AMD promises Radeon HD 6900 series launch for the week beginning December 13th
November 15, 2010 No Comment
AMD’s cutting it mighty close, but the latest word from its PR mouthpiece is that the hotly anticipated Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 will be unveiled just in time for the gift-giving holidays. Fudzilla has heard directly from the Radeon team, who say they’re “going to take a bit more time before shipping the AMD Radeon HD 6900 series.” The NDA is expected to lift on the week beginning December 13th, but it’s anyone’s guess whether reviews of the cards will be accompanied by widespread in-store availability. Our hearts say yes, but our minds are already making other plans. AMD promises Radeon HD 6900 series launch for the week beginning December 13th originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Nov 2010 05:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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If you’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time on the couch… well, that’s not exactly something we’d happily admit to all. But that doesn’t mean you actually have to get up and get moving. IOGEAR’s making it even easier to access Netflix, the world wide web and your mum’s Picasa account through your HTPC , all courtesy of a new pair of 2.4GHz wireless couch keyboards. The GKM571R is the smaller of the two (shown above), with a palm-sized design, backlit keys, a tiny optical trackball in the top-right corner and a svelte lid to cover things up when bedtime calls. The GKM571R is an oval shaped board that’s closer to full size, with a row of dedicated media hotkeys and an even larger trackball for moving your cursor. You’ll find ‘em both available later this year, with the former going for $99.95 and the latter for $89.95. Good thing you won’t even have to leave said sofa to order one. Gallery: IOGEAR’s GKM571R and GKM581R HTPC keyboards Continue reading IOGEAR rolls out two trackball-equipped HTPC keyboards IOGEAR rolls out two trackball-equipped HTPC keyboards originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Nov 2010 05:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …ASUS’ Sandy Bridge motherboards are pretty, come with Bluetooth and USB 3.0 as standard
November 15, 2010 No Comment
We already got an early glimpse at what ASUS is bringing to Intel’s upcoming Sandy Bridge party, now how about some glamor shots of the actual hardware? The Taiwanese company has taken the shroud of mystery away from its latest range of motherboards and the first thing that stood out to us was the TUF-looking Sabertooth P67 above. It comes with an extended five-year warranty, “military-grade” electrical components, a litany of thermal sensors, and of course that Tactical Jacket up top. Beyond its obvious visual appeal, the Jacket serves to channel airflow throughout the board, aiding the cooling of more peripheral components. We’d love to see more of its kind of design purely to reduce the dust that gets in amongst our precious circuit boards. On the more diminutive front, ASUS is shown off a Mini-ITX board, the P8P67-I, that fits everything but full-sized RAM slots within a minuscule footprint. Check it out after the break. Oh, and yes, ASUS is sticking USB 3.0 ports and Bluetooth connectivity on almost all its forthcoming motherboards. Yay! Continue reading ASUS’ Sandy Bridge motherboards are pretty, come with Bluetooth and USB 3.0 as standard ASUS’ Sandy Bridge motherboards are pretty, come with Bluetooth and USB 3.0 as standard originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Nov 2010 04:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Universal remote arrives within a pillow, makes channel surfing hip again
November 15, 2010 No Comment
It’s a pillow. And a remote. And if your powers of observation are anywhere near “strong,” you’ve probably deduced by now that you’re looking at a universal remote control… albeit one that’s wrapped within a pillow. We’ve seen similar creations come around in concept form , but leave it to the folks at Brookstone to turn this thing into a reality. Purportedly, this unit can be programmed to work with over 500 devices, and there’s a power-saving auto shutoff feature that’ll definitely be overrode by your incessant squeezing. We wouldn’t count on this thing actually working well, but for $29.95 (in addition to the cost of two AAA batteries, of course), we highly doubt you’ll find a more fashionable, lovable cube of cotton. Universal remote arrives within a pillow, makes channel surfing hip again originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Nov 2010 03:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Researchers develop ‘blood camera’ to spot crime scene stains in a flash
November 15, 2010 No Comment
Could inspecting a crime scene for even the most minuscule blood stains one day be as simple as taking a picture? It will if some research now being conducted at the University of South Carolina in Columbia pans out. A team there led by Stephen Morgan and Michael Myrick have developed a so-called “blood camera” that uses a combination of infrared light and a transparent layer of the protein albumin — the latter of which acts as a filter and is able to highlight blood stains by filtering out wavelengths that aren’t characteristic of blood proteins (or so we’re told). That’s as opposed to current methods for detecting blood at a crime scene, which rely on the chemical luminol to make the stains appear in the dark. As New Scientist notes, however, that method can also dilute blood samples and make DNA difficult to recover, and create false positives. The researchers don’t seem to be stopping at blood, though — they say the camera could also be easily adapted to detect detect trace amounts of other materials that aren’t visible to the naked eye, like drugs or explosives. Researchers develop ‘blood camera’ to spot crime scene stains in a flash originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Nov 2010 02:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Toys R Us Black Friday doorbuster includes $80 netbook, $140 Sylvania netbook
November 15, 2010 No Comment
Believe it or not, America’s favorite holiday is under a fortnight away. And this year, it looks as if Toys R Us won’t even wait for Thanksgiving Day to conclude before forcing employees behind registers and breaking families apart as they seek out lukewarm deals camouflaged as revolutionary purchases. This year, Black Friday begins at 10PM on Thanksgiving Eve, meaning that quite a few desperate souls will be lined up in a parking lot rather than circling a stuffed bird and chuckling with loved ones. The culprit? Two devices in particular. The first is an unnamed 7-inch netbook, complete with WiFi, three USB sockets, a sub-two pound weight, a red chassis and a mind-scrambling $79.99 price tag. The second is a 7-inch Sylvania tablet, sporting Android 2.1, WiFi and an SD card slot; we’re assuming it’s the same unit Kmart is hawking for $180 , but Toys R Us will have it for the low, low price of $139.99. Other hidden treasures include a Vivitar point-and-shoot for $39.99, 7-inch Coby digiframe for $24.99 and a Vivitar pocket camcorder for just $19.99. We know your gears are already turning, but lest we forget that time with family is priceless… right ? [Thanks, Dave ] Continue reading Toys R Us Black Friday doorbuster includes $80 netbook, $140 Sylvania netbook Toys R Us Black Friday doorbuster includes $80 netbook, $140 Sylvania netbook originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Nov 2010 23:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …InstantAction dies in an instant, future of embedded gaming looks questionable
November 15, 2010 No Comment
Well, that was brief. Just a few short months after InstantAction went public with its embedded browser-based gaming platform at GDC 2010, the Oregon-based startup has gone belly-up. If you missed out on what this here outfit was offering, you clearly aren’t alone — but for the historians in attendance, we’d invite you to revisit our hands-on for an overview of what was planned. Unfortunately, the company has yanked all of its Vimeo clips detailing the system’s features, and its website now affirms that the service as a whole is “no longer available.” We’re hearing that it’ll be selling the underlying Torque Game Engine (and presumably that fancy “chunking” tech that enabled games to be played in a browser with just a broadband connection), but based on the tepid response so far, we’re guessing it won’t fetch much. We definitely saw a bit of promise in the concept — after all, browser-based games like Solipskier are all the rage in some circles — but bona fide console / PC games simply don’t fit that mold, or so it seems. InstantAction dies in an instant, future of embedded gaming looks questionable originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Nov 2010 22:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Inhabitat’s Week in Green: of electric tractor unicycles, garbage-powered garbage trucks, and luminous nanoparticle trees
November 15, 2010 No Comment
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green. This week we were blinded by the light as researchers unveiled a way to transform city trees into luminous streetlights using gold nanoparticles. We also showcased a mesmerizing paper LED structure shaped like a tree at Tokyo Designers Week, and speaking of stellar architecture, check out this stunning star-shaped Taiwanese tower topped with a built-in wind turbine. In other news, strap on your rollerblades and hang tight – from the Department of Questionable Transportation comes the FlyRad , an insane electric unicycle that pulls you down the street at 25 miles per hour. Meanwhile, the city of Toronto is doing their part to preserve the environment by rolling out a fleet of garbage trucks that can be powered by the very waste they collect . Finally, the University of Rhode Island signaled a bright future for efficient transportation as they unveiled four designs that could tap the United States’ 2.7 million miles of roadways for solar energy . This week we also looked at several new applications for futuristic manufacturing technologies – a dutch designer has pioneered a way to create 3D printed shoes that fit feet perfectly, and researchers have found that activated carbon cloth is a quicker picker-upper for toxic waste . Finally, with the holidays on their way, this week we rounded up our top ten green gadget gifts for 2010 ! Inhabitat’s Week in Green: of electric tractor unicycles, garbage-powered garbage trucks, and luminous nanoparticle trees originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Nov 2010 21:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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We all knew this would inevitably happen, but seeing it in action is something else — the Kinect transformed by the power of open-source drivers into a true 3D video camera for capturing oneself. UC Davis visualization researcher Oliver Kreylos fed the streams from his peripheral’s infrared and color cameras into a custom program that interpolated and reconstructed the result, generating a mildly mindblowing 3D virtual reality environment he can manipulate at will. And if it makes him look a little bit like the proficiently penciled protagonists in Take On Me, that’s just the cherry on top. Don’t miss the videos after the break to see what we’re talking about. Continue reading Hack turns Kinect into 3D video capture tool Hack turns Kinect into 3D video capture tool originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Nov 2010 20:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On , a column about consumer technology. Oh, e-readers are e-readers. And tablets are tablets. And surely the twain shall meet. Indeed, they already have, with the iPad hosting not only its own integrated bookstore, but client software from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and others. Barnes & Noble, in turn, describes its new Nook Color as a “readers’ tablet.” But these devices and their affiliated digital bookstores are all chasing the same avid readers of bestsellers. These readers read mostly for leisure or self-directed enrichment as they can fit it in to their schedules. But those who sell e-readers and tablets would really like to tap into a market of people who have to read versus want to read — not just the low-stakes novellas of Amazon singles, but hefty, cumbersome, expensive, perpetually obsolete tomes that are assigned to 19 million full-time college students annually. The National Association of College Stores estimates that the average full-time college student spends nearly $700 per year on course materials. For the 2008-2009 school year, the average new textbook price was $64. And the mean gross margin on course materials for a college bookstore is 27 percent. That is a prize worth pursuing. But can a device dedicated to the way students study survive amidst an onslaught of tablets from every corner of the PC, consumer electronics and cell phone industries? Kno thinks the answer is yes. Continue reading Switched On: Getting from Kno to yes, part 1 Switched On: Getting from Kno to yes, part 1 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Nov 2010 19:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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