Gadgets Control

Do you know what “dark matter” is? I thought I knew what it was until I tried to explain it to myself and failed. But I no longer need to file away topics like this for later study (my ever-growing list of things I will learn someday in order to become a more cultured and informed human being) because I now know I can pick up knowledge about dark matter - enough to get by in a drunken conversation at a bar in any event - and other weighty scientific subjects in 60 seconds (or thereabouts). As part of its 60-Second Science offerings, Scientific American has been running a video podcast series in which its editors explain big scientific topics of general interest, using common objects. (Read the full post about ‘Become an instant egghead with 60-Second Science’…)

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It looks like we may have all misinterpreted PayPal’s announcement that it will block users who are using old browsers when doing online transactions at PayPal. Some reports have included Apple’s Safari browser as among those that will be blocked by PayPal. PayPal has denied this report by saying that it has no intention of blocking current versions of any browsers that include the Safari browser from accessing it’s site. And to clarify, it will only block customers from logging into the PayPal when using obsolete browsers on outdated or unsupported operating systems, such as IE4 running on Windows 98. (Read the full post about ‘PayPal clarifies; we are not blocking Safari users’…)

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Transcend Information has a new mp3 player in our midst, the T.sonic 615. This MP3 player takes after the ipod in terms of color, coming in a glossy white casing complete with a dual-color OLED display and features an integrated FM radio, A-B repeat, and variable playback speed functions. You also get seven built-in equalizer modes to help you achieve the best listening experience possible (as far as something as tiny as this goes anyway) and Lyrics Sync. With a 13-language support and Transcend’s T.sonic Utility that allows users to add password protection to files, the T.sonic 615 will come in 2GB and 4GB capacities. (Read the full post about ‘Transcend Information T.sonic 615′…)

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Most office workers will be able to tell you - coffee is the elixir of life, never mind water. A hot cup of joe is the perfect tonic to kickstart a day, especially during those dreary Mondays. The Javabot brings coffee making to the 21st century, delivering your favorite blend of seven beans, including the way they are roasted, the ground and temperature at which the coffee is brewed, all in a mere half a minute. This makes the Javabot the first and only walk-in coffee machine in the world, but should this idea catch on, expect different varieties to start making an appearance throughout offices (and maybe even rich homes) worldwide. No better way to keep the morale up than by pampering their stomachs, eh? (Read the full post about ‘Javabot for coffee addicts’…)

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Filed in archive Digital Photo Sites by jim on April 21, 2008 Most photographers like showing their pictures to other people and displaying them in their homes and offices. Of course we shutterbugs are proud of our work, and we're eager to have it critiqued by others, or are we? I was always happy when someone commented that, my "pictures looked like postcards", and then, many years ago, I read in a photography magazine that if someone says that your pictures are common and not special. It bothered me for a while because it seemed to make sense. After all, postcards are supposed to document something in a purely technical way, they're not supposed to be works of art. (Read the full post about ‘Photoblog For Digital Photographers’…)

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It doesn’t look like the participants in the McAfee S.P.A.M. Experiment have received grand jury summonses in their inboxes yet, but it’s something they can look out for. According to the FBI’s press release about the email, “At first glance, the e-mail appears authentic. It contains a court case number, federal code, name and address of a California federal court, court room number, issuing officers’ names, and the court’s seal. The spammer directs recipients to click the link provided in the e-mail in order to download and print associated information for their records. If the recipient clicks the link, a malicious code is downloaded onto their computer. (Read the full post about ‘You can have contempt for this email’…)

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Remember back to late Dec 07 when we announced the launch of text-to-web service, kwiry, which gives you a great way to add items (kwirys) to your Remember or To Do lists. Well, kwiry is currently running a promotion at least until Jun 28, 2008 where you stand a chance of winning one of your kwirys assuming it’s a movie, book or music album. They’re giving away 1 per week each up to a value of US$25. All you need to do is to kwiry like you normally do and just include the keyword ‘music’, ‘book’ or ‘movie’ along with the full title of the item. (Read the full post about ‘Text your notes with kwiry - win a movie/book/CD’…)

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Forget quad-core, AMD is preparing a dodeca-core chip. If you didn’t stay in boarding school if you need refreshing with your greek vocabulary, dodeca means 12, and that’s 12 cores for you right there. Imagine, a dozen times faster than a normal chip. But how fast does one’s computer ever really need to be? AMD doesn’t seem to care if there’s an answer to that question or not (just as its closest competitor Intel doesn’t), and moves on with their plan to produce a 12-core processor to be released by late 2008. It will reportedly be called the Shanghai, and will be a 45nm successor to their not-so-successful Barcelona chip. (Read the full post about ‘AMD readying 12-core 45nm processors for late 2008′…)

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Head-worn camera for special eventsApr 20, 2008 Recording our lives has become wide-spread all over the world. But the technologies are being perfected all the time. Microsoft is working out in order to supply our society with wearable camera technology that will have a lot of features. Actually, now it is just a concept. But there is a gadget that is worth its price, is advanced and is a really great high-resolution head-worn camera. Let’s see what functions it has and if they are useful for you. The newest UKP300 (US5) head-worn device is already used by UK police. It is very handy for operations that need supervision. The gadget is qualitative and records all the necessary details. (Read the full post about ‘Head-worn camera for special events’…)

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by Donald Melanson, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 5:47PM BenQ has been showing off its first stab at an MID since the Intel Developer Forum last fall, but it hasn’t exactly been all that forthcoming about the full specs of the device. That situation seems to have changed at the more recent IDF in Shanghai, however, although those details seem to just now be making their way across the Internet. As we knew before, the device will pack an Intel Atom processor (the base 800MHz model), which will apparently be backed up by 512MB of RAM, a 4GB SSD hard drive, and HSPDA support in addition to some integrated WiFi and Bluetooth. (Read the full post about ‘BenQ’s Atom-based MID gets detailed’…)

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