Thursday, September 4, 2008
Phones
USA Ahead of 3G Race, Europe Drops to Second Position
11:45PM Jesus Diaz | Hey you Europeans! You may have all your hot Swedish and Italian and Spanish and British girls, and all those old stones, and all the awesome cuisine, and all the delicious wine, and all that great coffee, and all the cool clubs, but guess what we have? We have the number one position in 3G mobile phone subscribers. Yes baby, número uno, nummer ett, número um, première position, beste Stellung by a whole 0.1%! Nyah nyah nyah! More »
Cameras
Sony A900 Ad Leaked, Actual Camera Coming September 10th?
11:33PM Mark Wilson | Here’s the first print ad for the Sony A900, spotted in a Danish photography magazine, enjoying bubbles like an 8-year-old girl. But if that’s still not enough to convince you that this 25 megapixel SLR is just days from release, Sony has confirmed an SLR announcement during a Tokyo event next Wednesday. Short of bribing Mr. Sony knocking on your door with an A900 in-hand, this is pretty much the best we can nail things down for the time being. [DPReview and PCWorld via Photography Bay] More »
Computers
200,000 Core Supercomputer to be Built, Still Not As Clever as HAL
11:15PM Kit Eaton | Recently green-lit to be built at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IBM’s future Blue Waters supercomputer is peta’d all over. It’ll have up to 2-petaflops processing speed, more than a petabyte of memory and a 10 petabyte disk storage system. It’ll also have more than 200,000 processor cores, and cost around US$208 million, which is even more 000s. All this power is going to be used for proper hard science like simulating the Sun’s coronal mass ejections, studying black holes, and molecular biology. Probably developing on IBM’s previous Roadrunner supercomputer power, it should be accessible nationally, at campus-level. And you can bet someone’ll program it to sing “Daisy, daisy” pretty soon after it goes online in 2011. [NetworkWorld via Slashdot] More »
Computers
Brilliant: HP Packages Laptop in its Own Bag
10:54PM Mark Wilson | We’ve seem our share of good packaging ideas and bad packaging ideas, but this new method from HP is a great packaging idea. Their Pavilion dv692 systems available at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club will sit on the shelf in their own recycled material messenger bags, stabilised and protected with internal air bubbles. This alternative to huge boxes shoved full of styrofoam has reduced HP’s individual consumer packaging by an outrageous 97%. More »
Phones
Sprint’s HTC Touch Diamond Groped Ahead of Release by WSJ
10:30PM Kit Eaton | We’ve been keeping you up to date on the CDMA version of HTC’s Touch Diamond, coming soon to Sprint, but the lucky buggers over at the Wall St Journal got their mitts on one ahead of its launch. It’s fatness turns out to be 15mm in size, partly due to that 1,350 mAh battery good for 4.2 hours of talk time. It comes with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Edition with a Sprint-customised TouchFLO interface plus a bunch of extras like Dataviz’s Documents to Go Suite, Opera browser, a YouTube app and it works with Sprint TV and the Sprint Music Store. There’s also 4GB of internal memory, a 3.2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth A2DP. The price is now set at US$250, apparently, with 2-year contract, and it’s now due mid-September. [WSJ via CNET] More »
Toys
Massive Lego Mecha Can Probably Kill Humans, then Drink Ten Packs of Good Ole Fortran
10:00PM Jesus Diaz | This is what you get when you combine Lego and massive mechas done at the minifig scale: the biggest robotic overlord I’ve laid my eyes on. Then, when you go through the massive gallery, you get what I call a robner followed by a brickgasm. Updated: actually, reader/brother Oscar sends me pictures of a huge Bionicle mecha he saw last weekend, which looks even bigger. More »
Science
Scientists Do Extreme Close-Up On Milky Way’s Black Hole
9:39PM Kit Eaton | Forget “pretend” black holes in optical cables: astronomers at MIT have taken the highest-ever resolution imagery of the region of space near the giant black hole at the centre of our galaxy, as shown in this image. In fact, the bright spot in the centre is what they were looking at: it’s a funky space-object dubbed SgrA* which may be a fiery disc of matter spinning round outside the event horizon.
Design
Daewoo Takes Room Divider into 21st Century: Digital Screens in the Screen
9:13PM Kit Eaton | Folding screens (that occasionally useful piece of furniture, and classic movie prop) get a dab of 21st Century tech with the DID-FS from Daewoo. The old-fashioned wooden frame is there, but supplemented by four LCD widescreens, mounted vertically. That leaves you free to choose what pictures you’re using to break up your living space into themes. It’ll probably leave you with an empty wallet too, given current LCD prices for displays that big, but there’s no info on pricing or availability. That doesn’t stop me from lusting after this though… maybe I can achieve the same effect with some MDF, a Dremel and a couple of cheapo LCD photo frames from the local store? [Born Rich] More »
Screens
Sharp’s Aquos D65 HDTVs Coming to US Too
8:03PM Kit Eaton | Last week we mentioned a “premium” TV from Sharp (while talking about the XS1) that appeared to be destined for European shores: now there’s news that the D65 is coming to the US too. The D65U range has 1080p resolution, and will come in sizes between 42- and 52-inches. The HDTVs will have a 6ms response time, Sharp’s Advanced Super View and Black TFT Panel tech, and will apparently be very energy-efficient, through its dynamic back-lighting and contrast system which also reduces power consumption. Standard connectivity is supplemented with five HDMI inputs. Available in October, the 42-inch will be priced at US$1,600, the 46-inch for US$1,900 and the 52-inch version for US$2400. [Electronista] More »
Computers
