Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Google Play Just Gave Google TV a Reason to Exist [Google]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5949922/google-play-just-gave-google-tv-a-reason-to-exist

Google TV just became a thing you might actually want to use. According to a post on the Google TV blog, starting today, you can watch and listen to Google Play Movies, Music, and TV shows from your Google TV.

Maybe you're saying, "About time." Or, more probably, "Wait, it didn't do those things already?" Either way, Apple TV, Xbox, and every other media hub service just got an actual competitor in the new and improved Google TV.

Like those services, you can buy content from any device and watch it through Google TV. Also like Apple TV and the Xbox 360, you can buy or rent stuff from the Play Store right from Google TV.

Definitely welcome and overdue additions. Now we'll just wait to see if Google's got anything up its sleeve beyond just catching up. [Google]

Is This the Next LG Nexus Phone? [Android]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5950083/is-this-the-next-lg-nexus-phone

Is This the Next LG Nexus Phone? We've already heard that the next Nexus phone will be made by LG and be kinda, sorta similar to the powerful LG Optimus G but this might be the first time we're getting a good look at it. A gallery of photos of an LG Android phone that looks like the Optimus G and runs stock Android has popped up at XDA developers. Could this be the next Nexus?

As you can see in the LG phone's About screen, it mentions that the model number is 'Full JellyBean on Mako'. What the heck does that mean? Android Central notes that previous Nexus devices' internal names have carried a fish theme and Mako is a type of shark.

Is This the Next LG Nexus Phone? This mystery phone certainly looks a lot like the Optimus G and if it's really the next Nexus, those gnarly rumored specs running stock Android would make for a pretty awesome phone. How do you guys like it? [XDA Developers via Android Central]

AMD's New Mobile Processor Plays Call of Duty on Your Windows 8 Tab [Guts]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5950124/amds-new-mobile-processor-plays-call-of-duty-on-your-windows-8-tab

AMD's New Mobile Processor Plays Call of Duty on Your Windows 8 Tab AMD has officially announced its new tablet-specific Z-60 processor, known as Hondo, and it promises rather a lot. In fact, the chip manufacturer claims it will allow you to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on your Windows 8 tablet, at 30 fps on a 1024 x 768 display. Sounds zippy.

AMD claims that the Z-60's integrated Radeon HD 6250 graphics have five to six times the performance of Intel's last-gen Atom chips—if that's really a benchmark worth bragging about—made possible by creating a more power-efficient version of its low-end laptop processors. That's the opposite approach to Intel, whose Clover Trail tablet processor line is a beefed up version of its Medfield smartphone chip.

The Z-60, then, will pack a dual-core 1GHz chip with 80 graphics cores for video and gaming, and by the sounds of it should hold its own in terms of performance. Sadly, it sounds like AMD's offering will lag behind Intel when it comes to battery life, though: AMD claims the Z-60 should squeeze 6 hours of 720p HD video playback out of a 30Wh battery, while Intel promises 10 hours. Similarly, Intel claims 3 weeks of standby time, while AMD offers just 2.

All in, it seems like AMD's processor may pack more punch than Intel's Clover Trail, at the expense of battery life. It may, of course, come down to a question of cost—at which point it's not clear just yet who the winner will be. [Verge]

Math Has Never Looked as Pretty as This [Image Cache]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5950128/math-has-never-looked-as-pretty-as-this

When you were at high school, math was probably an uninspiring string of algebra you had to crunch through. Get to the cutting edge of computational fluid dynamics, though, and it all starts to look a hell of a lot more pretty.

These images represent incredibly complex fluid flows, and were generated suing supercomputers by researchers at the Laboratory for Computational Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota. From the top, these images show off examples of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability, the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, and finally some good ol' fashioned turbulence.

The best bit? They're available as high-res image files so you can download them and use them as your desktop background. [LCSE via Fuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics]

Images by LCSE

NVIDIA launches GeForce 650 Ti, Maingear says all custom desktop models now have it

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/09/nvidia-launches-geforce-650-ti-maingear-outs-desktops/

No one can accuse Maingear of skipping the latest hardware cycles -- less than a month after offering PCs with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 and 660 graphics, the PC system builder has announced that you can get all its desktop machines with GTX 650 Ti graphics now, too. As it happens, NVIDIA has just launched that very product -- a friskier version of the GTX 650 with extra Cuda cores -- keeping Maingear in lockstep with its graphics board suppliers again. That card will fill the gap between the $229 GeForce GTX 660 and $109 GTX 650 cards and run $149 (estimated), while Maingear has said it will feature special F131 and Potenza GTX 650 Ti systems at $150 off, along with a free copy of Assassin Creed III. So, if you need all the fps you can get, but can't quite pony up for the more desirable GTX 660, check the PR for more details.

Continue reading NVIDIA launches GeForce 650 Ti, Maingear says all custom desktop models now have it

Filed under: Desktops, Periphe! rals , NVIDIA