Category Archives: News

Google Chrome OS netbook specs leaked (looking good!)

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Out of the boring status quo comes a netbook with specs that don’t mention Intel Atom, NVIDIA Ion, HDD, and standard def.  Chrome OS, that browser-as-your-operating-system concoction from Google, is coming soon and it will come installed inside a Google-designed netbook of their own.  According to the IBTimes, the “Google netbook” looks to be one beast of the netbook: it will be powered by an ARM CPU and NVIDIA’s Tegra graphics chip; it will feature a 10.1-inch TFT HD multi-touch display, 64GB SSD, 2GB RAM, and other goodies such as WiFi, 3G, Bluetooth, an Ethernet port, USB ports, a webcam, a 3.5mm audio jack, a multi-card reader, and more.  According to the latest rumors, the device will be subsidized with a 3G plan and will end up in the sub-$300 category.

I really hope these specs are fact, not rumor.  A netbook with an ARM CPU and NVIDIA’s sweet Tegra graphics would be a welcome addition to the netbook mix.  Tegra can only be found inside Microsoft’s Zune today, and it deserves more than that!

In related Google news, Google will be holding a press conference on January 5 where they will likely announce the coveted “Google phone,” the Nexus One.  Search, browsers, cell phones, netbooks, oh my!  Google world dominance is starting to gain hold.

[Via IBTimes; Gizmodo; Engadget]

3D programming is coming to a non-compatible TV near you via DirecTV

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According to the HDGuru, DirecTV plans on launching the first 3D HDTV channel in the US sometime next year.  It’s been reported that DirecTV recently shot a brand new satellite into orbit that supports the addition of a 3D channel plus other regular HD stations.  The satillite becomes operational in March 2010, so that’s the earliest a 3D channel could pop up.  HD Guru’s “sources” tell him that all current DirecTV set top boxes will receive a firmware upgrade that will enable it to receive the 3D programming.  But remember, in order to watch 3D on your television, you need a TV that supports it.  DirecTV is expected to make this announcement at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show; TV manufacturers like LG, Sony, Samsung, and Panasonic are planning on showing off their latest 3D HDTVs as well.

Thing is, I don’t think we are ready for 3D programming yet.  Hell, we are just getting used to high definition!  A hefty percentage of America finally owns decent HDTVs, and now the industry expects us to go out and buy a new 3D-supported TV.  I think not.  Let’s stick with 3D in the theatres for now (Avatar and Up were the first 3D movies I thoroughly enjoyed); slowly but surely the industry should allow it to enter the home.

[Via HDGuru; Gizmodo]

Man cures blindness with stem cells

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Russell Turnbull lost eyesight in his right eye when a squirt of ammonia shot into it as he intervened in a fight between two men.  The chemical caused significant damage to his right eye and was diagnosed with a condition called Limbal Stem Cell Deficiency (LSCD).  LSCD is very painful and requires many trips to the hospital for care.  Because he had this rare condition, doctors used him as a guinea pig in stem cell trials.  Fifteen years after the frightful incident, Turnbull was miraculously cured of blindness thanks to the stem cells.  The treatment involved taking small samples of stem cells from his healthy eye’s cornea, growing it in the lab, and implanting them into his damaged eye.  Only eight weeks after the operation, Turnbull regained full eyesight in his right eye.  He was cured of blindness.  He remains “one of eight patients with impaired vision who have been treated successfully by surgeons at the North East England Stem Cell Institute.”

Though this treatment surely won’t cure all blind people, it is a huge step in the right direction for science and health.  Stem cell research is a controversial topic in today’s heated political and religious debates.  No matter what side you stand on, you cannot deny that this miraculous story of Turnbull and the advances in science and technology are pointing to a brighter future where incurable diseases become curable ones.

[Via Gizmodo; Channel 4]

Researchers develop substance that keeps you mildly drunk (plus an antidote to instantly make you sober)

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Imagine a world in which you can drink as much alcohol as you like without getting out-of-control drunk and without worrying about feeling hungover the next morning.  A new synthetic alcohol is being developed by a research team at Imperial College London, led by Professor David Nutt.  The alcohol, which is being developed from chemicals found in Valium, serves the same function as today’s alcohol (induces relaxation, well-being, etc.) except that it has NO affect on other parts of the brain, thus eliminating potentially dangerous side effects such as mood swings and addiction.  In addition, the researchers claim that a simple antidote can quickly flush out your system, removing the possibility of feeling hungover.

You can drink as much alcohol as you want.  You reach a pleasant state of drunkenness.  You can drink as much as you want and you will never leave this state.  Now it’s time to drive home; pop a pill and you’re sober as a bird.  Sounds great, right?  According to the researchers, since the substance is tasteless and colorless, it can replace the alcohol content in beer, wine, and other alcoholic drinks without issue.  So why isn’t this in place right now?  Unfortunately Professor Nutt has been unsuccessful in finding a test country to market his discovery and he does not have the financial backing to move forward in the process.  Also, since the liquor industry has shown little interest in change, this all places the substance on death watch.  What a damn shame.

[Via Gizmodo; Telegraph]

Snowflake-shaped photovoltaic cells emit holiday cheer

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Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have created these snowflake-shaped photovoltaic cells from crystalline silicon.  What’s so special about that is that they use 100 times less material to generate the same amount of electricity as regular solar cells.  Their unusual shape and minuscule size promise to soak up the sun’s rays and help power our devices.  Researchers can see the day when they are inexpensively mass-produced and used in the textile and clothes industries.  In theory, these cells can be placed on any flexible surface.  So for example, they can be installed in camping tents or even a pair of jeans to provide on-the-go charging of our cell phones.  Thanks to these photovoltaic cells, one day we may all be walking power sources.  Neat, huh?

[Via Engadget; Gizmodo; Inhabitat]

OLPC conjures up latest dream tablet slated for 2012 release

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Meet the XO-3 from the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project.  You know, the non-profit organization that created the $100 XO-1 laptop and whose mission is “to create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.”  On a side note, the XO-1 “has been distributed to more than 1.4 million children in 35 countries and in 25 languages,” according to Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of One Laptop Per Child.  The latest concept iteration, the XO-3, is skipping a whole “second generation.”  In fact, the XO-2 concept was unveiled in pictures (much like this go-around) and never came to fruition.  The dual-screen concept was scrapped and Negroponte began to focus on what we see here.  The XO-3 “will feature a new design using a single sheet of flexible plastic and will be unbreakable and without holes in it.”  The device itself is one big 8.5 x 11 touchscreen with a folding ring in the corner as a grip and a camera can be found on the backside.  It will take advantage of inductive charging (think the Palm Pre “puck”) and will use less than a watt of power.  Negroponte on the potential success of the XO-3: “Sure, if I were a commercial entity coming to you for investment, and I’d made the projections I had in the past, you wouldn’t invest again, but we’re not a commercial operation. If we only achieve half of what we’re setting out to do, it could have very big consequences.”  The XO-3 is designed by Yves Behar and is projected to cost $75 when it goes on sale in 2012.

In a press release Negroponte spilled the beans on two more iterations of the OLPC that are planned to emerge before the introduction of the XO-3.

The XO 1.5 is the same industrial design as the XO 1.0. Based on a VIA processor (replacing AMD), it will provide 2x the speed, 4x DRAM memory and 4x FLASH memory. It will run both the Linux and Windows operating systems. XO 1.5 will be available in January 2010 at about $200 per unit. The actual price floats in accordance with spot markets, particularly for those of DRAM and FLASH.

The XO 1.75, to be available in early 2011, will be essentially the same industrial design but rubber-bumpered on the outside and in the inside will be an 8.9”, touch-sensitive display. The XO 1.75 will be based on an ARM processor from Marvell that will enable 2x the speed at 1/4 the power and is targeted at $150 or less. This ARM-based system will complement the x86-based XO 1.5, which will remain in production, giving deployments a choice of processor platform.

The “One Laptop Per Child” initiative is great.  I’m all for putting computers in the hands of less fortunate people, giving them access to a wide array of educational opportunities.  The point of the XO-x laptops is their ability to be mass produced and shipped to countries around the world for the purpose of spreading the importance of education and development.  The XO-1 did its job, and according to Negroponte, the XO-3 and other form factors that come before it will do the same.  The only thing I worry about is whether or not the technology will be around to support Negroponte’s dream computers.  In pictures, the XO-3 looks like a device from 2050, not 2012.  Even if such technologies arearound to build this device in three years, will it be possible to price it at a mere $75?  These are pressing issues Negroponte and his designers and engineers I’m sure are dealing with today.  I have my fingers crossed that a day will come in the near future when little boys and girls in less-developed countries will sitting at desks with their thin, stylish XO-3s, developing their minds and expanding their opportunities.

“To fulfill our mission of reaching 500 million children in all remote corners of the planet, OLPC will continue to innovate in design and performance. Because we are a non-profit, we hope that industry will copy us.”  With a mission like this in mind, OLPC is on track to becoming a global force in the push for widespread education and innovation.

[Via Engadget; BusinessWire; Wiki]

Apple: iTunes subscription based services, more iPhone/tablet rumors

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Let’s get right to it, shall we?  The Wall Street Journal reports that CBS and Walt Disney Company (among other major TV networks) are “consideringparticipating in Apple’s plan to offer television subscriptions over the Internet.”  CBS will offer shows from CBS and CW and Disney will offer selections from its ABC, Disney Channel, and ABC Family networks.  Though details are being kept under wraps, word has it that Apple will offer its iTunes customers a $30/month subscription to choose from the TV networks’ selection of shows.  This is all starting to make sense now that Apple has ate up streaming company Lala; they might just have a Hulu-esque TV streamingservice in the works.  Whatever it may be, “sources” claim that Apple could finalize licensing deals and switch on the service sometime in 2010.

The Financial Times delves further into this matter and regurgitates the followinginformation:  “Apple has contacted other broadcast and cable networks, including Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting System and Viacom, which have so far been unconvinced by Apple’s proposal. The computer maker has also courted the book publishing industry, sector executives say.”  This is all very interesting, to say the least.  Major publishers like the WSJ and the FT reporting on a potential iTunes subscription-based service can only mean that something is brewingat Apple HQ.  Talks with CBS (Viacom), Time Warner, and ABC are vital if Apple plans on making such a TV show subscription plan work.  And let’s not forget about their “court[ing] [of the] book publishing industry”…cue the Apple tablet/iPhone rumors.

Addional news comes from the Financial Times, and this time it’s about the impendingannouncement of the Apple tablet: “Apple is preparing an announcement next month that many anticipate will be the official unveiling of its tablet, but the company has so far declined to confirm the existence of the device. Wall Street analysts expect mass production of an Apple tablet to begin as early as February.”

To spread to the gaining hype around the tablet and the next-gen iPhone comes news today from a Silicon Alley Insider report: “Apple is preparing to show off a new, larger mobile device with a higher resolution display in January — probably a version of the Apple tablet we’ve been hearing about for months — according to a plugged-in source in the mobile industry.”  This source says that Apple has asked a select group of app developers to prepare their apps to support a full-screen resolution (rather than the fixed 320×480 rez the iPhone currently uses) and to demo on a “new, larger mobile device.”  In addition, the report says that the tablet will be demoed in January but not released into the market until a later date.  This matches up with the FT news posted above; Apple will unveil it in January, ramp up production in February, and have it ready for the public by March 2010.  And there’s more!  DigiTimes reports that the next-gen iPhone will be packed with a 5 megapixel camera sensor.

And that’s it for now.  Exhausting, huh?  I think Apple just needs to come out with it already and unveil this coveted (albeit non-existent) tablet to calm our nerves and get us excited for something that we at least know is real.  With Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster claiming that there’s a 75% chance that an Apple January event is coming and word that the tablet will be the main focus of the event I am waiting in much anticipation.  An overhaul of iTunes, the next-gen iPhone, the tablet…so many potential topics to discuss!  Here’s hoping that Apple hits at least one of them next month.

[Via Engadget, here & here; Gizmodo, here & here; Apple Insider]

Intel Atom “Pine Trail” processors announced, will need NVIDIA Ion 2 boost

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How are your netbooks holding up?  Kinda slow, huh?  Doesn’t run YouTube and Hulu videos up to your high standards?  Well, I have some pleasant news for you.

On Monday Intel announced the introduction of their latest Atom processors: the N450 (or “Pine Trail”), the D410 D510, and the NM10 Express chipset.  The single-core D410 and dual-core D510 are designed for nettops.  What I want to focus on is the N450 chip.  What’s so different about the 1.66GHz N450 chip is that it integrates the Intel graphics and memory controller directly into the processor.  This results in a smaller processor that can be placed into even smaller devices such as tiny netbooks.  The N450 is 60% smaller and 20% more efficient than its predecessor.  Clocked at 1.66GHz, the N450 single-core chip has a 512kb cache, only supports, DDR2 memory, and is limited to handling 2GB of RAM.  After playing around with a new netbook from Asus, fellow bloggers at Engadget report back bittersweet news: while the new chip provides longer battery life it lacks in the performance category, especially in graphics.  Cue NVIDIA Ion 2…

Yesterday NVIDIA announced that its next generation of Ion graphics chips will be compatible with Intel’s new “Pine Trail” processors.  They will be available sometime during the first quarter of 2010.  This is very good news.  Those of you who are crying on a daily basis because your netbooks won’t load HD YouTube videos or stream shows from Hulu in a normal speedy manner will have Ion to thank for the resolution of your woes.  Atom + Ion is a match made in heaven, and I can’t wait for the next generation versions of these two to live in harmony with one another.  In fact, I still haven’t purchased a netbook because I’ve been waiting for this very moment to happen.  Expect to see a slew of netbooks sporting these new chips during next month’s CES.

[Via Engadget, here & here; Gizmodo]

Unreal Engine 3 running on iPhone/iPod touch (watch out PSP, DS)

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Thanks to the iPhone’s internal OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics capability, Epic has no reason to hold back from porting their Unreal Engine 3 (the same engine that runs mega-games BioShock, Gears of War and Mass Effect) to the iPhone 3Gs and iPod touch (3rd gen).  Do you know what this means!?  Soon Apple’s little genius devices will turn into real portable game machines.  Not that they aren’t already gaming machines; but the integration of such a powerful graphics engine backing future games should definitely give the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS a chill down their spines.  Check out the video above for a quick snippet of  Unreal gameplay and look forward to the iPhone and iPod touch becoming synonymous with “portable gaming machines.”

[Via Engadget; Gizmodo]

Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button leads to an ominous countdown

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When you leave the Google search box blank and click the “I’m Feeling Lucky” option you are lead to a page that displays a mysterious countdown clock…but to what?  The end of the world in 2012?  World peace?  Unfortunately it’s not as exciting as either of those pending events.  Simple math calculations reveal that it is counting down to the new year, the end of the first decade in the 2000s.  Interestingly the timer only shows up in the following URLs: Google.com, Google.co.uk, Google.ie and Google.com.au; Google German and French are left out of the prank.  I guess this is Google’s way of wishing everyone a happy new year, besides changing their homepage logo on the day of, of course.

[Via Telegraph.co.uk]

Mid-season TV cheat sheet

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When are your favorite TV shows coming back?  Where are new episodes of ABC’s Modern Family, FlashForward, V, and Castle?  What about FOX‘s House, Fringe, and Glee?  And what of NBC’s The Office, Parks & Rec, and Heroes?  CBS’ The Mentalist and The Big Bang Theory? I can’t wait for the return of Lost, 24, and American Idol, but when do they air?  When does Dollhouse air its series finale?  RELAX, fellow TV viewer.  Posted after the break is a mid-season TV cheat sheet that provides a complete schedule of when shows return and when season premieres air.  Be sure to thank EW’s intern Sandra Gonzalez in the comments for her beautiful work.

[Via EW]

Continue reading Mid-season TV cheat sheet →

Eminem is back with a “refill”

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Relpase: Refill - In Stores 12.21.09!

Before Relapse 2 is released later next year, Eminem is sharing with us seven new tracks in a re-release of this year’s comeback album Relapse.  Two of the seven new songs include iTunes singles “Hell Breaks Loose” (featuring Dr Dre) and Elevator.  “Forever,” the slick single that also features Drake, Kanye West, and Lil Wayne, is also on the album.  Eminem kills it on that track; his verse alone makes the song a great single.  Look after the break for a full track listing.

Eminem on Refill: “I want to deliver more material for the fans this year like I originally planned.  Hopefully these tracks on The Refill will tide the fans over until we put out Relapse 2 next year.”  Em also comments on his time in the studio: “I got back in with Dre and then a few more producers, including Just Blaze, and went in a completely different direction which made me start from scratch. The new tracks started to sound very different than the tracks I originally intended to be on Relapse 2, but I still want the other stuff to be heard.”

Relapse: Refill officially drops today but will made available for download on iTunes this Tuesday.

[Via EminemBlog] Continue reading Eminem is back with a “refill” →