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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Samsung's AnyCall Haptic is out and UI-licious

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/257715958/

While Samsung is a perennial innovator when it comes to hardware, software has never been the company's strong suit. Lucky for us, the new TouchWiz UI Samsung is building for its touchscreen phones is a significant step in the right direction, and the new AnyCall Haptic SCH-W420 looks to be the perfect way to show it off. Centered around a 16:9, 3.2-inch screen, the phone includes DMB, a 2 megapixel camera and Bluetooth 2.0. Haptic feedback in the form of vibrations help out with the UI, and home screen is customizable with widgets. The feature set seems to be squarely targeted at the consumer, but the price sure ain't -- the phone is launching in Korea starting at 700,000 KRW and ramping up to 800,000 KRW ($700 to $800 US). Video is after the break.

[Via Engadget Spanish]

Continue reading Samsung's AnyCall Haptic is out and UI-licious

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ASUS EAH3850 Trinity crams three Radeon GPUs onto one card

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/257731880/

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

Forget FPS and polygon crunching, we want one of these ASUS EAH3850 just for its sheer logic-defying properties. ASUS really took AMD's CrossFireX multi-GPU capabilities and ran with them, stuffing a ludicrous trio of GPUs onto a single "concept" card. Three RV670 cores power the setup, and it's kept cool by some heatpipes and a water block. If your box doesn't implode in incredulity, that means you can power four monitors with the three GPUs, or power a single monitor with all four at once for some seriously serious World of Warcraft, though we'll have to wait for benchmarks to see how well this setup actually runs.

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ASUS EAH3850 Trinity crams three Radeon GPUs onto one card

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/257731880/

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

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NVIDIA's 9800 GX2-based Quad SLI solution gets mixed reviews

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/257782842/

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

NVIDIA's high-end GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics card has been pretty well received on its own, but it looks to be decidedly more of a mixed bag when it comes to a Quad SLI configuration, at least according to a pair of early reviews. Least impressed with the setup was PC Perspective, which described the system's performance as "uninspiring" and "frustrating more often than it was fun to play on." The site did see some potential in the system, however, saying that it's very possible that NVIDIA will be able to address many of the problems in upcoming driver releases. Slightly more positive about the config were the folks at HotHardware, who were pleased with the performance, and seem to have been more satisfied with the setup's ability to scale with various applications than PC Perspective was. On the downside, they did admit that the system didn't scale well for everything, and there is of course the little matter of price (about $1,200), which will likely be pretty hard for even the most die-hard performance junkie to justify.

Read - PC Perspective
Read - HotHardware

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A-DATA intros "special edition" flash cards, drives for Eee PC users

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/257845253/

Filed under: Storage

You know something is really catching on when companies starts branding otherwise generic products as specially designed for said something, and it now looks like that's now true for the Eee PC, thanks to these two new clever bits of marketing from A-DATA. While you could of course use any USB flash drive of SDHC card with the laptop, A-DATA's apparently hoping that its new "special edition" flash cards and drives will sway over at least a couple of Eee PC users, and we don't doubt that they will. Apparently available only in 8GB versions, they each come in Eee PC-coordinating white, with the USB flash drive also boasting the extra bonus of a leather carrying strap. No word on pricing or availability just yet, unfortunately, but we wouldn't be surprised if they demand a bit of a premium over their non-Eee counterparts.

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Clear Channel digital billboards in SoCal hax0r3d

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/257931014/

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We've gotten pretty used to seeing crashed digital billboards and signage dot the landscape, but just like regular billboards, what's really interesting is when the graffiti artists manage to get their own messages up on the big (big) screen. Looks like Clear Channel is the latest victim - 10 LA-area billboards owned by the media giant started displaying the logo of 18-year-old graffiti artist Skullphone last Thursday, slotted innocuously within the regular ad rotation. Sure, it's not quite at the anarcho-political level of the Billboard Liberation Front and their ilk, but every great leap begins with just a small step, no? Hit the read link for tons more photos.

[Via Textually.org]

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Intel and Microsoft fund $20M grant to reinvent computing: where do you want to go tomorrow?

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/257981542/

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Although both Microsoft and Intel's R&D departments have been responsible for some nifty futuristic tech, the two companies got together last week and announced a $20M grant to two universities to "start over" and develop next-gen computing systems based around parallel processing. The grant will fund Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers at UC -Berkeley, which is kicking in another $7M, and the University of Illinois at Champaign / Urbana, which is donating $8M of its own. According to Mark Snir, head of the UIUC lab, the goal is to find a way to make "parallelism so easy to use that parallel programming becomes synonymous with programming" -- an increasingly important priority as current multi-core processors aren't necessarily being fully utilized, and 100-core processors aren't far off. That leads us to wonder: what to do with all that newly-unlocked processing power? Virtual-reality Facebook? Real-time visual augmentation? Finally being able to run Crysis? We know you've got ideas -- sound off in comments!

[Thanks, Luke]

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Official: ASUS 8.9-inch Eee PC will include touchscreen, possibly GPS

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/258145250/

Filed under: Laptops

Here we have it, confirmation that the second generation Eee PC will in fact feature an 8.9-inch (resistive) touchscreen display. Kevin Lin, ASUS VP of Sales, says that the $500 (starting price) Eee PC will begin shipping in May or June in 8GB to 12GB options with "possible GPS support." That's the same time ASUS plans to begin shipping its $200 Eee Dekstop, aka the E-DT. Look, we're happy with your success with the Eee brand ASUS, but when are we getting our $200 Eee PC?

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Super 3G hits 250Mbps downlink in NTT DoCoMo field test

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/258303946/

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Just think -- this time next year, we'll all look back at this milestone and wonder how on Earth we thought it was impressive. For now, however, we wouldn't blame you for high-fiving everyone around, as NTT DoCoMo has stretched the boundaries again with a recent Super 3G field test. Reportedly, the outfit was able to record "a downlink transmission rate of 250Mbps over a high-speed wireless network in an outdoor test of an experimental Super 3G system," and while it's not quite the 300Mbps we'd heard about before, you won't find us kvetching. If all goes to plan, the firm is hoping to "complete development of the technologies required for the eventual launch of a Super 3G network" by 2009, but who knows how long we Americans will have to wait to indulge after that.

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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Silicon Out, Graphene In? [Gadgets]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/257345138/silicon-out-graphene-in

Physicists at the University of Maryland have demonstrated that graphene, a single-atom-thick sheet of graphite, has a greater ability to conduct electricity than any other known material at room temperature. In fact, electrons can travel up to 100 times faster in graphine than silicon, making it a likely candidate to replace it as a semiconductor material in devices like computer chips and sensors.

Graphene also has a resistivity (opposition to the flow of electric current) of 1.0 microOhm-cm—which is 35% less than copper. That figure would also make graphene the lowest resistivity material at room temperature. However, impurities in graphine make it less effective than copper at transferring electrons (at least for the moment). Still, with some refinement, the future looks promising for graphene as our next "miracle material." [University of Maryland via Slashdot]