- Qualcomm Launches Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 Mobile Platform
- AMD Launches Ryzen PRO 7000 Series Mobile & Desktop Platform
- Intel Launches Sleek Single-Slot Arc Pro A60 Workstation Graphics Card
- NVIDIA Announces Latest Ada Lovelace Additions: GeForce RTX 4060 Ti & RTX 4060
- Maxon Redshift With AMD Radeon GPU Rendering Support Now Available
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Hewlett-Packard Sues Acer Over PC Patents
Hewlett-Packard is taking Acer to court over Acer’s alleged infringement of five HP patents. The lawsuit was filed today in a court located in the Eastern District of Texas. More specifically, HP believes Acer infringed on patents ranging from DVD editing, power management, processing capabilities, clock switching, and other technologies from 1997 to 2003.
HP just got out of one courtroom and into another. I’m surprised to hear of the rapid growth for Acer, actually. I personally know of three people who’ve had horrible experiences with their notebooks. This is quite the roundabout way for HP to halt their progress though. Whatever works, I guess.
Source: Daily Tech
PayPal Asking E-mail Services To Block Messages
PayPal, the Internet-based money transfer system owned by eBay, is trying to persuade e-mail providers to block messages that lack digital signatures, which are aimed at cutting down on phishing scams, a company attorney said Tuesday.
Now, I am not a big fan of PayPal, but I give kudos to them for this motion. I am not sure why any provider would disagree to this unless they there are some repercussions I’m not aware of. It wouldn’t be only beneficial to those who would fall for such scams, but also to others who have to wade through them each day…
Source: Network World
Mario and Sonic Join Forces at the Olympic Games
SEGA Corporation and Nintendo Co. Ltd. today made a historical announcement that two of the biggest icons in the entertainment industry, Mario and Sonic, are joining forces to star in Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. Developed for the Wii video game system and the Nintendo DS system, this momentous agreement marks the first time these two renowned stars have appeared together in a game.
I’m not a big fan of the Olympics, or games based on the Olympics, but this is certainly a unique twist on things.
Source: DC Emu
US Is No Longer Tech King
The US is now ranked seventh in the body’s league table measuring the impact of technology on the development of nations. A deterioration of the political and regulatory environment in the US prompted the fall, the report said. The top spot went for the first time to Denmark, followed by Sweden.
The sad part isn’t the fact that they lost first place, it’s the fact they wound up in seventh!
Source: BBC News
Xbox Elite Won’t Replace Premium or Core
Microsoft has confirmed that the new, 120GB-enabled Xbox 360 Elite won’t replace the Core or Premium systems, with both still to be available in the future. “At the moment there are three models of 360. They are separate models, and the Elite will not influence the other models’ availability,” a spokesperson told our sister site, Eurogamer.net.
This is good news for all those people not willing to shell out $479 for a new Xbox 360. I am still confused as to why the Core system exists though.
Source: Games Industry
Smart Sunglasses
Here’s a candidate for the next big thing: A pair of glasses with lenses that can be transparent or dark, and in shades of yellow, green or purple, all basically at the push of a button. Chemists at the University of Washington in Seattle say they are developing ‘smart’ sunglasses that will let the wearer instantly change the color of their lenses to virtually any hue of the rainbow.
Now this is cool science! The sunglasses are powered by a watch battery and by turning the dial, it alters the voltage to affect the layers and change the color or transparency. Neat stuff.
Source: Network World
Intel Details Upcoming New Processor Generations
Marking the next step in Intel’s “tick-tock” product strategy and cadence to deliver a new process technology with an enhanced microarchitecture or entirely new microarchitecture every year, Intel Corporation will begin producing its next-generation Penryn family of processors in the second half of this year. These new processors benefit from enhancements to the Intel(R) Core(TM) microarchitecture and also Intel’s industry-leading 45nm Hi-k process technology with its hafnium-based high-K + metal gate transistor design, which results in higher performance and more energy-efficient processors.
Be sure to read our article regarding these announcements here.
Source: Intel Press Release
Liquid moved using light alone
Scientists have found a way to “bend” and direct liquid using only the force of light. The discovery could one day offer a new way to control the flow of fluids through extremely narrow channels in devices used for in biomedical analysis.
A team of US and French scientists used a laser to produce a surprisingly long and steady jet of liquid in two fluids. With one fluid sitting on top of the other, the jet – about 10 microns wide – extended from the fluid above into the one below in the direction of the beam. When the direction of the beam was reversed, it just pushed the liquid below upwards slightly.
It is the first time light has been used to affect the flow of a fluid in this way, the researchers believe.
Source: NewScientistTech
Teen Creates Nuclear Fusion In Basement
In the basement of his parents’ Oakland Township, Mich., home, tucked away in an area most aren’t privy to see, Thiago is exhausting his love of physics on a project that has taken him more than two years and 1,000 hours to research and build — a large, intricate machine that, on a small scale, creates nuclear fusion.
Nuclear fusion? Hah! I write reviews for a living. Top that one! On a serious note, this is amazing no matter how you look at it. If he’s this smart at 17, his future is career will be amazing.
Source: LJ World
Canada to Pass a Bill that Legalizes Wiretapping
The goal here is to pass a low that will allow government and law enforcement agencies to access private citizen information without a warrant. Bill C-416 makes it possible for scenarios such as controversial wiretapping. ISPs will also be required to give full customer information if needed.
Up until recently, it was easy to be a proud Canadian since the governments were not adopting ridiculous new laws like the US and others are doing. I’m sure it won’t take very long before we have the music industry going nuts up here as well. No matter where you live, privacy is a thing of the past.
Source: Daily Tech
Best Buy Acquires Speakeasy
Best Buy Co. Inc. said on Tuesday it would buy Speakeasy Inc., an independent broadband voice, data and IT services provider, for about $97 million to strengthen its small business technology portfolio. Best Buy, the top U.S. consumer electronics retail chain, expects to close the acquisition in the first quarter of fiscal 2008 and said the deal should not affect fiscal 2008 earnings.
I don’t recall ever hearing anything that bad about Speakeasy, but now that Best Buy owns them it probably won’t take very long.
Source: Reuters
Casino Royale Blu-ray Breaks 100,000 Unit Milestone
It’s official: Sony has announced that ‘Casino Royale’ on Blu-ray is the first high-def disc title to ship over 100,000 units. ‘Royale’ has been breaking records ever since its Blu-ray debut on March 13 — as we’ve previously reported, it was the first high-def disc to crack the top ten on Amazon’s overall DVD best sellers list, and it easily topped Nielsen VideoScan’s Blu-ray chart its first week out.
Thanks to this, Blu-ray is even surpassing the DVDs performance when it was first released. Sony has a reason to be proud of their format now, although I’d be interested in knowing how many HD-DVD copies were shipped as well.
Source: High-Def Digest
Vonage Responds to Verizon’s Victory
Vonage chief executive officer, Mike Snyder, stated the company was shocked at the market reaction to the trial loss. “For the market to react the way it did to the recent rulings shows an unfortunate lack of understanding of the judicial/appellate system, a lack of appreciation of Vonage’s resourcefulness, or, perhaps, both. Anyone who’s counting Vonage out is making a huge mistake.”
I don’t think much of the discredit people are showing towards Vonage is because of these lawsuits, but rather because of their supposed customer-base decline. Lawsuits are not helping either way.
Source: Daily Tech
Run Linux, Lose Warranty
Laura Breeden bought a new Compaq Presario C304NR notebook in January. She bought it because she wanted to get rid of Windows and all the malware that surrounds it and move to Linux, and her old laptop lacked the memory and power to run Ubuntu Edgy. The salespeople assured her that the C304NR was “Linux ready.” But they didn’t tell her that running Linux would void her warranty.
This is unbelievable. I could understand software related warranties, but to ruin your hardware warranty because of an OS is asinine. Linux is not going to have the ability to simply kill a keyboard. This is something you need to be prepared to deal with though, as it seems to be an "industry standard".
Source: Linux.com
Samsung Announces 64 GB Solid State Drive
The market for flash-based solid state disk drives which act as drop-in replacements for traditional hard drives used in mobile and portable devices is heating up: Samsung announced today that it plans to ship a 64 GB solid state drive in the second quarter of this year. The announcement comes on the heels of SanDisk announcing a 32 GB flash drive only a couple weeks ago, and Fujitsu announcing solid state drives as an option in selected LifeBook portable computers.
SSD is something to look forward to, but right now it’s just far too expensive and is not worth it unless you really have a specific reason for it. The more announcements like these though, they quicker prices will decrease. Hopefully anyway.
Source: Digital Trends
Can the Me-Too Tubes buy the zeitgeist?
Money can’t buy you love, said the Beatles, but maybe they didn’t anticipate the financial daisy-cutter bomb that is a 21st-century multinational. With the news that News Corp and NBC plan to build a rival to YouTube, it’s time to ask the big question: can big corporations buy the zeitgeist or will they inevitably screw up?
YouTube was first, so it’s going to be hard for anyone to even dream of competing. The bonuses with News Corp is that they intend to provide legal ad-supported shows for people to watch. If anything helps them succeed, it will be that.
Source: CNet Crave
No Code Changes Needed to Support Xbox 360 HDMI
In a question posed under Microsoft’s Developer Network, a user asked in the XNA Game Studio Express section if any code changes are required to support the HDMI output on the revised Xbox 360. Shawn Hargreaves, XNA Framework Developer at Microsoft, replied simply with “No changes required.â€
It’s good to know that no code changes will need to be made. This simply means that all content, past and present, will look good. The article also links to a few spy pictures of the new Elite version… it shouldn’t be long before we see both it and the 120GB hard drive for sale.
Source: Daily Tech
IBM Doubles CPU Cooling Capabilities With Simple Manufacturing Change
In its current form, the process is quite inefficient: IBM’s says that up to 40% of a CPU’s total thermal budget (i.e., the cooling capacity available to draw heat away from the core) is consumed by these particles. This inefficiency is made worse because the particles aren’t truly spread evenly throughout the paste. Instead, particles clump together, forming what IBM refers to as the “Magic Cross”, as shown below at Figure 1. This thickened area is a non-homogeneous mixture of paste and particles that dramatically worsens total cooling efficiency across the core.
We finally have a breakthrough worthy of getting excited over, because it’s potential of actually being implemented is high. I’ll let the article explain the method, but it’s a small change that could effectively double the cooling ability of the IHS. If this design is as good as IBM says it is, it would be very likely to see AMD and Intel jump on board quick.
Source: Ars Technica
Million Dollar Laptop
March 23, 2007 UK-based bespoke luxury goods creator Luvaglio has created the first million dollar laptop. That’s what the first of their luxury laptops will sell for. Full details of the laptop have not been released at this point, but it is known that it incorporates a 17″ widescreen LED lit screen with a specially designed anti-reflective glare coating for clear and brighter image, 128GB of Solid State Disk space and a slot loading Blue-Ray drive.
It has a 128GB Solid State Drive… no wonder it’s so freaking expensive!
Source: Giz Mag
Vista Selling Like Hotfixe… cakes!
Microsoft Corp. said Monday it sold 20 million consumer copies of the new Windows Vista operating system worldwide in February, but analysts said the data shed little light on the program’s popularity during its first month on the market. By comparison, Windows XP, Vista’s predecessor, sold 17 million copies in the two months following its 2001 launch, Microsoft said.
I admit it… I’m impressed to hear that it has sold so many copies. Approximately 12 – 15 million were thanks to pre-built PC’s, but that still means more than 5 million were sold to the regular consumer. Not a bad "start".
Source: Yahoo
Albums On The Way Out?
Last year, digital singles outsold plastic CD’s for the first time. So far this year, sales of digital songs have risen 54 percent, to roughly 189 million units, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan. Digital album sales are rising at a slightly faster pace, but buyers of digital music are purchasing singles over albums by a margin of 19 to 1.
Sadly, it’s hard to ignore the fact that CD sales are declining rapidly. Despite being a tech geek, I am impressed with how well digital music sells. I’m old school… I like to see my collection grow, and I still purchase a few CDs each month.
Source: NY Times
One Year With ATI X1000 Linux Support
A year later and what will be twelve driver releases with R500 support, how does the performance now compare? In this article we will be comparing several R500 parts to see how the performance stacks up using the latest driver.
I am an NVIDIA fanboi when it comes to Linux. I wouldn’t imagine using anything else simply because I have never ran into a serious issue with them. However, ATI seems to be rapidly improving, so it might not be too long before there is more rampant competition.
Source: Phoronix
Adobe Unleashes Creative Suite 3 Product Line
SAN JOSE, Calif. — March 27, 2007 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the Adobe(R) Creative Suite(R) 3 product line, a revolutionary offering of tightly integrated, industry-leading design and development tools for virtually every creative workflow. Adobe’s new Creative Suite 3 line-up unites the best of Adobe and Macromedia(R) product innovation to provide designers and developers with a broad spectrum of creative options for all facets of print, web, mobile, interactive, film, and video production.
Be sure to check out our preview!
Source: Adobe Press Release
OCZ Enhances their Flash Lineup with the Trifecta Card
Sunnyvale, CA—March 26, 2007—OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today released the most innovative Secure Digital(TM) memory solution on the market, the new OCZ Trifecta SD card series. This unique combination of microSD(TM), SD and a USB key in one unit creates a new way of sharing files between your mobile phone, MP3 player, digital camera, and PC.
Source: OCZ Press Release
Intel To Build 300mm Wafer Fabrication Facility In China
BEIJING, March 26, 2007 – Intel Corporation today announced plans to build a 300-millimeter (mm) wafer fabrication facility (fab) in the coastal Northeast China city of Dalian in Liaoning Province. The $2.5 billion investment for the factory designated Fab 68 will become Intel’s first wafer fab in Asia and adds significant investment to Intel’s existing operations in China.
Source: Intel Press Release