Current news items regarding technology, tech companies, the Internet, the government, etc.
A bit of nostalgic retro for you today. If you ever played any of these 80s video games (seems like mostly Atari 2600 games), you’re going to love this video created by Boing Boing – it’s a collection of how the main characters die. And the music that goes along with it is just gloriously ironic yet perfectly suited.
Once you start watching, you won’t be able to stop, but don’t worry, it’s under 3 minutes. You could watch 5 of these in your coffee break!
Windows 8 will have a new feature common to the entire OS and not just IE called SmartScreen that will dynamically prevent programs that have been deemed illegal, fraudulent or malicious from running (assuming you have it turned on). …
Windows 8 SmartScreen is a Step in the Right Direction, but Needs a “Warn” SettingRead More »
A WiFi-only version of the Samsung Galaxy Tab goes on sale on Sunday (Apr 10) for $349 in retail stores and on the Web. The Galaxy Tab runs Android 2.2, and has a 7″ 1024×600 TFT screen with 16GB of internal storage and a micro-SD slot.
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WiFi-only Samsung Galaxy Tab on Sale April 10 for $349Read More »
Commodore is a brand that refuses to die, and there are enough nostalgic supporters to make a businessman think that it’s still worth something, which is why Barry Altman — who now owns the trademark — has released a desktop computer that looks just like the original Commodore 64 did, except it’s not actually a C64.
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If you want to jailbreak your iPad or iPhone to use some of those cool jailbreak hacks we showcased last year, but you already upgraded to the latest v 4.x firmware, you are in luck. An (untethered) iOS jailbreak is now out for v4.3.1.
It still doesn’t work on the iPad 2 (fix is forthcoming) or the Verizon iPhone, but covers everything else.
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Cloud-based provider of business services, RunMyProcess, has an interesting new product/service that allows multiple users in a hosted Gmail environment to see a common inbox.
Called the Shared Inbox, this plugin is perfect for a support/trouble ticket inbox that has to be monitored by multiple employees.
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TiVo, the DVR entertainment company, has announced that it is going to integrate its services in with Best Buy’s range of Insignia TVs to give another medium for their services to be viewed on. The deal will put Best Buy in a more competitive position with Wal-Mart, who acquired Vudu last year. Sources say that this move will allow them to offer their own on-demand video services that Best Buy has been developing for some time now, through TiVo’s software.
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Technology seems to be making advances in the blink of an eye, but who would have thought that the blink of an eye could someday power the latest technology? Apparently, researchers at the University of Washington did. They are currently creating prototypes of “augmented reality contact lenses.” In the next decade or so, these lenses could take the seemingly endless stream of data out there and display it magically right before our eyes, without need for a cell phone, tablet or PC.
Similar to Arnold Schwartzenegger’s character in the series of Terminator movies, the data we need would be displayed onto our visual field in a transparent way, without obstructing our view of the world around us. There are a number of interesting applications for this technology, spanning everything from the practical to our endless desire to be entertained.
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Hitachi-LG has managed to come up with an improvement to one of their hybrid drives. They now offer a solution for customers where space and performance are equally key by combining an SSD with a Blu-Ray optical drive.
The idea behind it is that the Blu-Ray and SSD hybrid can fit into one bay and share just one SATA connector. Their initial model needed 2 SATAs but Hitachi-LG has now integrated them into one. This allows premium laptop makers to boost their storage memory and still include a Blu-Ray drive.
The drive is available in sizes from 8GB up to 256GB, but no word on price currently. The typical setup is to have the operating system and other key files to be held on the SSD with a different HDD in another bay being used for any user files. The drive will be hitting the shelves in May this year.
Amazon.com just rolled out a number of related products revolving around storing your music, movies, photos or whatever in the cloud, Amazon’s cloud to be specific. Amazon just got a huge jump on Google, Apple, Microsoft and anyone else that wanted to get into this ‘digital locker’ game. And I use the word ‘game’ facetiously, because this is big business. Just ask Apple (re: iTunes).
First an overview. Cloud Drive is the linchpin in this whole deal. It’s where you store your well… anything. It can be music and everyone seems to be fixated on that, but it can be photos, videos, documents – so your own personal hard drive, but stored on Amazon’s S3 servers.
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Amazon Races Ahead of Google, Apple with Digital Locker Called Cloud DriveRead More »
