Dexter Funny Lab

92 Teen Text Terms Decoded for Confused Parents

2012-05-08T20:32:00.001+05:00

Not so long ago, most teenagers’ text messages read to other people like a jumble of seemingly disconnected letters, numbers, and odd punctuation. Using a combination of shortened words, creative spellings, and a liberal sprinkling of unusual punctuation, teen text message mavens created their own form of language — so-called text speak (a term itself boiled down to “txtspk”).

These days, teens are texting more than ever, but the advent of QWERTY smartphone keyboards, predictive text, autocorrect, and the removal of message character limits should allow young social butterflies the opportunity to type full, real words. However, the confusing shorthand continues to live on anyway. With the help of Twitter, the microblogging site that still limits each post to a mere 140 characters, abbreviated slang appears to be here to stay.

A field guide to text terms and abbreviations

To help you in your quest to decode your kids’ space-constrained text babble, we’ve compiled a list of popular terms and abbreviations. Don’t be surprised if you see variations when it comes to capitalization or style; it’s common for some kids to prefer all caps to lowercase or even changing capitalization, whether at the beginning or middle of a message.

These 92 terms are among the most popular, but know that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

143 I love you (popularized by no less awesome a source than Mister Rogers himself)
2DAY Today
4EAE For ever and ever
ADN Any day now
AFAIK As far as I know
AFK Away from keyboard
ATM At the moment
B/C Because
B4 Before
BF / GF Boyfriend / Girlfriend
BFN Bye for now
BOL Be on later
BRB Be right back
BTW By the way
DM Direct message
DWBH Don’t worry, be happy
F2F or FTF Face to face
FB Facebook
FF Follow Friday (Follow Friday is a recurring topic on Twitter. Each week, users post lists of people that they think others should followusing the #FF or #FollowFriday hashtag.)
FTL For the loss / For the lose
FTW For the win
FWB Friends with benefits
FWIW For what it’s worth
FYEO For your eyes only
FYI For your information
GLHF Good luck, have fun
GR8 Great
HAK Hugs and kisses
HAND Have a nice day
HT or H/T Hat tip or heard through (usually referencing news or an informative link)
HTH Hope this helps / Happy to help
IANAL I am not a lawyer
IDK I don’t know
IIRC If I remember correctly
IKR I know, right?
ILY / ILU I love you
IMHO In my honest opinion / In my humble opinion
IMO In my opinion
IRL In real life
IU2U It’s up to you
IYKWIM If you know what I mean
J/K Just kidding
J4F Just for fun
JIC Just in case
JSYK Just so you know
K or KK Okay
LMBO Laughing my butt off
LMK Let me know
LOL Laughing out loud
MM Music Monday. Another recurring Twitter topic. In this case, users post a song or two that will get your week off to a better start.
MSM Mainstream media
NAGI Not a good idea
NM Never mind
NMU Not much, you?
NP No problem or Now playing (as in “My MP3 stream is now playing LMFAO’s Party Rock.)
NSFW Not safe for work. If this is attached to a link, you’re strongly advised not to check it out while in the workplace or any other venue where inappropriate content would be, well, inappropriate.
NSFL Not safe for life. Usually a humorous disclaimer that something formerly innocent is going to be irreparably sullied if you click the link.
NTS Note to self
OH Overheard
OMG Oh my God
ORLY Oh, really?
PAW Parents are watching
PLS or PLZ Please
PPL People
PTB Please text back
QQ Crying. Rather than an abbreviation, this is an emoticon, a picture created in text. The tails of the capital Q form tears, while the circles are the eyes. Saying “QQ” aloud also can mimic the “boo hoo” of someone who’s upset. Usually used sarcastically or contemptuously.
RAK Random act of kindness
RL Real life
ROFL Rolling on the floor laughing
RT Retweet. Similar to forwarding an email, Twitter lets you echo other people’s tweets for your own followers to read. In some cases, folks will ask for something they’ve said to be amplified by saying “Please RT” or “PLS RT.”
RUOK Are you okay? In Australia, #RUOK is a regularly trending topic, following a government initiative called RUOK Day, which raises awareness of mental health issues on social networking sites.
SMH Shaking my head
SRSLY Seriously
SSDD Same stuff, different day
SWAK Sealed with a kiss
SWYP So, what’s your problem?
TIA Thanks in advance
TIME Tears in my eyes
TMB Tweet me back
TMI Too much information
TMRW Tomorrow
TTYL Talk to you later
TY or TU Thank you
VSF Very sad face
WB Welcome back
WTH What the heck?
WTPA Where the party at?
WYCM Will you call me?
YGM You’ve got mail (to alert your texting partner that you’ve contacted them via that staid old email thing. That’s sooo 2001!)
YMMV Your mileage may vary
YW You’re welcome
ZOMG Oh my god (sarcastic)

What is Facebook?

2012-05-08T20:24:00.000+05:00

Facebook started in the United States as a way for some college kids to stay in touch when they had left campus - and it’s evolved since then to become one of the largest social networks in the world. Here’s how you can get involved.

Facebook is a vast, sprawling network and you can make whatever you want of it. You sign up by putting some details, and preferably a photo of yourself, on the Facebook website. Then you’re ready to start posting a few updates.

These updates are statements about what you’re up to, links to interesting stuff you’ve seen elsewhere on the web - it’s up to you. As word gets around that you’re online, you’ll find old friends start to get in touch. They may have heard about you being on Facebook or they may have found you after doing a search.

Facebook itself will send notes on people you might know, based on the fact that you went to the same school or college or shared an employer (you only have to put up as much of this sort of information as you want).

Word of caution

Be a little wary about the information you share on Facebook. If you display your town, date of birth, marital status and other personal facts, someone might be able to get enough information to steal your identity (it’s unlikely, but be careful).

You might want to go into your profile page (it’s easy to find once you’ve signed up, there’s a tab on the homepage) and make sure you’re not sharing all of your information with everyone who happens to log on.

Soon you’ll be in touch with a lot of people, exchanging views and information on your page (or ’wall’ as Facebook calls it) and vice versa. If your friends are online when you log on, you’ll find a list of them to one side of the screen and you can send instant messages.

You can also put pictures of yourself up. Want to share holiday snaps with your aunt who lives in Australia? No problem, upload them and share them with her.

There are other things Facebook adds on - you can play games across the internet, you can tell it which book you’re reading at the moment, you can rate films and get recommendations. You can join groups of people with similar interests, you can join Facebook groups representing your favourite TV or radio programmes and chat to like-minded people about them.

It all starts with a simple sign-up to the most basic stuff, which enables you to make announcements and engage with people online. Catching up with old friends, making new ones, sharing an interest with a group of people or sharing your photos with someone the other side of the world - it’s only as limited as you want to make it.

6 Reasons Apple Is So Successful

2012-05-08T20:14:00.000+05:00

Apple's iPads and iPhones are displayed inside an Apple store in New York City on Dec. 7, 2011

One of the more interesting questions I get asked about as an industry analyst who’s followed Apple since 1981 is why Apple is so successful. It’s an honest question because to those unfamiliar with Apple, the company’s rise and current dominance in non-PC devices is somewhat puzzling.

Most people have a working understanding of the fact that Apple lost the PC wars to Microsoft, and only nominally understand that when Apple created the iPod and then the iPhone, the company started to go in a new direction. And anyone who’s gone into an Apple store knows full well that Apple’s customer service and stores represent the gold standard for selling and supporting tech gadgets. But beyond that, the reasons why Apple is really successful are still a mystery to many.

There are plenty of books about Apple that talk about everything from Steve Jobs’ history to tenets of Apple’s business models to secrets about Apple’s internal-management ideas. However, after years of watching Apple up close and personal and having to deal with every one of their CEOs, as well as interacting with various Apple execs over the years, I would like to suggest that the reasons the company is successful can be boiled down to six key principles that make it very hard for competitors to compete with Apple.

1. For any product that Apple creates, the people who create it have to want it themselves

So many times with projects I do with other tech companies, the goal is almost always based around the technology first, followed by whether or not people really want to use it. Geeky engineers are dazzled by the technology at their disposal and often create something because they can. But Apple’s approach is quite different. The engineers who are creating Apple products actually make them for themselves. And Jobs was the chief “user” of Apple products when he was alive. All of Apple’s products are based on the fact that Jobs represented the real customer. And his engineers had to come to grips with that when designing a product. It has to be something that they personally couldn’t live without.

2. The products have to be easy to use

Jobs was a stickler on this point. While industrial design is a critical component of any product Apple makes, if it is not easy to use, it is considered worthless to the consumer. This is what drove the company’s user-interface designs from Day 1 and is still the mantra pushed to the software and hardware engineers every day they go to work. All of the products they create have to be intuitive and easy to understand and learn. As technology has become more intricate and users want more features, the task of keeping things simple is sometimes difficult. And Apple creates tools for power users and rookies, which can mean a broad range of ease-of-use issues. But even with that, Apple is the only company I deal with where ease of use is more important than the product itself. Apple makes this a critical goal of its approach to creating anything for the market.

3. Keep things simple

I was in Paris in the past two weeks and had talks with various French telecommunications officials about many mobile-computing issues. But one conversation I had in particular emphasizes this keep-it-simple point. We were discussing how to compete with Apple — a major pastime for all Apple competitors and carriers these days — when the question of why Apple is really successful came up. And one exec nailed it when he said he felt that the real reason Apple is successful is because it has one product; in this case the iPhone. It minimizes the decisionmaking process for the consumer by making things simple. The person speaking was with a carrier in France, and he said that in their stores, they have to have as many as 25 different models of phones available. That makes it hard for his staff to be really knowledgeable about all of them all of the time, and their customers just have too many options to choose from.

But Apple only has one iPhone model, and anyone who has gone into an Apple store understands that every staff member there knows a great deal about each of the four major products carried in its stores. Apple doesn’t have five iPhone models to choose from; it has only one. While this may seem limiting given the amount of smart phones available to users, the truth is the reverse. Our company has done consumer research for over 30 years, and consumers constantly tell us that while choice is nice, in reality they want the process of choosing a tech product to be simple and not complicated by a plethora of choices.

Yes, there are tech-savvy people who like more choices and sometimes even like complexity, but from years of experience as a market researcher, I can tell you that in the end, the majority of users are not tech-savvy, and keeping things simple for them is a plus. Apple understands this in spades and is never tempted to add multiple versions of an iPhone, iPad or even more than one or two types of iPods. This makes buying an Apple product simple. And consumers seem to appreciate this considering the huge number of iDevices that are sold each year. I know the tech media and techies are the most vocal about this issue of choice, but in the end, while choice is good for competitive pricing, what nontechie consumers really want is simplicity.

4. Offer great customer service and in-store experiences

Jobs understood one of the major conundrums of technology: even if you create products that are easy to use, the variety of things that people want to use technology for often creates complexity. Because of this, consumers at all levels may need some hand holding from time to time. I was one of the most vocal critics of Apple when it introduced its first retail store in Tokyo in 2002. I thought it was crazy for Apple to try and go into retail. At the time, and even today, tech retail stores are in decline while big-box stores like Costco and Walmart sell products on price and nothing else. I thought that if price were the issue, an upscale retail store would be DOA. Wow, were other naysayers and I wrong about Apple’s retail strategy.

Apple uses this conundrum to its advantage. Because it keeps product SKUs simple, the salespeople inside the stores know the products really well. Notice that when you go into an Apple store and are greeted by one of the sales staff, you’re not asked, “How can I help you?” Instead they ask, “What would you like to do today?” They go right to the heart of any technology user’s question, a question that’s always related to what they want to do with the technology the user is interested in.

And once you explain your needs, they take care of it on the spot in most cases. Or if you need more hand holding, they turn you over to the Apple Geniuses. No wonder 50% of people buying Apple products are new to Apple. Apple’s products are simple to understand and use, but if you do have a problem, Apple can take care of it at their stores or over the phone quickly.

5. Apple only makes a product if Apple can do it better

Apple normally doesn’t invent a new product or product category. Sure, the company did invent the first commercial PC with the Apple II, and the Mac improved on PCs with a graphical user interface and mouse input. But since then, all of Apple’s other products have been recreations of existing products. Apple did not invent the MP3 player; Apple reinvented it and made it better. Apple did not invent the smart phone; Apple reinvented it and made it better. And Apple did not invent the tablet; Apple reinvented it and made it better.

As Apple designer Jonathan Ive said recently, “Our goals are very simple — to design and make better products. If we can’t make something that is better, we won’t do it.” Clearly, Apple applied that thinking first to iPods, then smart phones and more recently, to the iPad.

6. Apple stays at least two years ahead of its competitors

This is the one that scares Apple’s competitors the most. While those competing with Apple are just getting products to market that are competitive, Apple is already working on the products at least two years out. For example, the new iPhone that will most likely go to market in October was designed and signed off on two years ago. And the iPhone the company is working on now is for the fall of 2014. The same goes for the iPad. The new iPad that we will most likely see next March was signed off on two years ago. The one that’s being worked on now we will probably see in 2015. This is a nightmare for Apple’s competitors and will continue to be for some time.

Besides having geniuses in design, software and retail, Apple also has the cash to invent components, manufacturing processes and things like that, which almost makes it impossible for the competition to make any real headway against Apple. And don’t let the fact that Android has become the No. 1 smart-phone operating system make you think that it’s the big winner. Yes, Android has gained ground by the sheer numbers of companies and products pushing Android. But the real measure of success is in the profits, and Apple is making as much as 70% of all the profits in smart phones and about 85% of the profits in tablets. Just ask any Android competitor which they would like more, market share or profits. You’ll get the answer relating to the real measure of success in this market.

These six principles may seem a bit simplistic given the fact that Apple also has great software, industrial design and a powerful ecosystem of content, apps and services as part of the company’s success equation. However, I can tell you that from my three decades of following Apple, it’s these six key principles that are what really makes it successful. And as long as it adheres to them, it’s pretty likely that Apple will continue to grow and command a relatively large share of the market in the company’s product categories where it competes.

Adaptation: Why your brain loves to tune out

2012-05-08T19:48:00.000+05:00

Our brains are remarkably good at tuning out all sorts of constants in our everyday lives. If you don’t believe so, try a simple, but startling experiment.

The constant whir of a fan. The sensation of the clothes against your skin. The chair pressing against your legs. Chances are that you were not acutely aware of these until I pointed them out. The reason you had somehow forgotten about their existence? A fundamental brain process that we call adaptation.

Our brains are remarkably good at cancelling out all sorts of constants in our everyday lives. The brain is interested in changes that it needs to react or respond to, and so brain cells are charged with looking for any of these differences, no matter how minute. This makes it a waste of time registering things that are not changing, like the sensation of clothes or a chair against your body, so the brain uses adaptation to tune this background out, allowing you to focus on what is new.

If you don’t believe me, try this simple, but startling demonstration. First, hold your eyeball perfectly still. You could use calipers to do this, or a drug that paralyses the eye muscles, but my favourite method is to use my thumb and index finger. Using the sides of your thumb and finger, press on the bone of the eye socket, through your upper and lower eyelids. Do this gently. Try it with one eye first, closing the other eye or covering it with your hand.

With your eye fixed in position, keep your head still and soon you will experience the strangest thing. (You will have to stop reading at this point. I don't mind. We will pick up when you have finished). After a few seconds the world in front of you will fade away. As long as you are holding your eyeball perfectly still, you will very quickly discover that you can see nothing at all. Blink, or move your head, let go of your eye and the world will come back. What's going on?!

Now you see it…

For all of our senses, when a certain input is constant we gradually get used to it. As you are holding your eye still, exactly the same pattern of light is falling on each brain cell that makes up the receptors in the back of your eye. Adaptation cancels out this constant stimulation, fading out the visual world. The receptors in your eye are still processing information. They have not gone to sleep. They simply stop firing as much, reducing the messages they pass on about incoming sensations – in effect the message passed on to the rest of the brain is "nothing new... nothing new... nothing new…". You can make your brain cells spring into action by moving your eye, or by waving your hand in front of your face. Your hand, or anything moving in the visual world, is enough of a change to counteract the adaptation.

This sounds like it could go badly wrong. What if I am watching something, or someone, I am thinking hard about it, and I forget to move my eyes for a few seconds. Will adaptation mean that thing disappears? Well, yes, it could in principle. But the reason it does not happen in practice is due to an ingenious work-around that the evolution has built into the design of the eyes – they constantly jiggle in their sockets. As well as the large rapid eye movements we make several times a second, there is also a constant, almost unnoticeable twitching of the eye muscles that means that your eyes are never absolutely still, even when you are fixing your gaze on one point. This prevents any fading out due to adaptation.

You can see this twitching when you look at a single point of light against a dark background (such as a single star in the sky, or a glowing cigarette end in a totally dark room). Without a frame of reference your brain will be unable to infer a stable position of the point of light. Every twitch of your eye muscles will seem like a movement of the point of light (a phenomenon called the autokinetic effect).

Adaptation is so useful for the brain's processing of information that it has been kept by evolution, even in basic visual processing, and this extra muscle twitching has been added in to prevent too much adaptation causing problems for us. But the basic mechanism is still there, as my eye experiment revealed.

Once you understand adaptation, you discover that it is all around us. It is the reason people shout when they come out of nightclubs (they have got used to the constant high volume, so it does not seem as loud to them as it does to the people they wake up on the way home). It is why a smell that might have hit you as overpowering when you first enter a room can actually be ignored after you've got used to it. And it is related to the phenomenon of word alienation, whereby you repeat a word so often it loses its meaning. But most of the time it operates quietly, in the background, helping to filtering out the things that do not change, so that we can concentrate on the more important tasks of those that do.

Google gets Nevada driving licence for self-drive car

2012-05-08T15:46:00.001+05:00

Google has been experimenting with driverless Toyota Prius cars in the US

Driverless cars will soon be a reality on the roads of Nevada after the state approved America's first self-driven vehicle licence.

The first to hit the highway will be a Toyota Prius modified by search firm Google, which is leading the way in driverless car technology.

Its first drive included a spin down Las Vegas's famous strip.

Other car companies are also seeking self-driven car licences in Nevada.
Accident

The car uses video cameras mounted on the roof, radar sensors and a laser range finder to "see" other traffic.

Engineers at Google have previously tested the car on the streets of California, including crossing San Francisco's Golden Gate bridge.

For those tests, the car remained manned at all times by a trained driver ready to take control if the software failed.

According to software engineer Sebastian Thrun, the car has covered 140,000 miles with no accidents, other than a bump at traffic lights from a car behind.
Human error

Bruce Breslow, director of Nevada's Department of Motor Vehicles, says he believes driverless vehicles are the "cars of the future".

Nevada changed its laws to allow self-driven cars in March. The long-term plan is to license members of the public to drive such cars.

Google's car has been issued with a red licence plate to make it recognisable. The plate features an infinity sign next to the number 001.

Other states, including California, are planning similar changes.

"The vast majority of vehicle accidents are due to human error," said California state Senator Alex Padilla, when he introduced the legislation.

"Through the use of computers, sensors and other systems, an autonomous vehicle is capable of analysing the driving environment more quickly and operating the vehicle more safely."

The Adobe CS6 is now available online

2012-05-07T20:57:00.000+05:00

As of today, the long-awaited Adobe CS6 suite is available for purchase online. The beta versions of some of the products have been around for some time but it’s time for the real thing with all the promised magic tricks. The Adobe Creative Suite 6 is one of the most major releases in recent times.

Photoshop CS6, for instance, brings about 60% more feature changes than CS5. Visually, there are over 1,900 icons that have been replaced, and the engineers have also tweaked alignment, cursors, buttons, layout and even grammar throughout the application. And there’s a lot more.

Reportedly, designers will get as many new features as never before. But photographers haven’t been left out in the cold as well. I’m sure stuff such as the Camera Raw 7.0, the native 64-bit Bridge, the Background Save/Auto Recovery, the redesigned Auto Levels and Auto Curves and the newly added Auto Brightness, the updated Crop Tool, the new automatic Lens blur rendition, the latest Lens correction plus the Content-Aware Patch and Move tools will all make our lives a bit easier.

For now you can only opt for the full purchase of the software packages but come May 11, the Adobe Creative Cloud will become available as well, allowing you to buy monthly subscriptions for these great products. And yes, the regular products are still as expensive as ever. Photoshop CS6 alone would set you back some good $699 just for a single home license purchase.

Touche technology from Disney could revolutionize touch gestures

2012-05-07T19:49:00.002+05:00

A new touch sensing technology by Disney could drastically alter the way we interact with our environment, our tools, and our technology.

Touche can be used in a wide variety of applications, from expanded touchscreen interfaces on smartphones, to everyday objects such as doorknobs, and even liquids. It can also be used to track hand gestures and transmit the results wirelessly to a device over Bluetooth.

It accomplishes all this by detecting capacitive input across a wide range of frequencies, rather than the one solitary “on-or-off” frequency found in current capacitive touch sensing.

Apple may launch $799 MacBook Air this year, claims report

2012-05-07T18:31:00.000+05:00

Citing the usual "sources from the upstream supply chain," the site says that a more aggressively priced MacBook Air could crimp rival ultrabooks, especially if Intel is unable to bring their average selling price down to its goal of $699. A $799 offering from Apple may also keep competing machines from becoming more standardized.

Intel has been on a quest to push ultrabooks as the latest and greatest technology. Last year the chipmaker created a $300 fund to aid hardware and software companies aiming to enhance the lightweight laptops. The company has also spent $100 million to invest in ultrabook software developers.

Regardless of Apple's strategy, ultrabooks may not truly take off until the launch of Windows 8 later this year, say DigiTimes' sources. However, the latest sales figures from Dell are painting a brighter picture.

The PC maker recently revealed that its $999 XPS 13 ultrabook is selling way beyond expectations, providing some signs that the market as a whole may be poised to take off.

Apple is currently pricing its 11-inch MacBook Air with 64GB of flash storage at $999 and its 128GB version at $1,199. The 13-inch 128GB edition sells for $1,299, while the 256GB moidel is $1,599. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo recently projected that Apple could even introduce a hybrid laptop in the third quarter, one with the power of the MacBook Pro but the portability of the MacBook Air.

Magnetic bacteria may be building future bio-computers

2012-05-07T15:23:00.001+05:00

Tiny magnets form inside magnetic bacteria

Magnet-making bacteria may be building biological computers of the future, researchers have said.

A team from the UK's University of Leeds and Japan's Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have used microbes that eat iron.

As they ingest the iron, the microbes create tiny magnets inside themselves, similar to those in PC hard drives.

The research may lead to the creation of much faster hard drives, the team of scientists say.

As technology progresses and computer components get smaller and smaller, it becomes harder to produce electronics on a nano-scale.

So researchers are now turning to nature - and get microbes involved.

Magnetic bacteria

In the current study, the scientists used the bacterium Magnetospirilllum magneticum.

These naturally magnetic microorganisms usually live in aquatic environments such as ponds and lakes, below the surface where oxygen is scarce.

Continue reading the main story

“

Start Quote

We are quickly reaching the limits of traditional electronic manufacturing as computer components get smaller... Nature has provided us with the perfect tool to [deal with] this problem”

Dr Sarah Staniland

University of Leeds

They swim only up and down following the Earth's magnetic field lines, aligning in the magnetic field like compass needles, in search of preferred oxygen concentrations.

When the bacteria ingest iron, proteins inside their bodies interact with it to produce tiny crystals of the mineral magnetite, the most magnetic mineral on Earth.

Having studied the way the microbes collect, shape and position these nano-magnets inside themselves, the researchers copied the method and applied it outside the bacteria, effectively "growing" magnets that could in future help to build hard drives.

"We are quickly reaching the limits of traditional electronic manufacturing as computer components get smaller," said lead researcher Dr Sarah Staniland of the University of Leeds.

"The machines we've traditionally used to build them are clumsy at such small scales.

"Nature has provided us with the perfect tool to [deal with] this problem."

Biological wires

Besides using microorganisms to produce magnets, the researchers also managed to create tiny electrical wires from living organisms.

They created nano-scale tubes made from the membrane of artificial cells, grown in a lab-controlled environment with the help of a protein present in human lipid molecules.

A membrane is a biological film-like "wall" that separates a cell's interior from the outside environment.

Such tubes could in future be used as microscopic bio-engineered wires, capable to transfer information - just like cells do in our bodies - inside a computer, Dr Masayoshi Tanaka from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology told the BBC.

"These biological wires can have electrical resistance and can transfer information from one set of cells inside a bio-computer to all the other cells," he said.

Besides computers, such biological wires could even be used in future for human surgery because they are highly biocompatible, Dr Tanaka added.

"Various tiny wires have been already developed all over the world, but the biocompatibility is still problematic," he said.

"The fabricated nano-wires in this study were covered with components of cell membrane, so theoretically they are highly biocompatible."

Engineers launch artificial earthquakes at 'hospital'

2012-05-07T15:20:00.001+05:00

The five-storey building is protected from earthquakes by rubber bearings

Engineers in California have unleashed high-intensity artificial earthquakes on a five-storey building packed with medical equipment.

The mock hospital has been built on a giant "shake table" which can subject the building to movements similar to real earthquakes.

The tests are designed to determine if hospitals built on rubber bearings could function after a quake.

The use of these rubber bearings is common in earthquake-prone Japan.

The $5m (£3.1m) project also tested whether the bearings could protect other strategically important buildings, such as computer data centres, so they could operate without interruption after a large earthquake.

It is the first time that the bearing system has been tested under a full-scale building on a shake table in the United States.

"What the bearings do is uncouple the building from the motion of the ground during an earthquake, like putting the building on roller skates," said Tara Hutchinson, an engineering professor at the University of California, San Diego.

She said that while most research concentrated on the structural integrity of buildings after an earthquake, very little examined how vital contents such as stairs, lifts and other parts of a building that allowed it to fulfil its function fared after a major seismic event.

Earthquakes replayed

The building was equipped with a surgery and an intensive-care unit, computer servers and other electrical equipment, as well as stairs and a working lift.

The 80ft (24m) structure was also clad in precast concrete and synthetic stucco, two materials which are commonly used in commercial construction projects, and a large water tower and a heating and air-conditioning system was installed on the roof.

On the first day of testing in early April, the shake table subjected the building to identical motions to those recorded during the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, which measured 6.7 on the Richter scale, and the 8.8-magnitude Chile earthquake in 2010.

The engineers found that the rubber bearings (or "base isolators") successfully protected the building from most of the damaging lateral motion that it would experience during a real earthquake. It also left lifts, stairs, medical equipment and other machinery intact, although there was some minor cosmetic damage.

"What we found is that the contents of the building carried on working after our 'earthquakes'," said Professor Hutchinson. "If the equipment had been life-support systems keeping real people alive, then the bearings would have saved their lives."

Engineers have now removed the base isolators from beneath the building, and over the next three weeks Professor Hutchinson will repeat the simulated earthquakes so that a direct comparison can be made between the damage to the building's contents with and without them in place.

Rubber base isolators have already been retrofitted under the Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco city halls.

Review: Portenzo Wingtip Edition Case for the iPad

2012-05-06T21:02:00.000+05:00

Is your mobile phone REALLY killing your brain?

2012-05-06T20:46:00.000+05:00

FATAL brain cancer is on the rise and could be caused by radiation from mobile phones, which would mean we're heading for devastation "on a scale never before witnessed in history".

Or there may be nothing to worry about.

Right now, no one knows for sure – and Dr Charlie Teo, one of Australia's top neurosurgeons, says some people are too afraid to find out because of the enormous consequences.

Some studies have found there is no link between mobiles and brain cancer. Others have found a link. Dr Teo told News.com.au that studies that found no link were usually at least partly funded by telecommunications companies – and that the telcos have in the past refused to release records of phone usage that would allow a more robust study to be done.

The largest study done, the international and partly telco-funded Interphone study, found phones were safe – unless you are a "heavy user", or a child (children were not included in the study).

"(Brain cancer) is a terrible disease, it's the most lethal cancer known to mankind. It kills young people and it appears to be affecting more people than it did ten years ago. I believe there may be a link between mobile phones and brain cancer," Dr Teo said.

"Finding a definite link would be devastating – and the telecommunications companies are too afraid to find out."

Dr Teo – whose opinion is published in full on The Punch today – thinks we need to find out for sure, and soon.

"Why wait until half the world's population has brain cancer?" he asked.

He also went to great pains to emphasise that there may not be a link; that he is not a radiation expert, and that he is not a zealot who wants to get rid of mobile phones. But he has looked at all the available evidence, at least a third of his patients' tumours are in the area of the brain near the ear, and he wants to find out what is going on.

The Cancer Council NSW also says more research is always good, but they add that in general people shouldn't get too uptight. Chief executive officer Dr Andrew Penman said it was "difficult to prove that mobile phones cause cancer but even more difficult to prove they don't cause cancer".

He says the "real world" shows that if there was any effect from phones it would be "very small".

Dr Penman says any rise in brain cancer incidences are in older people, and that because large studies such as the Interphone study have not found a link there is no need for people to panic.

"It's fine to be aware of the debate, but as the evidence has accumulated the level of alarm and concern … that prompted warnings about use in young children … has abated," he said.

"People tend to cast around for exotic causes of cancer they can control – but the big thing is tobacco, lack of exercise, obesity, sun exposure, the use of hormone replacement therapy. We know those things have a big effect, and you can actually do something about those."

Dr Penman says there is no need for people to change their behavior.

Dr Teo says he personally minimises his usage and always uses a hands-free kit.

The World Health Organisation says the non-ionising radiation emitted by phones is possibly carcinogenic and recommends hands-free or texting.

And in the instructions for iPhones and Blackberries lurks a warning to keep phones slightly away from your body.

Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association Chief Executive Officer Chris Althaus said AMTA rejected "Dr Teo's baseless claims of alleged improper industry influence over research into mobile phone health and safety".

He said while they respected his work and acknowledged his right to express his opinion, expert opinion and the weight of evidence showed there were no adverse health effects from mobile phone use.

He said the industry was committed to supporting expert research to help consumers make informed choices, that funding was provided under strict protocols – and that sometimes governments made funding conditional on some funds coming from industry.

Mr Althaus also said the industry had cooperated fully with researchers.

'SeaNanners' and the art of video game commentary

2012-05-06T17:26:00.000+05:00

Armed with a small arsenal of guns, the 27-year-old races through a bombed-out Middle Eastern city, firing at adversaries who dart out of doorways and emerge around corners. As he eludes gunfire and switches nimbly between assault rifles and handguns, Montoya keeps up a running commentary.

"Trader Joe's has the best frozen chicken," he says. "I got some chicken with some mushrooms, some baby tomatoes. I got some paprika, some cumin in there. I do believe we have some green onion, some olive oil ... some thyme in there, some nutmeg. It's pretty good."

Welcome to the singular world of Montoya -- better known to the Internet as SeaNanners -- one of the few people in the world who can earn a living combining "Call of Duty" with chatter about what he's cooking for dinner. Montoya lives in West Los Angeles, California, and is a star in the exploding field of video-game commentary. Those who love video games and YouTube might argue he has the dream job.

In short, game-play commentary involves recording yourself playing a video game and uploading the footage to the Web, along with your remarks on the game as you're playing. But Montoya doesn't always talk about video gaming.

"For the most part I just want to chat about games and life ... and for the sake of this commentary, I suppose, food," he says later in the same clip, which has more than 1 million views on YouTube. "I'm a very strange person. I'm a very unique snowflake. I don't know too many people who do what I do ... cook, and skateboard, and make art. I'm like a confused Renaissance man."

He's also a very popular one. Montoya holds a remarkable presence in the gaming community. His YouTube channel has more than a million subscribers, while his game-play clips have been viewed more than 130 million times. He is reluctant to talk about his finances but after some prodding reveals that his gaming commentary and related work earns him a six-figure annual income.

Just don't call him a gamer.

"Gaming has always been a part of my life and I love it, but I ironically wouldn't consider myself a 'gamer.' Just because I'm good at video games doesn't mean it defines me," he told CNN. "I'm a guy who happens to play games from time to time. I'm making a really good living out of it, which is amazing. But it happened by accident. It wasn't planned."

From a hobby to a career

A decade ago, Montoya was on his way to crafting a very different future for himself. Rather than games and controllers taking over his desk, it was business and calculus textbooks.

"I originally went to San Diego State to pursue business because I heard it was a good business school," he said. "Then I took a couple of courses in calculus and I thought, wow this is not the life I want."

Instead, Montoya studied filmmaking. But after earning a degree in television, film and new media production, Montoya said he found himself discouraged with trying to find a job.

"I tried a variety of things initially. I did a lot of freelance gigs, shot weddings and tried to start a production company. It gets tough when you're unemployed and don't know what you're doing," he said. "It was depressing because I didn't know where my life was going and I didn't know what to do. I was just filling time. I wasn't happy."

Montoya loved playing video games. But little did he know that one of his favorite pastimes would eventually power-up his career.

"There were a couple of guys doing game-play commentary on YouTube already and I thought it was something I wanted to try," Montoya said. "I never told myself, 'Oh I want to make this a career.' It was just something I started because it was fun and over time it kind of developed into what it is now. It was a random coincidence."

His gamer handle was sort of an accident. "Nanners" (slang for bananas) was already taken, so Xbox auto-suggested "SeaNanners." It stuck.

It wasn't a coincidence that 100,000 YouTube subscribers later, Machinima, an entertainment network for gamers, approached him to join their directors program. Montoya quickly became a segment producer at Machinima but left earlier this year to focus on his own channel.

"When I first heard someone was able to earn money playing video games, I was like 'holy crap!' Mainly because I didn't even know that was possible. But it has never been about the money for me," Montoya said. "You can't plan for something like this, but I'm glad it happened. I am totally happy."

Family and fans

However, embracing a career in video gaming was difficult at first -- especially for his parents. His mother, Mat Motoya, was apprehensive that her son wouldn't be able to make a viable living.

"As a parent you want your kid to be a dentist or be a lawyer, to have a secure profession. So to think that your son is going to play video games for a living was hard to imagine," she said. " It's not a traditional type of job, and as a parent you want the best and the most secure thing for your child. So you could say I was worried."

Ultimately, his parents agreed to support his career choice no matter what.

"You always want your son to find success in what is important to him and what he's passionate about," Mat Montoya said. "The fact that all these people are interested and wanting to be a part of his life in that way is so great. I love that."

Perhaps surprisingly, many of Montoya's fans don't tune in to his channel to watch him play or hear his tricks of the trade. Instead, they see him as a role model, a comedian and an inspiration.

"I've subscribed to him for almost two years now, and even though I'm always blown away with how good he is at games, I think a lot of people enjoy his videos because of his conversations and random banter," said 25-year-old Carla Mah, a technical artist and gamer from Vancouver, Canada.

"I don't see any YouTubers or gaming personalities quite like him and I just find him really inspirational," Mah said. "His words are kind of therapeutic and moving, but at the same time hilarious."

"Therapeutic" and "moving" are not words most would associate with someone who goes on online killing sprees. Or with someone who plays games like "No Luca No," in which a player's objective is to keep a cat from eating one's cereal.

But for fans, that's what makes Montoya accessible.

Alex Barnes, 20, initially clicked on one of Montoya's videos to see if he wanted to buy a game, but has been following him ever since. To him, Montoya talks about things he can relate to.

"He's just a lot different than most video game commentators. I would consider him a very monumental guy in the game commentary industry and I think the big thing for him is he doesn't do it for the money. You can totally tell he does it because he loves it," said Barnes, of Nova Scotia, Canada.

"I usually have a hard time watching game play cause it's a lot of showing off. But he does it in a modest and very entertaining way. I usually have a better day after hearing him talk."

Random acts of commentary

When Montoya started his game-play commentary, he usually gave advice on how to get better at a game. But soon he found himself sharing his life in a more intimate fashion. For his videos, Montoya delves into scores of idiosyncratic topics that often invite viewers to pause and think.

"It's not solely about game-play because over time as you make more of these videos, your personality gets infused into them. My videos are kind of like a podcast with random game stuff in the background," he said, breaking into laughter. "Most of my commentary is random. It's like hey, I'm going to drink some wine, I'm eating this nice dinner I cooked and oh, I just shot someone in the face."

With several blogs and Facebook fan pages dedicated to him, Montoya is well-enough known that fans have stopped him in the street and asked for photos. But his modest fame, and the attention that comes with it, seems to make him a little uncomfortable.

"I try not to think about it because it gets weird. The trouble is thinking you're more important than you really are. I'm just me. I don't think of myself as a celebrity. Society is so accustomed to elevating and putting people on a pedestal in the entertainment space and that's stupid. It shouldn't be that way," he said.

"Typically when people approach me it's always a gasp, followed by 'SeaNanners' and a question mark. It's always an inquisitive approach because the face kind of looks familiar. ... It's like, maybe you're 'SeaNanners,' or maybe you're an ugly Ryan Gosling."

As someone with a long list of interests -- from gaming and art to skateboarding and cooking -- Montoya doesn't like to be pigeonholed. But it's clear that gaming will always have a lasting mark on his life.

"If there's something that gaming have taught me, it's that it gives you the ability to get accustomed to not giving up." Montoya said. "Let's say if you play 'Angry Birds' -- you find yourself wanting to get that high score. And that's kind of what life's all about. Trying to constantly hit the high score."

Montoya knows he is fortunate to have a career and a life that reflects his passions. When asked what his plans are for the future, he pauses before answering.

"I definitely see myself going above and beyond just my YouTube channel. There's a lot of endeavors I'd like to pursue, and it might be cool to try game development," he said.

"But I'm going to be on YouTube whether I have a huge audience or not. I'm interested in making content that I believe in. I don't care about money or the business side of it. It's never been about that. It's just something I really enjoy doing, and this is a hobby that can last indefinitely."

Seamless Flexible Display iPhone

2012-05-06T15:41:00.000+05:00

Today we’ve got two interesting iPhone concepts, that rely on the idea of a flexible display with seamless design. The two newcomers are iPhone Ace, the slider type smartphone below and the iPhone Jocker, that folds within the outer flexible screen.

Both models feature realistic specs and they used AMOLED flexible displays made of Graphene and offering good thermal conductivity. There’s also a solar panel on board, somehow attached to the display and powering the handset, for an extra of 30% electricity savings. The basic good thing about these designs is the lack of seam between the two areas of the screen, exactly where it folds. Having no specs published here, my mind wanders to an iPad Mini rather than an iPhone or better yet, a 5 inch Note-like iDevice.

The main case body of the folding device is made of aluminum and also works as a cooling fan. The display here looks very crisp and the idea is pretty interesting and original, but as usual with flexible displays, there’s the issue of fragility. I guess that there’s Samsung technology in the mix, since they’re at the top of the Super AMOLED display game, especially with the flexible technology in the mix. Will Apple ever get this approach?

Nokia vs Samsung

2012-05-06T15:19:00.005+05:00

When Apple unveiled its first touch-screen iPhone in June 2007, then Nokia Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo simply underestimated the impact of its release saying, ``What we decide is the global standard.’’ This was the beginning of the Finnish firm's fiasco.

His remark illustrates how Nokia’s influence and confidence was great back then in the phone making business. Later, Kallasvuo was replaced by Canadian Stephen Elop ― the firm’s first non-Finnish CEO ― in 2010 taking full responsibility for failing to keep up with rivals such as Apple.

Nokia, once the handset titan and ``the pride of Finland’’ is falling. It ended its 14-year leadership in the entire mobile phone industry in the first quarter of this year. Rather, Korea’s Samsung Electronics has risen to the top in the industry globally.

Standard and Poor’s (S&P) has downgraded Nokia’s credit rating to BB minus. It also cut Nokia’s short-term credit rating to B from A-3. With this downgrade, the company’s debt now falls under the junk category, which unexpected a few years ago. Moody’s has also slashed its credit rating to near junk status.

S&P remains skeptical about the future course of the Finnish outfit.

``We thought it was impossible to beat Nokia just a few years ago as it was regarded as untouchable. When at the top, four out of 10 mobile users worldwide were using Nokia phones. People knew what Nokia was, though they didn’t know where Finland was,’’ said a senior executive from Samsung Electronics’ telecommunications division.

``Nobody expected Samsung to rise as the world’s top phone seller, however, we finally did. The reason is Samsung was fast to respond to the industry’s new trend ― smartphones ― created by the late Apple founder Steve Jobs, which initially Nokia ignored,’’ said the executive, asking not to be identified. Nokia is still one of Samsung’s big customers, purchasing ``billions of dollars’’ of parts such as flat screens and memory chips.

In 2007, Nokia’s total market capitalization reached some 110 billion euros or about 164 trillion won, more than double that of Samsung. But the value dropped to 11.3 billion euros last year. Nokia’s position as Finland’s top firm has been replaced by an oil company.

Competence trap

Industry executives and market analysts say Nokia was caught in a ``competence trap’’ as it believed an era of low-end feature phones’’ would last longer.

``Nokia’s top management underestimated the impact of smartphones because Its success was mostly based on low-end feature phones. That’s the key reason for Nokia’s fall,’’ said Kim Jae-phil, a senior analyst at KT Economic Research and Institute (KTERI) by telephone.

Nokia was a ``genius’’ in creating a new demand during the feature phone era. Its 1100 model was a best seller globally over the last decade. In terms of revenue, the 1100 was the best earner in the electronics sector, followed by Nintendo’s popular gaming console Wii, Sony’s PlayStation and Motorola’s Razr.

``The 1100 was so popular to customers in developing countries from Africa to Southeast Asia. Within five years after its release, over 250 million were sold, which was very surprising. That’s why Nokia was hesitant to jump into the smartphone market,’’ said Park Won-jae, an analyst at leading local brokerage firm Daewoo Securities and Investment.

Nokia’s ``all-in’’ strategy for its Symbian mobile software failed without yielding any significant results. Against the open-based Google-powered Android software, Symbian is simply ``far too dusty’’ to compete and undoubtedly, that’s having a minimal effect on its share of the smartphone market, according to analysts.

``Another factor that led to Nokia’s collapse is its mobile platform. Symbian failed to create distinguished value and is far behind Apple's iOS and Android software. Nokia had its edge in cheap pricing, some volume-making but not software initiatives. In the world of smartphones, software is king,’’ said Choi Nam-gon, an analyst at TongYang Investment and Securities.

Nokia wasn’t the only one who insisted on its own system. BlackBerry phone maker Research In Motion (RIM) is barely visible in the mobile market as it didn’t upgrade its software, as an increasing number of phone users are obsessed with content-rich software such as Android and iOS.

``Nokia’s mobile eco-system collapsed. Meanwhile, the design of its phones was so simple. There’s no reason for consumers to buy Nokia phones amid attractive offers by design-upgraded and technology-advanced Apple and Samsung Electronics devices,’’ said Choi.

The Interactive Data Corp. (IDC), one of the top market research firms in the United States, said Nokia was the biggest loser in the smartphone war in the first quarter of this year.

``Nokia dropped the most, seeing the phasing out of Symbian cost it dearly. Nokia’s first quarter sales were about one-third of its first quarter sales a year ago ― a shocking fall. RIM’s sales fell to a little bit more than half,’’ said IDC.

Except for the 1100, Nokia didn’t have a killer product. In contrast, Apple’s iPhone has been continuing its bullish moves since its introduction, while Samsung’s Galaxy-branded smartphone was the top seller in the global market during the first three months of this year.

The IDC puts Samsung’s first quarter market share at 29.1 percent, five percentage points higher than that of Apple’s. ``Clearly, that isn’t the kind commanding lead Samsung had hoped for, however, it can hardly bemoan its fate as the world’s top smartphone seller,’’ according to the IDC.

Samsung's success story

Against Nokia, Samsung has ``all the conditions’’ to effectively push its phone-making business. It has advanced technology, highlighted with volume manufacturing, better pricing and on-time delivery of its products.

``It’s interesting to see only a few phone-making firms, which have realized economies of a scale under the Android umbrella can create more revenue and profit than others,’’ said Kang Gyeong-soo, an analyst at Strategy Analytics (SA), another leading market research firm.

Upgrading platforms is cash- and labor-intensive. Using other software by paying patent fees appears effective in catching up with the rapidly-changing mobile industry, according to Samsung and industry officials.

Samsung Electronics has developed its own mobile software called Bada, which means ocean in Korean but its concentrating on smartphones based on the Android mobile platform.

``Samsung’s strategy is paying off. It chose Android and put more resources into that platform,’’ said Kang.

It is aiming to ship more than 350 million handsets, including over 120 million smartphones this year and the Korean company is the sole one who can guarantee output commitment regardless of the situation as well as better pricing.

Samsung’s telecommunications division accounted for over 70 percent out of the total profit the company reaped during the first quarter, earning 5.8 trillion won.

Local LG Electronics is turning toward Android-based smartphones as the company blamed slow sales of MS-developed Windows phones, which, despite Nokia’s high-profile investment, still account for a tiny minority of the global smartphone market at around 2 percent.

Nokia is also in a transition, shifting from its Symbian feature phones to Microsoft’s Windows software. However, the Finnish firm’s latest long-term evolution Lumia 900 smartphone is facing some data connection problems, which could hamper Lumia’s success.

``It’s all about technology and decision making. Nokia missed those key factors, while Samsung is emerging,’’ said another high-ranking Samsung executive.

S&P retains its long-term ``underperform’’ recommendation on Nokia.

``The Roman Empire and Inca Empire fell. Once the handset giant Nokia and solutions leader IBM outpaced rivals. I had visited Nokia’s headquarters years ago. At that time, Nokia was the top global telecommunications company, and Samsung didn’t even dream of beating Nokia,’’ said Hong Ra-hee, wife of Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee in a recent meeting with high-profile industry executives in Seoul.

The Amazing Spider Man - Trailer # 3

2012-05-06T01:39:00.000+05:00

iPhone 5: 15 most-wanted features

2012-05-05T20:40:00.000+05:00

First, an apology to those who've read this article before in its various iterations, you probably have a bad case of deja vu.

Truth be told, I originally published this column shortly after the iPhone 4 came out back in June 2010, which is why you see a lot of dated comments -- but they are fun to read.

Hopefully, this will be the last update, but you never know, considering how long this whole waiting-for-iPhone-5 saga has gone on.

As those of you who've read earlier versions of this column are aware, with the release of the iPhone 4S, Apple did include some features I was hoping would be in the iPhone 5, so the list is now shorter; it's been culled from 20 down to 15 features.

In this update, I haven't thrown in any new items, but I did shift their order a little (I moved "better battery life" up a notch) and added some new information.

As a reminder, the 15 items in the list are ordered from least important to most in a reverse countdown. I've also included what I think are the odds of Apple actually implementing each request.

As always, feel free to agree or disagree with me and make your own suggestions (and to post your own ordered wish list).

12 cool, creative and just plain weird gadget concepts

2012-05-05T19:32:00.000+05:00

Take a gander at a dozen delightful concept designs for tomorrow's smartphones, laptops, gaming devices and more.

Flex phone: Samsung Galaxy Skin

Once you see the flexible Galaxy Skin prototype phone, rigid phones will seem so 2011. Made of a pair of pliable AMOLED displays mounted back to back, the Android device can be bent and twisted into a variety of shapes: hung from a shirt pocket like a name badge, wrapped around a wrist like a watch or folded to sit on a table for a videoconference. Because it can assume so many shapes, it makes current phone marketing categories irrelevant.

Developed by two Korean students, designer Haeyon You and engineer Haeseong Jee, for a Hongik University/Samsung talent project, the Skin is long and narrow with a 4-in. VGA screen on each side. It's only 0.3 in. thick and has a built-in microprojector for presentations.

Snap-together laptop: Fujitsu Lifebook 2013

This innovative modular system, developed by independent designer Prashant Chandra for a Fujitsu-sponsored design competition, might initially look like any other notebook computer. But a closer look reveals three smaller devices -- a tablet, a phone and a digital camera -- that can be snapped into the case or popped out and used individually as needed.

When the tablet is snapped in, it doubles as the laptop's keyboard, and its processing power is shared with the main system. Data is synced among the devices whenever they're snapped in. It seems that you can finally take it all -- or just what you need -- with you.

Floating peripherals: TransluSense ClearTouch keyboard and mouse
Made from tempered glass set atop a brushed aluminum base, the striking ClearTouch keyboard and mouse appear to float above the desktop. Aerospace engineer Jason Giddings designed the translucent peripherals with no moving parts, such as individual keys or mouse actuation buttons.

Rather than using touchscreens, the devices are based on frustrated total internal reflection technology, which sends pulses of infrared light through the glass. Each device has a tiny camera that picks up the signal when a key or button is touched and translates it into the desired action.

With venture capital and Kickstarter funding, Giddings is setting up an assembly factory to build and sell the unique peripherals. They could soon be heading to a desktop near...

See-through phone: Mobiado CPT002

Luxury phone seller Mobiado, a licensee of sports car maker Aston Martin, has created several smartphone concepts as a way to explore new materials for high-end smartphones. Perhaps the most striking is the see-through CPT002.

Rather than molded plastics, the Android-powered device is made of ultra-strong sapphire crystal framed by platinum edging. This makes the CPT002 lightweight yet scratch-proof. The trick is that all the electronic components are squeezed into the edging, leaving a phone that looks like a chunk of ice that never melts.

Opening the book on laptops: The Real Notebook

Designer Kim Min Seok takes the current advances in flexible display technology to the limit with his Real Notebook prototype. The system is made from a pair of bendable AMOLED displays held together by a cylindrical hinge that houses the system's battery.

You can use it like a conventional laptop with a touchscreen keyboard, or pick it up and hold it like a book. Press a folder's icon on the edge of the screen to see the contents of that folder flip by just as you would flip through the pages of a book or magazine. The more you bend the edge of the flexible screen, the faster the pages fly by.

Twisted TV remote: Murata Leaf Grip Remote Controller

In the "solutions in search of a problem" category is Murata's Leaf Grip Remote Controller, a working prototype that can control real TVs. Doing away with the typical TV remote's complicated array of small buttons, the Leaf Grip uses sheets of piezoelectric polyester that create small electrical signals when pressed, squeezed or bent.

Twist it slowly to move the TV's channel up or down, or adjust the volume by bending it into a "U." Shaking the device turns the TV on or off (see video).

The Leaf Grip charges via solar cells, but the prototype seems to be missing key functions like Mute and Last Channel. And using the remote is often a two-handed operation, so you'll have to put down the beer and chips.

PC gaming in hand: Razer Switchblade

The Razer Switchblade concept is for the PC gamer on the go. This handheld computer is a working prototype, so it could actually get produced.

Able to fit into a small bag or jacket pocket, the Switchblade opens to reveal a 7-in. color touchscreen and an ingenious dynamic keyboard. Equipped with 45 transparent keys on top of a display panel, the keyboard can be configured with controls for a variety of games while retaining the tactile feedback provided by mechanical keys. When you tire of blasting aliens, you can intimidate opponents via email with a simplified QWERTY keyboard.

Powered by an Intel Atom processor and Windows 7 software, the Switchblade will work with most Windows software and games.

Text-o-matic: Cave phone

By definition, a phone is for talking, right? Well, with Kim Min Seok's Samsung Cave concept phone, you can make calls, but you'll probably let your fingers do the talking because emailing and texting is so much easier.

Rather than an on-screen or slide-out keyboard, this multitasking phone has a mechanical keyboard built into the parallel ridges that run around the oval case outside the touchscreen. The rake of the four rows of keys is a comfortable 30 degrees so you can look down at the screen while tapping out a Web address or long email.

A major drawback: At a time when phone designs are getting thinner and thinner, the Cave appears thick and clunky.

Twist to scroll, squeeze to answer: Nokia Kinetic phone

Nokia's Kinetic device is all about interactivity. Designed at the company's research lab as a technology demonstration project, this working prototype phone is based on a flexible AMOLED display that responds to physical pressure. You can twist it to scroll through a group of photos or bend it into a "U" to pause the music or video that's playing. When it rings, just squeeze it to take the call (see video).

The phone has a unique advantage in the brutal winters of Nokia's native Finland: Gloved fingers are ineffective on touchscreen phones, but twisting, bending or squeezing the Kinetic device presents no problem.

Fold-a-phone: Origami handset

Still have a landline phone at home? Bet the handset seems clunky and enormous compared to your mobile phone. Enter Chengyuan Wei's Origami handset, which starts as a flat sheet of cardboard that is bent and folded to create a 3D phone. All the electrical elements, including the microphone and speaker, are inside.

The result? Wei's phone has sharp angles and is as light and sleek as your present home phone is heavy and bulbous. It folds flat when not in use and pops open when you press on its sides to answer a call. It has a phone network connector on the end for plugging in, but also a key design flaw: There's no obvious way to dial a call.

Subway screen: Strap Game

That half-hour train ride to and from work every day doesn't have to be dead time: Jiang Qian's Strap Game can turn it into game time. Designed with subway and bus straphangers in mind, the strap's handle has a portable gaming computer inside. Grasping the handle turns the device on and brings up your choice of five built-in games -- including a version of the ever-popular Tetris.

You'll never miss your stop because as the train arrives at a station, the system displays its name and rail connections. One-handed operation makes it safer to use on public transit than handheld gaming devices, but staring at the screen on a swaying streetcar could be a recipe for motion sickness.

Beyond surround sound: The Immersive Cocoon

By far the largest, most complex and most far-out concept of the bunch is NAU's Immersive Cocoon. The spherical black prototype saturates your senses with a 360-degree view of your cyberdomain. After you punch in your entry code, the Cocoon's steps extend and the hatch slides open, beckoning you in.

The inside surface of the sphere is covered with a curved high-resolution LED display. There's a bench seat to relax on. A sophisticated 3D motion-tracking system lets you interact with the Cocoon by pointing at items, creating a thrilling experience whether you're taking an educational trip under the ocean, trying to make sense of disparate data streams for work or just watching the World Series in style.

Which concept is your favorite?

Did one of these gadgets particularly strike your fancy, or is there one that you wouldn't be caught dead carrying? Which is the silliest? Share your thoughts on the Comments tab.

Who wants an iPad Mini? About one buyer in two

2012-05-05T15:57:00.001+05:00

Doing the math, that means 48 percent aren't interested. But delving further, only 22 percent of all those surveyed currently own a tablet. Among those, 68 percent have an iPad or iPad 2, while 10 percent own Amazon's Kindle Fire.
Why would half of those polled want a smaller iPad? The answers varied, with many people citing more than one reason.

A leading 64 percent pointed to the lower price compared to an iPad or iPad 2. Next, 54 percent said the smaller size would make the tablet more portable. A quarter of potential buyers said they'd pick it up as a gift. Some would buy it for work. And others would grab it just because they "love Apple products and always buy the company's latest and greatest products."

Among the features deemed most important in an iPad mini, the lower price was named by 84 percent. 3G connectivity was touted by 65 percent. The smaller size and an ultra thin body were each named by 60 percent. Other factors cited included the Retina display, Siri support, a unique and new design, and the belief that an iPad mini would be launched with iOS 6.

Apple naturally has been mum about the possibility of a miniature iPad. The late Steve Jobs reportedly nixed the idea, seeing little reason for a 7-inch tablet. But with Tim Cook at the helm, the company has shown it's willing to think outside the Jobsian box.

The latest scuttlebut from a Chinese portal site claims that 6 million iPad minis will hit the market in the third quarter, each selling from $249 to $299.

To grab its results, PriceGrabber surveyed 2,603 online shoppers in the U.S. between April 23 and April 30.

PC Makers Mum on Windows 8 Upgrades

2012-05-05T08:52:00.000+05:00

The first wave of laptops with Intel's latest third-generation Core processors started shipping this week with Windows 7, but PC makers are quiet about what it would take to upgrade the PCs to run Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8.

The Windows 8 OS is due to come out later this year, though Microsoft has not provided a specific release date. Analysts have said that Windows 8 may come out around October, and a consumer preview version of the OS is already available for download.

Dell is currently unable to disclose what Windows 8 upgrades would entail on any of the company's hardware, according to a spokeswoman. The company is not allowed to disclose any information due to a non-disclosure agreement with Microsoft. Samsung, which also released a new laptop this week, did not respond to requests for comment. Acer, which released a desktop last week, said it could not comment on the topic at this time.

Microsoft is declining comment on Windows 8 upgrade paths for now, but the company will "have more to share at a later time," a company spokesman said in an email. Microsoft plans to release multiple versions of the new OS, including Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro for x86 PCs and tablets, and Windows RT for ARM-based devices.

Microsoft did not support direct upgrades to Windows 7 from Windows XP, which attracted criticism as it required users to backup data and reload programs. Upgrades to Windows 7 were also constrained on Windows Vista, limited to only specific versions of the OS.

PC makers usually launch new laptops when new chips are released by Intel or Advanced Micro Devices. The new laptops that shipped this week included Dell's Alienware gaming laptops, which start at $1,099, and Samsung's Series 7 Gamer laptop, which starts at $1,899. The new laptops have Intel's high-end Core i5 and Core i7 processors, which are based on the newest Ivy Bridge microarchitecture.

The new chips deliver around 15 to 20 percent CPU performance improvement and up to two times better 3D graphics than the second-generation Core processors based on the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture.
What's New in Hardware?

Hundreds of lower-priced mainstream laptops with Intel's Ivy Bridge processors are expected to start shipping in June. Intel's rival Advanced Micro Devices said that new laptops priced starting at around $500 with its latest chips code-named Trinity will start shipping this quarter. The laptops will ship with Windows 7 until Windows 8 is released.

Microsoft may come forward with details on some program which would allow customers to buy Windows 7 with upgrades to Windows 8 perhaps by June or July, when laptops start shipping for the back-to-school buyers, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64.

"[Microsoft] is fairly sensitive to the issue of stalling the market," Brookwood said. "I suspect the issues of getting access to an upgrade of Windows 8 at the cost of, say, a CD will go away pretty soon."

The question of upgrading a PC to Windows 8 is complicated and will be different for those who want touch capability and for those who don't, Brookwood said.

Windows 8 has a touch interface, and the mainstream laptops released for the next couple of months may not have touchscreens. Buyers may wait for Windows 8 tablets or new ultrabooks with touchscreens, which could appear around the time of the Windows 8 release.

Initial touch-enabled laptops and tablets could be priced at a premium, Brookwood said. Budget buyers may have to wait even longer for prices to drop to get Windows 8.

Windows 8 will also work on devices with ARM processors, which usually go into tablets and smartphones. Users could buy ARM-based laptops or tablets, and Windows RT will come with Microsoft's Office 15 software, which could attract some buyers. Software running on Windows 8 on x86 and Windows RT for ARM may be incompatible as the operating systems are designed to run on different instruction sets.

"If you are going back to school and you don't have a huge commitment of running legacy applications, then Windows RT may be interesting," Brookwood said.

How to: Track stolen devices

2012-05-04T19:19:00.000+05:00

Want to find a stolen laptop, tablet or smartphone? We show you how to locate and wipe a missing device.

The more you use your laptop, smartphone or tablet, the more you have to lose. The loss of a machine you rely on for work is taken care of by your insurance, but consider the fact that your email is now in the hands of a stranger – as is your internet history, which probably contains details of where you shop and bank. The worst-case scenario is that your phone or computer will automatically log you in to sites such as Facebook, which is a treasure trove of valuable personal information.

You can protect yourself by adding a password (as we discuss here), but this won’t necessarily protect documents stored locally, nor will it help recover your property any faster. Fortunately, the likelihood is that either your phone or computer will be connected to the internet again – either automatically, or as a careless thief logs on. With the right software, your purloined hardware can seize the opportunity to phone home, delivering a wealth of information that could help you see it again. Alternatively, you can prime a service to destroy everything as soon as it checks into the internet.

Some devices, such as iOS hardware, come with tracking and remote wiping capabilities preinstalled; you only need to activate the service. Others, such as certain Dell Vostro laptops, come with software preinstalled with a year’s subscription to tracking and remote deletion services. If you’re using an Android device, or a laptop without preinstalled anti-theft software, you’ll need to install something yourself.

There are plenty of options out there, including very high-end, expensive options for IT managers with many devices to take care of. For consumers, there are a few high-quality packages that are easy to set up.

For those happy to spend cash, you can opt for a service such as Computrace’s LoJack for Laptops, which will set you back US$29 for a year of coverage. In return, you get the ability to lock your laptop remotely and display an unmovable message on the screen – perhaps your phone number or details of a reward for the safe return of your machine.

Alternatively, you can declare your laptop stolen, which provokes a more dramatic response. LoJack begins capturing screen grabs and logging keystrokes and sends them back to Computrace, where a member of the team begins collating them and sending them to the police. Geolocation data is also gathered and reported. All this is hidden from the owner’s view in the name of giving the relevant police force a single point of contact, and preventing the kind of vigilante action that saw a New Jersey man arrested after assaulting someone he wrongly suspected of stealing his iPhone, after tracking it to the wrong location in May. The result isn’t only location data, but an exceptionally detailed dossier of evidence about the person in control of the laptop.

For those giving their devices up as lost, the final stroke is remotely destroying your data. This won’t put your laptop beyond use, but it will at least mean your documents and internet history are removed. The days of remote data removal being the domain of high-end business-class devices are long gone – Apple’s mobile devices come with data removal built in, and it’s easily added to Android phones. On Windows laptops, LoJack can again be applied, and you can opt to remove your personal data – either folder by folder or wholesale – through another machine’s web browser. LoJack’s deletion doesn’t only move the contents of your My Documents to the Recycle Bin, either: it performs a seven-pass deletion designed to render data utterly unsalvageable.

On some laptops, LoJack is resistant to tampering: absolute.com lists a huge number of machines that have Computrace included in their BIOS. Downloading Computrace’s software, such as LoJack, activates the BIOS module, and if it detects that Computrace is missing or disabled, it reinstalls it. On a machine set to be locked or wiped, for instance, even reformatting the hard disk won’t be enough to permanently restore it; the BIOS will perform a quiet reinstallation when the computer is reconnected to a network.

The drawback is that it takes a while for commands issued through LoJack to take effect; we waited almost 12 hours for a lock command to come good, and several hours passed between us issuing a remote wipe command and the erasure of documents beginning. It’s an acceptable delay as long as the person with your laptop doesn’t immediately begin trawling your Documents folder for data. The company also claims that commands issued happen faster once the software has been running for a few days – we treated our test machine as lost immediately.

For those more keen on recovering their hardware than deleting the data on it and giving it up as lost, there are numerous ways to track and trace your kit. Again, iOS devices lead the way, with Find My iPhone (or iPad) included by default. Give the necessary command through www.icloud.com, and your phone or iPad – assuming it has a connection to the net – shares its location with you. It’s fast, free and accurate. Android devices (covered next page) require a third-party app, but the effect is the same.

WHERE IN THE WORLD?

Devices with GPS are arguably at an advantage when it comes to geolocation, but it’s possible to get an accurate location fix on any device with a Wi-Fi chip, thanks to Google’s location API, which means you can also locate laptops and non-GPS equipped devices, such as Wi-Fi-only iPads. Google’s geolocation works by mining the data gathered by its Street View cars, which includes the geographical location of wireless basestations.

By comparing the base stations your device can see with Google’s data, you can arrive at a spookily accurate – to a few metres, in some cases – estimate of a location. When used somewhere with fewer wireless networks, reliability decreases somewhat. The other option is to use your device’s IP address. This is the least accurate method: an IP address might be located anywhere in an area up to several miles across. It’s a starting point, but unlikely to help you to recover your kit.

TRACKING YOUR COMPUTER FOR FREE

LoJack isn’t the only option for tracking and recovering your kit. It’s possible to get useful tracking information for free, albeit without Computrace’s impressive team of investigators handling the resulting data and staying on top of the investigation.

In October 2011, Kamil Konzinski from the UK pleaded guilty to receiving stolen goods, after being caught using a laptop that was quietly phoning home every time it was connected to the internet. The laptop’s owner had installed a sliver of software called Prey (www.preyproject.com), which, when activated, creates a hugely detailed report about the state of your laptop.

By default, you get geolocation in longitude and latitude, which can pinpoint your laptop’s location to a few streets, as well as a pair of images. The first is a screen capture of whatever is going on at the time; over time this gives you a decent chance of finding your laptop’s new owner logging into a social networking site, or giving away their email address. The second is a shot quietly captured using your laptop’s webcam. Again, you stand a decent chance of getting a head-on shot of the thief, which you can supply to the police.

The most fully featured way to use Prey is via its control panel, which requires you to register. From the control panel you can mark your device as missing, sound an alarm or lock it remotely, the latter command requiring a password to clear. Alternatively, you can display a customisable message, either warning whoever has your machine that it’s being tracked, or possibly – if you’re in a forgiving mood – offering a reward. The only missing feature is the ability to remotely wipe your documents, although Prey offers the next best thing by supplying a secure mode, which disables access to your email and removes your machine’s saved passwords and browser cookies, preventing access to websites containing personal data.

Prey’s free account allows you to track three machines at once. Each machine will file ten reports containing a location and two images; once ten reports have been generated, the oldest report is deleted to make way for new entries. For those who want to cover more devices or save more reports, Pro accounts are available starting at US$5, covering ten devices.

For users who prefer not to have their laptop report its location to a third-party website, Prey can also be run in standalone mode. You lose features such as the ability to lock your computer or display a distress message, but you still get screen capture, webcam stills and geolocation data, all to your inbox. See “How to set up Prey to track your stolen laptop”, left.

HTC One S review

2012-05-04T18:26:00.001+05:00

The HTC One S follows swiftly on the heels of the One X in HTC's new premium brand of Android 4.0-enabled handsets, bringing a svelte chassis, 7.8mm depth and a low-price of just £26 a month at launch - and we're still waiting to hear word of a US launch too.
First things first: the HTC One S is a cracking looking device. It's marketed this as the thinnest handset HTC has ever made. And you feel that when you take it out of the box. It's tall at about the same height as last year's HTC Sensation (with which it will draw a lot of comparisons) but a lot, lot sleeker.
Measurements come in at 130.9 x 65 x 7.8mm and weight wise, it's pretty insignificant at a shade over 119g. And that's even more impressive when you look at what's inside. GPS, HSDPA etc – all elements we'd expect nowadays and all packed in here like sardines.

First thing you notice is that huge black, glossy display on the front. Resolution wise, it keeps the Sensation's 4.3-inch display with a 540 x 960 resolution.

It's clearly not as sharp as that found in the daddy of the range, the HTC One X, nor the likes of Apple's iPhone 4S or the Sony Xperia S (and you will be able to discern pixels if you look too closely) but it puts in a very good effort.

Colours are easily as bright and vivid as the now almost year-old Samsung Galaxy S2 even though the Super AMOLED display lacks the 'Plus' bit that the latter handset boasts of.
In fact, if you put the phone down on a table and look at it from a couple of feet away, that screen looks even more incredible with hues just jumping out at you and finished off with the polish of the glass.

The display has been pushed even further up towards that protective glass and it really shows. This is a display HTC can be proud to push.
Although the HTC One S ships with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box, it's decided to still include three soft keys beneath the screen. They're fully responsive and we had no issues whatsoever with them.
The design is pretty minimalist. The front also houses that VGA front snapper for video calling as well as the earpiece, which actually consists of dozens of holes individually drilled into the chassis to add to the air of class.

Up top is the power/lock button and 3.5mm headset jack, the right holds a volume rocker, the left gives us a micro USB socket and nothing at the bottom other than a tiny microphone hole. The rear has little other than holes for the speaker (again, drilled in), a couple of logos and the camera with LED flash.
Completing the minimalist look, you'll see that at the back, you can only remove a small area, which allows you to add the (micro) SIM and do nothing else.

No accessing the battery here, thank you. It's sealed in. Nor will you be slipping your MicroSD card in there because memory is non-expandable (don't go there – because we plan to later in the Media section!)
The chassis is made from aluminium, which has been given a 'micro-arc oxidisation treatment'...the same as they do with satellites.
It all sounds very swish and space age and sets the HTC One S up to take up a few extra knocks, which is handy since you'll probably have this phone for two years. It fact, it puts us in mind of a Nexus One from back in the day a little bit. In principle, it looks great. In practice, it can cause a couple of problems.
Because this is a tall phone – and because HTC has elected to put the lock button at the top rather than at the side as some other manufacturers do – there is a certain amount of leverage to even unlock the phone.
And that's only the beginning – the HTC One S is so uber stylish, HTC seems to have forgotten about the functionality of it. With anodized metal all over, this is one slippery customer. In the first few days of having it, we wince at recalling how many times we dropped it. Luckily only into our lap, but we can see a lot of people breaking these within the first few weeks.

The HTC One X, meanwhile, doesn't appear to suffer this affliction thanks to the slight curve. And despite being protected with Corning Gorilla Glass, it's not that robust.
We cared for our One S review unit like a newborn baby and still, we were dismayed to see what appears to look like a deep scratch at the bottom of the screen, which we can't explain through normal use.
Indeed, you'll need to wrap this baby up like a child in a case with screen protectors and protection galore. Maybe even take it to a church and get it blessed for extra protection. That does detract from the overall beauty

LG announces Optimus LTE2 with 2GB of RAM

2012-05-04T13:44:00.001+05:00

Not to be outdone by its Korean counterpart, LG announced its own flagship smartphone on the same day as the the Galaxy S III. The Optimus LTE2, as it is called, is no less when it comes to features and specifications and in some aspects even outdoes Samsung's offering.

For starters, the design seems to be a bit better. While Samsung has gone with an all plastic body, LG has opted for a bit of glass and metal, in other words, something befitting of a flagship device.
The display on the phone is something that LG likes to call TrueHD IPS display. It's likely to be a 720p display but the 'True' part comes from it having a standard RGB subpixel layout, unlike the display on the Galaxy S III that uses a PenTile RGBG layout. Looking at the performance of recent LCDs, we think the display on the Optimus LTE2 is going to be more than a match for the one on the Galaxy S III.
The main feature here, however, is the inclusion of a stonking 2GB of RAM, a first for any smartphone. While it is debatable if the extra gigabyte will make any noticeable difference, at least you will never have to worry about running out of memory while multitasking.
Other features include wireless induction charging, LTE connectivity, a camera that can be operated using your voice, 2,150mAh battery and Android 4.0. Unfortunately, there is no mention of what processor the phone is running on but the presence of LTE suggests that it could be (and we hope it is) Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4.
The phone is expected to go on sale in Korea by mid-May. Hopefully, LG announces international availability soon, along with some proper specifications.

Glasses Free 3D - Toshiba Qosmio F755-3D150

2012-05-04T12:38:00.000+05:00

In the half-year since we reviewed the first version of the Toshiba Qosmio F755, I have seen a grand total of zero new autostereoscopic laptops (3D displays that can be viewed without special glasses). Toshiba has not given up, however, and an updated version for 2012 shows some notable improvement over the original, which was a cool prototype, but not quite ready for prime time.

The Qosmio F755-3D150 is $1,299, about $400 less than the 2011 version I reviewed, but still uses the same special eye-tracking software to track the viewer's head movement and adjust the stereoscopic image accordingly, via the built-in Webcam.

Like the Nintendo 3DS, it's a bit of a novelty, but Blu-ray playback felt smoother and the 3D seemed more stable on this new model, even though the viewing angles are very narrow -- watching over someone's shoulder is tricky. Discs of 3D movies such as "Avatar" and "Tron: Legacy" present themselves well, although you have to use Toshiba's proprietary media player to view them in 3D.

The biggest knock against the original was that the 3D support only extended to Blu-ray movies and some types of video files, leaving out video games and streaming video. Thanks to new Nvidia drivers, games now work in 3D, to a point.

While nearly every PC game we tried worked in 3D (at least as well as it would using Nvidia's 3D Vision platform with active shutter glasses), the low-end Nvidia GeForce 540 GPU prevented every current game I tried from being playable in 3D, although many played fine with the 3D effect turned off.

That's a real shame, as an autostereoscopic 3D gaming laptop could be a fun splurge for gamers, and the F755 is a perfectly fine midrange-to-high-end Qosmio otherwise. As it is, unless you have a burning need for glasses-free 3D Blu-ray, we'd wait for better graphics hardware.

Physically, this Qosmio F755 is identical to the version we reviewed in mid-2011, and many of our observations still stand. This is a fairly standard-looking Qosmio laptop, based on a slightly older design than the most recent non-3D Qosmios we've seen. The outer shell is a textured bright red, with a glossy black interior.

The keyboard has tightly packed keys, while other Toshiba laptops in general seem to be moving toward a universal island-style keyboard. It's usable, but something of a dated look, although there's plenty of room for a full-size number pad and standalone Page Up/Page Down keys. There is a row of touch-sensitive control buttons right above the keyboard, including volume controls and a button to turn the 3D view off and on.

The smallish touch pad has a lighted strip above it that indicates the pad is active. Press a tiny, flush button above it to turn off both the touch pad and the light. I've never been a fan of the Toshiba style of mouse buttons seen here, with their convex shape and glossy plastic.

The original F755 3D laptop felt like more like a proof-of-concept piece than a practical consumer product. The 3D Blu-ray media player was sluggish, and the 3D effect would work sporadically. When everything lined up perfectly, it was a fun, watchable experience, but more trouble than it was worth.

I'm pleased to say this updated version feels much snappier. The Blu-ray playback software still took a bit too long to load, but the 3D effect kicked in automatically, and stayed in focus as long as I kept my head within a reasonable movie-watching zone. Moving more than a few inches in either direction started to degrade the image quickly.

The 3D effect still isn't as crisp as you may be used to from a 3D movie theater or 3D TV with active-shutter glasses. There is a subtle screen-door effect, which gets more obvious the closer you get to the screen, because while the display is a 1,920x1,080-pixel panel, the 3D effect cuts the resolution to 1,366x768 pixels in order to pump out twice as many frames of visual data.

The dual-core Intel Core i5-2450M CPU is a step down from the quad-core Core i7-2630QM in last year's F755. That, plus trading the original Blu-ray Disc-burning drive for a Blu-ray ROM/DVD burner, helps account for the $400 price drop.

It's still more than fine for just about any task, and still sufficient for the intensive work required for glasses-free 3D video playback. The later half of the year may see an update to Intel's third-generation Core i-series CPUs (also known as Ivy Bridge), but then again, it may not.

I called the Nvidia GeForce 540M graphics midlevel (somewhat charitably) last time. The graphics chip is unchanged in this new version and it's the single biggest problem with the F755. It can certainly handle Blu-ray playback, even in 3D, but gaming is another story.

With the 3D effect turned off, games played fine, especially with detail levels set to medium and the screen resolution knocked back from 1,920x1,080 pixels. With the 3D effect turned on, it was a different story altogether. First, the games all needed to be set to full 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution for the 3D effect to kick in (even though that would lower the effective resolution to 1,366x768). Then, nearly every game I tried was simply too choppy to play, even with details set to absolute minimums.

Skyrim was very playable in 2D, too choppy to play in 3D. The same went for Battlefield 3. In the older game Mafia 2, the system ran at 20.3 frames per second in 2D mode, and only 10.3fps in 3D mode -- both at the required full 1080p resolution. Batman: Arkham City was a bit better, just a step below playable in 3D, with every detail option turned to the lowest settings. In our relatively easy Street Fighter IV test, the F755 ran in 2D mode, at 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution, at 44.3fps, and 21.6fps in 3D mode. Portal, a game that nearly any laptop can play, worked fine in 3D, even at 1,920x1,080.

How 'in-cell' technology could make the next iPhone ultra-thin

2012-05-04T12:29:00.001+05:00

We're all familiar with Apple's love affair for thin devices. Although the third-generation iPad surprised many by gaining about half a millimeter of thickness, it looks like Apple could be back to trimming product dimensions by using a new kind of display technology in the next iPhone.

Instead of using a display comprising a number of separate layers, Apple could use in-cell touch display technology, according to a Friday report from Digitimes. The report says Apple would be sourcing its in-cell displays from Toshiba and Sharp.

"The advantage of in-cell is that you're streamlining the manufacturing process, so in time you should be able to drive efficiencies and reduce cost," IHS analyst Rhoda Alexander told Wired. "Additionally, by reducing the number of layers, you reduce the size and thickness of the device, making it thinner and lighter."

If the iPhone has a larger 4- to 4.3-inch display, as some reports expect it to, that extra glass could add a bit of heft to the iPhone's weight. Thus, Apple would need to find new ways to keep the phone from gaining too much weight.

Currently, the iPhone's "on cell" display is layered a bit like a sandwich (or if you're feeling like dessert, think of a trifle). At the very bottom, you've got the back light. Directly above that, the LCD section, which houses the red-, green-, and blue-colored pixels of the display. Then there's a layer of glass.

On top of that is the capacitive touch layer, which is then topped off by a tough layer of Gorilla Glass. The middle layer of glass separates the liquid crystal portion of the display from the touch portion.

In-cell display tech eliminates that middle layer of glass, combining the LCD and touch sections of the display into a single layer.

One way this can be successfully accomplished is by "multiplexing" the electrodes normally used to relay touch input -- that is, using the same electrodes to handle the signals for both touch control and the pixels of the LCD, according to a 2010 IHS report on touch-screen displays.

In-cell technology isn't currently deployed in any shipping cellphones. And it shouldn't be confused with the similar-sounding "Super" technologies from Samsung. Super AMOLED and Super LCD screens use on-cell technology rather than in-cell.

Right now, in-cell touch displays are still an emerging technology. So while the core technology promises long-term benefits, yield rates could be a problem in the shorter terms, Alexander says.

But that's the deal with any new technological process, isn't it? In the months before the new iPad was announced, yield rates for Apple's Retina display were a huge question mark.

So is in-cell really something Apple would pull the trigger on? "We do believe that the next iPhone display will implement in-cell touch," DisplaySearch's Paul Semenza told Wired via e-mail. But of course, we'll have to wait and see how it pans out when the next iPhone actually debuts