Monday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 02:07 AM CEST - May,06 2003
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- Handheld aimed at older gamers - Tapwave, based in Mountain
View,
says it will introduce its Helix device later this year. Byron Connell,
co-founder and senior vice president of marketing, said it is aimed primarily
at older gamers who have outgrown Nintendo's GameBoy Advance and also want the
basic functions of a handheld organizer. Tapwave will face stiff competition
from Nintendo, which has a corner on the market for portable games, and from a
variety of other handhelds that include gaming as a feature. Prime among those
is Nokia's upcoming N-Gage Game Deck debuting this fall.
- Microsoft Set to Debut Xbox Live Upgrade - Microsoft is aiming to
raise the stakes in the $30 billion global video game industry and strengthen
its foothold in living rooms with major changes to its Xbox Live online gaming
service, industry sources said on Monday. As game makers prepare for the E3 in
LA, Microsoft is readying
a new version of Xbox Live with advanced community features such as voice
chat and locater services that operate independently of games in progress,
said sources with knowledge of the software company's plans. After the
upgrades, the sources said, players will be able to turn on their Xboxes, see
who among their friends is online, and engage them in voice chats in community
settings that do not even require a game to be inside the console. Other
add-ons coming soon to the console include the ability to use the Xbox as a
sort of media center, to listen to digital music and watch videos in their
living rooms.
- Apple web music beats expectations - Apple Computer Inc. exceeded
pundit expectations
by selling more than 1 million songs in a one-week period on its online
music store. Songs are 99 cents per download, and the Apple services have
little copy protection, meaning users can keep the songs indefinitely and
share them on as many as three MacIntosh computers, as well as an indefinite
number of iPod portable music players.
- Is That a Computer Chip in Your Carpet? - Researchers at Germany's
Infineon Technologies have
demonstrated how a self-organizing network of chips woven into large textile
surfaces, such as carpets, could someday be used to monitor buildings,
provide directions in an emergency, and more. At the company's Emerging
Technology Lab in Munich, the research team showed how robust chips embedded
into industrial fabrics in the form of a checkerboard are able to monitor
temperature, pressure, vibration, and motion, Infineon said
- On the Edge: Interplanetary Internet -
IPN researchers have already assigned Internet addresses to all the
planets, satellites, and spacecraft in our solar system. Scientists are hoping
to launch a series of IPN-equipped satellites, possibly as soon as 2005. With
one or more IPN-equipped satellites in orbit around Mars, we would have a
two-planet IPN network
- Microsoft launches Windows hardware Web site -
Microsoft Corp. has created a new
engineering Web site
focused on hardware issues for Windows server and desktop products.
The new site to be
announced at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference here Tuesday (May 6)
will consist of specifications, white papers, tools and downloads for hardware
engineers working on Windows-based PCs and servers or peripherals that link to
them.
- Dell recalls nearly 20,000 motherboards - Dell Computer has
launched
a
service campaign to replace motherboards in nearly 20,000 Inspiron
notebooks. The Round Rock, Texas, company will replace the flawed
motherboards inside nearly 20,000 Inspiron 2650 laptop models manufactured
between the middle of November and the middle of December 2002, a company
representative said Friday. The replacement program was introduced by Dell to
remedy a bad component that could short out and render the notebook unable to
power up, when turned on.
- Adult content filter for MMS launched - The Irish software house,
Telcotec has launched an adult content filter that can be plugged into
MMSC's to provide a level of content filtering. People use picture phones to
take pictures and send them to their friends and to get pictures from the
internet. People who are concerned about the type of pictures their picture
phones can receive will be able to protect themselves and their children from
unwanted conte.
- Nokia 6800 comes to Cingular Wireless - Cingular Wireless and Nokia
today
announced the availability of the Nokia 6800 messaging phone in Cingular's
GSM/GPRS markets. The Nokia dual-band 850/1900 MHz 6800 messaging phone is
designed with data and text messaging users in mind, with flip access to a
full back-lit QWERTY keyboard. The mobile phone offers personal e-mail,
personal information management (PIM) and rich-sounding polyphonic ringtones.
- Gameloft unleashes Rayman 3 - It's a long way from being the
darling of the Playstation platform to being one of the foremost champions of
gaming on J2ME-enabled phones, but good old Rayman is holding up well.
Following up on previous titles including Rayman 1 and 2, as well as Rayman
Bowling and Rayman Golf,
Rayman
3 for Nokia's 3650 and Sharp's GX-10 is now available from Gameloft.
Rayman 3 is available now from the
Gameloft web site for
$3.99 USD for the Nokia 3650 and Sharp GX-10.
- iRock 530 Review -
The
iRock 530 would be a great product 2 years ago, but the technology of MP3
players today has grown beyond what the iRock 530 offers. Use of USB 1.0,
cheap feeling plastic in the housing and buttons, non-backlit display, and no
support for ID3 Tags along with a price of $125 on the http://www.myirock.com
site are negatives that outweigh the few positives.
- Asustek releases SiS648FX-based motherboards - Asustek Computer on
May 2 introduced its
latest motherboard, the P4S800, for Intel's Pentium 4 platform.
- VIA Chipsets Specifications Page featuring KT600 & VT8239 -
AMDboard is
quietly releasing a complete VIA Socket A chipsets specifications page
which include the latest datas for the VT8239 south bridge, and KT600, north
bridge.
- MSI FX5800 Ultra-TD8X Review - The box's design and the accessory
pack are
a good match for such an expensive card. The card itself is just a copy of
the reference sample with MSI's logo. The card heats very much, the cooler
works noisy in 3D and stands idle in 2D, that is why you should provide the
proper ventilation.
- Inno3D Tornado GeForce FX 5800 Card -
This
card comes in a decent looking box with some great game bundles for the
gamers. We have successfully overclocked the card to 500/1000Mhz core/memory
clock reaching the speed of a GeForce FX 5800 Ultra card and also did some
comparisons between the Detonator 43.45 and 43.51 WHQL drivers under
3DMark2003.
- Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9800 Pro Review - The performance of the
Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9800 Pro was equally as impressive, clearly
improving upon the Radeon 9700 Pro on many different levels and in every test,
all the while maintaining a relatively quiet cooling solution, contrary to the
shelved GeForce FX 5800 Ultra.
- MSI vs. Shuttle vs. Saintsong - Tom's Hardware Guide has
posted
a review on 3 mini-PCs. Three different mini-PCs with still more different
designs. Shuttle's bare-bones SB52G2 is another offering from the XPC series
and focuses on use as a mini-server. MSI aims for the business market, and
Saintsong puts out a micro-PC.
- CenDyne DVR-105 4x DVD-RW review - CDRLabs.com has published
a new review of the CenDyne DVR-105 DVD-recorder. "It's hard not to like
CenDyne's new DVD writer. With its 4x DVD-R and 2x DVD-RW writing speeds, the
DVR-105 is one of the fastest DVD-RW drives currently available. If you're
willing to shell out the money for 4x DVD-R media, it will take you less than
15 minutes to burn an entire DVD. Of course, the drive's 2x DVD-RW writing
speeds aren't nearly as fast, but they are a big improvement over what earlier
DVD-R/RW drives offered."
- EluminiX Illuminated Keyboard Review - Overall,
3DXtreme found the EluminiX illuminated keyboard to be a solid product and
a very high quality keyboard. The illumination is great for late night surfing
or gaming and just looks damn cool!
- Wi-LAN Broadband Wireless Access Systems - Some of such
broadband solutions were announced at the press conference held by Wi-LAN Inc
(the world-wide manufacturer of such systems) and Diamond Communications on
April 21 in Moscow. The company presented two base systems certified in
Russia:
Ultima3 and Libra 3000.
- Another Keyboard Cleaning Article - VoidedWarranty.com has written
an article on how to clean your keyboard.
- Memory Types Guide - EliteGuild has published
a
Memory Types Guide. If you've been to a store looking for memory, you
probably found many different types. It isn't as simple as it was a few years
ago when you had PC800, PC133, PC100, and PC700. To complicate things further,
enthusiasts have given new names to types of memory as well (ie DDR266 for
PC2100).
- Paint Shop Pro 8.0 Review -
Jasc Software's Paint Shop Pro 8.0 ($99 direct) improves and expands on
what was already the best value in image-editing software. Paint Shop Pro
offers a complete suite of image-editing and special-effects tools at a
fraction of the price of the competing Adobe Photoshop 7.0. Version 8.0 sports
a revamped and simplified user interface and adds several new features that
make the product more competitive with Adobe Photoshop 7.0, including a script
editor, support for JPEG 2000, and improved multilayer image tools.
- Video Codec Comparison - The contestants: 3ivX D4 4.0.3, Dicas
mpegable AVI 2.0.3, DivX3 in the form of SBC, DivX5.05, RealVideo9 based on
HelixProducer 9.1 M6 Gold , WMV V9 (VCM beta1), XviD (Isibaar's development
build dated 4/24).
All codecs were tested in a 2 pass setup where this was applicable (3ivX
and mpegable AVI only offer 1 pass encoding).
- Installing WindowsXP - Building & Deploying an Image -
Neowin.net has offers the full transcript (direct
link) for all the Q&A's from the hour long session with Microsoft experts.
- The Worm Game - Wohoo,
Catch the Worm :P (Flash req.)
- BlindWrite v4.4 - VSO Software has released
an update of their
popular 1:1 recording software, the
Blindwrite Suite. The
update enables users to make backups of SafeDisc 2.9x protected games and
introduces a changed image format.
- IsoBuster v1.4 -
IsoBuster
lets you explore a CD's File System while by-passing Windows.
- WinRAR 3.20 Beta 5 -
WinRAR (download
~ changelog)
has been updated to version 3.20 beta 5.
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Updated:12:40 AM CEST Jun,21
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