Mac users — are you tired of being taunted by your PC friends over their myriad GPU options / killer gaming rigs? Well, here’s one less front they can battle you on. NVIDIA is due to launch GTX 285 for Macs in June. Like the PC version, we’re guessing you can expect two things here: it’s killer… and it’s expensive.
There was a slight flurry of excitement felt last week when the first Google Android netbook, the Skytone Alpha 680, was spotted. Now, Computerworld has scored an exclusive interview with Skytone’s co-founder.
Among many tidbits, he reveals that the Alpha 680 builds upon the success of last year’s $180USD Alpha 400, which shipped 100,000 units, mostly in Europe under names such as Elonex OneT; that the new Alpha 680 will weigh 1.5 pounds, 25% less than the first Eee 701 netbook; that its ARM11 chip (basically the same as the one used in the iPhone) can handle YouTube video; and that he hopes to have Chinese manufacturing partners producing the $250USD Alpha 680 within 3 months.”
There’s a general rule with hard drives: spin faster, get better performance, use more power. “Green” hard drives take the opposite tack: they spin slower, and use less power, like Seagate’s new Barracuda LP.
Its RPM rating is a rather odd 5900rpm - That 18 percent speed reduction is how it achieves most of its power savings over regular hard drives, not through green alchemy. Which means it’s less suited to your high performance gaming rig than snugly slotted into your NAS or simply dedicated to straight media storage in your PC.
The rumors were true, and today’s the day that the Bluetooth SIG gets official with the latest, greatest version of Bluetooth. Bluetooth 3.0 + HS, as it’ll be called, promises to be markedly faster than prior iterations thanks to the reliance on 802.11, which is the same protocol used by WiFi modules, routers, etc. The new standard obviously catapults Bluetooth into a new dimension; rather than being good for nothing more than sending images from one phone to another or syncing a fitness module to a DAP, v3.0 is nimble enough to handle camcorder-to-HDTV, PC-to-PMP and UMPC-to-printer transfers.
That unassuming iPod dock that was launched at the new York Auto Show for Chrysler GEM’s Peapod prototype. Turns out it’s got a pretty interesting little trick, allowing your iPhone / iPod double as the ignition key. According to the EV’s brochure, the company’s got an app that makes all the magic work, and if you wish to start your car in an old-school manner, keys are still a viable option. Sure, it’s not the first example of car-phone integration we’ve come across, it’s a welcome addition to the oddly-shaped neighborhood whip that’s going beyond concept phase into production this October.
CNet has pictures of a planned 10,000 year clock to be built in eastern Nevada by the Long Now Foundation. From the article: ‘Running under its own power, the clock is an experiment in art, science, and engineering. The six dials on the face of this machine will represent the year, century, horizons, sun position, lunar phase, and the stars of the night sky over a 10,000-year period. Likely to span multiple generations and evolutions in culture, the thinking and design put into the monument makes it a moving sculpture as beautiful as it is complex.’ Really cool pictures, including one of a mechanical ‘binary computer’ that converts the pendulum into positions on the dial
According to a little site called Siliconera, Sony’s European arm has filed a patent for a remote-controlled car uses the PSP as an interface. This bad boy is equipped with a camera that feeds video back to the hand held and allows the user to upload the footage to a website. If that weren’t all, the patent makes mention of an augmented reality racing game incorporating virtual markers and paths that the players physically create — that is, the junk in your apartment is incorporated into on-screen game play. Innocent fun, right?
At the latest Press conference for P.U.M.A. Larry Burns and Jim Norrod from GM and Segway, respectively, talked up what they each brought to the table, and described the vehicle’s inception as a partnership.
Segway are responsible for the self tilting two wheel mechanism idea, while GMs part has yet to be seen in full potential, currently what we can see is the chassis, GM plan of having all sorts of “fashionable and futuristic” shells.
But the big issue comes from the general idea, this “car” is supposed to run in pre-existing bike lanes. Looks like most of the world misses out here!
Grace Digital Audio has announced a new floating wireless speaker called the Aqua sounders retailing for $149.99. The speaker floats around the pool or hot tub and has a pair of mood lights integrated for nighttime fun.
The submersible speaker is only part of the kit; a transmitter is included that sends music from any audio source with a 3.5mm jack to the speaker. Range is 150 feet from the transmitter and the battery inside the speaker is good for six hours. One transmitter can support up to ten speakers. You will need a really big pool for that many speakers though.
This so-called Reactable built by some researchers at Pompeu Fabra University has been making the rounds of trade shows and other events for quite a while now, but it looks like the group is now really getting their act together by forming a company (Reactable Systems) and putting the device into production. The table itself is not too dissimilar from some of the other multitouch tables out there, but it takes a slightly different tact by focusing primarily on the device’s potential as a musical instrument. To make things even simpler for the users, the table makes use of a series of “pucks” that each control a different aspect of the system, and are able to interact with each other when they’re in close proximity.