Nexus One
Cellphones these days are expensive enough without dropping wads of cash on accessories and unnecessary apps. These ten DIY cellphone mods and accessories solve common cellphone problems, add useful features to your phone, and are just plain cool.
Full tips here
Apple iPad Accessories
It’s only took a while for the accessories manufacturer to throwing out their products for the most bombastic apple’s creation of the years (may be the second of the most successful gadgets they ever made.
Hit the link for full articles : Engadget
Apple's iPad
We’ve crossed the finish line at last! How is it on the other side? You tell us! We just put down plastic for one and had it activated at the Apple Store, so stand by for pictures and videos from that unparalleled experience. The “activation” process is just plugging it into a computer with iTunes for the first time, so that you can walk out of the store with the device turned on. After the unit is up and running you can dive into the App Store, where you’re prompted for a free download of iBooks. It’s all smooth sailing from there.
Windows: As expected, Opera made version 10.5 of its browser official this morning,
Opera
calling it “the fastest browser on Earth” and also touting its Windows 7 integration, HTML5 video support, better private browsing, and more.
In terms of HTML5 and video, Opera has gone the way of Firefox, supporting native, Flash-free streams of the Ogg Theora format, but not H.264. Apple’s Safari supports only H.264, and Google Chrome supports both. Opera has also added in extensive Windows 7 graphical look and taskbar support, as we’ve detailed, and also added the seemingly requisite “private browsing” option.
What the Opera developers are really touting, though, is Opera’s JavaScript and page loading speeds—and we don’t blame them. Here are two quick reminders of how Opera’s 10.5 pre-alpha (labeled erroneously as a beta in these charts) fared against its competition. First in JavaScript:
Opera Features
And in “cold” (right off a reboot) and “warm” (having previously opened) start-ups:
Opera Benchmark
Opera’s certainly managed to get everyone’s attention with their new Carakan engine, that’s for sure. In our own tests, Opera 10.5 feels very snappy and lightweight when moving about the web, and that’s without the server-caching Turbo is turned on.
Opera 10.5 is a free download for Windows systems only; Mac and Linux users should expect their own versions to follow very soon.
The Acer Aspire One 532G emerged as the first officially announced Nvidia ION 2 netbook earlier this week.
Nvidia Ion 2
This is despite still knowing very little about the “next generation ION” apart from the evidence suggesting it will be a discrete GPU part, possibly the GeForce GT218.
The 10-inch AAO 532G netbook was on show at MWC in Barcelona this week and NetbookNews managed to do some sneaky testing to see how ‘next-gen’ the new ION really is. They conducted the 3DMark03 graphics benchmark test on the netbook and initial results don’t look too promising for those hoping ION 2 would be a leap in performance over the original.
They managed to record a score of 3,049 3DMarks on the Aspire One 532G. This compares to 3,593 3DMarks for the 11.6-inch Samsung N510 netbook that we reviewed recently that came with the Nvidia ION LE chipset. It’s disappointing to see the AAO 532G not outperforming current ION netbooks. The 532G is armed with a 1.66GHz N450 Atom processor and Windows 7, but I find it hard to believe these would be limiting performance.
Ion 2 Benchmark
If these results are representative of ION 2 generally, than perhaps it signals the problems that Nvidia have had to overcome with Intel’s 2-chip Pine Trail architecture. The new Intel Pine Trail platform uses the DMI bus to connect to the Pineview processor and NM10 express chipset. However as Nvidia doesn’t have a license to create chipsets around the DMI bus, ION 2 is likely to use the PCI Express lanes of the Intel NM10 chipset to interface with the Pine Trail platform. This would be a possibility as the NM10 has an integrated PCI-E controller.
A lack of bandwidth over the PCI-E lanes could be part of the reason for the poor performance. However, Acer and Nvidia may have purposely crippled the machine to keep it stable whilst on show during MWC. Also, improved drivers as we approach launch may make a difference and could be part of the reason for the poor performance. We’re keeping an open mind and expect official details on the next generation ION within the next week and then hopefully all shall become clear.
[via Netbookchoice]
Windows 7
Earlier last week lifehacker.com just asked us to share our favorite netbook operating system, then they rounded up the five most popular candidates for a vote. Now they’re back to highlight the winner and runners up.
At the front with a nearly 10% lead was Windows 7, the newest offering in the Hive, with 36% of the vote. Ubuntu took second place with 27% of the vote, followed by a near tie between OS X and Jolicloud—12% of the vote each, with a 58 vote margin pushing OS X slightly ahead. Pulling up the back of the popular crowd was Linux Mint and its 8% share of the vote.
[via Lifehacker]
Eric Schmidt (Google)
Google has admitted that their Buzz testing process was equivalent to mine: Click enable, then disable it ninety seconds later. They said to the BBC that their testing sucked donkey balls, which is why many people hate it. The excuse:
We’re very early in this space. This was one of our first big attempts. We’ve been testing Buzz internally at Google for a while. Of course, getting feedback from 20,000 Googlers isn’t quite the same as letting Gmail users play with Buzz in the wild. If it becomes clear that people don’t think we’ve done enough, we’ll make more changes.
That’s what Todd Jackson, Buzz product manager, told BBC News. Google only tested this thing internally, and didn’t put the service through the Google Trusted Tester program, like they have done with other services in the past. He also admitted that tens of millions of Buzz users were “rightfully upset” and that Google was “very, very sorry.” Todd’s right, but I don’t think all those “tens of millions of Buzz” ex-users would care about the too late apologies. They do care about the privacy problems and the inbox spamming.
Would these users give Google another chance? I doubt it would be soon. And, personally, I doubt there’s enough interest for yet another Facebookish Tumblred Twitting clusterfuckassered online service.
[via Gizmodo]
Kaspersky Lab has announced they have received a US patent for a hardware-based antivirus solution. The announcement emphasizes that the hardware operates below the level of rootkits and therefore can’t be bypassed by them.
Kaspersky Lab
The patent, #7,657,941, is entitled “Hardware-based anti-virus system,” is awarded to inventor Oleg V. Zaitsev (Technology Expert at Kaspersky Lab) and assigned to Kaspersky. The abstract reads:
An anti-virus (AV) system based on a hardware-implemented AV module for curing infected computer systems and a method for updating AV databases for effective curing of the computer system. The hardware-based AV system is located between a PC and a disk device. The hardware-based AV system can be implemented as a separate device or it can be integrated into a disk controller. An update method of the AV databases uses a two-phase approach. First, the updates are transferred to from a trusted utility to an update sector of the AV system. Then, the updates are verified within the AV system and the AV databases are updated. The AV system has its own CPU and memory and can be used in combination with AV application.
So it seems this device is an actual separate computer running an embedded AV application. While the press release and abstract emphasize that the AV functionality doesn’t strictly need a software counterpart running in the host system, it does need host software in order to update itself, because the AV hardware won’t have network access. This update application will need to be trusted and hardened against attack.
The difficulty of detecting rootkits once they have installed does call for unconventional measures. Whether a hardware approach is truly more effective remains to be seen. If the device is just an AV system running below the level of the rootkit then the improvement will be small, as it will still only operate as well as the signature process allows. If the fact that the device is running below rootkits allows it to run heuristic tests which are better capable of detecting rootkit behavior then the difference could be substantial.
There is another advantage to hardware-based AV: Because the device has its own CPU and memory and minimal software running on the host PC, the performance impact on the PC will be lessened. But in fact, this device can not be a complete security solution, since it can only monitor disk operations. Modern security suites also monitor network connections, for example.
[via PCmag]
Vacuum tubes are usually used in tube or valve amplifiers (electronic amplifiers) to boost the power of a signal. The technology has been around for decades, and vacuum tubes seem to be pretty enough for Hanwa Japan to announce [JP] the X-Tube today, a USB dongle that looks like one of those tubes and allows you to upgrade your computer with DTS sound.
X-Tube: Hanwa’s USB dongle
X-Tube: Hanwa’s USB dongle
Also dubbed AS301DTS, the dongle glows in blue when in use (see above). You’ll need two more things to enjoy DTS sound on your computer: “DTS Headphone Deck” (a piece of software) and DTS-compatible headphones (AH-516), but Hanwa throws in both items when you buy the dongle. Option-wise, there’s music or movie mode, voice clarification, and bass enhancement.
[via CrunchGear]
Yes, this phone may be can be titled as the World’s Greenest Phone, Daizi Zheng a student from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London just did a break through innovation for nokia. He invent a phone powered by sugar fuel cell.. yes you’re not dreaming.. a phone with sugar fuel cell so when the phone battery is low, you can rush to your refrigerator and pop up the coke and just refill.
Green phone by Nokia
Looks like not just us who’s happy with this innovation, Coca-cola, Pepsi and other soft drink producers may be thinking about open up refill station, something like gas station so you can’t stop by and refill your phone. The battery lifes itself can’t last 3-4 hours longer than the conventional battery.
Daizi writes:
“The concept is using bio battery to replace the traditional battery to create a pollution free environment. Bio battery is an ecologically friendly energy generates electricity from carbohydrates (currently sugar) and utilizes enzymes as the catalyst. By using bio battery as the power source of the phone, it only needs a pack of sugary drink and it generates water and oxygen while the battery dies out.
Bio battery has the potential to operate three to four times longer on a single charge than conventional lithium batteries and it could be fully biodegradable. Meanwhile, it brings a whole new perception to batteries and afternoon tea. “
Source : Daizi Zheng Projects