a 3.7-inch screen and runs the latest version of Google’s Android operating system. It is just 11.5 millimeters thin, or about the thickness of a No. 2 pencil, and weighs 130 grams, or no more than a small Swiss Army knife, said Erick Tseng, a senior product manager. It has a 5-megapixel camera and an LED flash and can shoot both still images and video
A camera you can wear as a pendant to record every moment of your life will soon be launched by a UK-based firm.
Originally invented to help jog the memories of people with Alzheimer's disease, it might one day be used by consumers to create "lifelogs" that archive their entire lives.
Worn on a cord around the neck, the camera takes pictures automatically as often as once every 30 seconds. It also uses an accelerometer and light sensors to snap an image when a person enters a new environment, and an infrared sensor to take one when it detects the body heat of a person in front of the wearer. It can fit 30,000 images onto its 1-gigabyte memory.
We now have an update: Facebook has 30,000 servers supporting its operations. That number comes from Jeff Rothschild, the vice president of technology at Facebook, who discussed the company’s infrastructure in a presentation last week at UC San Diego (link via High Scalability).
That is way more than I had ever thought. Can't believe how big Facebook is.
We’d like to share several freeware and open source tools available for download to help you harness the power of multi-display set ups and get you up and running quickly. We hope that you might find the perfect application for you!
For those of you unfamiliar with the problem of file fragmentation, a quick—and quite simplified—primer is in order. Files are stored on a hard drive in blocks of data. The larger the file, the larger the number of blocks it is composed of. As your operating system accesses files, moves files around, and so on data blocks are not always arranged in the most effective manner. Imagine it like a messy office where as you opened file folders from your file cabinet you frequently placed documents from inside all over the room. You have a great memory, and you can find all the pages from each folder again if you need to, but you waste a lot of time just moving around looking for them.
Fix It is a relative new way of solving problems that occur in the Windows operating system. These fix it solutions are basically one-click solutions for fixing problems. The Fix It logo will signal to the user that an automated solution is available. It usually consists of a file that has to be downloaded to the local computer system and executed from there.
The front includes a 3.3-inch capacitive OLED touch-screen display covered with glass, and a single home button beneath it that behaves just like a normal button and doesn't replicate any of the Zune Pad functionality of previous models. The top edge includes a power button that also triggers the lock screen, the left edge has an iPhone-like volume rocker, and the bottom carries the headphone jack and Zune dock. For all you sound nerds out there, the Zune HD's DAC is the same Wolfson one used on previous models--which is good news in my book.
Take Intel's venerable 8086 for example -- you might know it better as "x86". Released in 1979, just a decade after Apollo 11's trip to the Moon, the 8086's cousin, the 8088, formed the basis for the IBM PC we all know and love. When the IBM PC "XT" was released in 1981, the lowest end configuration had 8 times more memory than Apollo's Guidance Computer -- 16k, vs the Apollo's 2k. The read-only storage of the AGC was 32k,
The IBM PC XT also ran at a dizzying clock speed of 4.077MHz. That's 0.004077 GHz. The Apollo's Guidance Computer was a snail-like 1.024 MHz in comparison, and it's external signaling was half that -- actually measured in Hz (1/1000th of 1 MHz, much as 1 MHz is 1/1000 of 1 GHz).
Whether you work on a Mac, a PC, or both - the way your workstation is set up reveals a lot about your sense of style and work attitude. Have a comfortable place where you can do your work can lead to increased creativity and productivity.This collection presents some excellent examples of elegant, beautiful, cozy, and well-designed workspaces so that you might get some ideas and inspiration from them.
You already know that if you want to lock down your Wi-Fi network, you should opt for WPA encryption because WEP is easy to crack. But did you know how easy? Take a look.
Today we're going to run down, step-by-step, how to crack a Wi-Fi network with WEP security turned on. But first, a word: Knowledge is power, but power doesn't mean you should be a jerk, or do anything illegal. Knowing how to pick a lock doesn't make you a thief. Consider this post educational, or a proof-of-concept intellectual exercise.
What type of protection do you have on your home network?
It's the length and width of a credit card. It's the thickness of a couple nickels. It'll let you and a few friends get an Internet connection just about anywhere with no wires whatsoever.
It's a MiFi, Sprint's new wireless broadband device, and it's geek gadget magic that'll realistically fit in your wallet.
there are plenty of ways you can turn your old laptop into something far more useful again. The easiest way to get the most from your old system is to recycle the internal hardware, such as the memory, hard drive and, in some cases, even the processor.
However, this isn't the only thing you can do, as your trusty portable can even find a new lease of life when used alongside other devices in your home. It can bring improved usability to games consoles in your living room, or even be used to enhance other PCs that you or your family use. Whatever the case, there's no need to get rid of your old laptop just yet.
The new Zune is coming with some much needed improvements:
Zune HD comes with a built-in HD Radio receiver so users can listen to higher-quality sound than traditional radio on the go. Users also will have access to the additional song and artist data broadcast by HD Radio stations as well as additional channels from their favorite stations multicasting in HD. If you don’t like the song playing on your station’s HD channel, switch to its HD2 or HD3 channels for additional programming.
The bright OLED touch screen interface allows users to flip through music, movies and other content with ease, and the 16:9 widescreen format display (480x272 resolution) offers a premium viewing experience on the go.
The HD-compatible output lets Zune HD customers playback supported HD video files from the device through a premium high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) audiovisual docking station (sold separately) direct to an HD TV in 720p.*
Zune HD will include a full-screen Internet browser optimized for multitouch functionality.
Zune HD is Wi-Fi enabled, allowing for instant streaming to the device from the more than 5 million-track Zune music store.
Now if they would just fix the horrible software that is used to update the media or release an API so developers can incorporate the Zune syncing in their own software, like Media Monkey.
TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.
What it does:
Fix partition table, recover deleted partition
Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup
Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector
Fix FAT tables
Rebuild NTFS boot sector
Recover NTFS boot sector from its backup
Fix MFT using MFT mirror
Locate ext2/ext3 Backup SuperBlock
Undelete files from FAT, NTFS and ext2 filesystem
Copy files from deleted FAT, NTFS and ext2/ext3 partitions.
Google's big surprise: each server has its own 12-volt battery to supply power if there's a problem with the main source of electricity. The company also revealed for the first time that since 2005, its data centers have been composed of standard shipping containers--each with 1,160 servers and a power consumption that can reach 250 kilowatts.
They show the inside of a Google module data-center - very smart designing.
Google is normally quite secretive about their search infrastructure but, in a break from tradition, they have revealed that a single search query on Google can consume the processing power of 1000 machines.
Let me start by saying that the Kindle 2 is a nice upgrade over the original Kindle, but we're not talking a jump from, say, black-and-white television to color, so early adopters who own the original Kindle shouldn't feel too dejected.
Yes, the Kindle 2 is thinner--it measures a svelte 0.36 inches at its thickest point--and weighs in at 10.2 ounces. It also has 25 percent improved battery life and is about 20 percent faster, thanks to an upgraded processor. And it's got 16 shades of gray instead of 4, so the text pops a little more. But this is an evolution, not a revolution.
The Samsung Omnia has a feature I have not seen, or even heard about, in any other cell phone - business card scanning with OCR. What is does is allow you to take a picture of a business card and it reads the information into a contact by pre-filling in information.
Thanx to Erb for showing me this phone and the feature. It just tells me that my cell phone is a dinosaur and needs to be upgraded.
A dictionary-size assemblage of 37 interlocking dials crafted with the precision and complexity of a 19th-century Swiss clock, the Antikythera mechanism was used for modeling and predicting the movements of the heavenly bodies as well as the dates and locations of upcoming Olympic games.
Quickly transfer and share your videos on DVD with Dazzle DVD Recorder. Thanks to its plug-in-play simplicity and a step-by step guide, copying your home movies from almost any video device to DVD has never been easier or faster.
I was looking for a way to convert a bunch of VHS tapes to DVD (or mpeg) as I didn't want to have my VCR hooked up anymore. Did lots of research and cames across Dazzle from Pinnacle. This has got to be the easiest and quickest way as its as simple as connecting the hardware interface between the VCR 'out' and a USB2.0 in on my computer and letting the wizard style software do the rest. The software captures the video feed from the VCR and burns it to a DVD.
Now I can finally get rid of my VCR from the living room. Now I keep it in my office for converting tapes to DVD's...
(more information coming on converting the video from Dazzle (DVD) to VCD or SVCD using only freely available software)
You can't exactly load up a bunch of test signals and spectrum analyzers to carry into Best Buy to check out their TVs (though Gary has been known to do this). Still, there are some basic things you can look for beyond the specs, which are at times intentionally misleading. Once you've swept the reviews from the likes of HD Guru, CNet and Home Entertainment, giving you an approximate idea of the best performers in your price range, find out where they are and visit them in person. Obviously, the sets on the shelf aren't always properly tuned, but if the store is committed to making a sale—and they are more now than ever before—they should produce a remote and let you mess around to properly vet it for your living situation.
As with every other component, motherboards have come a long way from the original IBM PC of 1981. If you're old enough to remember the first De Lorean DMC-12, perhaps the original PC XT mobo still casts some dark shadow over your memory? At the time there were certainly wonders to behold; these days, they simply look a mess with integration the last thing on the designers mind and all the IO having to be decidedly off-board.
The XT had all the same parts as today's mobos, they just worked a little slower. Instead of having a dedicated, integrated chipset, the XT used discrete off-the-shelf components: clock generators, DMA controller, interrupt handler, keyboard and bus controllers, a system timer and a real-time clock, along with the CPU, FPU, ROM and system memory.
That's eleven individual integrated-chips along with all the additional components, adding up to one expensive mother of a board. What we might recognise today as a motherboard didn't appear until 1986, when a company called Chips and Technology offered a single-chipset solution, by rolling most of the previous parts into one. Requiring only a few support chips, it simplified mobo design, reduced costs and started the trend of ever-greater integration.
it’s one of the smallest PCs in the world, with each side measuring around 2 inches square. I wrote that it looked cool, ran on a 300MHz processor and that it probably wouldn’t be sold outside of Japan, if at all.
"15 datacenters hosting 148,357 servers sitting on 17,406 racks consuming 72,500KW of utility power as of the end of January 2008 (as indicated by the bar chart). If you’re a bit of a imperial measurement person, that’s 97,000 horsepower."
Using little more than book knowledge, experience from previous projects, and a healthy shot of elbow grease, a Kenyan kid has constructed a nifty (and perhaps just a little scary) box that attaches to your car to provide a number of unique remote-control features that you're not going to find on your average OnStar setup. The flagship function seems to be the real-time lockout, which can call you as the car is being started; only if you confirm that it's not some baddie trying to jack your ride will the ignition request be granted. That's not all, though -- it'll also let you dial into the car and listen in on any conversations going on within.
Scientists unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer on Monday, a $100 million machine that for the first time has performed 1,000 trillion calculations per second in a sustained exercise.
The computer, named Roadrunner, is twice as fast as IBM's Blue Gene system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which itself is three times faster than any of the world's other supercomputers, according to IBM.
To put the computer's speed in perspective, it has roughly the computing power of 100,000 of today's most powerful laptops stacked 1.5 miles high, according to IBM. Or, if each of the world's 6 billion people worked on hand-held computers for 24 hours a day, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner computer can do in a single day.
It's been a long, leak-filled wait, but Apple finally took the wraps off its 3G iPhone. Thinner edges, full plastic back, flush headphone jack, and the iPhone 2.0 firmware -- Apple's taking a lot of the criticisms to heart from the first time around. Obviously 3G is at the forefront, but they're also making sure it's available all over internationally, works with enterprises, runs 3rd party apps... and does it all for cheaper. Apple claims its 3G speeds trounce the competition, with pageloads 36% faster than the N95 and Treo 750 -- and of course it completely trounces the old EDGE data. Battery life isn't getting put out to pasture though, with 300 hours of standby, 8-10 hours of 2G talk, 5 hours of 3G talk, 7 hours of video and 24 hours of audio. GPS is also a go. Apple is using A-GPS, which supplements regular satellite GPS data with info from cellular towers. WiFi data is also worked into the mix, which should give users a pretty solid lock on where the heck they are on this planet. Unfortunately, there's no front-facing cam, which syncs with what we were hearing, but is still a little disappointing. Apple hopes to launch in 70 countries this year. 8GB is available for $199, 16GB for $299 -- and the 16GB comes in white. Apple will be hitting the 22 biggest markets, including the US, on July 11th.
For the DIY home automator, the most popular solution is the X10 network protocol. X10 is communications protocol and network address system not unlike the TCP/IP protocol that powers the internet.
Google’s latest Android prototype is miles improved over the versions we last saw. Back at CES the GUI was clunky and the whole thing looked relatively primative; Google themselves asked us to keep an open mind and instead concentrate on the OS’ potential. Now, they’ve brought out a device that you could, frankly, mistake for production hardware.
The prototype display has a massive 82” size and features a resolution of 3820x2160 pixels, which results in a total screen resolution of 8.3 megapixels. Current 1080p TVs run at 1920x1080 pixels or 2.1 megapixels. According to the manufacturer, the TV integrates a red/green/blue LED backlight, which raises the color saturation to 150%. The image refresh rate is 120 Hz.
In this practical introduction to the basics of securing your home wireless network, we'll cover the important, high-level points that ordinary users need to know in order to secure a network of game consoles, phones, and PCs. Along the way, we'll also recap some of the relevant information from the original wireless blackpaper...
Regularly making phone calls Internationally can get pretty darn pricey these days! Coming to the rescue of those callers is Skype who today, just announced new unlimited calling plans to overseas phones for an extremely reasonable price. When I say reasonable, it’ll only cost $9.95 per month to make a phone call to 34 different countries around the World. You really can’t beat that price, can you?
PhoneTray Dialup will notify you when someone is calling while you are online. You can choose to take the call or ignore the call. With PhoneTray you can put internet on hold and answer incoming calls without disconnecting from the internet.
Plus, you get full-featured Caller ID software that shows and speaks callers name and number, logs all your incoming calls, blocks unwanted calls and zaps telemarketers.
Digital cameras have powers beyond what is immediately available to the user. On a standard Canon, for example, the fastest shutter speed option offered is 1/1,600 second, but the hardware can handle much more than that -- up to 1/60,000 of a second.
CHDK, the Canon Hacker's Development Kit, is an open-source software project that can be loaded on cameras using Canon's DIGIC II or DIGIC III firmware platforms. It unleashes new features including RAW file format, live histogram display, a battery readout, and the ability to run scripted actions on a camera.
Commercial DVDs are far too expensive to let scratches turn your video into a glorified coaster, but most people still don't back up their DVD collection. Once upon a time, the four to eight gigabyte footprint of a DVD on your hard drive was prohibitively large. But since the price of a gigabyte has plummeted, ripping your entire DVD collection to your computer is not just possible, it's prudent—and it's easy. Let's take a look at the best ways to back up and play any DVD rip on your home computer, along with how to burn a DVD rip back to a playable DVD.
Windows Live OneCare safety scanner is a free service designed to help ensure the health of your PC.
Check for and remove viruses
Get rid of junk on your hard disk
Improve your PC's performance
Ran a full scan in a Virtual PC and it mainly found registry problems. Ran the fixes and really can't tell anything - which I expect from the registry problems tools like this find.
Backing up your data on a regular basis is important, and turning a spare computer into a backup server is often the best way to make sure it gets done. But most methods require either a good deal of command-line learning or serve only one operating system. Not with Restore, a free, open-source backup system that can install or run from a live CD, work with any OS, and operate through a simple browser-based interface. Today I'll demonstrate backing up a Windows laptop to an older desktop, but you'll see how Restore can be easily molded to fit just about any home backup needs.
Toshiba said Tuesday it will no longer develop, make or market HD DVD players and recorders, handing a victory to rival Blu-ray disc technology in the format battle for next-generation video.
"We concluded that a swift decision would be best," Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters at his company's Tokyo offices.
Establish Retrofitted Designs as a sustainable high-design decor and organization products manufacturer that balances its commitment to profitable growth and community focus.
What a cool and innovative idea. Seems like more and more companies are offering means to make your electronic devices a bit more personal (check out ColorwarePc.com). Schtickers goes beyond the custom look by allowing a bit more 'feel' to your laptop with suede products available.
I would use a black one with my tribal logo on it .
With the upcoming 2.0 player profile requiring Blu-ray players to be networked, Sony finally gets to play its trump card: the PlayStation 3, which has clearly emerged as one of the best Blu-ray players on the market—and is likely to remain so for some time. Why? Because the first player now becomes the most versatile, sporting a future-proof Blu-ray setup.
Thus far, the preliminary list of bidders in the US Federal Communications Commission's 700 MHz auction is a veritable cavalcade of small telecom companies, plus small and large companies alike looking to become telecom companies. Google Airwaves, Inc. is the least surprising, and perhaps most spotlighted member of the group thus far.
1.You keep getting a "your system is running low on virtual memory" message 2.Your windows slide off the desktop . . . and you can't grab them 3.Your taskbar has disappeared
Remove evidence or just remove information before giving away or trashing an old computer. You would be surprised at what can be recovered from your hard drive if the proper steps aren't taken to permanently erase the data. So, here's a few tools to help you destroy your data. Darik's Boot and Nuke - A self-contained boot floppy (can be a bootable CD) that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction. I just got done using this application on an old laptop.
Eraser - Eraser is a secure data removal tool, which allows you to remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it with carefully selected patterns.
Secure Delete - Secure Delete allows you to specify a directory (and optionally all subdirectories) in which all files should be deleted. When each file is deleted the contents of the file are filled with random data prior to deleting the file.
Wipe [linux] - Wipe is a secure file wiping utility and listed by some as one of the best utilities for securely removing data from a hard drive.
Active KillDisk - A powerful and compact software that allows you to destroy all data on hard and floppy drives completely, excluding any possibility of future recovery of deleted files and folders. It's a hard drive and partition eraser utility.
stay tuned for a tool to get data from an erased hard drive...
A few hours after Google's dramatic announcement which some sources had still been anticipating as a mobile phone bearing the Google brand, we actually know less about Android than we did -- or thought we did -- at 11:00 this morning when it was announced. During a midday press conference featuring key Google executives including CEO Eric Schmidt, reporters called into question most of the principal facts surrounding the new Open Handset Alliance - most importantly, the ingredients of the Android platform.
The EURion constellation is a pattern of symbols found on a number of banknote designs since about 1996. It is added to help software detect the presence of a banknote in a digital image. Such software can then block the user from reproducing banknotes to prevent counterfeiting using colour photocopiers.
Pretty interesting on the mechanism that copy machines use to detect and block the copying of a banknote.
WOS Portable: "WOS stands for the three letter abbreviation Webserver On Stick and makes it possible, to run a webserver based on Apache, MySQL and PHP from an USB Stick or any other writable media (harddrive, flash cards etc.) without installation under Windows (98 to Vista). There are three different versions of WOS:"
This is a great way to showcase a PHP website when you have no control over the location. Simply place the website on a USB drive, carry to the location, showcase your work and accept pat on the back.
Engineers at the University of California, San Diego have constructed the highest-resolution computer display in the world - with a screen resolution up to 220 million pixels.
The new HIPerSpace system between Irvine and San Diego is joined together via high-performance, dedicated optical networking that clocks in at up to two gigabits per second (2Gbps). The systems use the same type of graphics rendering technology, from industry partner NVIDIA. The "graphics super cluster" being developed at UCSD consists of 80 NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 graphics processing units (GPUs). "The graphics and computational performance of these cards is quite astounding," said Kuester. "Putting the theoretical computational performance of the cluster at almost 40 teraflops.
GeeXboX is a free embedded Linux distribution which aims at turning your computer into a so called HTPC (Home Theater PC) or Media Center. Being a standalone LiveCD-based distribution, it's a ready to boot operating system than works on any Pentium-class x86 computer or PowerPC Macintosh, implying no software requirement. You can even use it on a diskless computer, the whole system being loaded in RAM.
Despite his tiny ISO image size, the distribution comes with a complete and automatic hardware detection, not requiring any driver to be added. It supports playback of nearly any kind of audio/video and image files and all known codecs and containers are shipped in, allowing playing them through various physical supports, either being CD, DVD, HDD, LAN or Internet.
ColorWare Inc., established in 2000, is an industry leader in altering the color of existing products. The idea behind ColorWare started with transforming the ubiquitous beige computer into a custom-colored work of art.
A simple idea that can give your hardware a personal touch. Check it out.
Dell Selling De-Gunked PCs: "Dell customers have the option to order PCs without the additional trial software that is usually preinstalled. In order to purchase a de-gunked PC, customers should select the option 'no software preinstalled' when purchasing Inspiron notebooks or Dimension desktops."
Tech Support Guy is one buzzing forum with lots of groups and 100K's of posts. If you need some help with anything computer than check this forum out. Even if you don't want to ask a questions just using their search feature can probably yield a discussion going on.
The company claims to have developed a new technology that uses plastic instead of glass to make OLED screens that can actually bend (hopefully without breaking), according to Pink Tentacle. Its 2.5-inch prototype weighs only 1.5 grams--that's 0.053 ounces for the metric-challenged among us.
Slurpr claims that it can locate 6 separate wi-fi networks and combine their bandwidth into one monster of a connection. Can it work? Is this a hoax of sorts? I'm not gonna spend the cash to find out. Either way it looks cool and if it does work could land you in jail.
Surface is a keyboard less, well, surface that you can interact with with your hands or any object around you. Everything you do is with your hands in a more natural way and in a way may provide a better user experience.
Simply put, its amazing, it will be expensive, and its a long way out.
Google Bonding With ISPs: "On Friday of last week, Google announced that they would now begin offering their Google Apps for Your Domain to ISPs, making the popular web apps available to, potentially, thousands of ISP subscribers as ISP-branded services."
Google Announces Purge Of Ad-heavy Web Sites: "Google is trying to clean up its search results by cracking down on dubious Web sites that contain little content but lots of ads."
Wal-Mart to begin selling Dell PCs: "Dell plans to begin selling desktop PCs in Wal-Mart Stores in the next few weeks, the first move in a major departure from its decades-long sales strategy."
Google Lauches Hot Trends: A almost real-time view of what people are searching for. Minus the porn and Britney Spears results.
Industry Leading Encryption Software from Pointsec Mobile Technologies: "What's the real cost of a lost laptop, PC, PDA or smart phone? It depends. How much private information could be stolen? How many trade secrets? How much will you have to spend to restore your customers' privacy? Not to mention their trust - or your reputation?"
The specs on the Sony VAIO looks interesting and the price is right. Compared to the OQO which is considerably more, with respect to the Ultra Mobile PC (UPMC) market, Sony may be headed in the right direction. Low cost, great specs, small footprint and include a keyboard and you have something people will actually purchase.
If Sony or OQO wants to send me one for extensive testing my address is on the right - go ahead, I'll wait...
What ever happened to all the buzz that MS generated with the Ultra-Mobile PC's? OQO has been around for a while. In fact they have recently released a new version of their UMPC, which is pretty impresive - listening OQO, my address is on the right if you want to throw one in the mail to me. A better priced, but not as impressive UPMC can be found over at Windows Marketplace. I think the key to these things is to have a qwerty keyboard.
If OQO could lower their price and increase its size by a bit, I think they would have a winner.
Did you know that every page you print contains a tracking code? Its very, very difficult to see and can be used to trace the printed page back to your printer. If you didn't know about this or just curious about the tracking code check out the Track Dot Decoding Guide.
Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC): "The Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) category offers consumers small, ultra-mobile devices with full PC capabilities, uncompromised Internet access, anytime connectivity, and the ability to recognize and adapt to its environment virtually anytime and anywhere."
I think this is a great technology. Much better for me then tying the functionality into a phone like the Treo
The 
Ultimate PC is Microsoft's latest attempt to get users more interested in the Vista operating system by providing 'blueprints' to ultimate pc setups.
This is gonna be my next coffee table! 
The specs on the 
