Great post by @glenngabe - Facebook or Just Face-Look? Are People 55+ Really Using Social Networking Websites? - http://ping.fm/I11Lp

Read More...

Summary only...

NVIDIA Tegra smartphone due from a "top five" manufacturer before 2010?

If you want to get HD in your handheld, NVIDIA's Tegra processor is the hot way to do it at the moment, and we've got reasonably concrete sounding rumors from disparate sources that a handset containing one of the chips is currently under development by a "top five" smartphone builder (we're guessing it's not Apple), and that it'll be out sometime before the end of the year, selling at T-Mobile and AT&T for just $199. The details of the device beyond that are scant, with Android being a possibility but Windows Mobile looking more likely, and a continued pledge of battery life of rated for "days and days" of mobile multimedia. We like the sound of that.

Read - NVIDIA Tegra phone due from "big five" firm
Read - Rumor: NVIDIA Tegra phones in Q409?

Filed under: Cellphones

NVIDIA Tegra smartphone due from a "top five" manufacturer before 2010? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Read More...

Summary only...

Micron's smaller NAND chips mean more, faster flash memory in the same old enclosures

Need a little more proof that Intel's got some fly SSDs about ready to roll? We have confirmation from Micron that it's working on new and improved 34nm chips in capacities of 8, 16, and 32Gb. These lovelies are 17 percent smaller than the previous rainbow colored flash delights, and are faster too, offering 200Mb/s transfer speeds and when combined into an SSD, able to keep up with SATA 6Gb/s transfers. This press release confirms the chips will show up in flash memory from Lexar, but we're guessing that official Intel announcement can't be far off now.

Filed under: Storage

Micron's smaller NAND chips mean more, faster flash memory in the same old enclosures originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalin! k&nb sp;| Email this | Comments

Read More...

Summary only...

Video: Mobinnova élan sporting a custom Tegra UI

Video: Mobinnova élan sporting a custom Tegra UI

Although we get irked by all the names assigned to netbooks, smartbooks, or in this case, viewbooks, we are still pretty excited about the élan's 1080p capabilities, and now the Netbook News crew are adding to our enthusiasm with a pair of videos investigating the machine's chassis and software. The UI they looked at is notable for being supplied by NVIDIA, and may therefore give a good indication of what future Tegra-based devices of all shapes, sizes and naming nomenclatures may look and feel like. We like the media-centric approach, which complements the platform's strengths well, and the chunky navigation icons avoid the pitfalls inherent in a screen of this size (8.9-inches). Click through for the vids, but be warned: super-glossy screens and pink laptop enclosures lay ahead.

Continue reading Video: Mobinnova élan sporting a custom Tegra UI

Filed under: Laptops

Video: Mobinnova élan sporting a custom Tegra UI originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Read More...

Summary only...

DARPA Hires Company to Build a Machine Reader That Scours the Web

The intelligence community is inputting data to the Web at an amazing rate. That mountain of data can be overwhelming to mere humans who are trying to read through pages and pages of information to pinpoint exactly what they're after. Mark Rutherford of CNET News reports that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has hired a tech company to develop a reader that will scour the Web and render certain information and knowledge into a form that is more easily digested and usable.

Sponsor

BBN Technologies was recently awarded a $29.7 million contract to develop a universal text engine that will capture intelligence and render it usable to humans as well as artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Officially called the Machine Reading Program, this new system will "automatically monitor the technological and political activities of nation states and transnational organizations - which could mean everything from al-Qaeda to the U.N." for the US military. BBN expects there may also be many useful civilian applications for its new reader. The company has also developed a real-time audio stream called the the BBN Broadcast Monitoring System that automatically transcribes real-time audio streams and translates them into English.

With this new project, BBN hopes to "develop techniques that can generalize across the linguistic structure and content of diverse documents to extract relations and axioms directly from text rather than relying on a knowledge engineer to encode such information." Here's how it will work:

Although it is not immediately clear when (or if) this new machine reader will be available to civilians, we are certainly looking forward to trying something like this out. Some paranoid types will believe this is nothing more than "the man" trying to spy on us, but those people need to realize everything we do online is being watched by someone. If you are really concerned about your online privacy you should secure important data on your computer, call your government leaders and try to change privacy laws, or stay off the Web altogether.

Researchers, medical professionals, consumers, students and others are all likely to benefit from such an application. Not having to spend unnecessary time searching through mountains of information on the Web for something relevant makes life easier and allows us to be more productive.

Discuss

Read More...

Summary only...