Gadgets Control

by Paul Miller, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 5:12PM If your interest in processor speeds doesn’t extend much beyond “is it fast?” then these juicy tidbits likely aren’t for you. That said, AMD is certainly getting excited about its upcoming Barcelona successor: the 45nm Shanghai. The main points of interest out of the gate are HyperTransport 3.0, which was nixed late in the game on Barcelona, and six cores, which are meant to pit the chip up against Intel’s upcoming six-core Dunnington chip. Where things get really exciting is a few months after Shanghai’s late 2008 debut, when AMD plans do release a twin-die version, with 12 cores of happiness connected by HyperTransport 3.0. What does all that mean? (Read the full post about ‘AMD’s Shanghai proffers 12 cores, HyperTransport 3.0′…)

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B Movie Victims

You can have this for ?14.95

Tags: buyers guides, MP3, hi fi, robots

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I love gadgets that are for the betterment of mankind and this is certainly one of those, ExacTap, a new kind of beer disperser that can pour the perfect pint in under 3 seconds. ExacTap works with lager, cider, stout and Guinness. Though whether a pint of Guinness poured in 3 seconds tastes nicer than the more traditional 10 minute multi stage Guinness pouring ceromony is up for debate. The ExacTap is currently by used at Chelsea footie club, Twickenham and the Odyssey arena in Belfast. For further info and videos check out the official product page. (Read the full post about ‘ExacTap - The 3 Second Pint’…)

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Ever since YouTube became really popular, lots of people have posted videos of whatever they wanted on it. Whether it was music videos, commercials, or their homemade videos. YouTube is a great source of entertainment and laughs, and many people try to post videos that get a lot of views. Two teens who live in Peoria, Arizona decided to try and post a video that would become very popular, but their plan backfired and had serious consequences. Their plan was to use a Mitsubishi Eclipse to fly in the air across an intersection. They managed to get in the air but as soon as they hit the ground the driver, a 16 year old, lost control and the car crashed through trees and rolled over. (Read the full post about ‘Teens reaching for fame, reach near death instead’…)

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by Donald Melanson, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 1:59PMAMD wasn’t exactly all that specific about exactly when its new ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series graphics chips would actually find their way into some laptops when it announced them earlier this year, but it looks like they’re now finally starting to trickle out, with new laptops from Toshiba and ASUS now each receiving a boost from ‘em. For Toshiba’s part, it’s squeezed the lower-end ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 into its 17-inch Satellite P305 and P305D laptops (pictured at right), with other “select” P305 models also getting the more powerful Mobility Radeon HD 3650 model, which boasts 120 stream processors, a 128-bit memory interface, and 512MB or 1GB of VRAM depending on the system. (Read the full post about ‘ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 lands in Toshiba Satellite P305, ASUS M50 laptops’…)

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by Darren Murph, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 3:41PM Yeah, we’ve seen other mad scientists take way more antiquated chips to higher figures on the GHz scale, but can that cryogenically cooled P4 handle all those SSE4.1 instructions? The latest feat of overclocking prowess comes to us courtesy of K|ngp|n, who has apparently taken Skulltrail beyond the 6GHz mark. (Read the full post about ‘Intel’s Skulltrail QX9775 hits 6GHz, manages not to spontaneously combust’…)

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Let me make this clear from the start, my idea of “roughing it” is when there’s no 24-hour room service. Still, I love this itty bitty camping lantern from Coghlan, which makes camping and outdoorsy accessories. Weighing less than one ounce with batteries and coming in under two inches, the Micro Lantern features an LED light with a conical reflector which makes it incredibly bright. As it’s designed to clip onto clothes and gear, I commandeered it for a keychain. And it’s not just adorable, it has an emergency strobe feature that will flash for 50 hours. See? It’s very practical, even for us city-dwelling types. A mere $7.99 at Coghlans. (Read the full post about ‘LED Micro Lantern begs “Take me camping”’…)

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X-Ploda Roulette Xploda is the type of game that puts your heart in your mouth, though not in a Hannibal Lechter way. It's a bit like Russian Roulette, except that the bang at the end isn't terminal unless you suffer from a dodgy ticker. You can have this for ?9.99 Tags: computers, AAC, dvr, amps (Read the full post about ‘X-Ploda Roulette’…)

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by Donald Melanson, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 12:59PM16:9 lcd panels designed for computer use aren’t exactly all that uncommon, but this latest batch announced by LG will likely generate a bit more interest than most, especially given that they’re apparently intended specifically for use in low-cost laptops. According to DigiTimes, LG will first roll out a standard 16:10 aspect ratio, 8.9-inch panel with a resolution of 1024 x 600 in August, which will then be followed by a 16:9, 10.1-inch panel with a 1024 x 576 resolution in October, and finally a 9.4-inch panel of unspecified resolution in April of 2009. Making things even more interesting is that some unspecified “industry sources” say the panels are “expected” (Read the full post about ‘LG said to be prepping 16:9 LCD panels for low-cost laptops’…)

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HP has taken their recently announced Upline service offline. An email from HP revealed the bad news that they have “suspended operation” and unfortunately gave no details as to when the service will return, other than a mention that they anticipate the downtime to be “temporary and short in duration” with a promise of email notification when it does return. An attempt to login simply offers a message stating: “The HP Upline Service is temporarily unavailable.” To take the outage a little further it seems the service was initially intended for users in the US only, however the online signup initially allowed anyone to register. (Read the full post about ‘HP suspends its Upline cloud-based storage service’…)

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