Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Sonos ZonePlayer ZP120 and ZP90 leak out

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/355892567/

There's no official word on the wires, but we don't think Stuff.tv has a particularly good reason to fake press shots of new Sonos gear, so we'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt until we hear otherwise -- the cheeky Brits say Sonos is set to unveil two new ZonePlayers, the ZP120 and ZP90, both of which feature MIMO antennas for extended range. Just as in the current lineup, the £249 ZP90 is a receiver only, while the £349 ZP120 features a built-in amp in a package 43 percent smaller than the ZP100. Should be available soon, separately or in the £699 BU150 bundle.

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More details leak on AMD's Fusion platform, Fusion now officially the Palm OS II of CPUs

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/355926835/

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

In yet more news about the perpetually forthcoming Fusion CPU / GPU combos from AMD, new details have been leaked regarding the chips' sizes, configurations, and other bits of insufferably tedious details that only Professor Frink could truly love. According to this latest report, the "first" Fusion processor will be called "Shrike," sport a dual-core Phenom CPU, an ATI RV800 GPU, and a footprint of just 40nm. Another chip, codenamed "Falcon," will debut in 2010 at a 32nm size, based around a platform known as "Bulldozer," and will be launched to combat Intel's 32nm offering. Of course, we've been hearing about these chips since 2006, so we're not exactly on the edge of our seats hearing new details of what essentially amounts to vaporware.

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Obscura Digital projects multi-touch "hologram," blows all sorts of minds

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/355992821/

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

The creative cats and kittens at Obscura Digital have put together a stunning piece of performance art / data manipulation demo which combines their proprietary multi-touch software with Musion's Eyeliner 3D holographic projection system. Like that BMW installation we saw recently, this is one of those odd combinations of technology and art which is best seen in action rather than described -- so check out the video after the break and see the work in all its mind-bending glory.

Continue reading Obscura Digital projects multi-touch "hologram," blows all sorts of minds

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Micron announces insanely quick RealSSD C200 SSDs

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/356040607/

Filed under: Storage

Intel's partner in solid state crime, Micron, just announced an update to its RealSSD lineup of SSDs. Based on the typically slower (and cheaper) MLC NAND process technology, the new 2.5-inch (up to 256GB) laptop and 1.8-inch (32GB to 128GB) ultra-portable storage slabs offer a 3Gbps SATA interface and ridiculous 250MBps read and 100MBps write speeds -- yes, that's fast, damn fast when you consider the 70MBps write and 90MBps read speeds of Samsung's latest consumer oriented SSDs. They even best the listed read speeds of Samsung's top-ender. Unfortunately, no prices were given (though it's said to be "balanced price to performance"), but we should expect 'em to hit the market in Q4 under the Lexar brand, and maybe even Seagate and Intel for all we know.

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Monday, August 04, 2008

BgPatterns Generates Tiled Desktop or Web Site Backgrounds [Design]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/354680386/bgpatterns-generates-tiled-desktop-or-web-site-backgrounds

Free online design tool BgPatterns gives you a full range of options to make your own tiled/repeating backgrounds, whether for your computer desktop or to fill in the background space on a blog or web site. The transparency, foreground/background colors, rotation of the patterns, and canvas texture are all up for tweaking, and there's a gallery of designs you can stroll through and vote on. In other words, it's reminiscent of the tiled background options from earlier versions of Windows, just a lot more appealing. BgBackgrounds is free to use and download images from; signing up lets you store your patterns online.