SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

NVedia graphic card

2009-07-07T23:30:00.001-07:00

I started going for an Animation course from Arena and so now I needed to work with some very high graphics and designing. My computer doesn’t provide working environment for such high graphic activities and so I had to add up an extra graphic card just for that. I bought and NVedia graphic card and had it installed in my Asus motherboard, I must say it is an very good product but a little expensive. Nvedia Graphic card cost me around Rs.2500 but it has made practicing my animation work very easy, before installing an graphic card whenever I tried working with them my computer mal functioned and I had to re-boot everything to work, almost everything stopped functioning and I knew it was because of the low graphic memory.

NVedia graphic card comes in with three years warranty so though costly it is very good and very helpful especially with animation .My nephew likes it for playing his games though because the graphic card gives life like picture which was not there before I installed the graphic card.

NVedia graphic card really gives some enhanced picture quality and a computer without a graphic quite is quite boring and mundane, if you really want to enjoy some life like animation and video quality install an NVedia graphic card.

Seagate 160 GB USB drive

2009-07-07T23:29:00.001-07:00

My computer just has a hard disk of 40 GB and these days 40 GB is nothing much, my music files almost accommodates all the 40 GB memory space and so I needed to increase my memory. Now the problem is that my computer is pretty old and doesn’t facilitate expansion of internal memory like it does these days so I had to buy an USB external hard drive and when it comes to buying hard disk I always trust Seagate hard drive only.

The Plug and Play 160 GB USB drive by Seagate is really very easy and comfortable to use, just plugging it in the USB port and the memory space is available for use. Being a portable and detachable I don’t require it to plug in to the computer always and use it only when I requite, actually I have stored all my music files and emptied the main memory space on my desktop and so I don’t need the external memory very often.

Not just my music I also keep a back of all my important files on the external hard disk drive so that even if my main memory is attacked by the virus I have a back up copy of the data in my Seagate drive. So now I don’t feel the pinch of low memory on my computer as the external USB drive by Seagate is as good as it can be.

Kinston all in one sim card reader

2009-06-19T05:59:00.001-07:00

If you find it hard storing you phone book or other details on your phone then Kinston all in one sim card reader is something you will love using. Just insert the sim card in to the device and plug in to the computer via a USB port and now you can copy, paste, modify and thing on you card from your computer. Kinston has been making innovative products and the all in one sim card reader is another great example of innovation, fairly priced at 6 dollars it sure is a great product especially for a person like me.

I own a mobile repairing service center and so daily 2-3 mobiles come up for repairs, now the contacts numbers and other information are quite important and while repairing the phone sometimes everything gets deleted so I always back up the sim card information in my desktop. It is a hectic process at times specially when a new company cell pops up for repair and I donā?Tt have the software installed in my desktop. So here is when Kinston all in one sim card reader comes in very handy, now I donā?Tt need any software to connect me to the sim memory and I just take the sim out pop it in to the sim reader and back up the memory easily without any problem. It is hassle free and takes just few minutes to complete the whole process.

Kinston all in one sim card reader is a great device and very cheap and affordable as well, it can prove handy to people with numerous sim cards and just one phone.

How to install RAM in a PC desktop

2009-06-08T03:08:00.000-07:00

How to install RAM in a PC desktop

Steps for RAM installation in a PC desktop

1. Unplug desktop, and all peripherals
2. Open desktop side door
-it may be a good idea to dust out the computer before RAM installation, just to
keep everything in good working order. Use compressed air in a can or a
compressor. Make sure not to get the fans running too fast when blowing them
out, as you may strip the bearings.
*There is usually either a latch around the back to open the side door, or a couple of screws.
3. Ground yourself
4. Take RAM out of anti-static bag
5. Push back the small little arms on the top and bottom of the RAM slot

6. Line up the pins
7. Insert the RAM and push down hard. It takes some force to get the RAM in, just
push it in until the arms click around the stick. Make sure that your pins are lined
up, though, and that you are not pushing it in the wrong direction.
8. Put side door back on, and plug in computer. Then boot it up, and check your
RAM amount (to do this go: Start-Control Panel-System) to verify that it is the
correct amount.

*You can find good, reliable RAM at www.crucial.com (it is a bit more pricy than newegg, but it is of high quality)

*Crucial has a tool that helps you identify what type of RAM your computer needs, and then shows you the maximum it can take. This took is very handy for the average user or even the professional. I highly recommend Crucial technology.

Content Source: How to install RAM in a PC desktop - Bukisa.com

RAM can speed up your computer- its true or a myth?

2009-06-08T02:50:00.000-07:00

RAM can speed up your computer- its true or a myth?

Many people are searching for different ideas for speeding up their computers. Ram has some how solved their confusion a bit. Many people wonder that ram is capable of speeding up the computer speed

The answer to their question is Yess, Ram is considered to be an element when you use the computer, ram also used during this process.

The amount of program you are processing depends upon the amount of ram you are using.

Internet programs like instant messenger or browser puts load on ram by the help of an executable file

RAM takes 5 megabytes to load large programs.

Dynamic link libraries which range from 20 to 30 megabytes are used by microprocessor

Most of the time, users open more than one application, this put a lot of load on Ram. If you use more Ram this will currently slower your computer speed.

If you want to increase your Ram speed then here are some steps you have to perform to get your computer’s speed on the top:

You first step is to find out how much Ram you have.

If you don’t have Ram status, then click right on my computer and then look for the properties. After choosing the general tab, you will find information about Ram.

Simple press both CNTRL and ALT along with delete to get the task manager.

After processing the tab, you will easily figure out the number of Ram used in your computer.

Calculate the amount of amount of Ram used and deduct it from the Ram left, in this way you get the exact idea about the amount of Ram you are using.

You can speed up your computer by adding Ram, in this way you will not have to buy a faster unit. Also try to buy internal hard drive for transferring and saving the important files that you may or may not use in future. Keep those files in your hard drive which are used by you on regular basis, so as to get the fast computer speed.

Spacing your hard drive is another way to speed up your computer.

Uninstalling all the unnecessary files from your computer to get the space for the current files.

Opening unnecessary programs and files and software is avoided.

If you area not having any budget to upgrade the Ram for better speed then apply certain techniques to get your job done cheaply.

I hope the above discussion will surely help you to use the Ram for increasing the computer speed. Enjoying computing, have a nice time.

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Content Source: RAM can speed up your computer- its true or a myth? - Bukisa.com

How to troubleshoot your computers display issues

2009-06-08T02:48:00.000-07:00

How to troubleshoot your computers display issues

First go through all the usual possibilities in the display properties, check your resolution and color depth if you can log into windows normally.

The next thing you are going to want to try is last known good configuration. It does not always work but for the 1 out of every 100 it does it makes it worth trying. To get the option to do this just Tap F8 as your computer is starting.

If that does not work boot into safe mode that way you can attempt a system restore. Try restoring the computer to before any recent updates, software installations, or random problems started occurring.

Next try updating your graphics card driver on the Internet using safe mode with networking.

If your display is still not working then go back into the device manager and uninstall the graphics card driver. Reinstall the original driver that came with the device in case you are having a compatibility issue with the newest driver.

If you get nothing on your monitor screen at all so can not get into safe mode try another data cable. If the problem is still there use another monitor. If the problem is still there with the other monitor then you need to replace the graphics card. If you still see nothing then it is time for you to test other things as well such as the ram and motherboard.

If your computer beeps when you turn it on count the beeps. Then check your motherboard documentation to find out what the beep code means. These beeps usually indicate an error that can tell you which device is at fault.

Content Source: How to troubleshoot your computers display issues - Bukisa.com

GPRS Vs 3G tecnology

2009-06-08T02:47:00.000-07:00

GPRS Vs 3G tecnology

GPRS Vs 3G Technology

General packet radio switching(GPRS) is a Mobile Data Service available to users of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and IS-136 mobile phones. General Packet Radio Service data transfer is typically charged per megabyte of transferred data, while data communication via traditional circuit switching is billed per minute of connection time, independent of whether the user has actually transferred data or has been in an idle state. GPRS can be used for services such as Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) access, Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), and for Internet communication services such as email and World Wide Web access.

GPRS is packet-switched, which means that multiple users share the same transmission channel, only transmitting when they have data to send. Thus the total available bandwidth can be immediately dedicated to those users who are actually sending at any given moment, providing higher use where users only send or receive data intermittently. Web browsing, receiving e-mails as they arrive and instant messaging are examples of uses that require intermittent data transfers, which benefit from sharing the available bandwidth.

Like GPRS, 3G is also a wireless communication service. 3G is an ITU specification for the third generation (analog cellular was the first generation, digital PCS the second) of mobile communications technology. 3G promises increased bandwidth, up to 384 Kbps when a device is stationary or moving at pedestrian speed, 128 Kbps in a car, and 2 Mbps in fixed applications. 3G will work over wireless air interfaces such as GSM, TDMA, and CDMA. It gives you ‘always-on’ continuous connection to the Internet via your Tablet PC or Notebook and Mobile.

3Gstands for third generation wireless, that’s nearly seven times as fast as a standard dial-up connection. You can enjoy your mobile online activities, at work or play, at faster speeds than ever before.3G allows for higher call volumes and supports multimedia data applications such as video and photograph.

Video calling facility is with 3G you can now actually see the person on the other side! As long as both people have a 3G phone you no longer have to imagine what they look like and you can see them face-to-face via your cell phone’s screen.

Obtaining information and news with 3G technology it is possible to access any site on the Internet by using your phone as a modem with your laptop. You can use your favorite search engines to find information on the weather, the daily news, stocks and shares, or practically any other information you require to ensure that you are continually on top of things.

If you have left your office and forgotten to send an important e-mail, you are now able to quickly and efficiently perform this function directly by using your cell phone.

The speed and quality of 3G really contributes to enhancing the quality of film over mobile devices. One is now able to view film trailers, reviews, and interviews, download ring tones, wall papers and enter competitions all by means of your cell phone.

With the incredible sound and video quality of your 3G phone you can view highlights from your favorite matches and you’ll always have access to the latest scores.

You can download songs, music videos and interviews, compose your own ring tone through your cell phone as requirement.

3G is an exciting new technology that is being incorporated into mobile devices across the globe. Users are now able to make person-to-person calls, download data and do a variety of other tasks they never imagined possible all via their 3G cell phones.

Content Source: GPRS Vs 3G tecnology - Bukisa.com

Multi-Media HDD player Enclosure

2009-05-03T02:46:00.001-07:00

Multi-Media HDD player Enclosure features and specs
# SATA 2.5 Inch HDD Enclosure
# Max HDD Size: 500GB
# Video Record Format: MPEG1 (mpg dat), MPEG2 (vob), MPEG4 (Divx 11/4.x/5.x, Xvid, mp4 &) avi.
# Audio Format: MP3,CD,WMA,WAV
# Picture Format: JPEG
# Video Output: 2.0vP-P +/- 0.1 (75 ohm)
# S/N Ratio: >80 dB (1 KHz0dB)
# Color System: AUTO/NTSC/PAL
# Output: AV, VGA
# USB: USB 2.0 (high speed), USB 1.1 (full speed)
# System: Windows Me/ XP/2000 SP3/ Vista/Linux Kernel 2.4.22/Mac OS 10.2 above
# Power Source: AC 100-240V
# Dimension: 130 x 20 x 80mm ( L X W X D)
# Weight: 215 G
# Manufacturer Ref.: X56L5OTOW0PU

Other Features:
# SD/MMC card slot
# Coaxial In for multi speaker systems
# Multi Language OSD
# 5 Button Interface

Nokia 5800 review

2009-04-22T02:04:00.000-07:00

Nokia 5800 is one of the coolest corpuscle phones around. The key chat for the 5800 is hi tech because it has: one blow of the top analogue screen, superfast internet admission which makes downloads a breeze, abounding QWERTY keyboard, autography acceptance software and able beleaguer speakers.

Nokia 5800Nokia 5800 key features

# 3.0 - 4.0 megapixel

# Built in GPS navigation

# 3.2 Megapixel camera

# HSDPA

# 3G

# GPRS

# Quadband

# WiFi

# Bluetooth

# Modem

# Anamnesis agenda slot

# Blow awning 3.2"

# MP3 player

# Stereo FM radio

# Camera / Video

# Flash or light

# Alarm clock

# Dimensions 111 x 51.7 x 15.5 mm

# Weight 109g

# Talk time (with accepted battery) Up to 500 minutes

# Internal anamnesis 81MB

Nokia 5800 review

Nokia 5800 is a actual acute buzz with abundant functionality. My admired is the admit your autography feature.

Also the architecture is stylish.

The bare of this buzz is the camera: alone 3.2 Megapixel after cocky timer and zoom.

BlackBerry Storm

2009-04-22T01:59:00.000-07:00

The BlackBerry Storm smartphone’s blue touch-screen is supple, responds instantly to your blow and lets you type, cross and browse at speed. Its 3.25" awning is aswell full-on HD, bringing your pictures and video to life.

It’s a BlackBerry, so email is sorted. A supercharged 3G affiliation delivers the web at bastardize speed. And if you wish to accept to music, there’s abundant allowance for 4,000 of your favourite tracks.

BlackBerry Storm key features
# Touch screen
# Built in GPS navigation
# Best for internet
# 3G
# HSDPA
# Quadband
# Bluetooth
# Modem
# PC synchronisation
# Vodafone Find & Go
# Memory card slot
# Qwerty keyboard
# Voice activated dialing
# Vodafone Mobile Internet
# Email
# Games included
# MP3 player
# Poly ring tones
# Mobile TV compatible
# Camera / Video
# Flash or light
# Alarm clock
# Calendar
# Handsfree headset
# Car kit
# Memory card
# Black
# GPRS
# 3.0 - 4.0 megapixel

Fantom GreenDrive II - 1TB USB 2.0 & eSATA External Hard Drive

2009-04-15T02:48:00.000-07:00

Fantom GreenDrive II - 1TB USB 2.0 & eSATA External Hard Drive uses a addition which reduces power burning up to 40% .

GreenDrive II is Fantom Drives acknowledgment to activity abridgement and ecology albatross by utilizing up to 40% beneath ability after sacrificing performance.

The GreenDrive II employs capricious acceleration deejay mechanisms that access their rotational acceleration in acknowledgment to host demand, consistent in around no achievement abasement vs. a 7200RPM disk. \

GreenDrive II Features

* Reduce ability burning up to 40%

* eSATA cable included

* NTI Shadow 4 with Ninja advancement software

* eSATA and USB 2.0 interface

* Blazing fast 300MB/s eSATA port

* PC & Mac compatible

* Quiet fan-free design

* Compact aluminum enclosure

NTI Shadow 4 with Ninja Features

* Two Way Sync with assorted computers and drives

* Ninja for USB drives adds customized accessible and clandestine partitions, 256-bit encryption and countersign on a PC

* Continuous abstracts aegis and appointed backups

* Capacity active so you apperceive if to add added space

* Version ascendancy delivers assorted revisions of your files

* Drag and Drop additional 1-Click Quick Restore

* Improved user interface for even easier advancement and book sharing

* Graph blueprint of Source and Destination accessories to bound accept capacity

Make Your Automobile A Portable Kitchen

2009-04-10T02:47:00.000-07:00

I don’t apperceive abounding humans that baker in their car, but if you are allotment of that group, analysis out this sandwich maker (Aka toaster) which be a acceptable accession for your carriageable kitchen. The Road Pro 12 Volt Sandwich Maker, the accessory gets ability from the cigarette lighter socket. The ability bond alone measures 5 foot, but back the affable sessions are fabricated central the car, you apparently don’t charge abundant space…

Spin Wine Lets you

2009-04-10T02:30:00.000-07:00

Despite it’s credible simplicity, SpinWine performs a set of circuitous accomplishments as the wine circulates about the baby accessible cup alcove and through the bifold braid into your glass. The advance in flavour and aroma occurs because of the structural changes brought about by the different process.

Numerous abstracts has able the exact admeasurement of the cup and the circling carry accomplishing the adapted benevolence of the wine.

When wine is spun in this way, it goes through a action of acerbic and structural reforming causing actinic changes that affect both the flavors and the texture.

Shuttle X50 - Compact, Portable and Stylish PC

2009-04-07T08:47:00.000-07:00

This is a actual beautiful and bunched PC with 15.6 inch display. It combines all a lot of important applications. You can alpha the accessory by artlessly affecting the awning with your feel or with a stylus pen that comes with the PC.

Shuttle X50 has a bland and glassy architecture and it is rather baby so it won't yield a lot of amplitude on your desk. It is just 36mm slim.

The blow awning allows you to calmly plan on this PC whether you're amateur or professional. The apparatus aswell includes a congenital 1.3Mp webcam and microphone.

You can cull the angle of Shuttle X50 up and use it as a accustomed handle. You aswell accept the adeptness to accept angle angels from 0 to 180 degrees. The angle can be calmly removed to bare four VESA ascent spiral holes. With their advice you can arise accoutrements as able-bodied as added ascent accessories from a advanced ambit of manufacturers.

Shuttle X50 can be acclimated as a multimedia ball gadget, able to abundance movies, videos, photos, and music.

It is account advertence that all apparatus of X50 accommodated the austere standards of RoHs. The accessory is arranged with ENERGY STAR 5.0 able ability adapter.

In addition, the Shuttle I.C.E calefaction pipe, amid central the computer, calmly dissipates calefaction away. Thus the arrangement charcoal air-conditioned while the calefaction aqueduct does all the work, bearing a appreciably low babble at alone 22 dB.

Here are some of the specs:

- Processor: Intel Atom 330 CPU, CPU on board;

- Chipset: Intel 945GC + ICH7;

-Memory: DDR II 1GB (support up to 2GB);

-VGA: Intel GMA 950 256bit 3D engine with a 400MHz amount and DirectX 9 3D accouterments acceleration; Dynamic Video Memory Technology(DVMT)3.0 supports up to 224MB of Video memory;

- Audio: Realtek ALC662 5.1 Channel HD audio; 2W x 2 Stereo speaker;

- Storage Interface: 160GB SATAII 5400rpm (support up to 600GB);

- Dimensions: 391.3x 327 x 36(mm);

- Card Reader: 4 in 1 Card Reader(support SD/MMC/MS/XD)

SATA Hard Drive Dock With Multiple Features, Including MP3 Player

2009-04-07T08:40:00.000-07:00

This is one artistic and technologically avant-garde apparatus that represents a abstraction of HDD advancing featuring a music player. The accessory is alleged SATA HDD Dock Station Combo Stereo Speaker + Hub.

While adequate a fast abstracts transfer, you can accept to you admired music on the aforementioned gadget.

HDD Dock Station Combo Stereo Speaker + Hub is accordant with 2.5-inch as able-bodied as 3.5-inch SATA Hard Disks.

The accessory includes a 2 anchorage USB2.0 HUB on its foreground plate. With its advice you accept the achievability to admission several USB accessories at the aforementioned time.

With an congenital USB audio affection forth with as adjustable aggregate control, the station's stereo speakers accommodate top superior sound.

The accessory includes microphone inputs for VOIP applications, such as MSN, Skype, Google Talk. It plugs into an accessible USB anchorage on the user's desktop computer of laptop and serves as a USB soundcard. Besides, you can acquisition a line-in jack on the gadget's appropriate side. With its advice you can bung in any alfresco audio source, including an MP3 player.

On the aback of the accessory there are microphone and headphone ports, which are there for quick VOIP angle hookup.

The apparatus comes with a USB cable, accepted ability adapter (100 ~ 240V), audio-in cable and user's manual. You will apparently adore its price, which is just .

Here are some added specs:

Built-in stereo speaker with output power of 3W;
Built-in USB audio sound card;
Support Window 2000/XP/Vista, Mac OS 9.X or higher;
Size: 134 x 117 x 56mm;
Weight: 285g.

Emachines T5026 Desktop Computer

2009-04-04T09:58:00.001-07:00

Today I am traveling to be cogent all of you guys about a computer I was accustomed a few years ago. The computer I am talking about is Emachines T5026. My grandmother gave this to me, back she didn’t accept any use for it anymore, and I accept had bags of fun with it since. I apperceive that this is a old computer, but still, it works actual able-bodied in my opinion. The harder drive it comes with is about 150 gigs. Not bad for an old computer, huh? This computer came installed with windows xp. I accept to say for an old computer it runs actual fast! I adulation getting able to alpha up in beneath afresh a min., it makes it so abundant easier to just about-face it on in the morning if I charge to book something off actually fast afore I leave, ect. I am actually aloof on its acceleration because like I said beforehand I accept not put any upgrades on it at all! None, and it is still this fast. Next I wish to allocution about it’s deejay drives. It has 2 deejay drives, both of which are able to apprehend and bake from. It is so simple to bake cd’s and dvd’s from this computer. It has a nice bifold band afire affection with 8.5 gig max capacity, which I adulation to use if I wish to accomplish a acceptable dvd. So in that aspect, I accept to say that I acquisition it to be actually amazing too! Next is it’s keyboard. I actually absolutely adore application it’s keyboard. It has a accomplished agglomeration of added buttons, that you can use to play movies with, and use on internet sites. It makes application the computer a lot easier and a lot added fun. I accept to yet afresh blow on it’s processor ability because, a little while ago, I absitively that I capital to accept windows angle ultimate on it. I was somewhat afraid that it wouldn’t be able to handle it, but it did! I was so aflame to see that it could run angle on it. The alone affair that didn’t work, were the angle aero effects, because it didn’t accept abundant cartoon power. But with a quick advancement to a new cartoon agenda it could. To be able to say that my old Emachine computer can run angle on it withought problems is amazing! I actually adulation this

computer, even admitting it is old, I acquisition it to be one of the best computers, out there.

Iomega Prestige 500 GB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive

2009-04-04T09:33:00.001-07:00

What a abhorrent acquaintance I endured with this alien harder drive! When I aboriginal accustomed my alien harder drive, I apparent that it was dead. Yep, it would not even ability on. I had to acknowledgment it and get a new one, although cerebration back, I abiding ambition I would accept just asked for a refund. When I brought my new one home, I was admiring to acquisition that this one did ability on. I was aswell admiring to acquisition the accession action to be adequately quick and simple. Although the abstracts alteration could alone be handled through a USB cable, the alteration seemed to be able and quick. I kept it on top of my board because the alien harder drive was decidedly baby and compact, so it did not yield up abundant allowance and I acquainted that would be a safe abode for it. Safe or not, about one ages later, I accustomed an absurdity bulletin from my alien harder drive allegorical me that all of my abstracts had been absent and was nonrecoverable. I was shocked. I just sat there for a brace of account staring at that

terrible, abhorrent message. I anon pulled out the apprenticeship booklet, acquisitive that I could acquisition some achievement in there, but I did not. I bound got on the buzz with abstruse abutment and I explained to the woman how continued I accept had the alien harder drive, how abundant I had acclimated it and the bulletin that now was displayed on my screen. She anon comes out and says that it is accustomed for harder drives to abrasion out because it is a automated accessory and that automated accessories do abrasion out, sometimes sooner, sometimes later. I capital to ability through the buzz and asphyxiate her. She did not even try to action any accessible troubleshooting solutions and if something is just one ages old, it should not die! Especially if that something is able-bodied cared for like I did with mine! What affectionate of abnormal and bargain locations did they use in this alien harder drive anyhow that it alone lasted about thirty canicule or so? This was infuriating and I affirm I will never acquirement addition artefact from this

company again. They will not be accepting any added of my harder becoming money, that is for abuse sure! If you are anyone that is in seek of an alien harder drive, I highly, awful admonish you to attending abroad for one because the aboriginal one of these I ordered concluded up asleep on accession while the additional one kicked the brazier just afterwards thirty or so canicule of use! Save your money, anticipate a cephalalgia and abstain a fasten in claret burden and seek abroad for an alien harder drive.

Cool water gadget garden the 45cm Stainless Steel Sphere

2009-04-04T09:26:00.000-07:00

As apparent in abounding artist gardens, stainless animate spheres are beauteous yet adequate baptize appearance ideal in any garden, accessory or paved area.

Water flows over and about the stainless animate apple in this adequate baptize feature. Four white LED lights ablaze the baptize from the top creating a beauteous aftereffect at dark and night.

45cm Stainless Animate Apple Features:

* Self independent baptize feature

* Easy to install & maintain

* Child & Pet Safe

* Low voltage (cheap & safe to run)

* For calm & alfresco use

* Sump can be dug into the arena or placed in a pot / container

* Lit by 4 white LED lights

* Just the one bung for the pump and LED lights!

Basketball PC

2009-03-30T20:06:00.000-07:00

Ok sports fans you are not going to want to miss these basketball PC’s. These are computers shaped and styled to look like basketballs. Judging from the pictures they look very realistic. If basketball is not your sport they come in a Soccer ball style and Football style as well.

The computing power on these is not all that impressive. But that should not come as any big surprise considering these are more about looks than performance. They are available with an Intel Pentium M processor ranging from 1.3GHz to 1.7GHz. They support high speed DDR memory and come with a built in CD-Rom drive.

One of these would look very cool in your bedroom or living room. Hook one up to an LCD screen in your bar and play all your favorite old school games.

The Infrared Flashlight Video Recorder

2009-03-30T20:02:00.001-07:00

Hammacher and Schlemmer is continuing on with their quest of creating gadgets that you wish you knew why you needed. This gadget might actually be one that you attempt to justify paying the hefty price tag for, just purely because it’s a cool gadget. Despite that I haven’t the faintest idea why it’s necessary. This flashlight claims to be the absolute and only Infrared Flashlight Video Recorder. It might very well be, I know I’ve never seen another of its kind, but then I can’t manage to see everything there is to see on the internet. As much as I wish I could and still attempt to anyway.

The flashlight features a 3-watt cool white LED light as the main light and then 17 infrared LEDs that surround that main light. With those extra LEDs it can illuminate up to 13′ for all that late night recording. The flashlight will support up to a 2GB mini-SD card and also has 128MB of built-in memory. The video and snapshots are captured at 640 x 480 resolution at 30 fps. If you want to use the built-in memory, you’ll be able to store 15 seconds of video and 500 quick snapshots. It also features a microphone (for sound) and an LCD screen (to show you details such as battery life). It takes 3 C batteries to keep the light running for 3 hours. You can pick it up for $399.95.

Motorola Evoke QA4 is now official

2009-03-30T19:59:00.000-07:00

Motorola might be in the doldrums at the moment as each step they take does not seem to result in phenomenal sales of sorts, which can get rather depressing when you think about it. After all, they seem to have fallen into being a victim of their own success, where everything else after the RAZR just failed to capture the imagination of the masses, leading to the quandary where they’re at today. Still, it is nice to see them not throwing in the towel just yet, as it will be a sad day when Motorola is no longer part of the cell phone industry - somewhat like how most people would’ve felt when Sega pulled out of the home console race with the Dreamcast being its last foray. This time round, we have the Motorola Evoke QA4 that was announced officially, so let’s take a look at what it offers in greater detail right after the jump.

First of all, the Motorola Evoke QA4 is but a socially-inclined device that comes with a 2.8″ full touch screen display to make navigation and usage a snap. A wide variety of messaging styles are supported by the Evoke, where you will be able to benefit from a full touch-screen QWERTY keyboard as well as a slide out traditional keypad if you’re more inclined towards actual buttons. Your home screen content can be further customized with integrated widgets and personalized RSS feeds, where you are able to take advantage of the full HTML browser to share pictures, videos and other files online.

According to Mark Shockley, corporate vice president and general manager, Motorola Mobile Devices, “We understand the importance of having a mobile phone that helps you stay connected simply and seamlessly with your friends and family, whether you prefer to talk, text or network. Motorola Evoke offers the cutting-edge convenience and instant gratification of a full touch-screen, intuitive online browsing and the ability to stay plugged in on your terms.”

The Evoke QA4 is also a multimedia device, supporting audio and video playback of selected files, alongside a camera that not only lets you capture your favorite moments when you don’t have a dedicated digital camera with you, but it is also able to record video although be forewarned that this is no high definition machine for you to parade around with. There is no word on pricing although we do know that the Motorola Evoke QA4 will be out sometime in Q2 this year, which isn’t too far off, actually.

Sharp LC46XL2E 46 inch 100Hz HD Ready 1080p Slimline LCD TV

2009-03-26T04:15:00.000-07:00

Almost every electronics and gadgets from the world are made in China. Sharp is different: all their products are made in Japan and Japanese products are famous for 3gnthings smart design, hi technology and quality (and some have also beautiful design).

Sharp LC46XL2E 46 inch 100Hz HD Ready 1080p Slimline LCD TV is a 46 Inch Aquos HD Ready 1080p LCD TV with built-in digital tuner (DVB-T).

LC46XL2E 46 inch 100Hz HD Ready

46 inch Aquos HD Ready 1080p LCD TV with built-in digital tuner (DVB-T) and dynamic contrast ratio of 10000:1. 100Hz Double frame drive.

Slim frame and super thin design.

De-Juddering picture enhancement technology, 4ms response time and 3x HDMI outputs. 10bit Signal processing for smoother colour gradients. 24Hz Compatible.

Sharp LC46XL2E 46 inch 100Hz HD Ready 1080p Slimline LCD TV Features and Specifications:

* Screen size (inches) 46, Aspect ratio 16:9
* Response time (ms) 4
* Screen resolution (pixels) 1920 x 1080 x 3
* HD technology HD Ready 1080p
* Brightness (cd/m2) 450
* Contrast ratio 2000:1
* Dynamic Contrast Ratio 10,000:1
* IDTV Freeview DVB tuner
* 100Hz
* Wall mountable
* Full 10-bit Signal Processing
* Teletext built in
* Dejuddering (HD/SD)
* Automatic Channel Sorting
* Digital Audio Amplifier
* Automatic Volume Level
* NICAM/A2 Stereo Decoded
* SRS Tru-Surround XT
* EPG
* Low-power Stand-by
* Audio technology: SRS TruSurroundXT
* Audio output (watts): 15W + 15W
* Panel life (hours): 60,000

Sharp LC46XL2E is a quality TV with a good response time (4 ms), hi resolution, good audio quality and with a long panel life (if you watch TV 4 hours per day the panel life in enough for more than 40 years).

Pricing and availably info

Sharp LC46XL2E 46 inch 100Hz HD Ready 1080p Slimline LCD TV cost £1699.00 and it is available at Sharp store.

Shopping Tip

If you use the discount code xl700 until 30April 2009 you will get an enormous discount. You will get the TV for only £999.

ASUS Eee Keyboard - Spectrum-like PC with 5-inch display

2009-03-23T09:36:00.000-07:00

From the very launch of Eee PC, ASUS do not stop to amaze us. Taking Apple as their example, they bring some sort of Apple style into PC world. Look for yourself: ASUS Eee Top PC is a PC version of Apple's iMac, all-in-one PC that keeps wire hassle away; ASUS Eee Box is a PC version of Apple's Mac Mini, ultra-portable PC made using "Bring Your Own Keyboard and Display" philosophy. Now, it's time for keyboards. ASUS Eee Keyboard PC looks similar to Apple keyboard; however, this gadget is not only a keyboard. It is a complete featured PC made into keyboard form! More details follow.

ASUS Eee Keyboard PC is a novelty from Asus, which was recently presented to public. Its form-factor reminds of the beginning of PC era, when computers were placed inside keyboards (like ZX Spectrum for instance). Eee Keyboard is fully equipped with most interesting and modern features: 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor, 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, 16 or 32 GB SSD, and full pack of wireless protocols, including Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi b/g/n and mysterious Wireless HDMI.

In the right side of this gadget is placed small, but useful 5 inched touchscreen display. It can be used as main display or, in the case if you connected external display via VGA port, as an additional display for media player, calculator, internet surfing or other purposes. Of course, if it will be supported by OS as additional display, it can be used for almost everything.

Another strong side of novelty from ASUS - it is very energy sufficient. This was achieved due to usage of modern Intel Atom platform, which was done especially for netbooks and low-power applications. Of course, Intel Atom cannot bring the same processing power as its fully-featured desktop brothers, but it is powerful enough for doing almost every task modern user needs. Performance was sacrificed to increase battery life - and it is a very smart move, because battery life is the most important parameter of portable devices.

Unfortunately, ASUS do not reveal all characteristics of this device, because it is on a concept stage right now. In the final version some minor features can change, no major changes will be done. Estimated price is 400-600 USA dollars, it is reasonable for such an interesting device. ASUS once again amazed the audience; let's wait until this keyboard will hit the store shelves.

LG KP500 Cookie the amazing phone with 3 inch touchscreen, handwriting recognition and 3 megapixel camera

2009-03-23T00:36:00.001-07:00

LG KP500 Cookie is an amazing phone with 3 inch touchscreen, handwriting recognition, 3 megapixel camera built in stylus and can hold up to 8gb of memory.

LG KP500 Cookie features and specifications:
# 3.0-megapixel camera
# Video recorder
# 240 x 400 resolution display
# TFT Touch-screen
# 256K colour display
# Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
# Handwriting recognition
# Flash UI
# EDGE
# Java
# SMS
# EMS
# Email
# Polyphonic ringtones
# Downloadable ringtones
# WAP 2.0
# Bluetooth
# USB
# FM radio with RDS
# Java MIDP 2.0
# MP3/WMA/AAC player
# Organiser
# Document viewer (DOC, XLS, PDF)
# Voice memo
# Built-in handsfree
# T9
# 48MB Internal Memory
# Expandable memory up to 8GB
# GPRS
# Quadband
# Bluetooth
# Camera
# Dimensions: 107 x 55 x 12mm
# Weight: 89 grams
# Talk Time up to: 3 Hours 30 minutes
# Stand by Time up to: 350 Hours

Want the "most affordable” touch-screen mobile phone?
The LG Cookie is an affordable touch-screen mobile phone with handwriting recognition and a built-in stylus for ease. With a massive 3 inch TFT display screen you’ll be able to view all your pictures and videos with quality. The LG Cookie is jam-packed full of essential features! The built-in 3.0-megapixel camera and video recorder are great for capturing all those fun, spontaneous times. The FM Radio and MP3 Player are just what you need to listen to the latest and your favourite music tracks. You’ll be able to store all your favourite tracks and photo’s with the 48MB internal memory. But what’s even better is you can get up 8GB of external memory with MicroSD memory card!

Viewing pictures is great on the LG due to the Accelerometer which allows the display screen to auto rotate so you can view pictures` both landscape and portrait! Plus you’ll have WAP 2.0 which allows you to access your emails and a range of information from the internet!

LG KP500 Cookie advantages:
# Use the most affordable touch-screen mobile phone on the market!
# Capture great pictures with the built-in 3.0-megapixel camera
# Get access to a range of information from the internet via WAP 2.0
# Listen to all your music via the MP3 player and built-in FM Radio
# Store all your multimedia files with the 48MB internal memory or expand to up to 8Gb with a microSD card
# View pictures in landscape and portrait with the accelerometer for auto rotating the screen

The LG KP500 Cookie is available at e2save.com

Sony PRS505S eBook Reader the new way to read

2009-03-23T00:31:00.000-07:00

Ebooks are becoming very popular because of their main benefit: instant access.

When a paper book is released you have order it and wait until it is delivered. The delivering process can take even weeks if you live far away form the place where the book is.

For ebooks you don’t have to wait: just pay the book and it is delivered instantly.

That is why electronic gadgets for reading are selling very well.

Sony PRS505S eBook Reader is slim, lightweight and compact and it lets you store and take stacks of books with you wherever you go. You can download up to 160 books you’ve purchased from the internet to its memory.

Sony PRS505S eBook Reader Key Features

* Battery lifeHow long the battery lasts for until it needs recharging Up to 7,500 page turns (when reading only; usage may vary)
* Dimensions H175 x W122 x D8mm
* Finish Silver
* Memory card slotGreater amount of slots means more variety of card formats can be used SD, Memory stick
* Power supply Rechargeable lithium battery
* Weight 260g

The Sony eBook reader uses impressive e Ink technology to create the look of traditional print on its 6” screen, so it’s just like reading real paper. There’s no backlight so there’s no strain on your eyes, no flickering screen to distract you – for a really relaxing read you can even take it outside on a sunny day.

Because of the eBook’s ability to play MP3 files, you can even listen to your favorite tracks as you enjoy the latest page turner.

Conclusion

This is a recommended gadget for people who enjoys reading and traveling.

If you are using this tech gadget just for reading the battery life is enough to read hundreds of books. I don’t know how much the battery will last is you are listening to audiobooks.

I think ebook readers have a beautiful future because more and more people are concern by protecting the environment and they want to reduce the quantity of paper. Also this little device is appreciated by the ones who want their book delivered right away.

Pricing and availably info

Right now Sony PRS505S eBook Reader cost £224

ASUS CEO: Fold / Unfold laptop will cost between $1,000 and $1,500

2009-03-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

We had already heard that ASUS' Fold / Unfold laptop concept -- which we originally spotted at CES in January -- would be shipping later this year, but that little fact just got a lot more official. In an interview with TechRadar, ASUS CEO Jerry Shen confessed that this very machine would be shipping in the September to October time frame, and that the end-user price would be "somewhere between $1,000 and $1,500." Just make sure we're not stuck with integrated graphics and we'll be pleased as punch, okay Jerry?

Easy Internet surfing with Pocket Surfer 2

2009-03-17T20:12:00.000-07:00

The Pocket Surfer 2 is indeed pocket sized, and yet is jammed with technological magic to let you browse web pages with full graphics, Java support.

The built-in GPRS modem lets you zip effortlessly around the web wherever and whenever you like, displaying the pages in all their glory on its 5" color screen.

Powered by a re-chargeable battery Pocket Surfer 2 will provide four hours of surf time (with 5 days on standby), giving you plenty of time to check your emails, fiddle about on Facebook or whatever your preferred networking site is.

Pocket Surfer 2 features

* A pocket-sized, totally wireless link to the web wherever you are.
* An in-built GPRS antenna and sim card to access mobile networks wirelessly.
* A 5 inch 640 x 240 full color screen with Java support.
* Backlit QWERTY keyboard and integrated mouse.
* Works with any network.
* 20 hours free surfing every month for the first year.
* Browsing time can be boosted to unlimited status for £5.99 a month (this can be done on a month by month basis by calling the number enclosed in the pack).
* After the first year, subscription for the monthly 20 hours usage is just £40 annually.
* You can use the Pocket Surfer when you are outside the UK by activating roaming at the rate of 25p a minute.
* The pages take under 7 seconds to load.
* A mouse point.
* A rechargeable battery.
* Requires a mains plug (UK adaptor included).
* Doesn’t support audio, video or fast gaming applications.
* Weight: 174g.
* Size: 16 x 8 x 1.5cm.

Pocket Surfer 22

Pocket surfer seems like a cool gadget but I prefer having a small 12 inch notebook instead or something even smaller like ARCHOS 10 Mini Laptop.

Pricing and availability

Pocket Surfer 2 cost £139.00

Nokia XpressMusic handsets leaked ahead of launch

2009-03-16T02:43:00.000-07:00

Nokia will announce three new Comes with Music phones later today at its Comes with Music event, scheduled for Wednesday morning.

The new handsets will be the 5330 XpressMusic, 5730 XpressMusic and the Nokia 5030 according to Allaboutphones.nl who is reporting the scoop.

The site is reporting that the new 5730 will be an Xpress Music version of the E75 with a QWERTY keyboard, 3.2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi and GPS support, and judging by the pictures be a re-badge of the previously announced XpressMusic 5630 first announced in February with the addition of that slide out keyboard.

However new to the Comes with Music range, the phone will sport something supposedly called the "Xpress Home Screen" that allows you to "directly access all your media".

The second handset will be the XpressMusic 5330, a slider device that will promise a 24-hour battery life and streamlined design.

The third handset is expected to be the 5030 a candybar design handset that will feature XpressRadio and go up against the Sony Ericsson R300 mobile phone, according to the site.

All three handsets are expected in the next couple of months.

The Samsung Fashion Phone Tells Us When We’ve Eaten Too Much

2009-03-16T02:32:00.000-07:00

Now I like a nicely styled, pretty phone as much as the next girl, but the plethora of ‘pink girly’ phones that companies produce in the hope they will lure girls into starry eyed submission is getting a little annoying. Now this offering is rather curious, as at first glance it does look nice, but moving beyond the clam-shell design, it’s packed with frankly insulting features, from a calorie counting system to a perfume matcher.

Apple Facing Lawsuit Over Exploding iPod Touch

2009-03-14T19:59:00.000-07:00

A mother from Ohio says her son's iPod Touch exploded in his pants, caught fire, and left him with serious burns. Now, she's suing Apple for $225,000 in damages.
Exploding iPod Touch Lawsuit

The lawsuit, filed in Cincinnati on Wednesday, claims the iPod Touch (16GB) exploded while inside the 15-year-old boy's pants pocket. The boy was sitting at his desk in school, the document says, when he "heard a loud pop and immediately felt a burning sensation on his leg." When he stood up, the suit says, he realized the device was on fire.

"[He] immediately ran to the bathroom and took off his burning pants with the assistance of a friend," the lawsuit states. "The Apple [iPod Touch] had burned through [his] pants pocket and melted through his Nylon/Spandex underwear, burning his leg."
"Physical and Mental" Harm

The boy is said to have suffered second-degree burns along with other "physical and mental conditions which will cause him to suffer pain, mental distress, emotional distress, and otherwise for the rest of his life."

The family is demanding $75,000 in "compensatory damages," another $75,000 in "punitive damages," and yet another $75,000 in legal fees and other "special damages."
Lawsuit Specifics

The suit names both Apple and the group of 10 employees who were at the Apple Store when the device was purchased as defendants. Apple has a policy against discussing legal issues while they are still pending.

Nex-Sys V1 Corner Computer Desk

2009-03-14T04:11:00.000-07:00

Do you want to be like everybody and have a boring, hum drum computer desk? If you are bored with your current desk then the Nex-Sys Corner V1 might interest you.

Its Completely hand crafted has support for 2.1 speakers, height adjustable flat screen monitor and comes with a custom car seat and is available in a range of different specs.

There’s not much room for papers or folders on this desk, but who uses paper anymore anyways?

Bot Brain

2009-03-14T04:08:00.001-07:00

If you have a passion for robotic projects, then the BotBrain Animatronic Robot Head Kit is a pretty good toy for you. It is meant to help one pick up the basics of robotics and animatronics by leading the user through the entire assembly process of a fully functioning animatronic head. This head will be able to turn left and right, with moving eyes and eyelids add to the realism. The mouth can change according to how it is “feeling” at the moment, while integrated sensors enable it to react to changes in the environment. The BotBrain Animatronic Robot Head Kit retails for $449 so make sure you have a great love for all things robotic before dropping that amount of cash.

Apple unveils latest iPod Shuffle - world’s tiniest music player

2009-03-14T02:39:00.000-07:00

Apple has unveiled the next generation of iPod Shuffle which will feature a newly implemented technology for iPods called Voiceover which uses a speech engine to tell you the name of the singer or the title of the song in up to 14 different languages (English, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish). At half the size of the previous generation iPod Shuffle, latest successor is just 7.8mm thick and looks even more stylish with no control buttons at all.

The controls on the new Shuffle have been moved from the body of device to the earphone cord, this may be innovative but how long do you tend to stick around with Apple’s earbuds as opposed to using your own favourite headphones? Apple claims that this iPod Shuffle is now the world’s tiniest music player, smaller than the size of an AA battery.

The new iPod Shuffle will come in two colors, silver and black. Apple will continue to sell the second-generation version with the 1GB capacity for $49. But will phase out the 2GB version which is currently selling for $69. The new Shuffle is out now for $79, though you can still get the second generation 1GB version for the time being for $49.

Here’s the official press release…

CUPERTINO, Calif., March 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple® today introduced the all-new iPod® shuffle, the world’s smallest music player at nearly half of the size of the previous model, and the first music player that talks to you. The revolutionary new VoiceOver feature enables iPod shuffle to speak your song titles, artists and playlist names. The third generation iPod shuffle is significantly smaller than a AA battery, holds up to 1,000 songs and is easier to use with all of the controls conveniently located on the earphone cord. With the press of a button, you can play, pause, adjust volume, switch playlists and hear the name of the song and artist. iPod shuffle features a gorgeous new aluminum design with a built-in stainless steel clip that makes it ultra-wearable.

Checked out our new photo gallery page yet? We would love to hear some feedback from you!

“Imagine your music player talking to you, telling you your song titles, artists and playlist names,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of iPod and iPhone™ Product Marketing. “The amazingly small new iPod shuffle takes a revolutionary approach to how you listen to your music by talking to you, also making it the first iPod shuffle with playlists.”

iPod shuffle is based on Apple’s incredibly popular shuffle feature, which randomly selects songs from your music library. And now, when you can’t remember the name of a song or an artist playing, with the press of a button iPod shuffle tells you the name of the song and artist. iPod shuffle can even tell you status information, such as battery life. With the ability to hold up to 1,000 songs and the VoiceOver feature, you can now easily switch between multiple playlists on your iPod shuffle. iPod shuffle can speak 14 languages including English, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

The new iPod shuffle comes in silver or black and features a sleek and ultra-wearable design with a built-in stainless steel clip. iPod shuffle is the smallest music player in the world and is incredibly easy to clip to almost anything and take with you everywhere you go. iPod shuffle features up to 10 hours of battery life.*

Pricing & Availability

The third generation 4GB iPod shuffle is now shipping and comes in silver or black for a suggested price of $79 (US) through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers. iPod shuffle comes with the Apple Earphones with Remote and the iPod shuffle USB cable. iPod shuffle requires a Mac® with a USB 2.0 port, Mac OS® X v10.4.11 or later and iTunes® 8.1 or later; or a Windows PC with a USB 2.0 port and Windows Vista, Windows XP Home or Professional (Service Pack 3) or later and iTunes 8.1.

*Battery life and number of charge cycles vary by use and settings. Seewww.apple.com/batteries for more information. Song capacity is based on four minutes per song and 128-Kbps AAC encoding; in 256-Kbps AAC format, song capacity is up to 500 songs; actual capacity varies by encoding method and bit rate.

Call Rates To Get Cheaper From April!

2009-03-14T02:37:00.001-07:00

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has slashed tariffs for calls made from any type of phone, fixed or mobile, to any other phone within India, with a 33 per cent reduction in charges operators pay each other. The new rates are effective from 1 April 2009 onwards and are also applicable for 3G voice calls.
Under the new Interconnection Usage Charges (IUC) regime, the telecom regulator has reduced local termination charges (charges payable by your operator to a rival service provider when you call a subscriber on that network) by 33 per cent to 20 paise per minute from 30 paise per minute.

TRAI issued 'Telecommunications Interconnection Usage Charges (Tenth Amendment) Regulations', according to which "termination charge for all types of domestic calls (fixed-to-fixed, fixed-to-mobile, mobile-to-fixed and mobile-to-mobile) has been reduced to 20 paise from 30 paise per minute.

TRAI, however, increased the interconnection charge for international incoming calls from 30 paise at present to 40 paise per minute. However, the regulator expects that the telecom service providers would pass on this benefit in the form of lower tariff for outgoing international calls.

Ceiling on carriage of domestic long distance calls has been retained at 65 paise minute to encourage national long distance operators to expand into rural areas.

"Origination charge has not been specified as it would be residual from tariff after payment of other charges. This would provide service providers flexibility of introducing innovative tariff plans," says the telecom regulator.

The authority also reduced transit/carriage charge from level-II trunk automatic exchange to short distance charging area (SDCA) to 15 paise per minute as against the existing charge of 20 paise per minute. On the other hand, intra SDCA transit charge would be less than 15 paise per minute, down from less than 20 paise per minute.

TRAI also said termination charge for 3G voice calls shall be same as 2G voice calls.

Call Rates To Get Cheaper From April!

2009-03-14T02:37:00.000-07:00

PC Diagnostic Dice

2009-03-13T22:26:00.001-07:00

Let the Gods of Chance determine your IT-support solutions

IT-support personnel have a difficult job. Constant phone calls and emails from people barely smart enough to operate their computers can grate on you after a while. Before too long, every support phone call sounds the same.

“Hello, IT… yes… have you tried turning it off and on again?”

As you get older, you realize that people don’t necessarily want to know exactly what the problem is. What they really want is assurance that someone is there, listening, and is ready to come to their aid. The chances that you can actually walk them through fixing their problem is minuscule - you’re going to have to take a visit anyway, so why bother putting in the effort now?

With the new PC Dice diagnostic system, give your users the reassurance they need while maintaining your sanity. Just a quick toss of the dice, and all the information you need is right there. Three dice describe the problem, the culprit, and the solution. Now, your conversation is simplified:

“Hello, IT… [rolls dice] Hmm, sounds like you’ve got some spyware. It’s no big deal, it’s a Windows problem, but we can just install some anti-spyware and take care of it. Okay? Great… You’re welcome… I love you, too…”
Features

* Three acrylic dice
* Packaged in an attractive felt bag
* Each die shows the problem, the culprit, and the proposed solution
* Likely just as accurate as a real diagnosis*

Pillete, the new concept of Bluetooth headset

2009-03-13T22:06:00.000-07:00

Pillete, the new concept of Bluetooth headset is so tiny, it’s almost invisible to the untrained eye when you are wearing it. So you don’t have to worry anymore about looking like Robocop when walking down the street with it, but you have to consider the possibility of people starting to think you’ve lost your marbles and you’re talking to yourself.

The downside is the fact that people have different sized ears and the device might be too small and slip out or to big and not fit. People who often use earphones will tell you I’m right. But once they’ll figure out a way to make the Pillete adjustable, this design will be the future of all headsets.

Satyam Gets SEBI Nod To Sell 51 Per Cent Stake

2009-03-11T23:46:00.001-07:00

Satyam Computer Services has finally got approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to facilitate a global competitive bidding process, enabling it to sell 51 per cent stake in the company to a strategic investor. According to media reports, IBM has begun discussions with Satyam's government-nominated board and has expressed desire to acquire a majority stake in the company. IBM is understood to be the front-runner to acquire Satyam, a business daily says.
The selected investor will be issued equity shares representing 31 per cent of the company's share capital and upon a successful closing of the subscription, the investor will be required to make a mandatory minimum public open offer to purchase a minimum of 20 per cent of the company's share capital. The open offer will be made at the same share price as the price paid by the investor for the subscription.

If upon the closing of the open offer, the investor would have acquired less than 51 per cent of the share capital of the company through the subscription and the open offer, the investor would have the right to subscribe to additional newly issued equity shares, such that the shares acquired by the investor through the three related steps, the initial subscription, open offer and the subsequent subscription (if any) will result in the investor acquiring 51 per cent of the share capital of the company. The subsequent subscription, if any, will not result in requiring a further open offer.

In accordance with applicable Indian law, the investor will not be permitted to sell any equity shares acquired for a period of three years from the date of the acquisition, although the investor would be able to subscribe for additional equity shares.

Satyam expects to invite expressions of interest from qualified investors shortly in a global competitive bidding process. Qualified investors are expected to have total net assets in excess of $150 million.

SEBI has also eased the pricing norms for the preferential offer. Global IT firms including IBM can bid for Satyam now. Engineering group Larsen & Toubro, Mahindra and Mahindra Group firm Tech Mahindra and B. K. Modi-owned Spice Group are amongst the suitors who have declared their interest in Satyam, after its disgraced founder B. Ramalinga Raju confessed to perpetrating a Rs 7,000 crore financial fraud, reports The Economic Times.

NASA To Develop Planetary Skin With Cisco

2009-03-11T23:44:00.000-07:00

NASA has partnered with Cisco Inc. to develop an online collaborative global monitoring platform called the Planetary Skin to capture, collect, analyse and report data on environmental conditions around the world.
Under the terms of a Space Act Agreement, NASA and Cisco will work together to develop the Planetary Skin as an online collaborative platform to capture and analyse data from satellite, airborne, sea- and land-based sensors across the globe. This data will be made available for the general public, governments and businesses to measure, report and verify environmental data in near-real-time to help detect and adapt to global climate change.

"In the past 50 years, NASA's expertise has been applied to solving humanity's challenges, including playing a part in discovering global climate change," said S. Pete Worden, director, Ames Research Center, NASA. "The NASA-Cisco partnership brings together two world-class organisations that are well equipped with the technologies and skills to develop and prototype the Planetary Skin infrastructure."

Cisco and NASA will kick off Planetary Skin with a series of pilot projects, including Rainforest Skin, which will be prototyped during the next year. Rainforest Skin will focus on the deforestation of rainforests around the world and explore how to integrate a comprehensive sensor network. It also will examine how to capture, analyse and present information about the changes in the amount of carbon in rainforests in a transparent and useable way. According to scientists, the destruction of rainforests causes more carbon to be added to the atmosphere and remain there. That contributes significantly to global warming.

"Mitigating the impacts of climate change is critical to the world's economic and social stability," said John Chambers, chief executive officer, Cisco. "This unique partnership taps the power and innovation of the market and harnesses it for the public good. Cisco is proud to work with NASA on this initiative and hopes others from the public, private and not-for-profit sectors will join us in this exciting endeavour."

NASA provides continuous global observations of our home planet using a constellation of spacecraft, as well as airborne and in situ ground observations to monitor the health and well-being of Earth.

Cisco will bring its experience and expertise in networking technologies and advanced innovation to the project. Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group has a combination of business acumen, scientific, economics and policy understanding. Its experts will conduct complex data analysis and modelling, and share an in-depth knowledge of the next-generation Internet Protocol architectures to determine how to best prototype, replicate and scale a Planetary Skin to millions of participants.

Cisco is also working on the Planetary Skin programme with the United Nations, multi-lateral development banks, businesses, international government agencies, universities, think tanks, non-governmental agencies and foundations. Planetary Skin participants will pool their skills, assets and technologies to develop the decision support capabilities to effectively manage natural resources such as biomass, water, land and energy; climate change-related risks such as a rise in sea level, droughts and disease proliferation; and new environmental markets for carbon, water and biodiversity.

Think a Gamma Knife sounds cool? How about a Photonic Needle

2009-02-22T08:42:00.000-08:00

Researchers at St. Andrews University in Scotland have created a new technique for delivering drugs to individual cells which is essentially an incredibly precise laser fired from a fiber the width of a human hair. Despite this rather inflammatory article at the Daily Mail saying it will be used to cure cancer, the real applications are very specific and very practical — as is often the case with impressive-sounding medical technologies like MRI.

The ability to puncture a cell wall with ease and precision with an extremely non-invasive tool like a fiber (paired with another for drug delivery) is a coup for scientists testing at the cellular level. The new technology requires no focusing and is actually very much like a microscopic light saber when I think about it. Paging Dr. Vader…

New form of processor will make errors at hugely increased speeds

2009-02-22T08:37:00.001-08:00

The PCMOS system, designed by Rice University researchers, promises a speed increase of 700% at a thirtieth of the power demands. How, you ask? Well, transistors today are very tiny and use a lot of power to make sure that the intentional signal overpowers the random noise at that near-molecular scale. This is getting harder and harder, as transistor counts multiply and voltage per transistor increases as well, processors are getting hotter and more power hungry by the generation.

The creators of PCMOS think that by using “probabilistic logic” and accounting for noise in a different way, they can do a huge amount more work with a given amount of silicon. The system for such logic (an alternative to Boolean) is proprietary, of course, but the basics of it suggest that it may be suitable for tasks which do not require absolute precision or exact calculation. Decoding or showing a video stream, for instance, is something that, pixel by pixel, could be “estimated” and misplaced pixels would be quickly eclipsed by the next frame or ignored by our natural tolerance for such things.

The system is obviously not for everything, and it won’t be showing up as a desktop processor. But for things that need to have something low-power and aren’t doing anything terribly important (decoding the digital signal for a cell phone, for instance), they could increase both performance and battery life.

It’s all pie in the sky, however, until they get a product on the market (years); likely you won’t hear about it when it happens, or it will have a snazzy brand name. But it’s got DARPA and Intel behind it, so you know it’ll end up somewhere.

Lost city of Atlantis found on Google Earth?

2009-02-22T08:29:00.000-08:00

UK tabloid The Sun has an article claiming that someone found Atlantis using Google Earth. As someone who’s personally interested in ancient mysteries, paranormal phenomena, and cryptozoology, I’m really happy that a tabloid has this story because it totally gives credence to the idea that Atlantis does, indeed, exist and should definitely silence all the naysayers.

Surely I jest. The evidence is compelling, however; a grid of crisscrossing lines the size of Wales buried three and a half miles underwater is nothing to sneeze at. Remember, mother nature doesn’t make straight lines. Intelligent beings make straight lines. These lines are apparently 620 miles west of Morocco near the Canary Islands.

Most accounts tend to place Atlantis somewhere in or near the Atlantic Ocean, with placement ranging from near the Bermuda Triangle (also see the Bimini Road) all the way to islands in the Mediterranean Sea near Greece and Italy.

To play devil’s advocate, this could be any number of ancient super cities (if you believe in that kind of stuff) – not necessarily Atlantis. Or it could be an anomaly, a hoax, or it might have a reasonable explanation. Speaking of reasonable explanations…

According to a Google spokesperson, the lines are actually sonar artifacts from a boat gathering data for Google Earth’s new ocean feature:

“What users are seeing is an artefact of the data collection process.… Bathymetric (or sea floor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor.… The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data. The fact that there are blank spots between each of these lines is a sign of how little we really know about the world’s oceans.”

Here’s a link to the spot on Google Maps. Now if we could just get one of those Street View cars made into a submarine capable of going three and a half miles deep, we’d be in business.

Hindus plan cow urine drink to rival Western sodas

2009-02-12T01:14:00.001-08:00

A hardline Hindu organisation, known for its opposition to "corrupting" Western food imports, is planning to launch a new soft drink made from cow's urine, often seen as sacred in parts of India.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or National Volunteer Corps, said the bovine beverage is undergoing laboratory tests for the next 2 to 3 months but did not give a specific date for its commercial release.

The flavour is not yet known, but the RSS said the liquid produced by Hinduism's revered holy cows is being mixed with products such as aloe vera and gooseberry to fight diseases such as diabetes and cancer.

Many Hindus consider cow urine to have medicinal properties and it is often drunk in religious festivals.

The organisation, which aims to transform India's secular society and establish the supremacy of a Hindu majority, said it had not decided on a name or a price for the drink.

"Cow urine offers a cure for around 70 to 80 incurable diseases like diabetes. All are curable by cow urine," Om Prakash, the head of the RSS Cow Protection Department, told Reuters by phone.

Prakash, who is based in Hardwar, one of four holy Hindu cities on the river Ganges where the world's largest religious gathering takes place, said the product will be sold nationwide but did not rule out international success.

"It is useful for the whole country and the world as well. It will be done through shops and through corporates," he said.

The Hindu group has campaigned against foreign imports such as Pepsi and Coca Cola in the past, which it sees as a corrupting influence and a tool of Western imperialism.

The RSS was temporarily banned after a Hindu mob tore down a mosque in 1992 which lead to bloody religious riots.

The Shiv Sena, a hardline Hindu political party also known for attacking what it sees as threats to Indian culture such as Valentine's Day, started a similar initiative last year to appeal to its powerbase in Mumbai.

To promote the food of the native Marathi culture, the Shiv Sena said it was "making a chain like McDonalds" to sell a popular local fried snack.

Flash on iPhone IS Coming, Up To Adobe To Clear Tech Hurdles

2009-02-01T23:02:00.001-08:00

Bloomberg's interview with Adobe's Shantanu Narayen reveals that Adobe is developing Flash for the iPhone, it's been in development since June 2008, and is a customized solution just for the iPhone.

Apple has said repeatedly that regular desktop Flash is too heavy (on CPU, and thus battery life) for the iPhone, whereas Flash Lite is too lousy. Jobs has coerced Adobe to create a custom solution. From Narayan's words of "the ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver," the engineering effort lies more in Adobe's engineering team than in Apple's.

Adobe actually said, back in September '08, that there would be a version released "in a very short time" if Apple approved it. Obviously either Apple rejected it, or Adobe themselves decided it wasn't quite resource-friendly enough to launch.

NASA Wants You To Tell Them Where to Point the Hubble Space Telescope

2009-02-01T22:49:00.000-08:00

We're no stranger to the Hubble telescope here at Gizmodo, but our relationship up until this point has been a passive one. Today, however, NASA is asking the public where to point it.

There are six targets in all, and NASA is currently conducting a poll to figure out which one to survey using the venerable (and at times glitch-ridden) space telescope.

Voting concludes March 1, so you have some time to deliberate and research your choice. "Spiral Galaxy: NGC 5172" currently leads, followed by the plucky "Interacting Galaxies: Arp 274" in second, and the moxie-filled "Star-Forming Region: NGC 6634" is in third.

And guys, a quick aside, if you will. These are space-only locations. "Cute Girl's Window in the Apartment Across the Street" is not one of the options. [Hubble Site via Tom's Astronomy Blog]

Fall 2008 TV

2008-10-11T07:15:00.000-07:00

Review: iPhone 3G lives up to the hype

2008-09-09T10:06:00.000-07:00

Just over a year after Apple birthed the first iPhone, the long-awaited, next-generation iPhone 3G has arrived bearing a mildly tweaked design and a load of new features.

With access to a faster 3G wireless network, Microsoft Exchange server e-mail, and support for a staggering array of third-party software from the iPhone App Store, the new handset is the iPhone we've been waiting for.

It still lacks some basic features but when compared with what the original model was year ago, this device sets a new benchmark for the cell phone world.

With the iPhone 3G, Apple appears to have fixed some call-quality performance issues we had with the previous model--in our initial tests, the volume is louder with less background buzz than before. Music and video quality were largely unchanged, but we didn't have many complaints in that department to begin with.

We're worried about battery life--some early reviews indicate that the iPhone 3G lasts only a day--but we'll run full tests over the next couple of days and report our results on this page.

Price may well remain our largest concern. New AT&T customers and most current AT&T customers can buy the iPhone 3G for $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for the 16GB model. If you don't qualify for that price--check your AT&T account to find out--you'll pay $399 and $499 respectively.

Either way, you'll pay $15 more per month ($74.99 total) for a plan comparable with the original iPhone ($59 per month). So, while you'll pay less outright to buy the handset, you'll make it up over the course of a standard two-year AT&T contract.
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So should you buy an iPhone 3G? If you haven't bought an iPhone yet, and have been holding out for a new model, now is the time. If you're a current iPhone owner and you're yearning for a faster cellular network, then you should take the plunge.

But if you're an iPhone owner who won't use 3G (or can't; check your coverage at AT&T), then you should stick with your current model. The iPhone 2.0 software update provides Exchange server support, third-party apps support, and many new features without the added cost.

Design

You'd be hard-pressed to notice any design differences on the front of the iPhone 3G. The minor changes -- the silver rim is thinner and the silver mesh behind the speaker -- are so minimal we didn't notice them for a few hours after picking up the device.

Turn the phone on its side, however, and you'll see more changes. Apple has replaced the aluminum silver back with a plastic face in either white or black. The black version (our review model) is attractive, but we admit that we miss the original silver, which shows fewer fingerprints and smudges than the shiny black version. The white model is not our cup of tea.

The iPhone 3G's edges are slightly tapered to accommodate the curved back, making the device thinner around its perimeter than its predecessor, but a hair thicker (0.48 inch versus 0.46 inch) in the gut. Unfortunately, the curved back makes the iPhone 3G wobble slightly if you use it while resting on a table--which quickly becomes annoying.

The phone's height and width measurements (5.5 inches by 2.4 inches) remain the same, though it weighs just a tiny bit less (4.7 ounces versus 4.8 ounces).

At 3.5 inches and 480x320 pixels, the display is the same size as its predecessor, but displays slightly more dots per inch (163 vs.160), and still cranks out brilliant colors, sharp graphics, and fluid movements.

The layout of the home screen is identical to that on the first version, though you'll see two new icons from the outset: A Contacts icon takes you directly to your phone book, and the App Store icon opens the iTunes App Store. The display's glass surface, accelerometer feature, touch interface, and secondary menus remain the same.

The iPhone's 3G controls reveal a few changes, but none will surprise a current iPhone user. The Home button sits below the display, while the volume rocker and ringer mute switch rest on the left spine. The Power/sleep button rests on top of the phone in its normal position.

All controls are now silver instead of black. The SIM card slot hasn't moved either, and Apple now includes a SIM removal tool in the box. The bottom of the iPhone houses the speaker, the microphone, and the charger port, but you'll also notice two tiny screws on either side of the charger jack.

Think maybe you'll be able to replace your own battery now? Bummer: The battery is still not user-replaceable, so we don't recommend trying it (although we hear the battery is no longer soldered down).

We're very pleased that the iPhone 3G's 3.5mm headset jack now sits flush with the surface of the phone allowing you to use any 3.5mm headset you like; you're no longer restricted to a headset that can fit in the previous phone's inane recessed jack.

In the box you'll find the syncing cable, a display cleaning cloth, a headset, user documentation, the aforementioned SIM removal tool, and an electrical outlet plug. The plug is pleasantly smaller than on the original iPhone's, but it's compatible with a standard USB cable.

On the downside, you don't get a syncing dock. If you want one, you have to shell out $30 for it (boo!), and Apple made sure the iPhone 3G won't fit in the first iPhone's dock.

Features

The iPhone 3G hangs on to all the original iPhone features and throws in a few more, so we'll concentrate on what's new. Lucky for first-gen iPhone owners, most of the impressive array of additions -- save 3G support and enhanced GPS -- come along with the free 2.0 software update. (For more on the organizer features, stocks and weather widgets, YouTube app, notepad, threaded texting, and visual voicemail, see our original iPhone review.)

Exchange server support: Worker bees worldwide have awaited the iPhone 3G's full support for Microsoft Exchange server. In our tests, adding an Exchange account was ridiculously easy once we had the correct settings from our IT department--simply choose to add a new e-mail account in the main Settings menu, and you'll be taken to the standard list of available e-mail systems.

"Microsoft Exchange" and "MobileMe" (we'll try that later) will appear at the top of the list just above the choice for Gmail. You'll then be prompted to enter the applicable e-mail address, domain/username, server, and password. The authentication process took just a couple of minutes. Installing CNET's security certificate posed a bit of a challenge, but we eventually succeeded by mailing the certificate to ourselves through Yahoo Mail.

Once you're ready to go, the iPhone will sync your Outlook e-mail, contacts, and calendar. Be advised that while the iPhone can support multiple POP3 accounts at once (two Yahoo accounts, for instance), it syncs with only one Exchange server and, worse, with only with one calendar or contacts list at a time. If you have a separate personal calendar, your work calendar will replace it once you start the sync. (You'll be notified before it happens.)

As an alternative, though, you can sync e-mail without syncing your contacts and calendar. Also, you can keep work and personal e-mail accounts open at the same time, although you'll have to switch between the two (unlike on a BlackBerry). MobileMe is another way to work around this restriction, but we'll talk about the later.

When using Wi-Fi, e-mail syncing went quickly. As new messages came in, the iPhone registered them almost immediately. It seemed to bog down when we received a large clump of messages at one time, however. In those cases, we had to update the phone manually. In one instance, an update took a couple of minutes--long enough that we thought the phone had frozen.

We also noticed that if the iPhone loses its Wi-Fi connection, the syncing is interrupted even if the phone has 3G service. Even with these caveats, however, the experience was satisfactory. The Syncing via 3G was just as quick; if there was a difference, we didn't notice it.

When we deleted a message on our phone, the same e-mail vanished on our PC just a couple of seconds later. Messages deleted on the PC took longer to disappear from the phone; typically, we had to do a manual update to see them gone. Messages deleted on the phone will show up in your PC's Recycle Bin and vice versa.

You can access all folders in your in-box and move messages from your in-box to a specific folder. You can't search for messages, but you can call a contact if they include their phone number in their e-mail. Opening attachments worked as promised, and we like how you now can save attached images directly to your photo gallery simply by tapping the image.

To e-mail photos, you will need to do so in the traditional manner by opening the photo, selecting the e-mail option, and choosing which account you'd like to send from.

Though according to AT&T, using Exchange server support on the iPhone 3G will require the business data plan (the one that costs $45 per month), we're not sure how AT&T will enforce this rule. The iPhone does not prompt you of this restriction in any way.

MobileMe: The iPhone 3G supports Apple's new MobileMe service, which synchronizes from Mac's Mail, Address Book, and iCal applications: contacts, calendar appointments, e-mail messages, photos, and browser bookmarks. One advantage of MobileMe is that it allows you to sync personal and work calendars, and contacts. We'll test MobileMe on the phone once we get it up and running.

App Store: When you select the iTunes Store, you're taken to the App Store main menu, which somewhat resembles the mobile iTunes store in design. You search applications by name and category and you can browse through the lists of Featured applications or the Top 25. There also is a feature for seeing if your purchased applications have any updates.

We purchased a few apps for the iPhone. Downloads over Wi-Fi were pretty quick; most apps took just a few seconds, but keep in mind it will vary by the size of the app. Though you can purchase iTunes songs wirelessly only through a Wi-Fi connection, you can download applications of 10Mb or less over a 3G network and even over EDGE (if 3G isn't available).

Downloads over 3G took about the same time as they did over Wi-Fi, give or take a few seconds, but apps over EDGE are quite pokey. We also purchased applications through the online iTunes (7.7) store. We downloaded Super Monkey Ball and then synced it to our phone--a new applications tab appears under the iPhone menu. The process was quick and painless. What's more, navigation through the online apps store is easy. After loading apps, the icons will appear on the Home screen.

What's most remarkable about the online applications store is the sheer breadth of titles available, many of which take full advantage of the accelerometer. As of this writing, there are 27 pages available in a extensive range of categories. If there is one thing about the iPhone that's to love, it's the App Store -- even if not all the applications are keepers and Apple is maintaining strict control over who gets in.

Sure, Apple is not the first company to build a phone that takes third-party applications, but like the iPhone itself, the App Store is unique not for what it does, but for how it does it. The process is so easy that we can't imagine having the same experience on a Windows Mobile device. Of course, before you get carried away, remember that some apps are free but others will cost you.

The iPhone 3G's support for AT&T's wireless UMTS/HSDPA wireless broadband network comes too late for original iPhone buyers who grew frustrated with the slow Web-surfing speeds over the 2.5G EDGE network, but it makes for a much more satisfying second-generation device.

Safari consistently delivered speeds of about 300Kbps to 500Kbps and even faster at times in our tests. That's a huge jump over the typical EDGE speeds of less than 100Kbps. Web pages that used to take minutes took only seconds to load via 3G.

In preliminary testing, the iPhone 3G blew away its predecessor. When using the 3G network, WorldofWarcraft.com (a very bandwidth-heavy Web site) loaded as quickly as 38 seconds and as slowly as 47 seconds. In contrast, the same site loaded anywhere from 2 minutes to 2 minutes and 45 seconds on the original iPhone using EDGE.

We also tried accessing WorldofWarcraft.com on the iPhone 3G using EDGE. Its fastest speed also was 2 minutes but the slowest speed was a painful 3 minutes 30 seconds. The mobile site of CNET.com loaded in just 12 seconds on the 3G network but up to 23 seconds using EDGE. For more on Internet speeds, check out this Prizefight.

Of course, the 3G experience is all relative. Your experience will depend on many factors including 3G coverage in your area, the number of people on the network at a given time, and the kind of pages you're trying to access--as a rule, busier pages will load more slowly.

Also, it's absolutely essential that you test 3G coverage in your area using another AT&T 3G handset before buying the new iPhone. AT&T can give you guidance, but there's no substitute for real-world experience.

Outside of the United States, the iPhone's tri-band (850/1900/2100) UMTS/HSDPA support will deliver 3G coverage around the world. One final point is that 3G will suck juice from your phone, so you should consider switching it off (there's an options in the Settings menu) when you're not using it. At that point, the handset will default to EDGE.

GPS: While the current iPhone location services find your position by triangulating among nearby cell phone towers and satellites, the iPhone 3G uses Assisted GPS supplemented by satellites, which better pinpoints your location. It also offers live tracking so that you can monitor your progress as you drive (or walk) along.

We tested the GPS feature both in a car and on foot. When on foot, the tracking service from satellites was quite accurate. It pinpointed our location almost exactly and the small blue dot that represented our location followed us as we moved along. What's more, we didn't lose the connection as we walked between tall buildings or under an overpass.

Naturally, the satellite connection dropped out as we entered buildings but it switched automatically to find the closest cellular phone tower or hot spot. That method isn't quite as accurate--at times it could only show a circle spanning several city blocks--but you get the general idea of where you are.

There were times where we had to ask the iPhone to pinpoint our location again, particularly as we left buildings and switched back to a satellite connection. When riding in a car, the GPS wasn't quite as specific. The blue dot tended to jump block by block or as we came to stoplights.

Even with these additions, however, the iPhone's GPS features can't compete with standalone GPS devices. Google Maps provide point-to-point directions on the iPhone 3G, but the phone doesn't support turn-by-turn directions in real time, and it's unclear whether that capability will come later from third-party applications. Apple's SDK prohibits location-based services "designed or marketed for real-time route guidance," but that doesn't mean we'll never see them.

The iPhone's iPod: We can't blame Apple for leaving the iPhone's iPod functions unchanged. In the year since the original iPhone, no competitor has been able to match the iPhone's aptitude as a music and video player. Of course, it doesn't hurt that Apple's online iTunes store continues to reign as a top destination for music, video, and podcast downloads.

As with the first-generation iPhone, the iPod icon on the iPhone 3G's main menu reveals a submenu of any content transferred from your computer's iTunes media library, including music, videos, and podcasts. The iPhone's remarkably responsive touch screen and its intuitive navigation allow you to swiftly scroll through lengthy song lists or leisurely browse your music collection in an attractive Cover Flow view.

By default, the iPod menu includes shortcut icons for Playlists, Artists, Songs, and Video; however, these shortcuts can be easily swapped for other options that may be more useful to you, such as Podcasts, Albums, Audiobooks, Compilations, Composers, or Genres.

If you hunger for new music but lack the patience to download songs at home, the iPhone's iTunes Wi-Fi Store lets you browse new music and download purchases directly to your phone. As the name implies, the iTunes Wi-Fi Store unfortunately works only over your iPhone's Wi-Fi Internet connection, which is surprising, considering that downloads over 3G would strengthen the iPhone's appeal as on-demand music player.

The arrival of third-party applications to the iPhone has ushered in several new music-related capabilities, including a few free music applications we consider essential. For instance, radio fans can take advantage of AOL Radio and Pandora to stream music directly to the iPhone over both Wi-Fi and 3G connections. An in-house Apple application, Remote, transforms your iPhone into a full-featured remote control for your computer's iTunes music library or a separate Apple TV system.

The iPhone 3G does an admirable job supporting MP3, AAC, Audible, Apple Lossless, WAV, and AIFF audio files, as well as MPEG-4 or H.264 video files. Predictably, the iPhone does not support Windows Media file types such as WMA audio or WMV video, or more boutique formats like DIVX, FLAC, or Ogg Vorbis.

With the exception of songs downloaded directly to the phone using the iTunes Wi-Fi music store, loading audio and video content onto the iPhone 3G requires Apple's iTunes software. Unlike the initial release of the first-generation iPhone, you can now manually sync music files to your iPhone if you prefer not to have content automatically load from your iTunes library.

The iPhone 3G's sound quality and EQ enhancement features are indistinguishable from the first-generation version's and certainly good enough to make your existing MP3 player redundant. The iPhone 3G's built-in speakers crank out noticeably louder -- but still musically unacceptable -- sound. To squeeze the most from the iPhone's sound quality, we recommend investing in a pair of higher quality headphones or earbuds than those that come with the device.

The iPhone 3G's near-perfect storm of video features includes iTunes movie rental compatibility, excellent video podcast support, a dedicated YouTube player, autobookmarking, full-screen resizing, and support for embedded closed captions and chapter bookmarks.

The iPhone's critical shortcoming as a Web-enabled portable video player is its lack of support for the Internet's ubiquitous Flash video content. Smaller video gripes include our dislike of the iPhone's reflective screen and the lack of a flip-out kickstand. The iPhone 3G's video quality offers no surprises, displaying crisp and colorful 480x320 video on its 3.5-inch screen.

The phone tends toward negative blacks and low contrast when viewing the iPhone 3G at off angles, but the overall video experience is one of the best you'll find on a mobile phone.

With all of the iPhone 3G's cool new audio and radio applications, it's disappointing that Apple couldn't find a way to roll wireless A2DP stereo Bluetooth audio streaming into the device. In time, we hope third-party manufacturers will find a way to help users stream music from their iPhones to their Bluetooth-enabled speakers, headphones, and car stereos.

Camera: We were hoping that the iPhone 3G would throw in an improved camera, but we got the same 2-megapixel shooter as in the original model, although with a slight improvement in the photo quality. Colors looked natural, there was little image noise, and interior shots had enough light.

The camera's white balance can't handle bright sunlight, but that's not unusual for a camera phone. Camera features remain equally minimal and the blatant lack of multimedia messaging and video recording continue to rub us the wrong way.

Contacts search: A search bar now appears above your contacts list. Typing in any portion of the name will take you immediately to that person.

iWork documents and PowerPoint: We haven't tried iWork documents, but we were able to view PowerPoint e-mail attachments. The attachment was rather large (1.3MB), but it didn't take very long to download. Keep in mind that as with other Office documents, the iPhone does not allow you to edit attachments.

Bulk delete and move: This works in your e-mail boxes only. In your in-box you'll see a small "edit" button at the top right-hand corner. When you press the button, a small circle will appear next to each e-mail. Touch the circle to highlight as many messages as you like and then select the "delete" or "move" options.

Scientific calculator: As Steve Jobs said in his WWDC keynote, you'll now get a scientific calculator when you turn the phone on its side. You'll see a lot more buttons that will set a mathematician's heart aflutter.

Parental controls: You now will find a "Restrictions" selection under the General tab of the main Settings menu. There you can restrict access to the Safari browser, explicit songs, YouTube, and the iTunes and iTunes App Stores. You can select as many restrictions as you like.

Language support: The iPhone 3G also brings language support and typing keyboards in French, Canadian French, U.K. English, German, Japanese (QWERTY and Kana), Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Russian, and Polish.

You can select as many languages you want by opening the "International" selection under the General tab of the main Settings menu. For Chinese, you choose from Pinyin or a graffiti-style application for writing characters. As you enter characters, suggestions will appear to the right. To change between menus, choose from the small globe icon next to the space bar.

What else is new? The IPhone 3G offers a host of additional new features, from the noteworthy to the trivial. For the enterprise, there's remote wipe (to erase data in case of a stolen or lost phone) and integration with Cisco IPSec VPN for remote network access.

You'll also find calendar colors and a new interface for entering passwords. (Now the screen temporarily displays the last character you entered so you can verify that you haven't mistyped.) We found the new ability to take screen captures (by holding the Home button and pressing the power/sleep key) especially useful. Screenshots end up in the camera's photo gallery.

What's missing? We've mentioned already that Apple has stubbornly left out multimedia messaging, stereo Bluetooth, and video recording. But we also wish we'd gotten a landscape keyboard for messaging, cut and paste, voice dialing, Flash support for the Web browser, tactile feedback for the touch screen and a memory card (or at least a 32GB model).

Perhaps those additions will come in time. We'd also like the capability to send calendar appointments to contacts and an easier way to transfer files to the iPhone. Because there's no way to transfer them via iTunes, you'll have to e-mail files to yourself to access them on the iPhone. And even then, there's no accessible mass file storage.

Call quality: When we reviewed the original iPhone, we withheld our Editors' Choice Award largely over middling call quality because of low volume and a slight background hum. The iPhone 3G corrects these problems--our tests revealed louder volume and clearer audio.

We also noticed that we could hear better at a variety of angles, whereas the first iPhone had a sensitive sweet spot. Also, while it was difficult to hear the original iPhone in noisy environments, we had better luck with this model. Reception didn't vary between GSM and HSDPA calls.

iPhone 3G also improves speakerphone calls. The phone's external speaker creates louder output, and callers said they can hear us better. Voices don't sound quite as natural, but that's typical on a speakerphone. Automated calling systems could understand us via regular or speakerphone calls. The iPhone's signal remained strong. According to FCC radiation tests, the iPhone 3G's highest digital SAR is 1.38 watts per kilogram.

Battery life: Apple rates the iPhone 3G's battery at 5 hours of talk time over 3G and 10 hours over AT&T's standard cellular network; 6 hours of Internet time on Wi-Fi, or 5 hours over 3G; 7 hours of video playback; 24 hours of music playback; and a standby time of 12.5 days. In our first round of testing we 4.95 hours of 3G talk time and 8.75 hours talk time over EDGE. We'll continue to run further tests over the next few days.

Though our official lab tests aren't bad so far, real-world use will be a better judge of the iPhone 3G's endurance. And on that front, we've noticed that the iPhone 3G's battery life does seem to drop faster than on the original model, particularly while using the 3G network or GPS.

That's to be expected, but we noticed that after a couple hours of use, the battery life dropped by about 30 percent. Large color displays like the iPhone's tend to be battery drainers as well, so you should expect to use more juice when you're constantly switching between applications.

Activation: Unlike the original iPhone, you cannot activate the iPhone 3G via iTunes. Instead, you will have to activate the phone and sign your new contract in either an AT&T store or an Apple store. Though we understand the motivation behind this move -- AT&T is trying to ensure every iPhone sold is activated on its own network -- the experience isn't as nice as sitting in the comfort of your home.

Once you have your phone out of the store, you will need to sync it with your iTunes account after first downloading the latest iTunes 7.7 update (download for Windows or Mac) first. That took us a long time on the iPhone 3G's first day on sale but hopefully those glitches will subside.

If you're replacing an original iPhone, make sure you back up your data from the old iPhone first; you'll then be able to transfer it to your new handset. As before, you can sync multiple iPhones to a single iTunes account

Multibillion-dollar experiment to probe nature's mysteries

2008-09-09T09:27:00.000-07:00

Deep underground on the border between France and Switzerland, the world's largest particle accelerator complex will explore the world on smaller scales than any human invention has explored before.
The collider's ALICE experiment will look at how the universe formed by analyzing particle collisions.

The collider's ALICE experiment will look at how the universe formed by analyzing particle collisions.

The Large Hadron Collider will look at how the universe formed by analyzing particle collisions. Some have expressed fears that the project could lead to the Earth's demise -- something scientists say will not happen. Still, skeptics have filed suit to try to stop the project.

It even has a rap dedicated to it on YouTube.

Scientists say the collider is finally ready for an attempt to circulate a beam of protons the whole way around the 17-mile tunnel. The test, which takes place Wednesday, is a major step toward seeing if the the immense experiment will provide new information about the way the universe works.

"It's really a generation that we've been looking forward to this moment, and the moments that will come after it in particular," said Bob Cousins, deputy to the scientific leader of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment, one of six experiments inside the collider complex. "September 10 is a demarcation between finishing the construction and starting to turn it on, but the excitement will only continue to grow."

The collider consists of a particle accelerator buried more than 300 feet near Geneva, Switzerland. About $10 billion have gone into the accelerator's construction, the particle detectors and the computers, said Katie Yurkewicz, spokewoman for CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which is host to the collider.

In the coming months, the collider is expected to begin smashing particles into each other by sending two beams of protons around the tunnel in opposite directions. It will operate at higher energies and intensities in the next year, and the experiments could generate enough data to make a discovery by 2009, experts say. Check out the collider complex's six detectors »

Testing the unknown

Experts say the collider has the potential to confirm theories about questions that physicists have been working on for decades including the possible existence of extra dimensions. They also hope to find a theoretical particle called the Higgs boson, which has never been detected, but would help explain why matter has mass.
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The collider will recreate the conditions of less than a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, when there was a hot "soup" of tiny particles called quarks and gluons, to look at how the universe evolved, said John Harris, U.S. coordinator for ALICE, a detector specialized to analyze that question.

Since this is exploratory science, the collider may uncover surprises that contradict prevailing theories, but which are just as interesting, said Joseph Lykken, theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

"When Columbus sails west, he thought he was going to find something. He didn't find what he thought he was going to find, but he did find something interesting," said Lykken, who works on the Compact Muon Solenoid, one of six experiments inside the collider complex.

Why should the layperson care about this particular exploration? Years ago, when electrons were first identified, no one knew what they were good for, but they have since transformed our entire economy, said Howard Gordon, deputy research program manager for the collider's ATLAS experiment.

"The transformative effect of this research will be to understand the world we live in much better," said Gordon, at Brookhaven National Laboratory. "It's important for just who we are, what we are."

Black hole fears are "baloney"

Fears have emerged that the collider could produce black holes that could suck up anything around them -- including the whole Earth. Such fears prompted legal actions in the U.S. and Europe to halt the operation of the Large Hadron Collider, alleging safety concerns regarding black holes and other phenomena that could theoretically emerge.

Although physicists acknowledge that the collider could, in theory, create small black holes, they say they do not pose any risk. A study released Friday by CERN scientists explains that any black hole created would be tiny, and would not have enough energy to stick around very long before dissolving. Five collider collaborators who did not pen the report independently told CNN there would be no danger from potential black holes.

John Huth, who works on the collider's ATLAS experiment, called such fears "baloney" in a recent interview, and noted that in normal physics, even if the black hole were stable, it could just pass through the Earth without being detected or without interacting at all.

"The gravitational force is so weak that you'd have to wait many, many, many, many, many lifetimes of the universe before one of these things could [get] big enough to even get close to being a problem," said Huth, professor of physics at Harvard University.

At the scene

When visiting the general-purpose detectors CMS and ATLAS at the Large Hadron Collider, Lykken said he was awed that 30,000 tons of electronics would have to work without anyone fiddling with them all the time.

"It just blows you away to look at these things and realize they're not only incredibly complex and huge, but they have to actually work," he said. "They have to work without people banging on them all day because they're sitting underground all by themselves."

With twice as much iron as the Eiffel Tower, CMS will run at full power for the first time in conjunction with the first beam test Wednesday, Lykken said. The magnet serves to bend particles, whizzing by at almost the speed of light, to figure out what kind of particles they are.

Although the detector's parts weigh thousands of tons, in previous trials of CMS at lower power, the magnet actually yanked certain parts around because of its power, Lykken said.

"You're talking about such incredible power inside both the accelerator and detectors that you never really know until you turn it all on what's going to happen," he said.

Scientists around the world are pumped for the first beam. Fermilab, the high energy physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, and major collaborator on the Large Hadron Collider, will be host of a "pajama party" at 1:30 a.m. CT that includes a live connection to CERN to follow the action.
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Cousins believes that because the collider pushes the frontiers of science and technology, it would be "amazingly impressive if it works the first try," he said in a phone interview from CERN. Any little disturbance of the magnetic field anywhere in the tunnel could stop the beam from making it all the way around.

Still, after a 25-year wait, he's not complaining. "I personally will be fine if there's some problem that has to be overcome in the next few days,"

iPhone 3G will be launched in India on August 18

2008-08-12T20:43:00.000-07:00

Oh Finally we get the news that iPhone 3G will released in Indian on August 18. Vodafone will launch the iPhone 3G first on the 18th of August. And after 15 days you can also get it from Airtel too.
Pricing and other essentials are still unknown. But will update you ASAP.........

NASA: Space shuttle replacement won't fly until 2014

2008-08-12T20:35:00.000-07:00

NASA has put off the planned launch of its next-generation Orion spacecraft for a year, a setback to efforts to fly a successor to its aging space shuttles, the space agency announced Monday.
The Orion space vehicle in this artist rendering from Lockheed Martin's web site, won't see space until 2014.

The Orion space vehicle in this artist rendering from Lockheed Martin's web site, won't see space until 2014.
more photos »

"September 2014 is when we are saying we will launch the first crew on the Orion," program manager Jeff Hanley told reporters in a conference call Monday.

NASA officials plan to wrap up assembly of the International Space Station and retire the space shuttle fleet in 2010, freeing up money to build and fly the new spacecraft. Cost concerns are at the root of the delay, but NASA is also giving itself wiggle room to deal with the unforeseen technical problems that will inevitably crop up, Hanley said.

"It's the unknown unknowns that we have to hedge against," he said. "Having some number of months of schedule flexibility to meet our commitment, in addition to having some number of months of cost -- dollars -- flexibility, is key to keeping ourselves in a healthy posture."

Sometimes called "Apollo on steroids," Orion is designed to ferry astronauts to and from the space station and eventually back to the moon. Unlike the space shuttles, which land like an airplane, Orion is a capsule that will parachute to a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Photo See photos of the full-size mock-up »

The new goal of September 2014 is a year later than NASA had planned to launch the first Orion, but still six months short of the March 2015 commitment date set by Congress. Program managers were hoping to fly the new vehicle much sooner than that to keep the gap between the last shuttle flight and the first Orion flight to a minimum.

"As we looked at the plan we had for September 2013 against the available dollars, it became clear to us that we needed to adjust our schedules," said Hanley.

SEE MARS IN WIDE-SCREEN

2008-07-12T05:17:00.001-07:00

It's prime time for the Mars probes: NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is at the halfway point of its 90-day primary mission, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is sending back a flood of images from orbit. The pictures contain an incredible amount of detail - as the latest jaw-dropping panoramas illustrate.

One of the coolest views is a work in progress that's being put together by amateur image wizard James Canvin. He's a weather researcher and former astronomer who often posts his work to Unmanned Spaceflight and Emily Lakdawalla's Planetary Society Weblog. As more raw imagery come in from the Phoenix lander, Canvin adds it to a home-brewed mosaic that shows a 360-degree view of the probe's surroundings in Mars' north polar region.

The latest version of the Phoenix's mission success panorama (a.k.a. the Peter Pan, in honor of Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith) appears on Lakdawalla's blog as well as on Martian Vistas, Canvin's own home on the Web. With his permission, we've created a zoomable HD View version - but if HD View doesn't work for you, you can still check out Canvin's 10,000-pixel-wide version on Martian Vistas.

"I'd better get working on the final version!" Canvin told me in an e-mail.

In today's posting, Lakdawalla explains why Canvin and other amateurs can get their own versions of NASA imagery on the Web before NASA does. Mission scientists use a more painstaking system for processing their images precisely and scientifically - while the amateurs (and, truth be told, most of us in the outside world) are interested primarily in a good-looking picture.

A thrilling view of Victoria Crater's Cape Verde, based on data from NASA's Opportunity rover, provides a prime example: The wide reddish sky and thin Martian clouds add to the drama of the scene, but they're artistic enhancements rather than the real thing.

Art plus science
Producing pictures of Mars in color is an art as well as a science. Sometimes the technical limitations of spacecraft operating tens of millions of miles from Earth limit what they can do. Even if everything works perfectly, it can take a while to combine the imagery taken through different filters. That's why you'll almost always see the black-and-white versions of Martian scenes first.

A prime example is the stunning picture that Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured on May 25, showing the Phoenix lander descending toward its landing spot on the end of a parachute. The black-and-white version of the image was released a day after the landing, but the partially colorized version didn't come out until this week.

NASA / JPL / UA
This partially colorized picture, captured by the high-resolution camera on NASA's
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows the Phoenix Mars Lander descending on the
end of its parachute. The inset photograph highlights the parachute and lander.
Click on the image for a larger version. Can you spot the heat shield falling away?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The scientists who control the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, could get the color data only for a narrow strip of the panorama. Unfortunately, the lander was outside that target strip when the picture was taken.

"For this reason, processing the color bands did not take a high priority in the days following acquisition of this image," the HiRISE team explained.

Nevertheless, the color strips reveal extra information about the crater in the background: There's a slight bluish tint along the right edge of the rightmost strip, indicating that the bowl of the crater contains a dusting of ice or frost.

The high-resolution version of the image holds another surprise: The HiRISE team says the picture appears to show the spacecraft's heat shield falling away, as a tiny black speck below and to the right of the drifting parachute and lander. Can you find it? This detail image from the HiRISE Web site helps you spot the speck.

The heat shield also appears as a speck in HiRISE's latest view of the Phoenix landing site. Check out this high-resolution image to see the lander's parachute and backshell, the black dot of the heat shield, and the lander itself toward the lower right. If you've got your 3-D glasses handy, you'll get a kick out of HiRISE's red-blue stereo pictures.

HiRISE's pictures of the Phoenix site are just the tip of the iceberg. The full image catalog, updated weekly, shows a wide variety of Martian vistas - usually in false shades of blue and orange that are meant to emphasize the subtle differences in surface composition.

But wait ... there's more: Phoenix and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are only the latest probes on the Martian scene. To get the full picture, you'll want to keep tabs on NASA's Mars rovers as well as Mars Odyssey and Europe's Mars Express. And don't forget our special section on Mars exploration, "Return to the Red Planet."

Apple iPhone 3G

2008-07-12T05:15:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Mac Micro.

The iPhone 3G is the beginning of a new computing platform. With 3G and the App Store, the best iPod ever is now one of the best handheld computers ever. We struggled with a bunch of day-one bugs, but we're confident that Apple will work them out. Oh, and it's finally a decent phone, too.

SLIDESHOW (29)

Slideshow | All Shots

Over the past year or so, Apple has made a subtle shift from developing products to building platforms, and it's a move we applaud. Products are disposable. Platforms grow. We witnessed the shift in the last update to the Apple TV, which gave an old box new features. You saw it when Apple made the iPhone 2.0 software available to original iPhone and iPod Touch owners, as well as to the new iPhone 3G users.

Buzz up!on Yahoo!
While not a huge physical upgrade over the original iPhone, the 3G hits two of the older model's critical weaknesses—poor phone call quality and slow Internet connection speeds—and makes it clear that the iPhone is now a platform, a pocket computer that software developers can empower to do anything its users want. It's a formidable smartphone (though not without weaknesses), a heck of a lot of fun to use, and a device that will grow with you.

What Hasn't Changed Much

By and large, the 3G looks, feels, and acts like an iPhone. It's still a big slab of touch screen with a single Home button. The display is the same 3.5-inch 320x480-pixel panel with multi-touch capabilities, but it's a little bit brighter than the previous iPhone's screen. There's a slightly thinner metal bezel around the screen and the back of the handset plastic rather than metal. It's also slightly rounded; the iPhone wobbles a little on a table if you push on its edges. The plastic back attracts fingerprints like nobody's business. A new metal grill over the earpiece and speakers helps improve the sound quality. And thank goodness, the 3G eschews the recessed headphone jack for a regular one that accepts ordinary, run-of-the-mill music headphones.

You still enter data on a touch keyboard that corrects your spelling, but still doesn't offer force feedback. That turns a lot of people off, but it's still one of the two best touch keyboards in the business (along with the LG Dare's.) The keyboard still rotates into wide mode for entering URLs, but not for typing text or e-mail messages.

The basic array of iPhone applications hasn't changed much. There's the Phone, iPod, iTunes, Safari, YouTube, Mail, Text (threaded SMS), Calendar, Camera, Photos, Stocks, Maps, Weather, Clock, Calculator, Notes, and Settings. Now there's a dedicated icon for Contacts and the App store. (For more on the App Store, see below.)

You still have to click a whole bunch of times to dial the phone. You can still pinch, spread your fingers, and drag them across the screen to manipulate pictures. Apple's Safari browser remains untouched, showing Web pages with beautiful desktop fidelity, but without Flash or Java.

The phone comes in 8GB (black) and 16GB (black and white) sizes, neither with a removable memory card slot. The iPhone's disappointing 2-megapixel camera, with absolutely no settings options (including no video recording) sadly hasn't changed; our 3G pictures looked identical to our 2G shots, though the 3G ones came tagged with GPS data. And there's no picture messaging to other phones (MMS), no removable battery, and you can't cut and paste text.

Speaking of batteries, the 3G has an even shorter rated battery life than its predecessor; 10 hours of 2G and 5 hours of 3G talk time, 5 hours of 3G data, 6 hours of Wi-Fi, 24 hours of music, or 7 hours of video. We'll test that over the next week, but in our experience so far, this iPhone may not even last a day of heavy use.

Wall-E World

2008-07-08T21:43:00.000-07:00

A little more than a century from now, our planet will be so polluted as to be virtually uninhabitable. That’s the cheery premise behind Disney/Pixar’s charming “Wall-E,” the most popular movie in the country last week.

AP Photo

The film takes place in the 2800s, when Wall-E, a cute little trash-compacting robot, is the last life of any kind remaining on Earth (aside from his indestructible pet cockroach). Long since abandoned, Wall-E goes about his solitary and meaningless work in a bleak urban landscape marred by dirty skies, sludgy seas and towering piles of consumer waste from Buy N’ Large, the free market’s last surviving megastore.

From “I Am Legend” to Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” recent pop culture has been full of post-apocalyptic stories. But “Wall-E” departs from those tales in one key aspect: The human race in this movie isn’t becoming extinct, it’s just on an indefinite vacation. In the future created by “Wall-E’s” filmmakers, we humans flee our ruined planet in 2110 for giant, cruise-ship-like space vessels, where we drift numbly through the solar system for the next 700 years. Coddled by servant robots, carted around on levitating recliner chairs, fed through Big Gulp-like cups and medicated by programming on ever-present hologram TVs, we have become infantile and morbidly fat.

In this way, “Wall-E” takes 21st-century societal trends – ecological destruction, rampant consumerism, corporate consolidation and obesity – and projects them forward to their most drastic consequences. Right-wing bloggers already have attacked what they see as the movie’s save-the-Earth message, although they might be heartened to see that in “Wall-E’s” vision of the future, government doesn’t seem to exist (the spacecraft are operated by Buy N’ Large).

Like many futuristic stories, “Wall-E” takes a cautionary view of technology. Its chief antagonist is a spaceship’s autopilot function (a nod to HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey”), and the movie’s ending celebrates the benefits of. . .simple farming. Wall-E himself is a mostly low-tech creation, more mechanical than digital, although he displays remarkable feelings of curiosity, fear and love.

One final thought: Considering that Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs also ran Pixar, it’s no surprise that the solar-powered Wall-E reboots to the swelling sound of the Mac startup tone. But Pixar does have a sense of humor — the evil autopilot computer is voiced by Apple’s speech-recognition software.

–Brandon Griggs, Tech Section Producer, CNN.com

Best used fuel-efficient cars under $10,000

2008-06-27T08:51:00.001-07:00

(AOL Autos) -- Consumer Reports recently announced its annual used cars ratings, and we weren't surprised to see one of the major categories was "Best in Fuel Economy."

With gasoline and oil prices on a seemingly endless upward spiral, that's a key factor these days when choosing a used car -- or even a new one.

The cars that made this list were, according to Consumer Reports, "the affordable and reliable vehicles [that] returned some of the best results in our real-world fuel-economy tests."

What follows is a list of the vehicles that magazine rated "Best in Fuel Economy" in the under $10,000 price range, with a short description of each vehicle. The mileage figures stated are the ones calculated by Consumer Reports in their own on-the-road tests.

2000 Honda Insight
Overall MPG: 51

When the Insight hit showrooms in 1999 for the 2000 model year, it was hailed as one of the cleanest and most fuel-efficient vehicles in the world. It was the first gasoline-electric hybrid to be sold in the U.S., and won several design, engineering and technology awards.

The Insight employs Honda's Integrated Motor Assist (IMA) system, combining an extremely lightweight 1.0-liter, three-cylinder gasoline automobile engine with an ultra-thin electric motor. Early models came with a 5-speed manual transmission, but a continuously variable transmission (CVT) was offered starting in '01.

2001 - 2002 Toyota Prius
Overall MPG: 41

This was one of the earliest generations of the fuel-sipping Prius, and it certainly has become a green living icon since then. Drawing its power from a combination of a 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine and an electric motor, these earlier editions generated only 70 hp, but muscle isn't the point in a hybrid car. It's pod-like design had a certain retro-futuristic appeal, and was roomier than one might think.

2000 - 2005 Toyota Echo
Overall MPG: 38

The Echo was rolled out in 2000 as a no-frills compact econo-box, for those who wanted Toyota quality but were on a budget that precluded them from snagging a Corolla.

The interior is plain, but the engine is reliable and efficient, and the taut suspension delivers a ride comparable to larger models. This version of the Echo comes with a 1.5-liter four-cylinder 108-hp 16-Valve EFI engine.

1998 - 2002 Chevrolet Prizm
Overall MPG: 32

The Prizm of this era bore some resemblance to the Corolla, since both were built on the same assembly line in a joint GM/Toyota plant. A front-wheel-drive subcompact sedan, the Prizm was initially rolled out under the Geo nameplate, but later became a Chevy model.

Available as a base model and LSi, the Prizm is powered by single twin-cam four-cylinder engines that produced 120 hp in 1998 and 1999, but the addition of VVT in 2000 boosted the ponies to 125.

1998 Mazda Protégé LX
Overall MPG: 32

Mazda redesigned the Protégé in 1995, upgrading it considerably with a more rigid chassis and much-improved ride quality -- not to mention increased interior space.

This edition also offers a silkier ride, crisp handling and solid performance for a small car. This model year has a 92-hp 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine, and comes in three trim levels.

1998 - 2000 Toyota Corolla CE/LE
Overall MPG: 32/31

The Corolla has been a stalwart for more than 40 years, for its quality, dependability and, maybe most importantly, for its fuel economy. The 1998-1999 editions are powered by a 1.8 L, 120-hp, four-cylinder 16-Valve EFI, with aluminum alloy block and head.

By 2000, they'd tweaked the engine to deliver 125 ponies. A front-wheel drive job, the Corollas of this period come in three trim levels, but Consumer Reports chose the midline CE and top-end LE.

1998 - 2001 Acura Integra LS
Overall MPG: 32

The Acura Integra sport coupe and sport sedan lineups have always been standard-bearers for innovative technology, craftsmanship, and exhilarating performance.

It was the top-selling automobile in its segment from 1994 - 1998. It is available on five sport-coupe trim levels and three sport- sedan trims. The Intergra LS came with a 1.8-liter, 140-hp engine, automatic transmission is optional.

2004 - 2005 Scion xA
Overall MPG: 31/30

The Scion xA's body lines are rounder and more sculpted than the distinctly boxy shape of its xB cousin, but it's just as well-constructed and just as comfy inside. Low maintenance costs are a big selling point, as is the taut ride.

A 1.5-liter, 108-hp 16-valve four-cylinder comes standard on the 2004 - 2005, along with a five-speed manual transmission, and an automatic transmission was optional

Sega Dream Dog DX: The first robot dog you can truly love

2008-06-26T00:58:00.001-07:00

Many attempts have been made to create the perfect robot dog, but we can now safely say that a new bot called the Dream Dog DX Golden Retriever reigns supreme over them all. More cuddly than a tribble and ten times more believable than the AIBO, the DX made its debut at the recent Tokyo Toy Show and blew visitors away with its realistic antics. Responding to voice commands, the DX will sit, roll over, bark and even nip at your fingers when you play with its nose. The "toy" is actually rather cute and comes closer to a realistic dog than any robot I've seen. The plaintive dog sounds it emits are enough to tug at your geek heartstrings. Imagine what life would be like if this thing had an embedded, live-updated Wikipedia database and speech functions enabled--scary. Available in September, the Dream Dog DX Golden Retriever will be sell for just 29,800 ($276) here.

Scholars Set Date for Odysseus' Bloody Homecoming

2008-06-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

Using clues from star and sun positions mentioned by the ancient Greek poet Homer, scholars think they have determined the date when King Odysseus returned from the Trojan War and slaughtered a group of suitors who had been pressing his wife to marry one of them.

It was on April 16, 1178 B.C. that the great warrior struck with arrows, swords and spears, killing those who sought to replace him, a pair of researchers say in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Experts have long debated whether the books of Homer reflect the actual history of the Trojan War and its aftermath.

Marcelo O. Magnasco of Rockefeller University in New York and Constantino Baikouzis of the Astronomical Observatory in La Plata, Argentina, acknowledge they had to make some assumptions to determine the date Odysseus returned to his kingdom of Ithaca.

But interpreting clues in Homer's "Odyssey" as references to the positions of stars and a total eclipse of the sun allowed them to determine when a particular set of conditions would have occurred.

"What we'd like to achieve is to get the reader to pick up the "Odyssey," and read it again, and ponder," said Magnasco. "And to realize that our understanding of these texts is quite imperfect, and even when entire libraries have been written about Homeric studies, there is still room for further investigation."

Their study potentially adds support to the accuracy of Homer's writing.

"Under the assumption that our work turns out to be correct, it adds to the evidence that he knew what he was talking about," Magnasco said. "It still does not prove the historicity of the return of Odysseus," he said. "It only proves that Homer knew about certain astronomical phenomena that happened much before his time."

Homer reports that on the day of the slaughter the sun is blotted from the sky, possibly a reference to an eclipse. In addition, he mentions more than once that it is the time of a new moon, which is necessary for a total eclipse, the researchers say.

Other clues include:

_Six days before the slaughter, Venus is visible and high in the sky.

_Twenty-nine days before, two constellations -- the Pleiades and Bootes -- are simultaneously visible at sunset.

_And 33 days before, Mercury is high at dawn and near the western end of its trajectory. This is the researchers' interpretation, anyway. Homer wrote that Hermes, the Greek name for Mercury, traveled far west to deliver a message.

"Of course we believe it's amply justified, otherwise we would not commit it to print. However we do recognize there's less ammunition to defend this interpretation than the others," Magnasco said.

"Even though the other astronomical references are much clearer, our interpretation of them as allusions to astronomical phenomena is an assumption," he added in an interview via e-mail.

For example, Magnasco said, Homer writes that as Odysseus spread his sails out of Ogygia, "sleep did not weigh on his eyelids as he watched the Pleiades, and late-setting Bootes, and the Bear."

"We assume he means that as Odysseus set sail shortly after sunset, at nautical twilight the Pleiades and Bootes were simultaneously visible, and that Bootes would be the later-setting of the two," Magnasco explained. "It is a good assumption because every member of his audience would know what was being discussed, as the Pleiades and Bootes were important to them to know the passage of the seasons and would be very familiar with which times of the year they were visible. Remember the only calendar they had was the sky."

Since the occurrence of an eclipse and the various star positions repeat over different periods of time, Magnasco and Baikouzis set out to calculate when they would all occur in the order mentioned in the "Odyssey."

And their result has Odysseus exacting his revenge on April 16, 1178 B.C.

Mars lander finds bits of ice, scientists say

2008-06-25T22:12:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Scientists believe that NASA's Phoenix Mars lander exposed bits of ice while recently digging a trench in the soil of the Martian arctic, the mission's principal investigator said Thursday.

Trenches excavated by the lander's robotic arm have turned up white material mixed in with the reddish dirt.

Crumbs of bright material initially photographed in the trench later vanished, meaning they must have been frozen water that vaporized after being exposed, said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, in a statement.

"These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice," Smith said.

"There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."

Phoenix Mars is studying whether the arctic region of the Red Planet could be habitable.

The probe is using its robotic arm to dig up soil samples, and scientists hope it will find frozen water.

However, an initial soil sample heated in a science instrument failed to yield evidence of water.

The bright material was seen in the bottom of a trench dubbed Dodo-Goldilocks that Phoenix enlarged on June 15.

Several of the bright crumbs were gone when the spacecraft looked into the trench again early Thursday, NASA said.

Phoenix's arm, meanwhile, encountered a hard surface while digging another trench Thursday and scientists were hopeful of uncovering an icy layer, the space agency said. That trench is called Snow White 2.

The arm went into a "holding position" after three attempts to dig further, which is expected when it the reaches a hard surface, NASA said.

Scientists have been using names from fairy tales and mythology to designate geologic features around Phoenix and the trenches it has been digging.

In 2002, the orbiting Mars Odyssey detected hints of a vast store of ice below the surface of Mars' polar regions. The arctic terrain where Phoenix touched down has polygon shapes in the ground similar to those found in Earth's permafrost regions. The patterns on Earth are caused by seasonal expansion and shrinking of underground ice.

Engineers also have prepared a software patch to send up to Phoenix to fix a problem that surfaced Tuesday in the use of its flash memory.

NASA said that because Phoenix generated a large amount of duplicative file-maintenance data that day, the mission team has been avoiding storing science data in the flash memory and is instead transmitting it to Earth at the end of each day.

"We now understand what happened, and we can fix it with a software patch," said Barry Goldstein, the Phoenix project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

Phoenix landed near Mars' north pole May 25. The $420 million mission is planned to last 90 days.

Dubai 'shape-shifting skyscraper' unveiled

2008-06-25T22:07:00.000-07:00

Ambitious plans to build a revolutionary 420-meter shape-shifting skyscraper in Dubai have been unveiled by architects.

Each floor of the tower would rotate independently, architects claim, creating an ever-shifting shape.

The 80-story Dynamic Tower, described as the "world's first building in motion," will also be the first skyscraper constructed from prefabricated units, according to a press statement released by New York-based architect David Fisher's Dynamic Group.

Each floor would be capable of rotating independently, powered by wind turbines fitted between each floor.

"You can adjust the shape the way you like every given moment," Fisher said. "It's not a piece of architecture somebody designed today and that's it. It remains forever. It's designed by life, shaped by time." Watch how the tower would spin and twist »

Apartments will sell for about $3,000 per square foot, making each unit range in price from about $4 million to $40 million. Work on the tower is to be completed by 2010, according to Dynamic's Web site.

Fisher said that plans to build a second rotating skyscraper in Moscow were at an advanced stage and that the group intended to build a third tower in New York. He said developers and public officials in Canada, Europe and South Korea had also expressed interest in the project.

But some have expressed skepticism. Fisher has never built a skyscraper before. He says he has teamed up with reputed architects and engineers in the United Kingdom and India.

Although he has received a development license for construction in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, he has not disclosed the site of the building. The Moscow mayor's office said that it was looking into the project and that a decision had not been made.

Fisher has called prefabricated construction techniques the "future of architecture" and says they will radically transform 4,000-year-old "brick-on-brick" building methods.

By using preconstructed parts, Fisher said each story could be built in just seven days, resulting in environmentally cleaner building methods.

He said that just 600 people on an assembly site and 80 technicians on the construction site would be needed to build the tower, compared with about 2,000 workers for a traditional project of a comparable scale.

"It is unbelievable that real estate and construction, which is the leading sector of the world economy, is also the most primitive," Fisher is quoted as saying on Dynamic's Web site.

"Most workers throughout the world still regularly use trowels that was first used by the Egyptians and then by the Romans. Buildings should not be different than any other product, and from now on they will be manufactured in a production facility."

Dubai is experiencing a construction boom, with the Burj tower set to claim the title of the world's tallest building when it is completed in 2009. It is already home to the world's largest mall, and despite being in the Middle East, it boasts the largest indoor snow park in the world