Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Major tech companies joining forces to create massive patent shell company

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/323935523/

Yeah, we hate patent trolls as much as anyone, but the Wall Street Journal says that a group of major tech companies have created a patent shield organization to fend off trolls that sounds to us like it'll eventually just be an even worse troll. The foundation, called the Allied Security Trust, will take $250,000 in buy-in money and $5M in escrow from member companies -- Verizon, Google, Ericsson, HP, and Cisco are apparently the founding corporations -- and use it to buy up patents to prevent future litigation. After a member company buys a patent, it will grant itself a non-exclusive license and sell it to AST, which will then license it to the other members. Of course, that means that AST will eventually own a large number of patents on common technology, which means it could very well become a aggressive patent litigant itself. Not to worry, says AST CEO Brian Hinman: the group will "never be an enforcement vehicle," and it isn't anyone's intention to "make money on the transactions." Sure, sure -- but any time players this big start putting this much potential cash on the line, we're not going to take random promises at face value. See you in Marshall, boys.

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Monday, June 30, 2008

Home Floating Over the Pacific Brings Peace, Insane Envy [Architecture]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/323160049/home-floating-over-the-pacific-brings-peace-insane-envy

It may not be crazy high-tech architecture, but there's something about this Chilean home hanging over the Pacific—the breathtaking views, the clean design—that has me glued to the screen with a mixed feeling of complete awe, peace, and envy.

Divided in three floors, Casa 11 Mujeres (House 11 Women, named like that because it was designed for a family with 11 daughters, ages four to twenty) was built with bare concrete with wood floors, glass, and steel on a 45 degree slope looking down Cachagua beach, 87 miles north of Santiago de Chile. The bottom floor contains shared spaces, while the second level has the daughters bedrooms—all overlooking the sea—, and the top floor has the master bedroom, kitchen, living room, and dining room.

I don't know about the 11 daughters part, but sign me up for the rest. [Dezeen]

Mitsubishi's new iSP 149 series LCDs have it all in one place

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/322964353/

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

If you're a lazy ass consumer (the very best kind), bent on pulling a device out of the box, plugging it into a wall, and never messing with another bit of "setup" again, you're certainly not alone. In fact, most folks never lift a finger to calibrate their displays, plug better speakers in, or place those speakers in actually advantageous spots. To that end, Mitsubishi is debuting its new LT-46149 and LT-52149 LCDs with integrated 16-speaker sound projectors. Similar to the sound bars offered up by many home audio manufacturers, the "Integrated Sound Projector" (iSP) is designed to bounce sound off walls and around the room to give the illusion of surround sound. The perk of TV integration is an easy to use room configuration on-screen tool to specify your room's dimensions, couch placement and preferred sweet spot size. At the end of the day, your sound is all coming from one spot, so directionality isn't going to quite match a for-realsie surround sound setup, and the system we listened to was a little sharp in the high end, but it's certainly a unique and appealing offering from Mitsu to the everyman TV watcher. The TV itself is CableCard ready, can support sound over HDMI and PCM inputs, and offers Mitsu's 120Hz film dejuddering -- that rather awkwardly makes your favorite films look like they were shot by a TV news crew. The 46-inch and 52-inch LCDs will sell for $3,299 and $3,699, respectively.

Gallery: Mitsubishi's new iSP 149 series LCDs have it all in one place

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ASUS' bigger, badder Eee PC 904 and 905 in the chute?

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/323080869/

Filed under: Laptops

The price isn't the only thing swelling on ASUS' Eee PC. According to DigiTimes' proven ASUS sources, bigger Eee PC 904 and 905 models are cueing up for release. In a return to the Eee PC salad days of the big bezel, the new models will slot the same 8.9-inch display found in the 901 into a larger, Eee PC 1000-esque chassis with proportionally larger keyboard. Decisions about battery and storage have not yet been finalized although the new models would be priced similar to the 900 and 901 which they would ultimately replace.

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Sunday, June 29, 2008

Matrox Reappears With Multi-Display Graphics Card Line For Professional Apps [Graphics Cards]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/322825462/matrox-reappears-with-multi+display-graphics-card-line-for-professional-apps

In the battle for video card domination, dark horse Matrox never seemed to even come close to keeping up with Nvidia and ATI's crazy GPU arms race. But after fading almost completely from the gadgetsphere, the company has suddenly returned with the launch of five new graphics cards under its "M-Series" line. The M-Series targets the multi-display market and consists of two low-profile PCIe cards and three standard formate ATX PCIe cards.

The cards range from $259 for the M9120 PCIe x16, which has a single DVI-I output that uses a breakout cable to run two independent displays, to the $599 M9140 LP PCIe x16, which can power up to four 1920 x 1200 screens.

Judging from the pricing and features no regular person would need, it seems that Matrox has bypassed the home consumer market in favor of "professional" applications. That's probably a smart move, considering how even Intel is having trouble wrestling control of the market away from our two graphics chip overlords now. [The Inquirer via Crunch Gear]