Mobile Devices

With the Linux-based ultra-mobile market heating up, it seems like everyone is wanting to have an offering. The latest is coming from Elonex, except this one does not appear to be that Eee PC killer that everyone is looking for. The price, if it is actually released at what it is anticipated at will be nice, it is expected to retail for £100 (about $200). Elonex plans to introduce the One to education markets, but will also be marketed to “adult learners, business users, people who are constantly mobile, elderly people and first time internet users.”

The Elonex One will feature a 7-inch 800×480 display, a 300 MHz X86 processor, 1GB of flash memory, three hours of battery life, weighing 2.2 pounds and running Linux. There will also be a more expensive version costing £120 that will include 2GB of flash memory and also Bluetooth.

Via [Engadget] Via [jkkmobile]

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Posted Feb 18th 2008 1:26PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: cellphones
We’re not sure Motorola’s turnaround strategy should involve picking legal fights with an undisputed market leader, but now that CEO Greg Brown’s personally in charge, it looks like the gloves are off — Moto’s just filed a lawsuit claiming that RIM infringed on seven of its patents in various blackberry 8000-series devices and the BlackBerry Exchange Server. The move comes as a response to a patent suit filed by RIM on Saturday, which claims that Motorola infringed several of its patents, demanded “exorbitant” royalties for Moto patents covering wireless communications, and refused to pay royalties on RIM patents. We’d say this one will drag on forever and then settle (like a certain other RIM patent case), but with Motorola’s fortunes fading fast and no suitors in the wings, this just may prove to be one burden too many.

Disclaimer: Nilay’s a lawyer, but he’s not your lawyer, and this post isn’t meant to be legal advice or analysis.

Mother always said not to play with your food, but with the Tic Tac Toast, that warning comes across as harder to follow.

Another good reason to play with your food! The Tic Tac Toast stamper combines the fun of tic-tac-toe with the tastiness of toast. Just press this 3 1/2″ x 3 1/2″ plastic stamper into a piece of bread, then put your bread in the toaster. The resulting toast will be branded with a tic-tac-toe grid! When the toasted gameboard is ready, all thats left to do is pick some tasty toppings and play a game.

No prizes for guessing who gets to ear the toast. At least you know both peanut butter and jelly will be more or less evenly spread out. The Tic Tac Toast is going for $2.99 a bite.

Posted Feb 18th 2008 1:37PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment
Nah, Samsung’s M310 isn’t nearly as diminutive as its MBP-100, but it’s still quite the cutie. Hailed as an Ultra Mobile Pocket Imager, this DLP device features a 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 150 ANSI lumens, VGA input, SVGA native resolution and a pleasantly small footprint. Mum’s the word on an official price / release date, but we’ve all ideas this is one case where more won’t cost less.

[Via AboutProjectors]

I guess if you wait around long enough, all technology shrinks. Even things that probably shouldn’t be shrunk get shrank.

Take Guitar Hero, for example. I’ve recently purchased this game for the Wii and it has quickly become my newest addiction. There is something about strumming and hitting those frets while those streaming spots go by that make me feel like a legit rock star.

A company known as Basic Fun has created a portable version of this fun with the Guitar Hero Caribiner, a Guitar Hero that fits in your pocket. It is only 3 x 7.5 inches in measurement, and the chord buttons or “frets” are not located on the neck of this contraption, but the body itself.

Beyond that, the gameplay is the same the regular version as the LCD screen displays the notes the player needs to play. There is even a miniature version of the whammy bar, and some of the more popular songs from Guitar Hero I and II are included.

Still, I’m not certain whether this tiny Guitar Hero really captures the console or PC version of the game. However, it is something that you can do while waiting on a bus or subway.

The Guitar Hero Caribiner is scheduled to be released at major retail outlets in March for a price of about $14.99.

Source

Kyoto University in Japan just placed a new order for a supercomputer to replace the existing aging unit. The new machine will contain 6,656 AMD Opteron cores on 1,664 quad-core processors housed in 416 Fujitsu HX600 computers with a total of 800TB of storage space. To supplement this system, there will be a separate multiprocessing cluster containing 7 Sparc enterprise Unix servers with 1TB of RAM. Together it is thought the new machine will perform well enough to sit in the top 20 most powerful computers.With the advancements in power management technology, the new machine will consume the same amount of power as the old supercomputer it is replacing. When you consider the new unit is 7-times more powerful, with the capability to perform 61.2 Tflops, it is clearly a significant improvement.

Fujitsu has said the new machine will use around 600 Kilowatts of power, or 102 Mflops per watt. Kyoto University plans to use the new machine for the following:

• Scientific computations
• Ultra-large archive searches
• Computer graphics
• Grid technology research in collaboration with the University of Tokyo and Tsukuba
• A range of other new areas of research

Hiroshi Nakashima, Professor at Kyoto University’s Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies, commented:

This new supercomputer system upgrade represents a significant departure from our past procurement practices. This time we laid out the basic concept of the new supercomputer along with general specifications based on the T2K Open Supercomputer Specification jointly created with the University of Tokyo and University of Tsukuba, and we asked vendors to develop systems and submit proposals to meet our requirements. In this sense, I think it was more difficult this time to develop systems proposals that met our requirements, but this HX600 cluster exceeds our baseline requirements for performance and functionality, so we’re very pleased with the outcome. The SPARC Enterprise M9000 sub-system will be able to directly utilize our existing software assets, and the high-capacity storage system can also be configured to exceed our base requirements.

Read more at InfoWorld and the Fujitsu press release.

Matthew’s Opinion

Energy efficiency has jumped right up the list of concerns when designing computer systems of any scale today. Supercomputers especially need to benefit from any advancements made in power saving, because by their nature they are heavy consumers of energy.

Managing to increase the performance of a machine 7-fold while not increasing the energy requirements is quite a significant achievement. It demonstrates just how much we have improved upon the technology at the core of computer systems. The good news is those improvements are bound to continue, because there is so much focus on cutting down on our energy use in all areas of our lives right now.

Posted Feb 18th 2008 9:41AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Misc. gadgets, Transportation
Some Penn State researchers are taking a cue from nature and have built the first solar cell that can effectively split water to harvest the hydrogen. While the technology and efficiency of electricity-gathering solar cells has been humming on nicely, cells that can pull hydrogen out of water directly (instead of using solar-harvested electricity to do it) have found that the catalysts conducive to separating hydrogen and oxygen are usually pretty good at putting the two gases right back together again. The folks at Penn State have now developed a process that more closely mimics the photosynthesis process in plants, and while we won’t pretend to understand all the nitty gritty of dye usage and other such nonsense, we do know that such a system could eventually attain 15% or so efficiency, providing a nice and clean way to gather power for that fuel cell car of the future.

[Image courtesy of MTU.edu]

Rumor has it that Verizon Wireless is going to begin offering unlimited voice, data and message plans. With some good news that these will become available as early as February 19. The rumored plans are said to have several options to include:

• $100 - Nationwide Unlimited (voice)
• $120 - Nationwide Select Unlimited (voice, SMS, MMS)
• $140 - Nationwide Premium (voice, SMS, MMS, VZNav, VCAST, email)
• $150 - Nationwide Email and Messaging (voice, SMS, MMS, and data)
• $170 - Nationwide Global Email and Messaging (voice, SMS, MMS, and international data)
• $200 - Family plan with two lines, $100 per additional line.

In addition to the wonderful unlimited options these plans are also reported to include no roaming or long distance charges, be available with one or two year agreements, have no contract extensions for current users and include Mobile Web 2.0 portal access. Possibly the best part, assuming these rumors are true is that the 5GB data cap is out.

Via [Engadget]

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With Toshiba’s shares surging on reports that it is about to kill HD-DVD off, the invisible fist makes its position clear: Get it over with.

Toshiba rose 6 percent this morning on reports that it was about to bury the high-definition disk format, axed last week by Wal-Mart and Netflix. Investors are happy to see the company uncouple itself from the technology. From MarketWatch:

"Although it would be a blow to Toshiba’s prestige, not to mention its balance sheet in terms of capital expenditure, investors savored the prospect of the company pulling out of the high-definition DVD segment to focus on other businesses."

Toshiba shares surge [MarketWatch]

Posted Feb 18th 2008 1:54AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Desktops, Handhelds, LaptopsThink you’ve mastered Intel speak? Impressive, it’s no easy task keeping Intel’s brand names and in-house silicon language straight. Now rumor has it that Intel’s Montevina will carry a new Centrino 2 branding in hopes of clearing up any confusing amongst consumers. Probably a good idea what with Centrino providing the catch-all since the launch of those Carmel, Sonoma, Napa, and Santa Rosa platforms running Pentium M, Core Duo, Core 2 Duo branded Banisa, Donthan, Yonah/Merom and Merom/Penryn processors. If true, a Centrino 2 sticker would indicate 5th generation, Montevina-class Centrino with support for 45-nm, Core 2 Duo Penryn CPUs, a 1066MHz FSB, DDR3 memory, and mobile WiMax. Still not clear? No worries, try the handy table after break.