Monday, May 18, 2009

ColorRotate Creates Design Color Palettes [Design]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/IBPM1RuibKU/colorrotate-creates-design-color-palettes

Need a new color palette for your next design project? ColorRotate is a color palette generator with a heavy dose of eye candy and easy-to-use controls.

The default setup for ColorRotate is a 3D diamond shape, which you use to set the tint, hue, and the blending for your palette. If you prefer a more traditional appearance, you can switch it over to a series of sliders. You can create a completely new palette or browse through popular user-created palettes, or modify them. If you create an account, you can save your palettes, but even without an account you can export palettes in .ACT format, which allows for import into Adobe products.

Palettes can be created in a variety of color schemes including RGB, CMYK, and LAB. For another interesting way to generate a color palette, check out Color Palette Generator which extracts a color palette from an image.



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Why Should I Want This MID

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/yankodesign/~3/cfRUS87jROo/

Really, why would I want this MID (Mobile Internet Device) over the current iPhone I use? Lord! I know you're up to your neck with Apple banging, so for a change let's compare it to an LG Arena, Samsung I7500 or even BlackBerry Storm 2. Where does this MID score over the rest of these Internet efficient phones? Two places: Prime Real Estate i.e. a three screen setup that opens to 210 x 210 mm and an Integrated Stand.

On the flip side, this MID is merely a concept, but is pompous enough to include a clip-like anti-theft mechanism! I'm not going to get into the tech-specs, coz any dandy designer can pump out just about anything they like these days. So my focus stays on the screen.

How important is the screen of a mobile phone anyways. Plenty! Those who chanced on the LG Arena etc. will have to admit, that when you are using a device that small for net browsing, you wished for that moment the screen was a bit larger. Unfortunately I do need to quote Apple here, but damn; the panning in and out on the iPhone, sure compensates for not having a large computer screen handy. So yeah, a mobile device with a three tier screen layout giving easy keyboard access to fat fingers really scores, even if it's a concept!

Designer: Petr KubĂ­k

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Second-Tier FiOS Providers Undercut Verizon, Are Verizon [FiOS]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/h-HdOwETaS0/second+tier-fios-providers-undercut-verizon-are-verizon

Verizon FiOS, which can pipe the internet into your home at 50mbps, is something like bliss. It's also hideously expensive. Luckily, smaller ISPs are offering the same service for less. The exact same service.

Midsize ISP DSLExtreme has announced that it will be offering a 50mbps service in 17 states at an introductory rate of $100/mo. This will climb to $105 after the first year, but still undercuts Verizon's standard price (in most markets) of $145/mo. The weird thing? DSLExtreme is beating Verizon's prices on Verizon's own service. The ISP has become a FiOS wholesaler, meaning that DSLExtreme's service operates on their fiber, through their network.

That makes it all the more odd that they can undercut a giant like Verizon, but they're doing it anyway. Voodoo! Economics! [Ars Technica]



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Killer Xeno Pro Network Card Lightning Review [Lightning Review]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/VA7Kb_RbdfM/killer-xeno-pro-network-card-lightning-review

A specialized networking card—with blingtastic LIGHTS—designed to murder lag for gamers, the $130 Killer Xeno Pro practically screams "snake oil." It's not quite.

If you've got a crappy ISP, obviously, a special thingamajig on your end won't help you—it can't fix the whole internet, and it doesn't claim to. What it claims is that network traffic running through it bypasses the Windows network stack, so it's a more direct connection to your game, and less load on your CPU, resulting in less lag and theoretically a higher framerate. Different from the older Killer cards, this also has a built-in voice processor to offload chat. You can customize network and bandwidth priority, app by app—giving your games the highest priority, obvs—so theoretically you can leave your torrents running and game normally.

Did it work? No and yes. I really didn't notice any difference in my framerates or latency playing Team Fortress 2. I keep the game's netgraph feature running by default, and I always play on the same server, so I have a pretty solid grip on what's typical of my machine in terms of framerate and latency. Playing 10 minutes on my standard connection and then switching immediately to the Killer Xeno for 10 minutes, and repeating this sequence three times, it was about the same every time—if it improved my connection or framerate, I couldn't taste it.

It does do a pretty decent job as a local QoS (quality of service) client. I ran a bunch of torrents and my game played perfectly okay, just like if I wasn't downl! oading a whole bunch of crap. However, if you've got a decent router, you could do the same thing if you know what you're doing. And really, router-level QoS is the only way to deal with your roommate's crazy torrent habits—the Killer Xeno Pro can't do anything about what the other people on your network are doing, so even then, its application is fairly limited.

Is it worth $130? If your computer's crappy enough, getting back that slight amount of overhead used by the Windows network stack and your usual chat client could make a difference. And if you can't figure out QoS, its software is pretty easy to use. But if your computer's that crappy, why are you spending $130 on a network card? [Killer Xeno Pro]



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AMD to flood Computex with mainstream Tigris laptops, reveal Danube?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/18/amd-to-flood-computex-with-tigris-notebooks-reveal-danube/

Besides being overwhelmed by Intel's CULV thin-and-lights at Computex, it looks like AMD will use the event to punish Engadget editors and readers with the launch of its Tigris platform. Since you've most likely supplanted any memory of Tigris with something useful, let us remind you that Tigris is AMD's mainstream laptop platform built around a dual-core 45-nm Caspian processor supporting 800MHz DDR2 memory and ATI M9x series graphics. The Commercial Times is also reporting that Computex might even bring a possible unveiling of AMD's next-generation Danube laptop platform featuring a quad-core Champlain processor with support for DDR3 memory. Unfortunately, Champlain won't be available for consumers until 2010 -- 2009 is all about Tigris laptops and the Athlon Neo thin-and-lights for AMD. Where's the AMD netbook? Oh they ceded that market to Intel a long time ago; a bad move now that Atom-based netbooks are plundering mainstream laptop marketshare that AMD was betting on with Tigris.

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AMD to flood Computex with mainstream Tigris laptops, reveal Danube? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 May 2009 06:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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