWERTY layout of this “N900 Style” handset is a near exact physical knock-off of its Nokia inspiration. Critically absent is Maemo 5 riding an ARM Cortex A8 processor, 32GB of integrated storage, WiFi, 3G data radio, Carl Zeiss optics, and the peace of mind you get when purchasing a genuine Nokia handset. Besides, even with dual-SIM support, do you really want to spend $120 for a JAVA-built S60 5th-ish user experience on a 3.2-inch display pushing 240 x 320 pixels? Oh hell no. One more shot after the break if you’re feeling surly.

[Thanks, Drew]

Continue reading Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLII: Nokia N900 commits S60 5th fraud

Keepin’ it real fake, part CCLII: Nokia N900 commits S60 5th fraud originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 04:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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