No, it’s not a new console, but Sega is releasing a number of notebook PCs with interchangeable covers inspired by the company’s past. There are covers for the Sega Mega Driver (Genesis), Saturn, Dreamcast and just a regular blue Sega cover.

The notebook PCs are only being made available in Japan for now. There will also be four models with varying specs ranging from decent to really good. The premium PC will retail for 194,250 yen, or $2,094 USD. For that price, you’ll get the 64-bit version of Windows 8, an Intel Core i7, 120 GB SSD, 8 GB of RAM, and a Nvidia GeForce GT650M GPU.

The computers will also ship with custom Sega themes and system sound effects. Fans have probably already made a collection of retro Sega system sounds, but hey, these are official.

Check out all the skins below:

I’m saddened by the lack of a Master System skin. The red/black color scheme would look awesome on a notebook PC.

[h/t: Eurogamer]

The folks at the Edyge have come to the rescue with a completely honest review of the Paperchase Kraft Notebook. You’ll marvel at its glorious display and abundance of free apps. It’s no wonder Sonny Ericksen likes it so much.

Well, I’m sold.

[h/t: Reddit]

According to NPD’s Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report, tablets – most notably the iPad – will account for an ever-increasing percentage of mobile computing sales over the next few years. By 2016, tablet sales are expected to surpass notebook sales for the first time, with the margin between the two increasing again in 2017.

According to NPD’s data, 208 million notebooks will be sold in 2012, compared to 121 million tablets (most of them iPads). By 2017, they expect notebook sales to clime to 393 million, whereas tablets will grow to 416 million. A key factor in the growth of tablet sales, they say, are mature markets like the North America, Japan, and Western Europe, where notebook penetration is high but tablet penetration is significantly lower.

NPD also predicted that the line between tablets and notebooks will become fuzzier over the next few years. In a trend that has already begun with some of the most recent models (including the MacBook Air), notebooks are trending sharply toward thinner, lighter form factors, SSD drives, and other features that increase portability and ease of use. Meanwhile tablets – which already pretty much have the portability and ease of use thing down – are trending toward the use of more powerful hardware and gaining more robust productivity capabilities.

Bill Slawski reported on the new Google Notebook patents; highlighting the points in the 3rd patent (Presenting Search Result Information) that refer to potential ties between Google Notebook content and Google’s ranking algorithm.

Back in May 2006, when I first blogged about the Google Notebook launch, I quietly wondered whether the search engine giant would use the service to help determine its rankings. Given its blend of bookmarking and online notation, its content is prime for adding a social element to the ranking algorithm.

Given the lack of buzz around Google Notebook since its launch, I presumed that Google was focusing on other social services to help improve the relevance of its search results. It appears that Google has other plans. Below are a couple of the excerpts from the patents:

Excerpt 1:
"Furthermore, the higher ranking can be based on an analysis of the contents of the web notebooks 118. For example, a web site matching a title, heading, user-annotation, metadata or clipped content from a web notebook 118 can receive a higher ranking than one that matched no web notebooks."

Excerpt 2:
"The web notebook-based ranker 404 uses the content of web notebooks to determine ranking. Web notebook content can include titles or headings in the web notebooks, snippets that have been clipped into the web notebooks, user-supplied annotations or user-supplied free-form text, metadata associated with web notebooks (e.g., metadata that identifies a corresponding search request, a time/date stamp, or other information related to a snippet, annotation, heading, title, etc.), and other information stored in the web notebooks."

From patent filing to execution can be a long time, but it’s a take on the socialization of Google’s search results that seems a logical fit. It’ll be interesting to see how Google prevents the spamming and gaming of Google Notebook, that’s inherent in similar social media services that impact SEO.

For more information on the patents and their ranking impact visit:

Bill Slawski’s Post:

Might Google Notebooks Influence Web Rankings?

The Patents:
Web Notebook Tools
Managing and Accessing Data in Web Notebooks
Presenting Search Result Information

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It took a couple of years for PreFound to get its hyperlink patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office. Once they got the patent, it became part of what has been nearly a year-long discussion with Google over the engineering work both companies do.

PreFound CEO Steve Mansfield told WebProNews in a phone interview that they and Google seemed to be doing similar things, among them work related to PreFound’s recent hyperlinking patent. He believes Google Notebook in particular infringes the newly granted patent.

Though Google and PreFound have been talking productively, Mansfield said that prior to their legal action, "the feeling was there wasn’t going to be any more talking." Since the filing, the two sides have been making greater progress in their discussions, and Mansfield said he is "very optimistic" they and Google can reach an accord.

PreFound sued Google over the patent the same day it was issued, Steve Bryant said at eWeek’s Google Watch. The patent covers "Method for adding a user selectable function to a hyperlink," and affects what happens when a cursor is held over a hyperlink for a given period of time. From the abstract (bullets added):

Examples of link enhancement include, but are not limited to,

• opening the selected link in a new window;
• opening the selected link in a new window with that window minimized;
• creating a clickable graphic/text string, and/or icon that would enable the user to return to the selected link at a later time;
• or anchor the current page by creating an icon or other clickable item that would return the user to the current page;
• or view off-line which would, in the background download the files associated with the selected link to a memory device for viewing later off-line.

According to Mansfield, there is more to the patent than what is available by simply right-clicking a link for a menu of options. If the functionality is intrinsic to Google Notebook, that would seem to prove him correct.

Xiangtian Dai, a software engineer at Google, announced the step forward.  “We have German, Polish, Turkish – to name a few – and of course Chinese,” he wrote.  “Rest assured . . . that just because your language isn’t one of the first doesn’t mean that we have forgotten you.”  And everyone – even those of us who can only converse in English – should benefit from the new interface, which Dai describes as “much smoother to use than it was.”

Of course, Googlers may not be the most objective people when it comes to reviewing Google’s products, so it wouldn’t be surprising if Dai’s testimony failed to convince some readers.  But he (sort of) has Garett Rogers’ support.

“[I]t has been nicely polished and finally looks like a finished product,” Rogers acknowledged on Googling Google.

“[I]t looks like something I could potentially find a use for,” he continued later in the post, “but I’m still not rushing to start using it on a regular basis.”  Considering how many Google products fail outright, that still qualifies as comparatively high praise.

So if you’re a fan of Google Notebooks, rejoice, because it just got even better.  If you’re not among the faithful, the newest upgrades probably won’t be enough to convert you.  But Google’s trying, and as it does, the company is making more of an effort to reach a global audience.

Google Notebook is now integrating with Google Docs, letting you one-click export your entire notebook. Considering that Google is slowly acknowledging it is releasing too many products, and that Yahoo has received criticism for having multiple products with the same function, I could see Google closing Google Notebook eventually. Wouldn’t Notebook serve more of Google’s purposes as a plugin for Google Docs, then as a seperate product? Probably.

You can now send Twitter updates from Google Talk, by sending messages to twitter@twitter.com. Frankly, it doesn’t work, since it created a new Twitter account for me, instead of letting me post to my regular Twitter account. I’ll stick with posting through the Twitter Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget. Speaking of which, add me as a friend if you are on Twitter.

Valleywag wonders if Dodgeball is now completely over with Twitter gaining steam. Yeah, probably.

Google has effectively closed the Google Video Blog, telling readers to start relying on the YouTube blog. That’s a shame, since they found some pretty interesting videos, and the YouTube blog ignores Google Video and isn’t updated as often.

Here’s a real shame: Google hasn’t updated Google Trends since November. I liked Google Trends, even if it had many limitations, and I’d hate to see it so neglected. They neglected Google Images for awhile once, and it met with a lot of criticism. I don’t think Google Trends ever had that many loyal users, but it presented a useful peek into the thoughts of the Google-using public.

UPDATE: Oh, and Google Finance now has videos on the front page full of financial news, all from Google Video.

UPDATE 2: Google Finance also added data on extended hours trading. Good for them.

Comments

The Google Labs project called Notebook delivered a compelling way to keep track of things observed online. Browser extensions for Firefox and Internet Explorer open a small window where content can be added and shared online.

Notebooks can be set to private, but that would not be very much fun for us. For those public notebooks, Google has set up a Notebook search that queries through them just like a typical Google search.

Without knowing how many Notebooks have been set to private, it isn’t possible to tell just how greatly the market has embraced the service. If you go by public Notebooks, it looks like the service has not reached anything near the critical mass of Google search.

But it is a resource and resources are always worth a look to see what others have noted as interesting. Those items could contain a useful nugget of information that may not turn up in other searches. There’s also the usual curiosity factor involved.

Under a query for search engine marketing, 271 results come back. Some users have created Notebooks as collections of articles about SEM, while others made Notebooks about themselves.

Sometimes a result brings back a familiar name. Aaron Wall’s Notebook has references to his SEObook.com and Threadwatch sites, as well as interests in Seth Godin’s marketing ideas and Noam Chomsky’s politics.

The query for search engine optimization brings back about half the results of the SEM query, with many of the same results repeated there.

Searching for marketing delivered more results, including one public Notebook that collected a number of innovative advertising approaches appearing on multiple blogs into one Notebook.

More general queries into currently popular topics, like the PS3 and Nintendo Wii gaming consoles, only returned a few dozen responses each. Scanning a few of those entries did not show anything posted after each console launched.

As useful as Google Notebook can be, it may have been a too-late entry to a market where social bookmarking solutions like Delicious and a slew of others, with features like user comments, sharing, and tagging dominate the scene.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

So far, contributions have been constructive and civil. Only exceptions so far have been from wiki vendors plugging or trolling (which is suprising given how they should, in theory, know the tool).

Today Ryan Singer started to share his Reporter’s Notebook, so editors could source copy from his interview with Ward Cunningham. We also split the Comments page with a Discussion page.

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Ross Mayfield is CEO and co-founder of Socialtext, an emerging provider of Enterprise Social Software that dramatically increases group productivity and develops a group memory.

He also writes Ross Mayfield’s Weblog which focuses on markets, technology and musings.

What can you expect from the service?

* Clip useful information.

You can add clippings of text, images and links from web pages to your Google Notebook without ever leaving your browser window.

* Organize your notes.

You can create multiple notebooks, divide them into sections, and drag-and-drop your notes to stay organized.

* Get access from anywhere.

You can access your Google Notebooks from any computer by using your Google Accounts login.

* Publish your notebook.

You can share your Google Notebook with the world by making it public.

Via ZDNet.

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.