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iPhone 3.0, holograms and the shed birthplace of Silicon Valley

Photos of the month - June 2009
By Natasha Lomas, Contributor
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1 of 15 Natasha Lomas/ZDNET

Photos of the month - June 2009

June saw plenty of activity on the hardware and software fronts - including a peek at prototypes of a new kind of mobile gadget that's a cross between a smartphone and a netbook, from Freescale. The chipmaker was showing off so-called 'smartbook' prototypes at the Computex show in Taiwan. The design pictured above is intended for vertical displays.

Click here to see more smartbook prototypes.

Photo credit: Freescale Semiconductor

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2 of 15 Natasha Lomas/ZDNET

This month, mobile maker Sony Ericsson announced two new handsets which it claims are manufactured in a more sustainable manner than the average phone. The devices will come with a smaller box to reduce packaging, shown here bearing the GreenHeart logo Sony Ericsson uses to distinguish the phones from their less green counterparts.

For more on this story click here.

Photo credit: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com

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From sustainable mobiles to feature-rich smartphones: June was also the month the Palm Pre arrived in the US. The much anticipated handset is expected on this side of the pond soon, however.

Click here for more Pre pics.

Photo credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET

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But the device launch that dominated June was the next iteration of Apple's iPhone - the iPhone 3G S, where S stands for speed as the handset sports a faster processor. Other improvements to the iPhone include cut and paste, and a better camera.

For more pictures of the iPhone 3G S in action, click here.

Photo credit: James Martin/CNET

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And for more on the main enhancements of version 3.0 of the iPhone OS - including the addition of parental controls (pictured) - click here.

Photo credit: CNET

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And if you're still hungry for mobile hardware, click here to check out our round up of 10 of the best smartphones on the market - or arriving soon - including the Android-powered HTC Hero (pictured) which is due to ship in Europe this month.

Photo credit: HTC

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From shiny new phones to a shiny new cabinet, as June saw PM Gordon Brown reshuffle his deck.

A number of new faces stepped up to the top table after several long-standing ministers made their exit. Pictured here is cabinet newbie defence secretary Bob Ainsworth - the man who, among other tasks, will take over responsibility for managing the £7.1bn Defence Information Infrastructure tech change programme.

Click here for more on the reshuffle and its implications for tech.

Photo credit: Ministry of Defence

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Alternatives to Google's search engine were explored in this June photo story, including Microsoft's latest search effort Bing, Twitter and others. Pictured here is Cooliris, a search engine designed for finding images and video.

Click here to see all the pretenders to Google's throne.

Image credit: Nick Heath/silicon.com

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From search engines to a web platform (via a web browser): Opera released the technical preview of Opera Unite last month, its application platform for turning your computer into a server from which you can share photos, files, notes, music and websites.

Click here for more screenshots.

Photo credit: Opera Software

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June also saw performers in the UK giving a show in the US thanks to 3D holograms beamed thousands of miles across the Atlantic.

Photo credit: Nick Heath/silicon.com

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But the most important tech event for silicon.com in June was the launch of the 2009 CIO50, our list of the 50 most influential CIOs in the UK.

Pictured here is the winner of this year's CIO50 list - Catherine Doran, director of corporate development at Network Rail.

Click here to view the silicon.com CIO50 2009 special report and here to see more pictures from the event.

Photo credit: Chris Beaumont/CBS Interactive

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12 of 15 Natasha Lomas/ZDNET

Intel Labs' researchers were also demonstrating some new technology at the Intel Research Day at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

silicon.com sister site CNET News.com went along to take a look - getting a peek at this wireless power transmission rig, running a speaker playing music. For more from Intel Labs click here.

Photo credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET

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silicon.com columnist Saritha Rai recently visited a giant training centre run by India's second-largest outsourcing company, Infosys Technologies, in Mysore, a three-hour drive from Bangalore.

The 336-acre expanse, with its capacity to train 14,000 people, is likely to be the largest dedicated corporate training centre in the world, with its own Domino's Pizza, the 24x7 library and official merchandise store.

Read our exclusive feature about the centre or click here for more pictures.

Photo credit: Saritha Rai/silicon.com

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Stockholm University's Mobile Life Centre is the focus of this photo story - a research lab where academics are working with tech industry players to cook up the next generation of mobile apps.

A project called Affective Health is shown here. The project explores how mobile phones could be combined with body sensors to help users identify stressful situations in their lives. It works in conjunction with Bluetooth-enabled monitoring devices (pictured above) which detect bio-data including sweat level (such as the devices wrapped around the subject's fingers in this case) and heart rate.

To see more photos from the centre, click here.

Photo credit: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com

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It may look just like a garden shed but this humble garage is the birthplace of Silicon Valley, according to the US National Register of Historic Places. It's also the place where David Packard and William Hewlett, with the encouragement of their former Stanford University professor, Fred Terman, set up their eponymous company - now known as HP.

See more from the shed here.

Photo credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET

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