Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

FeelHome Gives Easy Remote Access to Your Files Across Platforms [Downloads]

2010-03-12T16:05:00.001-05:00

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5490268/feelhome-gives-easy-remote-access-to-your-files-across-platforms

Windows/Mac/Linux: If you would like to easily access, edit, and save files across multiple computers, free application FeelHome allows you to share files across operating systems and over the web.

Once you install FeelHome on your computer and specify which folders you want to share, you can access those files from the web or from another computer in your virtual FeelHome network.

Files aren't stored on the FeelHome servers, and FeelHome isn't an online storage solution like Dropbox. Your files still reside on their respective computers. Instead, FeelHome allows you to access them between machines and through the web-based interface. FeelHome's servers act as secure mediators in the transaction—much like the LogMeIn Hamachi servers help mediate your VPN connections.

Check out the video below to see FeelHome in action:

FeelHome is free, and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. Have a great tool for sharing files across multiple computers and the web? Let's hear about it in the comments.

FeelHome [via Download Squad]

Photo Magician Batch Converts Your Images with Drag and Drop Ease [Downloads]

2010-03-12T15:54:00.007-05:00

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5491775/photo-magician-batch-converts-your-images-with-drag-and-drop-ease

Windows: If you're not about to manually convert that pile of images in front of you but you've found the batch converters you've tried to be lacking, free and portable Photo Magician offers both fine tweaking and drag and drop simplicity.

Photo Magician has two modes: full and quick convert. In the full mode you select an input and output folder and options like whether or not you want to scan the sub folders, overwrite the originals, speed up conversion by ditching the image preview, and unify the image format to a format of your select, among other options.

Photo Magician also supports presets covering popular portable devices and common image sizes. You can select Custom to set your own sizes if they aren't covered by the presets but unfortunately you can't save the custom presets you create, an oversight we'd love to see corrected in future versions of an otherwise strong program.

Full conversion mode aside you can also click "Quick Convert Mode" in the menu bar of Photo Magician and the program will minimize to the magician's hat—see at left here—like a sidebar gadget. Drop Photos right onto the hat and they will be automatically converted and saved after being reduced by the percentage you've selected.

Photo Magician is portable freeware, Windows only. Have a favorite tool—image-related or otherwise—for batching tasks? Let's hear about it in the comments.

Photo Magician [Softpedia via Addictive Tips]

GigaPan Indexes Enormous Panoramic Photos [Photography]

2010-03-12T15:54:00.005-05:00

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5491787/gigapan-indexes-enormous-panoramic-photos

If you like taking and sharing panoramic photos—or just enjoy checking out the impressive results others have gotten—GigaPan indexes high-resolution panoramic photos.

The panoramic images at GigaPan are extremely high resolution which allows you to not only enjoy the greater panoramic image but zoom deeply into the image. How deeply? In the same image above we zoomed in to the point where we could read signs and small text—in the lower right hand portion of the bridge a guy is wearing a basketball jersey with a number 5 on it.

How big are the images in a quantifiable sense? GigaPan rejects photos smaller than 50 megapixels in size and the majority of images on the site well exceed that. Check out the link below to browse GigaPan photos and if you're interested in submitting your own pictures, check out their tips and tricks in their FAQ file. For more great—but not as huge!—panoramic photos, check out previously reviewed viewAT.

Have some tips or tricks of your own to share on panoramic creation? Let's hear them in the comments.

Gigapan [via Gadetopia]

Reboot Your Office to Return to a Clean Workspace [Clutter]

2010-03-12T15:54:00.003-05:00

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5491829/reboot-your-office-to-return-to-a-clean-workspace

Every night thousands of workers boot down their work stations and return to them the next morning, booting into a fresh system. Reboot your physical workspace in the same way to keep your office tidy and efficient.

Photo by Masterjay88.

Over at the organizational blog Unclutterer they've put together a list of ten ways you can do little things each day to keep your home uncluttered. We particularly like the idea of applying their first tip to your workspace at the end of the day:

Reset your home each evening. This doesn't have to take long, but it's really effective. Spend 5 or 10 minutes on a quick run-through of your home. Straighten books and knickknacks, return dishes to the kitchen, and hang up jackets. Don't strive for perfection, this is just a quick pick up.

Sitting down to a messy desk—or waking up in a messy house!—isn't a relaxing or productive experience. Today when your work day is over, take a moment to put your desk in order and prepare it for a fresh start tomorrow. The effort it takes to keep a clean workspace in order with nightly reboots is much less effort than it takes to overhaul a totally trashed office or dig through the piles on your desk looking for things.

10 More Uncluttering Things to Do Everyday [Unclutterer]

Check out the full list at the link below for more tips and tricks for beating back clutter and disorder. Have an end-of-day ritual of your own to share? Let's hear about it in the comments below.

Enable Variable Speed Playback in YouTube [YouTube]

2010-03-12T15:54:00.001-05:00

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5491852/enable-variable-speed-playback-in-youtube

If your browser supports HTML5 you can opt into the experimental HTML5 video playback on YouTube. Not only will you get smoother video playback—goodbye Flash!—but you'll be able to speed up and slow down your videos.

The variable speed control is great for seeing things in slow motion. DIY and tutorial videos often go too fast and watching something in slow motion is usually better than having to watch the same section over and over again to see what is happening. Conversely you can speed up to make finding a section of a long video easier than hopping around from point to point trying to find it.

Visit the link below to opt into the HTML5 beta test. You'll need a browser that supports HTML5 like Chrome or Apple Safari to participate. Check out the link for more details and sound off with you opinion on the new video playback in the comments.

YouTube HTML5 Video Player [via Google Blogscoped]

First Reviews of the Panasonic TC-P50VT20 3DTV [Reviews]

2010-03-12T15:47:00.001-05:00

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5492122/first-reviews-of-the-panasonic-tc+p50vt20-3dtv

After seeing it at CES, there was little doubt. The 50-inch Panasonic TC-P50VT20 wouldn't just be among the first 3DTVs on the market, it would be among the best. The first two reviews are in, and they are glowing.

Just a little background—the TC-P50VT20 runs $2500 and comes with one pair of active shutter glasses. (Additional pairs cost $150.) You can get it bundled with a 3D Blu-ray player for an extra $250.

In 2D mode, it's a solid TV (which should be expected since Panasonic's plasmas are traditionally quite excellent...if controversial). In 3D mode? Because of a lack of current 3D content, keep in mind that the impressions here are based upon a demo disc only. But here's what was said:

TelevisionInfo

... we found that the P50VT20 produced smooth, clean motion that looked as good in 3D as it did in 2D. Because of the lack of 3D source material at the moment, we were not able to run our full suite of motion tests, but we did not see any significant difference between 2D and 3D, so it looks like the new 3D feature does not adversely affect the smooth motion that this display produces. That's not a surprise, as the 3D Blu-ray standard allows the display to show a full 60 frames a second to each eye, so the eyes get to see 60 frames a second if you are watching 2D or 3D video.

HDGuru3D

As much as I tried to see the issues witnessed with the Sony FHD3D TV (the only production 3D models publicly demoed in 3D link) I did not see them. They simply are not present. These include crosstalk seen as ghost images, motion artifacts best described as a motion breakup, sort of like a strobe effect and flickering....The mode memory choices such as "Custom" have offsets built-in to compensate for the brightness reduction of the 3D glasses and any other image picture parameter shifts. They proved quite effective, although until Panasonic or someone else makes 3D test signals available on Blu-ray, there is no way to calibrate the user controls in the 3D mode.

Overall, I find the 3D image outstanding with considerably more brightness and pop than the motion picture theater 3D movie experience.

Those are pretty positive words, though we're guessing professional TV reviewers are the most excited cohort for 3D. But for those of you in the market for a new TV—are you considering the 3D PLUNGE??

(And if you still can't answer that question, I recommend this (my) piece on what it feels like to watch 3DTV.)

HDI headquarters walkthrough: details galore on the new face of in-home 3D

2010-03-12T15:41:00.003-05:00

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/12/hdi-headquarters-walkthrough-details-galore-on-the-new-face-of/

Call it an inexplicable fascination, or call it all-out geek lust over a screen with three digits in the "diagonal screen size" specification field -- either way, we had little choice but to shuttle over to HDI's nondescript Los Gatos, California headquarters in order to check out what even Steve Wozniak has been quoted as saying is the best 3D solution out there. While stationed on the west coast this week for GDC, we grabbed a camera and bolted down the 280 in order to get a sneak peek at the aforesaid firm, a tight-knit startup that currently has prototype displays in production and plans for far more. We've heard plenty through the grapevine, but we set out to get our questions answered directly, and possibly even provide some insight that has yet to be made available to the public thus far.

For those unaware, HDI's flagship product is a planned 103-inch 3D HDTV that uses a proprietary technology in order to showcase content in the third dimension (or 2D, if you'd like). We sat down with Chris Stuart (Director of Technology) and Edmund Sandberg (Chief Technology Officer) in order to get an overview of the tech, set the story straight in regard to pricing and availability, and dig in a little deeper on its plans for distribution and expansion. We also plopped down in front of the company's prototype 97-inch set and a 46-inch 3D LCD that has remained mostly a myth up until now, and we've certainly got plenty to share in terms of impressions. If you're eager to learn more (and take a behind-the-scenes look at a television R&D lab), give that 'Read More' link a gentle press.

Gallery: HDI 3D prototype HDTVs

Continue reading HDI headquarters walkthrough: details galore on the new face of in-home 3D

HDI headquarters walkthrough: details galore on the new face of in-home 3D originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | | Email this | Comments

Wacom Cintiq 21UX hands-on

2010-03-12T15:41:00.001-05:00

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/12/wacom-cintiq-21ux-hands-on/

It's almost too much to take in all at once. Sure, the $1,999 Cintiq 21UX pen display is priced out of reach for most of us mere mortals who "don't draw good," but the pure lustworthiness of this unit sure makes us try to forget that inconvenient fact. The expanded movability of Wacom's latest is commendable, the pen input is naturally great, the screen is beautiful, and even those new rear-mounted touchpads seem helpful. It would take someone much more familiar with professional draw-ist-ing to really speak to the more specific merits of the 21UX, but from a mere standpoint of inspiring irrational desire in our hearts, Wacom seems to have done a pretty good job this time out. Check out a video of the screen in action after the break.

Gallery: Wacom Cintiq 21UX hands-on

Contin! ue readi ng Wacom Cintiq 21UX hands-on

Wacom Cintiq 21UX hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | | Email this | Comments

It's A Bike Jim, But Not As We Know It [Concepts]

2010-03-12T09:51:00.001-05:00

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5491739/its-a-bike-jim-but-not-as-we-know-it

Designed for 10 - 15 year olds (kids get all the fun, grumble grumble), this Big Eye Cruiser bike can be adapted whenever the teen has a growth spurt, with the frame stretching horizontally.

The frame, with the comfortable-looking seat, can be angled to suit the user's height, and even sex. It's a concept by Claudia Baer, Anna Wiesinger, and Marlene Klausner, but actually very practical—unlike a lot of other concepts we feature on here. [Yanko Design]

Sony's ultra-compact concept shooter will come with an APS sensor, UI shows up on video

2010-03-12T09:29:00.003-05:00

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/12/sonys-ultra-compact-concept-shooter-will-come-with-an-aps-senso/

Yesterday we brought you pictures of the touchscreen-loving user interface on Sony's genre-straddling camera concept, so what better way to improve on that than with video and a few specs? Beyond the break you shall find one of those excessively stylized promotional vids you know and love to hate, but tolerating the fluff with reward you with some nice hints about how the shooter is operated plus finally some word on what's inside. An Exmor APS HD CMOS sensor is touted, along with the accompanying capability to shoot 1080p AVCHD video. While we still find the design of these interchangeable lens cameras ridiculously appealing, there is one thing we have to complain about and that's the clunky naming scheme. Please Sony, give us something sexier to call it than an "ultra-compact camera concept" -- how about the Sony Beta, it comes after Alpha and is typically used to denote an unfinished product. You can have that one for free.

Continue reading Sony's ultra-compact concept shooter will come with an APS sensor, UI shows up on video

Sony's ultra-compact concept shooter will come with an APS sensor, UI shows up on video originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Geeky Gadgets | YouTube | Email this | Comments

Unreal Engine 3 adds extra dimension with NVIDIA 3D Vision

2010-03-12T09:29:00.001-05:00

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/12/unreal-engine-3-adds-extra-dimension-with-nvidia-3d-vision/

Epic Games has announced that its wildly popular Unreal Engine 3 has now added NVIDIA's 3D Vision to its list of supported technologies. We've already come across Batman: Arkham Asylum being played with NVIDIA's signature shutter glasses so this isn't a huge surprise per se, but it does put a stamp of compatibility on the vast catalog of games -- both current and future -- built upon Epic's graphics engine. Those include Borderlands, Mass Effect 1 and 2, Bioshock 1 and 2, and that all-time classic 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. The Unreal Development Kit -- a freeware version of the Engine for non-commercial uses -- is also being upgraded to make the addition of stereoscopic 3D effects "easier than ever," while other small improvements (covered by Gamespot) show that the Epic crew isn't standing still on its core product. Good news for all you mobile mavens wanting a taste of Unreality on your iPhones or Pres.

Unreal Engine 3 adds extra dimension with NVIDIA 3D Vision originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | NVIDIA | Email this | Comments

2010-03-12T08:57:00.001-05:00

#iPad on sale today; but what percent will buy now vs "wait and see"? (pic) - http://bit.ly/95cLL1

Unreal Engine 3 adds extra dimension with NVIDIA 3D Vision

2010-03-12T08:53:00.001-05:00

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/12/unreal-engine-3-adds-extra-dimension-with-nvidia-3d-vision/

Unreal Engine 3 adds extra dimension with NVIDIA 3D Vision originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | NVIDIA | Email this | Comments

Google Reader Play: Fullscreen Playback of Popular/Recommended Reader Items [Google Reader]

2010-03-12T05:36:00.001-05:00

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5490369/google-reader-play-fullscreen-playback-of-popularrecommended-reader-items

Google Reader Play is a new Reader feature that plays a slideshow of cool items from around the web based on the stories you star. It's like a 10-foot viewing experience for your newsreader.

In Google Reader Play, items are presented one at a time, and each item is big and full-screen. After you've read an item, just click the next arrow to move to the next one, or click any item on the filmstrip below to fast-forward. Of course, you can click the title or image of any item to go to the original version. And since so much of the good stuff online is visual, we automatically enlarge images and auto-play videos full-screen.

You can also just run Reader Play as a auto-advancing slideshow if you just want to sit back and bask in the stream. Thanks Joey!

Google Reader Play [Google]
And now for something completely different [Google Reader Blog]

Intel's 6-Core Gulftown Gets Tested, Blows Us Away [CPUs]

2010-03-12T05:02:00.001-05:00

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5491045/intels-6+core-gulftown-gets-tested-blows-us-away

Six cores. That's how many are in Intel's ridiculous new Core i7-980x. MaximumPC takes us deep inside the world's fastest CPU, with full, mind-searing benchmarks.

Meet the world's fastest CPU. OK, so we just gave away the big reveal to our report before you even flipped one page, and without so much as the common courtesy of a spoiler alert. For that, we do not apologize, because it's not like you couldn't have guessed how this one would end up. After all, Intel's new 3.33GHz Core i7-980X builds on all the goodness of the ass-kicking quad-core 3.33GHz Core i7-975 Extreme Edition, but is smaller, cooler, and has an additional two cores under its heat spreader. With Hyper-Threading enabled, that's a cool 12 threads at the ready. How could anyone screw that one up?

With Hyper-Threading enabled, that's a cool 12 threads at the ready. How could anyone screw that one up?

In fact, Intel's Core i7-980X seems to be one of the most flawless launches we've seen from the company in some time. By flawless, we mean there are no contortionist acts, such as explaining to consumers that a new socket (LGA1156) will have the same CPU branding as an incompatible existing socket. Nor is there the head-scratcher of a very novel, yet very limp, integrated graphics chip in a CPU (Clarkdale), which, by the way, won't work in boards that lack graphics output ports.

With Core i7-980X, you update your BIOS, drop the chip in, and-voilà-you spend hours rocking a six-core high. Put simply, Core i7-980X is 24-ounces of prime-rib red meat for performance enthusiasts who really haven't had much to gnaw on since the original 3.2GHz Core i7-965 Extreme Edition came out two years ago.

So we're done, right? You don't need to read on? Sorry, there's still more to learn. If you want to know if your motherboard works with the new chip, what applications can really exploit the six cores, and how this bad boy performs, you'll have to keep reading.

Click to enlarge

What's in a Name?
We know that, by now, enthusiasts should be immune to Intel's confusing model numbers, but there's one thing that sticks in our craw about the Core i7-980X: Despite it being the world's first consumer x86 hexa-core, and despite it using the latest 32nm process, it's label is a mere five notches greater than the quad-core Core i7-975 Extreme Edition part it ostensibly replaces.

Surely, all the goodness of two more cores and a total 12 threads of computing would warrant a Core i9 designation, or at the very least, a much higher model number, right? No, Intel officials told us. The company said that, despite previous reports that it would call its hexa-core Core i9, Intel backed off when retailers and vendors complained of too many blasted brands. And as to why it isn't a 999X or 9900X, Intel said such gestures are unnecessary. The part is designed for enthusiasts and the folks who buy it will know that it's not a mere five clicks more than a Core i7-975.

Beneath the Surface
Fortunately, the chip is fairly simple to understand. It uses the new 32nm process that was introduced with the dual-core Core i5/Core i3 Clarkdale CPUs. For code-name junkies, that makes it part of the Westmere family-not part of the original 45nm Nehalem family. All six-cores reside on a single contiguous piece of silicon. Like the original Nehalem CPUs, each core has 2MB of L3 available to it, giving the CPU a total of 12MB of L3 cache. The cache is shared across all the individual cores, which means a single core can have up to 12MB of L3 cache if the other five cores are sleeping.

As is the case with all Extreme processors, the chip is fully unlocked letting you change multipliers as well as Turbo Mode ratios. Turbo Boost is present but not as pedal-to-the-firewall as the LGA1156 parts. The Core i7-980X will give you a Turbo Boost up to 133MHz if more than one core is active. With single-threaded apps, the CPU will Turbo Boost up to 266MHz. That's boring compared to the Core i7-870, which will boost from 2.93GHz to 3.6GHz, or about 733MHz. We'd be remiss, though, if we didn't point out that the Core i7-870 starts out at a much lower clock speed.

Tick-Tock
Keeping with Intel's tick-tock model, with ticks being little jumps and tocks being huge jumps, 980X is a tick. For the most part, besides the process shrink, there's very little that's changed from Nehalem to Westmere. The most notable new feature is the inclusion of advanced encryption instructions, which accelerate encryption.

Overall, Westmere is just a smaller, denser 45nm Nehalem. How much smaller? The Core i7-975 Extreme Edition weighed in at 731 million transistors and occupied 263mm2 of die space. Core i7-980X has 1.17 billion transistors but occupies just 248mm2 of die space.

Westmere will run its course until 2011 or 2012 when Intel introduces its Sandy Bridge CPUs. Where Westmere is a tick, Sandry Bridge will be a tock, introducing a new microarchitecture that will include advanced vector extensions as well as other enhancements. For entry-level CPUs, Sandy Bridge will also move the GPU core onto the die. Initial Sandy Bridge chips will be 32nm with a shrink to 22nm due soon after.

Pushing the Boundaries
Normally, a smaller process leads to enhanced overclocking and the same holds true for the Core i7-980X. With the original Core i7-965, we've never exceeded 4GHz on air. The D0-step Core i7-975 improved overclocking, but even there, we've never seen production machines exceed 4.2GHz reliably-and that's with water cooling. With the Core i7-980X, we went into the BIOS and dialed the base clock up until the processor was at 4GHz. From there, we had no stability issues and ran multiple benchmark runs without incident. Mind you, this was without tweaking core voltage for the CPU, the QPI, RAM, or other various knobs we could have turned to get more reliability. We even got the machine to POST at 4.5GHz on air cooling, but then it crashed. The verdict is that the Core i7-980X looks to be a wonderful overclocker.

Early Adopters Get the Respect
Let's face it: When Intel introduced its LGA1156 Lynnfield CPUs last year, every single person who bought into the Core i7 CPUs and LGA1366 motherboards had a panic attack. Would Intel, as some feared, abandon the LGA1366 platform altogether in favor of the more cost-conscious new socket? It's happened before. Think of Intel's short-lived Socket 423 and AMD's original Socket 940. With those, early adopters got one or two upgrades and then were left waving their DIMMs in the wind.

Fortunately, users who chose the early adopter route will be rewarded for once. The Core i7-980X is an LGA1366 CPU that should be drop-in compatible with nearly every LGA1366 motherboard. To keep things compatible, Intel even kept the official spec for the Core i7-980X to DDR3/1066 only. Even though the CPU is quite capable of supporting memory at far higher speeds, Intel said it didn't want to require motherboards makers to recertify boards for higher speeds of RAM. For what it's worth, we tested both the Bloomfield and Gulftown LGA1366 Core i7s at DDR3/1333.

You'll still have to update the BIOS before dropping in a Core i7-980X, but we haven't heard of any LGA1366 motherboards being incompatible with the new chip. That's quite an accomplishment for Intel, which has a history of burning people when new CPUs are launched. We don't want to rehash ancient history, but let's just say we're happy it worked out for early adopters for once.

Extreme Exclusivity
Intel has long had a dilemma with its Extreme series of CPUs. Only folks with deep pockets actually purchased the Core i7-975-most consumers just bought the poor-boy Core i7-920 and overclocked that puppy up to the 3.7GHz+ range. There was simply very little incentive to buy the top-end part when the low-end part overclocked so well. That little cheat no longer works, though. To get a hexa-core chip today, you'll have to pay for an Extreme series. That's why we were actually surprised when Intel priced the Core i7-980X at $999. Sure, it's still too rich for most, but as the only game in town, we expected Intel to charge $1,500 for the CPU. At $999, the Core i7-980X is actually the same price as the Core i7-975 part that it will slowly replace.

When will Intel offer a friendlier-priced hexa-core? The company won't talk about unannounced product but several Internet rumor sites have reported that Intel has a hexa-core Core i7-970 in the $500 range on tap for the end of the year.

If You Build It, Will They Come?
If you think it's all sunshine and lollipops for hexa-core computing, it's not. As always, the problem is finding applications that will actually use the available threads. That was a problem with the original dual-cores and quad-cores; now with a hexa-core and Hyper-Threading, the situation hasn't improved much. The apps aren't nonexistent, but they're certainly not as prevalent as you would hope. That makes upgrading to the Core i7-980X something you'll want to think about first. Certainly, if you are a mega-multitasker, more cores don't hurt. But if your primary applications are single- or dual-threaded, the extra cores will just sit idle, so you'll need to seriously consider whether paying for a hexa-core makes sense.

A Close-Up Look at the Core i7-980X

All six cores of Intel's Core i7-980X share 12MB of L3 cache on the die. The 1.17 billion–transistor CPU also has two QPI connections but only one is enabled on consumer CPUs. The second QPI is use for multi-CPU Xeon configurations.

Even 100 Cores Won't Help Lazy Code
Multiple cores are only useful if there's software that takes advantage of them. Thus, we queried a couple leading software developers on where they saw the multicore sweet spot to be. Their answers shed interesting light on the quest for more threads.

Jeff Stephens, president of Bibble Labs: "Bibble 5 'supports' unlimited cores, and with fast enough disks and efficient OS-level scheduling, we can scale up to about 30 CPUs (performance benefits stop there, so 32 CPUs runs as fast as 30-right now). Without sounding glib, the reason no one else is doing this is because it's hard.… To scale beyond four or so threads, all aspects of a program must be built around parallel processing of huge amounts of data, efficient scheduling of processing tasks, and disk reads/writes to prevent starving CPUs of work to do by waiting for data, etc."

Paul Schmidt, president of Photodex: "In my opinion, more cores don't solve the biggest problem. The biggest problem is how the code is written-most code just isn't written to take advantage of more cores. I don't see that changing soon because writing code for multiple cores is hard and the development world is moving away from hard and toward easy. I think the trend is due to the same old brute-force single-core speed improvements that have been happening combined with how cheap computers are now. Why rewrite for more cores when you can wait a year and get a CPU that is another 20 percent faster?

AMD Responds with Phenom II X6
By now, we've pretty much become accustomed to AMD taking a back seat to Intel, particularly in matters of core count and performance. This year, however, it doesn't look like AMD fans will to wait as long for a six-core proc.

AMD expects to release its own hexa-core processor, the Phenom II X6, hot on the heels of Core i7-980X this spring. The chip will be a derivative of the company's Istanbul CPU that's been available for some time in Opteron-based servers. The chip is likely to have 6MB of L3 and will be compatible with AM3 sockets. It's not clear if the new chip will work in AM2+ boards, as we've been told that DDR3 will be mandatory for the new chip.

One other trick AMD may have up its sleeve-if a news report from Xbit Labs is correct -is its own spin on Turbo Boost. Using so-called Dynamic Speed Boost, Phenom II X6 processors may overclock individual cores when the full complement of cores is not in use.

AMD is also continuing to forge ahead with its Bulldozer core, which the company hopes will put it back on a competitive edge with Intel. Bulldozer's new microarchitecture will support advanced vector extensions and will be built on a 32nm process. Bulldozer is expected to be available in early 2011.

Let the Benchmarks Begin!

For our showdown, we decided that the new hexa-core has two primary competitors: the Core i7-975 Extreme Edition and the LGA1156-bound Core i7-870. We considered adding AMD's Phenom II X4 965 to the mix but the pricing ($185) and performance of that CPU puts it in a different class than the three Intel chips. When AMD's Phenom II X6 hexa-core hits in the near future, we'll certainly put it into the mix.

For our benchmarks, we used both older and newer benchmarks to stretch the Core i7-980X. We used both synthetic and real-world applications for video editing, encoding, 3D rendering, and memory tests, along with a handful of gaming benchmarks. Be advised, when we review a CPU, we set resolutions fairly low in order to remove the GPU from the equation.

The verdict: We have no problem proclaiming the Core i7-980X as the world's fastest. Obviously, it shined the brightest in our multithreaded 3D-rendering benchmarks, where its performance surmounted the already ludicrously fast Core i7-975 by 37 to 55 percent. Encoding also gave us a healthy 25 percent performance boost. Likewise, video editing saw the hexa-core achieve anywhere from 10 to 25 percent performance boosts. In applications where multithreading is minimal, the Core i7-980X was usually tied with the similarly clocked Core i7-975. We do suspect that the larger L3 cache of the Core i-980X paid off dividends in several of our gaming benchmarks.

One figure we couldn't quite square was the memory performance of the Core i7-980X. We expected its memory bandwidth in the synthetic tests to be equal to the Core i7-975's, but the hexa-core was at a disadvantage. The lower memory bandwidth didn't seem to hurt in the other benchmarks, though.

In the final analysis, this is a CPU that turns in performance that is, at its worst, equivalent to the Core i7-975 it replaces. At its best, the i7-980X offers up to 50 percent more performance than its closest competitor. That's pretty much unprecedented and certainly helps the Core i7-980X earn its crown as the new performance king.

Best scores are bolded. We tested both LGA1366 CPUs using an Asus P6X58D Premium motherboard with 6GB of Corsair DDR3/1333, an EVGA GeForce GTX 280, and 64-bit Windows 7 Professional. The LGA1156 CPU was tested with a Gigabyte P55A-UD6 motherboard, 8GB of Corsair DDR3/1333, an EVGA GeForce GTX 280, and 64-bit Windows 7 Professional. Both configurations used a 150GB Western Digital Raptor hard drive.

Maximum PC brings you the latest in PC news, reviews, and how-tos.

Record Labels: Change or Die [Music]

2010-03-12T04:59:00.003-05:00

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5481545/record-labels-change-or-die

It's a lousy time to be a record label. Profits are tanking, bands are angry—OK Go just ditched EMI—and YouTube and BitTorrent changed the game. Still, some labels are transforming themselves to help musicians in the digital age.

"Change or Die" may sound like hyperbole, or an idle threat, but for the music business, the two alternatives have never been more real. EMI may very well go extinct in the coming months, and all of the major labels are fighting losing battles. But all is not lost.

The traditional role of a record label, in the broadest sense, is to bankroll a band until they start making lots of money, at which point the label gets to keep most of it. They own the master recordings a band makes, and by taking on this ownership they put all of their resources behind selling said recordings.

This setup makes sense when bands lacked the wherewithal to produce and record their own albums and when manufacturing and distributing physical copies of albums and marketing said albums costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. It also makes sense when a popular album will sell millions of copies at $15 a pop.

But that's definitely not the case now. Record stores are dying at an alarming rate, and fewer and fewer people are buying CDs every day. It's safe to say that the current generation of teenagers has never perused record stores as a normal activity; it's all downhill from here for physical music sales. And FM radio isn't doing too hot either. In short, everything that the music industry has known to be true for the last few decades is quickly turning to dust. Big labels can still bank on country, R&B and pop acts, but the bottom has already fallen out on alternative groups and other internet-friendly genres. And that's just the beginning.

The Old, Dead Way of Doing Business

The way bands operate has changed so much in the last decade that what a label can provide and what bands require of a label has changed drastically, faster than labels have been able to adapt.

Manufacturing and distribution used to be the cornerstone of a label's business; every major label owned its own plants to make the albums and also dealt with shipping the albums worldwide. Today, only Sony still owns plants that manufacture CDs, with the other three big labels outsourcing manufacturing to them. But they all still have reps who have to go out to record stores and make sure that their albums are getting proper shelf space. They have to deal with defects and returns. There are lots of resources required to deal with the manufacture and distribution of a physical product, but that physical product is quickly headed towards irrelevancy.

The biggest music stores are now virtual, so there's no need for someone to go gladhand every Sam Goody manager so they give you endcap space for Use Your Illusion II. The iTunes Music Store sells 25% of the music sold in America as of last August, and that number is definitely going up, not down.

According to the IFPI, physical sales of music dropped 15.4% globally between 2007 and 2008. But in that same year, digital sales rose 24.1%. And Nielsen SoundScan numbers show that the number of units sold between 2006 and 2009 rose from 1 billion per year to 1.7 billion per year, with a unit referring to either an album or a song sold. It's a significant increase, but when someone buying three songs counts the same as someone buying three CDs, you can see why the labels are losing money despite the positive-sounding stat.

But for unsigned bands, companies such as TuneCore and CD Baby act as middlemen between them and digital storefronts like iTunes for very small amounts of money; getting your album up on major stores such as iTunes, Amazon and eMusic will set you back about $47 through TuneCore. And you retain all ownership of your music and keep all royalties, unlike working with a record label.

And TuneCore's internal numbers show that online sales are growing even faster for independent acts than those already well established. TuneCore CEO Jeff Price told me that between 2007 and 2009, TuneCore artists have gone from earning $7-8 million a year to $31 million, with $60 million in earnings projected for 2010. That's insane growth, to be sure, but it's got a long way to go before it represents a sizable proportion of global music sales. To put things in perspective, the IFPI recorded $4.9 billion in sales for 2008.

Furthermore, these days it's easier than ever for musicians to record music without an expensive studio. Software such as Reason, Pro Tools and Logic can be bought for $300 or less, and run on a mid-range laptop. Cheap mics and gear can be found all over eBay and Craigslist. Tie everything together with a $200 to $500 mic preamp analog-to-digital/digital-to-analog box, and you have a mini-studio in your bedroom.

And music blogs have turned the way artists are discovered on its head. It used to be that high-paid A&R executives would scour clubs to find underground bands to sign, acting as the filter between the millions of mediocre bands and the discriminating public. Today, obsessive music fans scour clubs and the web for free, discovering new acts and writing about them on blogs. Labels then discover bands from these blogs. The A&R system is no longer as relevant.

Marketing and promotion, another cornerstone service that labels provide, has also been transformed by the web. You no longer need radio play and ads in Rolling Stone to get your band noticed. When a band makes a music video, there's less of a need for a major label with contacts at MTV to push it through official channels to get it noticed. These days, you can just throw it up on YouTube and get it noticed by some music—or gadget—blogs. The fact that it's a simple click or two from video appreciation to buying actual music is worth more than any paper ad in any dying magazine.

As Voyno from the musicians-as-entrepreneurs blog New Rockstar Philosophy told me, it's very possible for a band to use the internet to replace much of what a label provides:

There are artists on YouTube who use creative on-the-cheap strategies to garner millions of views that direct traffic to their main site, iTunes pages, Facebook page and bandcamp.com profile. They then build an e-mail/text subscription from their new fans, which allows them to offer new merchandise, tickets for shows and other related info directly to fans. The web traffic analytics from all their sites can help them plan successful tours, target Facebook ads, and make better decisions on how to move forward.

These changes have shaken the foundation of the industry, and the biggest labels have borne the brunt of the losses that these changes wrought.

Tough Times for Major Labels

EMI is bleeding money. Earlier this month, it reported a whopping $2.4 billion loss, which, when added to its prior debts, puts it $4.5 billion in debt to CitiGroup. It owes Citi $160 million this month, and it's facing a restructuring plan that'll require an additional investment from its parent company.

EMI is owned by Terra Firma Capital Partners, a British private equity firm that also owns waste management companies, gas stations, residential home builders and movie theaters. To them, the art EMI is releasing is about as important as the trash that Waste Recycling Group collects. If it doesn't make them money, it isn't worth keeping around, 80 years of history or not.

Billboard's Senior Editorial Analyst Glenn Peoples told me that it's not for lack of trying that EMI finds itself in this position. "Labels have cut as many costs as they possibly can, they've taken fewer risks, they've signed fewer artists and tried to make safer bets," he says. "They're doing what they can, but the revenue might not be there to support the way they do business. So it's very possible that the recorded music division of EMI will be sold off and will go elsewhere. An acquisition by Warner Music Group is a possibility, and that would take it down to three majors in recorded music, and that'd be pretty drastic and a lot of concentration between three companies."

An EMI Music spokesperson told me, "EMI Music is doing well. We've reported revenue growth, despite a declining market, and strong operating profit and margin improvement, both in the last financial year and in the current year." But if they can't convince Terra Firma that they have a way out of the quagmire they're in, the possibility of the number of major labels to dropping to three is very real.

And if that happens, what of those remaining three? Universal Music Group is owned by French media conglomerate Vivendi, a company with stakes in the Universal and Canal movie studios and the video game publisher Activision Blizzard amongst other holdings. Sony Music Entertainment is obviously a division of Sony, and we all know Sony has had problems of its own lately. Warner Music Group is the only major without a parent company to answer to, as it spun off from Time Warner in 2004, and its revenue dropped about $3.5 billion last year.

The Upside of Signing on the Dotted Line

But all is not lost, and the death of the record label at a business is not a foregone conclusion. Labels from EMI down to the smallest indie labels are racing to change the way they do business. And they still have quite a bit to offer.

Ra Ra Riot is a band from Syracuse, NY who's currently prepping their second album from indie label Barsuk Records. Barsuk is a true indie based out of Seattle, featuring bands such as Death Cab for Cutie, Mates of State, Nada Surf and They Might Be Giants in addition to Ra Ra Riot.

I talked to Josh Roth, Ra Ra Riot's manager, about the reasons bands still have for signing with a label. One big positive that signing to a label provides a band, he told me, is giving them legitimacy. "I think right now with the internet, there are just so many bands out there that it's easy to go unnoticed," he told me. "There's still is a certain charm to having a label saying 'We like this band and we're going to sign them and you should take a listen.' With the amount of bands that are out there, it's hard to filter what is actually good now."

Furthermore, as outlets such as radio and MTV have become less relevant, new venues for being heard and getting paid have opened up. "Commercials are becoming much more relevant," Ra Ra Riot guitarist Milo Bonacci told me.

"That's how a lot of bands get paid or get their music out there. That's how a lot of people hear a song for the first time. I feel like commercials are taking the place of commercial radio." And to get on a commercial, it sure helps to be signed to a label with a nice licensing department.

Of course, there are different types of record labels. A major label, such as EMI, has a lot more money to throw around and can make more promises, but contracts with majors can end up with artists further in the hole due to these deep pockets. As Bonacci told me, "There's more risk. There's more fuel to propel you forward up front, but that's no guarantee." That same fuel could blow up in your face. We've seen how bands who don't hit it big can end up "owing" their major label hundreds of thousands of dollars, after all.

Indie labels (true indie labels, not boutiques under the umbrella of a major) have less resources and therefore will give bands less to recoup. Indies also will often offer the artist a chance to interact with top brass, something that is almost never done at a major. Indies are presumably owned by passionate music fans rather than gigantic multinational holding companies, which is important when a band needs to know that a label is 100% behind them, according to RRR's Bonacci.

And signing to an indie instantly connects you to that labels fans, Bonacci says. "Nobody really cares about Sony records or Universal. You don't seek out stuff that's being released on Universal as a fan. Independent labels, be it Domino or SubPop or whatever, those labels have fans."

Indie labels seem to have a better chance of adapting and surviving in tumultuous times. Since for the most part they're private companies with few employees, they're able to make drastic changes in their business models much more quickly than major labels. But that doesn't mean they'll all survive; famed indie label Touch and Go closed down last year, and in addition to repping bands such as TV on the Radio, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, !!! and Blonde Redhead, they also handled distribution for other venerable indies such as Drag City, Kill Rock Stars, Jade Tree and Merge. It was a huge blow to the indie label scene.

Getting a Cut of Everything

The way labels are moving to stay alive is by becoming involved in the places that bands still make money, such as touring and merchandising. Traditionally, labels only made money off records sold, while any profits made from t-shirts or posters sold on the road went to the band. After all, if the label just owns the master recordings, it can only make money off the sale of said recordings, not any ancillary profits that come from things like touring.

But now some labels are pushing what are called 360 deals, which involve them in virtually everything an artist does. One of the most famous 360 deals was EMI's 2002 deal with Robbie Williams, which was worth a whopping £80 million, giving EMI a piece of basically everything that Williams touched. That didn't go so well, with Williams threatening to withhold albums from the label and trying to get out of his contract. But last week, according to UK trade paper Music Week, Williams' manager Tim Clark publicly came out in support of the embattled label, saying, "My own view is Citigroup would be mad at this stage not to keep EMI on as a going concern. It just would be bonkers."

In any case, 360 deals and general diversification are what big labels such as EMI are looking to move into, according to Billboard's Glenn Peoples. "They're definitely diversifying and they're actually getting into agencies, artist management, concert promotion. There's really no area that the four majors are not pursuing right now."

These deals make the most sense for huge acts with lots of opportunities for branding and licensing. You've seen it in action here on Giz, in fact, with Dr. Dre's Beats headphones and Lady Gaga's new Creative Director "job" at Polaroid. Both those acts are signed to Interscope, a sub-label of Universal that's clearly pushing artists towards these new revenue streams. But many smaller acts are still reluctant to give a label a slice of the entire pie with such a wide-reaching deal.

The fact of the matter is that bands do still need someone working for them, 360 deal or not. For some bands, just having a small team of a dedicated manager, publicist and lawyer who can handle the nitty-gritty of online sales, tour organization, merchandising and marketing will be enough for them. But many can still benefit from the huge networks that labels have with their contacts in every facet of the industry. Sure, you can print your own t-shirts, but a label with contacts with clothing manufacturers, stores and distributors can make that process a lot easier. And just how much of this work do you want to do yourself?

360 deals don't make sense for all bands; Ra Ra Riot manager Roth isn't sold on them. "A lot of labels are also now branching into management because the manager is involved with everything going on with a band. Labels will try to be like a full-service company to a band, but I don't think it'll be very popular." He worries that bands will be setting themselves up to be taken advantage of even more by labels if they give up merchandising and touring profits to them. Having an independent team working for a band and playing middleman between them in the label makes sure there's someone deeply involved in "business stuff" that still has their best interests at heart.

And it makes sense that a manager would be wary of labels moving into their territory, but there's still a distinction between label and manager with these deals. "For example, a new artist signed to a multi-rights deal may use the major label's merchandise company and e-commerce division in addition to its publishing and recorded music companies," Peoples says. "In the past, a manager could pick and choose which merch, e-commerce, publishing and record companies it wanted to work with. Now they're more likely to be under the same umbrella."

Sometimes, a band's management team can replace what a label does entirely. Just yesterday, OK Go announced it was splitting with EMI, whom they didn't have the greatest relationship with, to strike out on their own with a new company called Paracadute. Paracadute is basically OK Go's own team to handle management, promotion and distribution of their records. "The things that a major has to offer above and beyond anybody else are the things that OK Go really didn't need so much," Peoples says. "And that's radio promotion and access to brick and mortar retail. If you're going to create nearly all of your consumer awareness through cheaply made YouTube videos, you don't need this big promotional and distribution system behind you."

But not all bands can do what OK Go has done. The digital world looks a lot more accessible when only viewed through the lens of rock acts. "If you're an R&B act, if you're a straight up pop act, a country act, you're going to need radio and you're going to need brick and mortar retail, and that's not going to change anytime soon. Things are changing definitely for alternative rock, rock and indie, but some genres sell a lot better in digital than other genres."

But clearly, the money that's to be made in music is no longer just in album sales. And bands seem to be presented with a choice: they can either allow labels to become more involved in everything that they do, and give up money that used to go exclusively to them in the process, or strike out on their own. Either way, they'll entering a landscape where getting their song on Gossip Girl for 40 seconds is more important than any amount of FM radio play, where getting a music video posted to Stereogum is more important than getting it on MTV and where you make more money touring behind an album than selling that same album.

And in order to prove to artists that signing with a label is a better idea than going out on your own, they'll need to make big changes; bigger than they've made so far. "It might be how an addict ends up turning his life around," Peoples says. "He's gotta hit rock bottom. And I dunno if the record industry has hit rock bottom yet, but maybe that's what'll need to happen for there to be really big change."

But at the end of the day, the saving grace of record labels might be a lot more basic than who gets what percentage of merchandise or who deals with distribution. The big question is this: do bands really want to try to make it completely on their own? As Bonacci says, "I don't necessarily want to have all that nitty-gritty stuff to worry about. I'd rather just worry about making music. I don't want to worry about numbers or distribution or marketing or publicity or anything like that. That sounds like a desk job. I used to have a desk job, that's why I'm playing music. Now look at me. I sleep on couches."

The Future Of Camera-Based Input [IPhone Apps]

2010-03-12T04:59:00.001-05:00

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5491060/the-future-of-camera+based-input

Not entirely dissimilar to the 2008 patent which showed an iPhone being controlled by camera-based input, is this German student's app, which controls the Maps app being controlled by the camera tracking hand movements through the app.

It's probably easiest if you watch the below, which demonstrates—in a slightly limited fashion—a hand being moved in front of the camera, controlling a dot moving around the iPhone's Google Maps app. The iPhone is connected to a laptop, which has the Map interface displayed. Interestingly, moving the hand further away from the camera zooms the map out, and moving it in zooms the map in.

I can't see how this app could be used any further though—or maybe I'm being too obtuse? The idea of having another way to control a touchscreen phone just seems a little crazy to me. [Daniel Bierwirth via Recombu]

Springpad Turns Your iPhone Into a Scrapbook for Everything [IPhone Apps]

2010-03-12T04:57:00.001-05:00

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5491450/springpad-turns-your-iphone-into-a-scrapbook-for-everything

Are you one of those people who collects stuff? Not material items, but little tiny scraps of information, be they photos, places, products, text snippets, ideas, or plans? Then maybe, maybe, you should try Springpad.

Springpad is a free iPhone app in the vein of Evernote, except with a broader scope. You can dump just about anything you encounter in here: photos are easily snapped and categorized; barcodes are scanned and filed; restaurants and stores are identified by manual or geo-based search; notes are pecked and saved; every input field, nearly, is augmented by a "search" option; and all your material syncs to the service's desktop web interface.

Since the app's promise—to make collecting and organizing little scraps of information super-easy—is so appealing, it's disappointing to find some interface awkwardness here; there's never anything missing, really, but you often find yourself pausing to look for the next command longer than you should have to. Regardless, information hoarders and relentless scrapbookers should probably give Springpad a chance—it's free, and for a first release, it does a lot. [Springpad]

United Airlines Claims In-Flight Videochat to Be Illegal [Travel]

2010-03-12T04:56:00.001-05:00

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5491312/united-airlines-claims-in+flight-videochat-to-be-illegal

John Battelle was on a Wi-Fi-enabled fight with United Airlines last night, and he decided to use videochat to say goodnight to his kids. Unfortunately, a flight attendant told him it was illegal.

The reasoning? Videochat could be used to coordinate terrorist attacks. Good thing he didn't have email or IM access!

So what's a curious guy to do? To the Internet! Which is exactly what I did. Responses starting pouring in. Including one from a pal at the State Department, who echoed my basic goal: To use video chat to tuck my kids into bed isn't a crime. Or at least, shouldn't be.

The flight attendant just showed me the United policy manual which prohibits "two way devices" from communicating with the ground. However, the PLANE HAS WIFI. To combat this, not unlike China, United and other airlines have blocked Skype and other known video chat offenders. Apparently, they missed Apple iChat. Oops.

The reason that in-flight videochat is frowned about is because it's annoying to fellow passengers, not because of terrorists. But who needs to know that when you can just claim something is against the law? [Battelle Media via Boing Boing]

ASUS Cine5 is 'world's most compact' five-channel speaker, doesn't forget the blue LEDs

2010-03-12T04:49:00.005-05:00

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/11/asus-cine5-is-worlds-most-compact-five-channel-speaker-doesn/

Seriously, who told manufacturers that we're in love with garish LED status lights?ASUS has strapped a glowing orb of unnecessariness around the volume knob of the Cine5 -- an otherwise perfectly acceptable and appreciably diminutive PC soundbar. With an array of speaker drivers integrated into that curvy body, ASUS claims the Cine5 produces realistic multidirectional surround sound, but does admit it's mostly intended for smaller spaces such as study rooms. The announcement also includes a nod to FPS gamers, with claims that the improved positional audio on offer will benefit both gameplay immersion and accuracy when identifying a sound source, though we reckon the biggest boon will still be the elimination of the extra cables and speakers one usually needs to get one's surround sound on. Price and availability have not yet been made public, but knowing ASUS both should be in the reasonable range of the market.

ASUS Cine5 is 'world's most compact' five-channel speaker, doesn't forget the blue LEDs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | ASUS | Email this |&nb! sp;Comments

Opera Mini 5 on Android mini review

2010-03-12T04:49:00.003-05:00

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/11/opera-mini-5-on-android-mini-review/

Opera's Mini 5 beta finally hit Android in the wee hours of this morning and, while writing about what it looks like is nice, we thought a little walk-through to demonstrate the impressive speed of the thing was worthwhile. So we have a short video for you below, with a comparison against the stock Android browser, plus some impressions of just how it is to use. So, click on through, won't you?

Continue reading Opera Mini 5 on Android mini review

Opera Mini 5 on Android mini review originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | | Email this | Comments

$92 MD500 Android tablet from Hott actually looks pretty cool

2010-03-12T04:49:00.001-05:00

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/11/92-md500-android-tablet-from-hott-actually-looks-pretty-cool/

At this point we really need another tablet like we need another hole in the head, but when this one could cost around $100 and still look quite good, well, it's worth talking about. It's the Hott MD500, an Android device with a 4.8-inch, 800 x 480 screen and plenty of OS customizations to make it rather more media-friendly, including the ability to "play every codec" according to the guy doing the demonstration. We'll believe that when we see it, but it is shown playing a 720p clip from the cinematic masterpiece Tokyo Drift without too much trouble. The somewhat iPhone-esque design looks very nice and is much smaller than a comparable Archos 5. The price is $92 to distributors without any flash memory and, since you can get a 4GB microSD card for a few bucks these days (even a legit one), we wouldn't be surprised if these sell for $115 or $120. Whether they'll ever hit retail in the US is, of course, another question. Video demonstration is embedded below if you want to hear the hype, just try not to lose your breakfast every time this is enthusiastically called an iPad killer.

Continue reading $92 MD500 Android tablet from Hott actually looks pretty cool

$92 MD500 Android tablet from Hott actually looks pretty cool originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | ARMdevices.net | Email this | Comments

Sony's ultra-compact concept camera gets slightly less mysterious

2010-03-12T04:48:00.003-05:00

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/11/sonys-ultra-compact-concept-camera-gets-slightly-less-mysteriou/

We didn't exactly get the best look at Sony's new ultra-compact concept camera at PMA last month, but the company is now thankfully starting to reveal a few more details about the "DSLR quality" camera. Still nothing in the way of specs or an actual working camera, of course, but Sony has provided a few screenshots of the camera's menu system that at least provide a few tidbits of information. Most notably, it seems that the camera will employ a touchscreen interface, with most of the main controls handled by a menu on the side of the screen, and it looks like the camera will have a RAW + JPEG shooting mode, which should no doubt please more serious photographers. Hit up the link below for a few more screenshots.

[Thanks, Julien]

Sony's ultra-compact concept camera gets slightly less mysterious originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Geeky Gadgets | Email this | Comments

JooJoo hits the FCC, reveals NVIDIA Ion, 3G card

2010-03-12T04:48:00.001-05:00

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/11/joojoo-hits-the-fcc-reveals-nvidia-ion-3g-card/

Well well. We'd always suspected that the JooJoo tablet was hiding something extra to run HD video and Flash, and it's just hit the FCC with full documentation and a teardown confirming that there's an NVIDIA Ion GPU paired with an Atom N270 packed inside. We're also seeing a 3G card in there, although it's unclear whether it'll be active or installed at launch -- we've been told the 3G version won't be ready until sometime later this year, but things have been changing fast, so that may be in flux as well. There's also a picture showing it running Windows, but we're assuming that's just for testing purposes -- we'd also bet it'd be an easy little hack. But back to Ion for a second: our experience with first-gen Ion netbooks has been one of decreased performance and drastically reduced battery life, so we're very curious to see how the JooJoo holds up compared to modern netbooks running Intel's Pine Trail chips and NVIDIA's Optimus-based Ion 2. We'll see -- it's supposed to ship in just a few weeks. Two more pics after the break.

P.S.- Oh, and Fusion Garage got back to us yesterday with a list of supported local video formats, and it's pretty decent: AVI, MPEG-4, MOV, WMV and WMA, FLV (Flash Video), VOB, OGG, OGM and OGV, MKV (Mastroska), DiVX and XViD. We'll see how the battery holds up, though -- our very own Joanna Stern predicts a best case of 3.5 hours with WiFi on and a video playback time of two hours.

Continue reading JooJoo hits the FCC, reveals NVIDIA Ion, 3G card

JooJoo hits the FCC, reveals NVIDIA Ion, 3G card originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | FCC | Email this | Comments

iPhone SDK 3.2 showing first hints of multitasking for third-party apps?

2010-03-12T04:47:00.005-05:00

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/11/iphone-sdk-3-2-showing-first-hints-of-multitasking-for-third-par/

Naturally, we need to first disclaim this noise by saying that rumors of third-party multitasking capability in the iPhone are as old as the iPhone SDK itself. That said, it's hard to ignore a new reference to a "multitasking dialog box" buried deep within the iPhone SDK 3.2 beta that -- while not new to beta 4 specifically -- we're told didn't exist in 3.1.3. Now, the wildest possible speculation would have us believing that this is the very first by-product of a new multitasking system for developers that's being developed for the platform, presumably destined for an appearance in OS 4.0 when it's introduced along with new hardware this summer -- but it's just as likely that Apple will continue to keep the iPhone's multitasking capability to itself, a function it uses liberally among the phone and music apps, just to name a couple. For what it's worth, AppleInsider is citing a tipster claiming that Apple's got a "full-on solution" to multitasking that would properly address its main concern -- battery life issues -- for release this year, so maybe we'll be able to chuck those awful push notifications before we know it. Now if you'll excuse us, we'll be over here in the corner running a few dozen apps on our Pre Plus.

iPhone SDK 3.2 showing first hints of multitasking for third-party apps? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TUAW | 9 to 5 Mac | Email this | Comments