Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Monday, April 27, 2009

Lenovo May Be Working on a Netbook That's Good Enough For Businessmen [Lenovo]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/C60l7RATSzo/lenovo-may-be-working-on-a-netbook-thats-good-enough-for-businessmen

Businessmen are picky bastards, which is why Lenovo working on a ThinkPad-branded netbook is good news for everyone.

Their "Worldwide Competitive Analyst" says that they're exploring the area (of course), and that people should "watch this space", meaning that they're going to be making one. There's no other reason for him to say "watch this space" unless he was just being a dick, in which case you should watch THIS space, if you know what I mean.

"Businesses are definitely asking about netbooks, they're wanting them more and more. Business problems, whether the economy is good or not, remain the same: do more with less, be more efficient and all that. This ties in very nicely with netbooks."

If it's anything like their concept, we'll take eight.

[APCMag via Crunchgear]

Carnegie Mellon Demos the Power of Facial Recognition Using Star Trek: TOS [Facial Recognition]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/P7RxsLepxM0/carnegie-mellon-demos-the-power-of-facial-recognition-using-star-trek-tos

Want to know how much screen time William Shatner commanded in Star Trek? Or how little Chekov received, for that matter? Carnegie Mellon has you covered, as it has "face mined" the entire series.

The powerful demo actually proves that facial data mining—real, accurate facial data mining—is coming to a Big Brother video search engine near you. The demo even does facial recognition from the side, as well as the obvious full-frontal we'd expect such an endeavor would have. "Non-frontal tracks" are planned for the future. Everything you see presented in the link was generated autonomously by the software, say the Carnegie Mellon folks.

Fun side game to play with this software: Spot the red shirts!

Note: There's no sound in the clips because of copyright restrictions. [Face Mining via Slashdot]

1080p DivX Support Coming to LG HDTVs in May [Lg]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/JHtz3BhH6n8/1080p-divx-support-coming-to-lg-hdtvs-in-may

LG has announced support for full 1080p DivX video in their new line of TVs, which begin shipping in May. LG has always been quick to try out new—if sometimes marginal—technologies in their TVs, like DivX playback from mass storage, which LG introduced in 2007. Similarly, this feature is great news for those of us who want a convenient way to play ~~torrented Blu-ray rips~~ our HD home video collection, but will mean absolutely nothing to the majority of people who buy the sets. [Gizmag]

Philips' OLED wall makes its video debut

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/24/philips-oled-wall-makes-its-video-debut/

We already caught sight of some of Philips' new OLED lighting concepts, but when it comes to something like a massive OLED wall there's really no substitute for a proper video, and Philips itself has now kindly provided one for all to enjoy. As you can see for yourself after the break, the wall reacts directly to folks passing by, which turns out to be a surefire to get folks dancing and more generally make fools of themselves -- all in the name of progress, of course. If that's not enough OLED for one day, you can also check out a slightly less entertaining video of Philips' OLED chandelier concept, which is a tad less interactive but considerably more likely to turn into an actual product.

Continue reading Philips' OLED wall makes its video debut

Filed under: Displays, Misc. Gadgets

Philips' OLED wall makes its video debut originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Virtualized Windows XP coming to Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate users

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/24/virtualized-windows-xp-coming-to-windows-7-professional-and-ulti/

Color us intrigued. The gang at SuperSite for Windows have revealed what they know about a pretty awesome Windows 7 feature: XP Mode, a virtualized copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 3. It'll reportedly be a free download for Professional and Ultimate Edition users, a shame it won't be coming to all versions. Unlike many other Virtual PC options, the environment won't require a separate workspace so you can run the individual apps as you would alongside those native to 7 -- in the example pictured, that's Word 2003 in XP mode next to Word 2007. It all sounds vaguely similar to the XP compatibility mode found in Vista, but if we're understanding this right, XPM should make legacy compatibility much less of a hassle. We haven't heard any reports of it being found in the leaked Release Candidate build, so if you're antsy to get a glimpse now, hit up the read link for a gallery.

[Thanks, Axel]

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Virtualized Windows XP coming to Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate users originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI X-Slim X340 gets dissected

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/25/msi-x-slim-x340-gets-dissected/

They're still pretty hard to come by 'round these parts, but it looks like the folks at UMPC Fever have managed to track down one of MSI's shiny new X-Slim X340 ultraportables and, like any good citizen of the internet, they've promptly gone and ripped it apart. As you might expect, there aren't exactly a ton of surprises, but it looks like anyone hoping to do a quick and easy 3G upgrade is out of luck, unless, as SlashGear points out, they're willing to ditch the built-in WiFi to free up a PCI-E slot. Hit up the read link below for the complete, not always pretty breakdown.

[Via Slash Gear]

Filed under: Laptops

MSI X-Slim X340 gets dissected originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 25 Apr 2009 00:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RED blows away small room of videophiles with 4k RED RAY footage at half the bitrate of MiniDV

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/25/red-blows-away-small-room-of-videophiles-with-4k-red-ray-footage/

While RED has been pretty tight-lipped about its planned RED RAY product, some footage shown off at RED's NAB party gave a sizable hint that RED RAY could be much more than meets the eye -- specifically a $1,000 device that can play cinema-quality 4k video off of standard DVDs. At the party they played an uncompressed showreel of 4k footage on a Sony 4k projector, which clocked in at 1.3GB per second, and then showed that exact same footage under the "RED RAY" codec at a mere 10Mb/s (megabits, not bytes; about half the bitrate of SD DV), at a compression rate of 700:1. Attendees claimed they could see zero visible compression, though a projector in a ballroom isn't exactly the best case scenario to test that sort of thing. Unfortunately, there's little other info about how they're achieving this (we hear "wavelets" come into the equation at some point), or to what nefarious aims, but with compression like this the implications for content distribution are pretty stunning: 1080p+ streaming for all. Naturally, the down side of all of this is probably some pretty hefty processing power on the consumer end, but we'll cross that I/O bridge when we come to it.

[Thanks, Ben H]

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Storage

RED blows away small room of videophiles with 4k RED RAY footage at half the bitrate of MiniDV originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 25 Apr 2009 15:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Skytone's Android-powered netbook to cost around $250

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/26/skytones-android-powered-netbook-to-cost-around-250/

Guangzhou Skytone Transmission Technologies Company, which we will absolutely never call by its full name again, has just dropped a juicy nugget about its forthcoming netbook. If you'll recall, we recently caught wind of the ARM-based, Android-powered rig (the Alpha 680), which is expected to be a stripped down portable useful for web surfing and light duty Office use. Nixon Wu, Skytone's co-founder, recently confessed that it's aiming to sell the machine for around $250, and if all goes well, it should have prototypes ready by June and final products ready for consumption a month or two after that. Call us crazy (or just greedy, really), but we were totally hoping for this to ring up at $199 or less.

Filed under: Laptops

Skytone's Android-powered netbook to cost around $250 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA's GT300 specs outed -- is this the cGPU we've been waiting for?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/26/nvidias-gt300-specs-outed-is-this-the-cgpu-weve-been-waitin/

NVIDIA's been dabbling in the CPU space behind closed doors for years now, but with Intel finally making a serious push into the GPU realm, it's about time the firm got serious with bringing the goods. BSN has it that the company's next-generation GT300 will be fundamentally different than the GT200 -- in fact, it's being hailed as the "first truly new architecture since SIMD (Single-Instruction Multiple Data) units first appeared in graphical processors." Beyond this, the technobabble runs deep, but the long and short of it is this: NVIDIA could be right on the cusp of delivering a single chip that can handle tasks that were typically separated for the CPU and GPU, and we needn't tell you just how much your life could change should it become a reality. Now, if only NVIDIA would come clean and lift away some of this fog surrounding it (and the rumored GTX 380), that'd be just swell.

[Thanks, Musouka]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

NVIDIA's GT300 specs outed -- is this the cGPU we've been waiting for? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung Omnia Pro with landscape QWERTY coming this summer?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/26/samsung-omnia-pro-with-landscape-qwerty-coming-this-summer/

This is totally unsubstantiated, but also totally plausible -- likely, even -- so we wanted to pass along a hot rumor out of Italian site hdblog.it claiming that there'll be a QWERTY-equipped Omnia Pro hitting the market in the coming months, and they've even crafted a mockup looking like the offspring of an F700 and an original Omnia to illustrate their point. Specifically, the rumor suggests that the Omnia Pro will run Windows Mobile 6.1 upgradeable to 6.5 -- which might explain Sammy's decision to back off the OmniaHD branding for the Symbian-powered i8950 -- along with a 5 megapixel cam and sweet 3.5-inch WVGA AMOLED display. Considering that the old Omnia is widely considered to be one of the company's better (and more successful) smartphones in recent memory, it certainly stands to reason that they'd want to carry on the legacy -- and slapping on a sliding landscape keyboard seems like a no-brainer way to do it. To top things off, gossip has this sucker launching this summer for something in the range of €500 ($662), which throws it face-first into this summer's superphone smackdown alongside the N97, the GSM Pre, and whatever Apple has up its sleeves. Fun time to be alive, isn't it?

[Via Slashphone]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Samsung Omnia Pro with landscape QWERTY coming this summer? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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GE microholographic storage promises cheap 500GB discs, Blu-ray and DVD compatibility

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/27/ge-microholographic-storage-promises-cheap-500gb-discs-blu-ray/

Ah, holographic storage -- you've held so much promise for cheap optical media since you were first imagined in research papers published in the early 60s. Later today, GE will be trying to keep the dream alive when it announces a new technique that promises to take holographic storage mainstream. GE's breakthrough in microholographics -- which, as the name implies, uses smaller, less complex holograms to achieve three-dimensional digital storage -- paves the way for players that can store about 500GB of data on standard-sized optical discs while still being able to read DVD and Blu-ray media. Better yet, researchers claim a price of about 10 cents per gigabyte compared to the nearly $1 per gigabyte paid when Blu-ray was introduced. The bad news? We're talking 2011 or 2012 by the time microholographics devices and media are introduced and even then it'll only be commercialized for use by film studios and medical institutions. In other words, you'll likely be streaming high-def films to your OLED TV long before you have a microholographic player in the living room.

Filed under: Storage

GE microholographic storage promises cheap 500GB discs, Blu-ray and DVD compatibility originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Inventors develop transistor to change color of any surface, your face notwithstanding

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/27/inventors-develop-transistor-to-change-color-of-any-surface-you/

Color shifting has been a pipe dream for about as long as alchemists have claimed their studies to be legitimate, but now a brilliant team from the New University of Lisbon can finally say a breakthrough has been found. Essentially, these inventors have conjured up a transistor that changes the color of practically any surface (paper, glass, plastics, ceramics and metals, just to name a few). For what it's worth, this same team already has quite a bit of display cred, as it has developed technology currently used within Samsung panels. With the help of a few good men and woman at the University of Texas at Austin, the team was able to register for a patent right here in the US, and with any luck, they'll be giving OLEDs and e-paper a run for their money before we can snap our fingers twice and run around the block. Check a video (narrated in Portuguese) after the break.

[Thanks, Nelson]

Continue reading Inventors develop transistor to change color of any surface, your face notwithstanding

Filed under: Displays

Inventors develop transistor to change color of any surface, your face notwithstanding originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung I7500 with OLED touchscreen powered by Android, dreams

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/27/samsung-i7500-oled-handset-powered-by-android-dreams/

Anticipated for months, Samsung's first Android phone is finally a (paper) reality after being flushed through the rumor mill just hours ago. Launching "in major European countries from June," the 11.9-mm slim quad-band GSM, tri-band 7.2Mbps HSDPA (900/1700/2100MHz) candybar packs a 3.2-inch, 320 x 480 pixel AMOLED touchscreen, WiFi, GPS, 5 megapixel camera with Power LED, 1,500mAh battery, 8GB of storage (plus MicroSD expansion for up to 32GB more), and a standard 3.5mm heasdset jack. Step aside HTC, you had your chance, let's all welcome Samsung to the Android party. Another picture and full press release after the break.

P.S. Although no US announcements have been made, that 1700MHz HSPA frequency could make T-Mobile USA customers very happy.

Continue reading Samsung I7500 with OLED touchscreen powered by Android, dreams

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Samsung I7500 with OLED touchscreen powered by Android, dreams originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 05:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Friday, April 24, 2009

Samsung 9000 Series LCD Rumored to Have Wireless Media Box, LEDs [Televisions]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/dZA3ECmFmgE/samsung-9000-series-lcd-rumored-to-have-wireless-media-box-leds

A few details on the still unannounced 9000 Series LCDs from Samsung have leaked, and according to FlatPanelsHD, they'll come with a wireless media port box, in addition to having LED backlighting.

The 9000 series will come in 46 and 55-inch sizes, and will come equipped with MPEG4 compliant DVB-T and DVB-C tuners. The external media box is similar to the Sony ZX1, where it takes all your video inputs and wirelessly transmits them to your TV, reducing the size of the panel itself. As for the LED backlighting, local dimming is superior to edge lighting because you get better contrast, and therefore deeper blacks, from the picture. (LED backlit Samsung LCDs have had this for awhile.)

Other features the 9000 series is rumored to have DLNA compatibility, USB port and on-screen widgets via the Medi@2.0 platform. FlatPanelsHD expects the 9000 series to be available in summer/fall 2009. [FlatPanelsHD] (Samsung B8000 Series LCD pictured above)

HTC Touch Pro2 gets thoroughly handled overseas

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/24/htc-touch-pro2-gets-thoroughly-tinkered-with-overseas/

While we still don't have an official release date for HTC's Touch Pro2 here in the states, the folks at Russian site Mobile-Review have managed to get some extensive hands-on time with the unit. Props go to the quality of the voice calls and especially the QWERTY keyboard, noted via the machine translation as one of the most user-friendly in modern mobile devices. The same is not said here, however, for the plastic casing and steep pricing. They also don't really touch on TouchFlo 3D 2.0.XX -- that's apparently coming later in another article -- but hit up the read link for a plethora of pictures and a video of the updated UI in action.

[Via WMPoweruser]

Continue reading HTC Touch Pro2 gets thoroughly handled overseas

Filed under: Cellphones

HTC Touch Pro2 gets thoroughly handled overseas originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 01:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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