Wednesday, 1 December 2010
Thursday, 28 October 2010
Well, the world’s already packed with iPod sound system, but I really don’t mind to have another option, especially if it’s from Yamaha. Their latest PDX-31 just looks so gorgeous. Aside from reminding us of the gorgeous Oregon shoreline, this here speaker dock handles iPods and iPhones with a 30-pin Dock Connector, ships in a trio of hues (dark red, black and light gray) and offers up an auxiliary input for those other media players. It also houses a pair of 3.25-inch speakers, dual wall construction and arrives with a bundled remote for good measure. It’ll carry an MSRP of $169.95, but would you even care about the price? It just looks so sexy! And it’s a Yamaha, so you can’t go wrong.
Xigmatek has just launched their newest mid-tower PC case called the Pantheon. Available with or without a side window, the case comes with a full black colour coating (inside and outside), a top-mounted fan controller (with two knobs) and 1x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0, 1x eSATA and two audio ports, four 5.25-inch external drive bays, six hot-swap HDD cages with anti-vibration mounts, tool-free installation for optical drives and PCI cards and has three fans – two 120mm on the side and one 140mm white LED fan at the back. No price was given during the launching though.
It’s been rather quiet since the last news, but Microsoft has finally announced today the Release Candidate (RC) for their Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) to the public. What does that mean? Well, simple. The final is just around the corner. A month or so if we go by the usual.As previously announced, the only new features added to the SP1 are the Windows Server 2008 R2-related virtualization technologies, Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX, and while Windows 7 SP1 will enable PCs to take advantage of these server-based features to provide a more scalable and richer VDI experience for end users, there are no additional new features specific to Windows 7. I don’t really recommend downloading it, if you’re a typical user, as beta usually will come with a bug or few, despite being heavily tested. But if you’re the adventurous type, there’s no harm in hitting the source. Seriously, the service pack doesn’t do much to commoners.
Okay, this product is crazy, or perhaps spooky to some. At least the use of it is crazy enough. You see, people get lots of eyebags and eyesore due to staring at LCD or CRT (still around?) too much. That’s where your panda eyes come from. Reluctant to go to sleep at 3AM, and blaming insomnia when you’re madly farming at Facebook. Here comes this product. The actual usage of this tiny LCD with legs is to hang it on your screen. It presents an eye, always looking at you, lazily and nonchalantly blinking. In theory, if you see an eye blinking you’ll blink more often yourself and cut down on eye strain. But truthfully, who knows there might be a webcam in it to record all your nasty moments when all your family members are asleep.
Team Group, the memory enthusiast company today announced two new members from its Xtreem family of memory modules. Known as the Xtreem LV DDR3 1866 and Xtreem LV DDR3 2000, these memory kits provide superfast speed of 1866MHz and 2000MHz, respectively. This baby will definitely push your Core i5 or Core i7 (Socket 1156) setup much further.
The next-generation Xtreem LV series comes equipped with high-speed 256×8 chips that were manufactured through new process which should be OC-happy for overclocking enthusiasts. Additionally, these low-voltage (LV) modules work only at 1.65V and deliver a low latency at 9-11-9-27. The Team Xtreem LV DDR3-1866 and DDR3-2000 MHz memory kits are now available for purchase. Too bad, there is no info on pricing so far. Up for some overclocking party?
There’s an app for everything, so I guess to Razer there’s a gaming keyboard for every game too huh? They’ve developed one of the world’s most ugly and uncomfortable mouse for MMO called the Naga, and now the Naga has a partner. It’s the Anansi. Keeping the trend of naming their gadgets after deadly snakes and spiders, the Anansi(pronunciation Ah-nahn-see) is a cunning and intelligent deadly spider found in West Africa.
Being an MMO keyboard, it’s no surprise that this will come with lots of macro commands. There’s the very obvious ‘seven thumb modifier keys’ located below the space bar to provide you with every possible combination of modifier key (shift, ctrl, alt) in total accuracy and comfort of using a single key stroke, exponentially expanding the repertoire of spells, abilities and macros you have at your command.Allowing you to both instantly and effortlessly actuate every possible in-game spell or ability and still have room for dozens of your own custom macros. There you have it, the use of an MMO keyboard.
Of course, being typical Razer keyboard, the Razer Anansi’s fully-programmable keys allow you to further expand your repertoire of boss-killing macros, giving you total control with convenient and instantaneous command executions. In addition, you can switch between up to 20 profiles for each game or avatar at the press of a button.
There are also the five additional gaming macro keys on the left side of the Razer™ Anansithat let you easily access extra abilities and commands such as switching equipment presets and buffing your team mates. Remind me of the good ol’ legacy Tarantula.
The Anansi will be available globally in December 2010, for a price of $99.99. looks like Razer wants you to celebrate your nerdy Christmas in your MMO.
Yes, we’ve been using Office 2010 for quite some time now, but Microsoft sure has not forgotten the Mac users. Yes, we might have a good debate in between Windows and other OS, but there’s no deny that despite there’s so many alternatives out there, free or not, Microsoft’s flagship desktop suite of productivity, Microsoft Office is still the best out there.
“We develop Office for Mac to give you the tools to create great-looking and compatible documents — with options to pick the right edition for your Mac needs,” said Eric Wilfrid, general manager, Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) at Microsoft Corp. “More than ever before, Office 2011 brings the familiar productivity tools and features of Microsoft Office to a suite of applications that work great on the Mac.”
Office 2011 for Mac replaces Microsoft’s Mac-specific Entourage email app with the industry standard Outlook, brings in some interface tweaks from Office 2010 over in PC land, and integrates with those Office Web Apps you’ve been hearing so much about. The entire “Home & Business” bundle goes for $279, and if you’re not so into Outlook, you can get the much cheaper “Home & Student” which only comes with Word / PowerPoint / Excel for $149. I think the “Home & Student” package is a steal, really.
This is doesn’t require any form of battery, and easily snugged your iPhone 4. With it, this silicone adds some 12 decibels of sound pressure to your iPhone 4’s speaker. I’m not sure if your iPhone’s battery life will be halved, but this should do some light music listening. Not for your 3G or 3GS though. It’s priced at $24.95.
Alright, it’s finally here boys and girls. Apple has now officially offers free engraving for its iPad 3G and WiFi models, just like their iPod lineups. That’s conveniently just in time for the holidays. That will change the shipping time from 24 hours to one to three business days, however, so make that message count. The lovely gift box from Apple will also come handily.
And I thought that Epson is only good at making A4 papers smudged all over with inks, here they come throwing a little white monster. I’ve seen plenty Epson printers, but I’ve never seen a nettop from them, what’s more a beast in it.
Their latest ST150E is possibly your best bet on a super powerful midget PC for your living room. Sure, it’s bigger than your average nettop, about twice as tall, but for that extra girth you get a selection of Intel processors ranging from a Celeron P4600 all the way up to a Core i7-640M. It also sports a DVD-R/W drive, up to 8GB of RAM, 640GB on platters or a 64GB SSD, mountability behind an LCD, and power consumption as low as 16 watts — though we’re guessing that’s with the Celeron. Indeed you can get this built however you want, with a starting price at 64,890 yen, or just under $800. But, get liberal with the options and you could be looking at a rather less frugal 190,000 yen. That’s about $2,300, and an awful, awful lot for a little machine. But you get to play NBA 2k11 (barely, and for the Core i7 model of kush)!
Woot. Here we go again. Apple has somehow just crushed my desire to wait for the white iPhone 4, nearly. Many, including lots of engineers have stated that it’s ‘near impossible’ to manufacture white stuff, and some scientists even stated that white doesn’t exist. But it’s a sad news that despite many Apple products do come in white, the iPhone 4 may not have white colour version coming after all.
Yes, this news is very obvious. After a missed availability date in July and another delay after that to end of this year, Cupertino has once again pushed back the manufacture of the white knight iPhone 4, this time spring shot into spring of 2011. Wow, that’s very far away. There’s no mention of why, but they’re still dealing with the same manufacturing woes they’ve had from the start. By the time mid-2011 rolls around, it seems probable that the release will be butting up against news of the iPhone 4’s successor, or at least a CDMA version of the phone. Yes, you might want to give up the wait, and go for the black, if you really want the iPhone 4. I’ll just probably go and buy some white paint, or perhaps some spray cans.
Barnes & Noble has just officially announced the Nook Color in the US. The eReadergadget features a 7-inch (1024 x 600) IPS display with capacitive touch, and is powered by the mighty Google Android 2.0 OS (sadly no Froyo here). There’s 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi connectivity, an 8GB internal storage space, a microSD card slot for your expansion, and has up to 8-hour of juice for your leisure reading time (Wi-Fi off of kush).
Barnes & Noble is launching the Nook Developer program to allow third party apps on the device, and it even ships with a few favorites like Pandora and Lonely Planet. The color screen also enables a new library of “Nook Kids” children books, full-color magazine and newspaper subscriptions, and video playback if you’re in the mood. That’s why there’s also a mono speaker and a headphone jack. The Nook Color will start to ship on November 19th, 2010. This e-book reader is currently available for pre-order at Barnes & Noble for $249 a pop.
Google has just confirmed that their Android apps market has hit the 100,000 mark via their official Twitter channel. Let’s see, that’s about a jump from 70,000 to 100,000 in just three (3) months. And if you really want to know, that’s also about seven (7) months from 30,000 till this six figure number. That’s obviously still no where near Steve Jobs’s proud 300,000 apps mark, but you really can’t deny that Google is seriously catching up. It’s so sad to see that RIM’s been left behind, by so far!
Now this is what I call unplug! Driving a super environment friendly electric car, and don’t have to worry about insufficient electric for your new EV. Drive home, flip the switch, and you’re ready for dinner. That’s a very cool invention from WiTriCity, a pioneer in wireless energy transfer technology, and Delphi Automotive. That’s the result of the collaboration between the two companies that are working on developing a range of automatic wireless charging products for electric vehicles.
No additional plugs or charging cords are needed in the wireless charging system. All the driver need to do is to simply park their electric vehicles over a wireless energy source that sits on the garage floor or embedded in a paved parking spot, and the system will automatically charge up your car once you activate it.
This patented wireless energy transfer technology is invented by Nikola Tesla, and improved by a team of MIT physicists since four years ago to make it feasible. The technology makes use of highly resonant magnetic coupling, offering a transfer of over 3,300 watts – enough to fully charge an electric car at the same rate as most residential plug-in chargers. The system can efficiently transfer power over significantly larger distances and allow more parking-related vehicle misalignment than inductive systems. Ask any E&E Engineering student, and they should be able to explain better to you than me, what resonant cavity is. Despite the gap, no power would be lost as power is transferred through induction within the resonant cavity, not electrical conduction.
However, wireless charging technology will of course need to co-exist with plug-in charging solutions, the company states, so that electric vehicle drivers have the ability to charge their vehicle with something like Delphi’s portable electric charger – which fits into any standard AC outlet – when they’re away from their wireless charging source. This is actually a much refined package, by offering the wireless energy transfer package as an add-on instead of a standalone device. Sometimes we just can’t park properly. Well, now you have a better reason to buy an EV!
Well, here it is. Yes, it may still be in beta, but that’s better than none right? Microsoft has made available the beta version of their Windows Phone 7 Mac-friendly companion app, giving basic media syncing capability into your Mac.
Now what’s unique here is integration of iTunes and iPhoto, which comes as a surprise. This is great news, as most places worldwide have yet to properly launch their Windows Phone 7 handsets, yet. Well, except for some Kiwi-loving-hobbit country, who already have their phone.
Here’s something new for us to know. Perhaps this might also kill off Bluetooth. This was talked about quite some time ago by the Wi-Fi Alliance, but there’s no news until recently. They’re ready to push this new technology called ‘Wi-Fi Direct’.Here’s how it works.
In order to make a direct device-to-device connection over WiFi, just one of the two needs to be Wi-Fi Direct certified. In other words, a Wi-Fi Direct printer can recognize and interface with your Latitude D410 laptop from 1999, as all Wi-Fi Direct certified devices have to be able to control the one-to-one relationship. The goal here is pretty simple — it’s to create a protected connection between two devices over WiFi with as little hassle as possible. Think Bluetooth, but using WiFi. Yes, the range’s gone so big, you can still transfer your MP3 while you go to poo.
Another thing, “most” products certified will also support “one-to-many” connections, enabling a Wi-Fi Direct laptop to be in contact with a printer, connected HDTV and a tablet simultaneously, with no router in-between at any point. Something important to note here, is that while 802.11a/g/n is supported over 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, there’s no requirement for Wi-Fi Direct products to support 802.11b. Odd right?
Hardware wise, there’s no minimum requirement. That means any existing WiFi chipset could be upgraded via firmware to handle Wi-Fi Direct. Finally, they noted that the app ecosystem is likely to make this whole rollout a lot more interesting, particularly considering that Direct is simply a pipe that software can dictate as it sees fit. Don’t have to stick to your mate anymore when transferring that MP3.
We’ve seen so many add-ons for Firefox, and that’s a good thing. Now, things will be getting slightly haywire. Some Eric Butler who is a software developer, isn’t very happy with Facebook, and he thinks you should too. Well, at least he wants you to know why you should. So, here he is, forcing you to learn a few simple things to know how bad Mark Zuckerburg is, as so does the rest of the Internet.
He’s developed Firesheep, a Firefox add-on that even the least technically inclined among us can use to eavesdrop on open WiFi networks and capture your fellow users’ cookies. Any time a site recognized by Firesheep (including Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and Dropbox) is accessed by a user on your network, Firesheep provides you with an icon and a link to access that account. A simple click, and Firesheep will show a small picture and a link, if there’s anyone accessing these sites with no encryption. And with a double-click, you’re on your way to post some nasty things on that person’s wall.
So, maybe you should think twice before accessing Facebook at Starbucks, or anywhere that is using public network. Maybe you should learn a thing or two about force SSL. Search up Force-TLS in Firefox Add-on, if you’re using Firefox.
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
If dual-SIM is just not enough for you, look at this OTECH F1 with FOUR SIM card slots. More exciting is that all four SIMs are active at the same time, making the F1 a true quad-SIM phone. The phone, at the same time, is a Blackberry-copycat with QWERTY keyboard and a Blackberry-like UI.
The OTECH F1 has a 2.4-inch color display and a so-called 12.1 Megapixel camera on the back. It packs also built-in TV tuner, FM tuner and Bluetooth.
Sprint announced that it is going to sell the Samsung Galaxy Tab Android-based tablet device starting on 14 November with a price tag of $399.99 with a new line or eligible upgrade and two-year service agreement on a 3G Tablet Mobile Broadband plan.
As you may already know, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab is a 7-inch tablet device running Android 2.2 OS. It is powered by a 1GHz Hummingbird processor and 512MB RAM. It packs 2GB onboard memory, 3 Megapixel camera with video recording and flash, a front 1.3 Megapixel camera for video calling, GPS, WiFi 802.11b/g/n, stereo speakers and a preinstalled 16GB microSD memory card. The Tab comes with a 4000mAh battery.
Patriot Memory announced its new Torqx TRB series 2.5-inch SATA solid state drives. The new line of 2.5-inch SSDs uses JMicron’s JMF616 SSD controller and comes with 64MB DDR2 cache memory. The Torqx TRB is available in 32GB (model PT32GS25SSDR) and 64GB (model PT64GS25SSDR) capacities, with former offers up to 245MB/s read speeds and 60MB/s write speeds and the latter provides 260MB/s read and 115MB/s write.
The Torqx TRB series includes support for TRIM command in Windows 7.
Following the launch of the new BDXL multi-layer recordable Blu-ray Disc format, Pioneer introduces the world’s first PC Blu-ray burner that supports the BDXL format. The drive can read and write the new Triple Layer (TL) 100GB and Quad Layer (QL) BDXL media, while it also reads and write standard Blu-ray discs, DVD media and CD media, including DVD+/-R/RW, DVD-RAM, CD-R/RW.
The Pioneer BDR-206MBK supports playback of 3D Blu-ray as well. It uses SATA interface and has 4MB buffer memory. A suite of Cyberlink’s software applications is bundled for media playback and creation.
While Sprint will release the Galaxy Tab on 14 November, Verizon Wireless will have it three days earlier on 11 November. The Galaxy Tab will be available for a full price of $599.99, meaning there’s no data plan and contract needed. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab is a 7-inch Android 2.2 tablet device with 1Ghz Hummingbird processor, 3 Megapixel camera, 7-inch capacitive touchscreen, 1.3 Megapixel front camera, GPS, WiFi and 2GB internal memory.
Monday, 25 October 2010
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