Asus Continues USB 3.0 Onslaught With a Cheap PCI-E Card [USB]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/LHbPvjJhnlA/asus-continues-usb-30-onslaught-with-a-cheap-pci+e-card

Man, Asus is really going nuts with USB 3.0 gear this week. First a 3.0 compatible motherboard, now this SuperSpeed ready PCI-E card that won't even break the bank at $30.

Unfortunately, the guys at Maximum PC didn't have any USB 3.0 devices to run the card through it's paces. All we know is that Windows 7 boots fine while once it's installed, and it gets similar USB 2.0 transfer rates to other controllers out there.

That said, we all know that USB 3.0 is going to be blazing. As long as the card performs anywhere near as fast as we expect from USB 3.0, the fact that it'll be out "soon" and won't cost much is good enough for me. [Maximum PC via CrunchGear]

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USB 3.0 and SATA 6G put to good use: benchmarks

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/31/usb-3-0-and-sata-6g-put-to-good-use-benchmarks/

The fine folks at both HotHardware and PC Perspective have run the new ASUS P7P55D-E Premium motherboard through its paces, which has the particular distinction of handling both USB 3.0 and the up-and-coming SATA 6G through controllers by NEC and Marvell, respectively. Lucky for us, both sites' tests came to similar conclusions. The Seagate Barracuda XT SATA 6G drive has almost zero improvement over SATA 3G, other than in some burst speeds due to the fancy cache on the 6G -- the bottleneck here is the drive, not the controller. Meanwhile, USB 3.0 has speeds that are roughly 5 to 6 times faster than USB 2.0 with the same drive, a huge win for fans of external storage the world over. Perhaps even better news is that an ASUS US36 controller card with USB 3.0 and SATA 6G support is a mere $30, so this stuff is already basically within reach to the average desktop user.

Read - HotHardware
Read - PC Perspective

Filed under: Desktops, Peripherals, Storage

USB 3.0 and SATA 6G put to good use: benchmarks originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 01:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ideum's 100-inch MT-50 multitouch table supports 50 simultaneous touch points (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/31/ideums-100-inch-mt-50-multitouch-table-supports-50-simultaneous/

Surface? What Surface? Ideum, which popped out a rather gigantic MT2 multitouch table earlier this year, is now introducing another model that makes that fellow look like child's play. The 100-inch MT-50 is an outright beast, boasting 86 viewable inches, a 16 x 5 aspect ratio and a stunning 2,304 x 800 resolution. It was engineered for the Space Chase Gallery at the Adventure Science Center, which is one of several high-tech exhibits the company has deployed at the Nashville, TN-based science center. The table itself can support over 50 simultaneous touch points, and while the Flash-based software is obviously tailored for learning applications, there's nothing stopping this thing from becoming the world's next great arcade fixture. Hop on past the break for a drool-worthy vid.

Gallery: Ideum's 100-inch MT-50 multitouch table supports 50 simultaneous touch points (video)

Continue reading Ideum's 100-inch MT-50 multitouch table supports 50 simultaneous touch points (video)

Filed under: Displays, Science

Ideum's 100-inch MT-50 multitouch table supports 50 simultaneous touch points (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 08:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CHOW Launches Foodie-Powered Restaurant Guide [Restaurants]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/SL8RIM-3mak/chow-launches-foodie+powered-restaurant-guide

Yelp is fine and good when you want passionate/brutal rants (and, occasionally, raves) about any and every store. For a more focused, and likely refined, local search, try long-standing foodie site CHOW's new restaurant guide.

CHOW, the site hosting the forums better known as Chowhound, pulls reviews and comments from its deep forum archives and articles to provide lists of the best-reviewed grub around, as well as fairly sophisticated category filtering. Tastes are personal, of course, but where CHOW might really come in handy is finding a certain cuisine in a particular city. "Where can I find good X food in Y?" is a fairly common query on the Chowhound forums, and getting those questions and answers sorted in a search is a helpful thing indeed.

Best of all, CHOW's launched their list with a fairly big list of cities, rather than the New York/San Francisco start-ups we're so used to seeing. Give it a go in your own neck of the woods, and tell us all how it fared in the comments.

Restaurants Regions - CHOW [via The Food Section]

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ColorJive Helps Visualize Room Colors Before Painting [Home Improvement]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/25CTNtEicUE/colorjive-helps-visualize-room-colors-before-painting

You want to re-paint a room, but you're not sure if the color will look right—holding up a little color swatch only goes so far. ColorJive helps you paint the entire room in virtual space.

Upload a picture of your room—an evenly lit photo works best—and begin applying colors from the available palette. You can use the enormous palette from COLOURLovers to access a nearly infinite color palette, though you may have a little trouble replicating it at your local home improvement store. If that's the case, you can select from the official palettes of Benjamin Moore and Sherman Williams.

The free account limits you to three colors per picture, and you're limited to saving one picture, although you can have three versions of it. The premium account is $15 per year and you can save up to 10 photos, 7 different versions of each, and use up to 5 colors per image—for those of you wanting to turn your room into a modernist painting.

Have your own favorite tool for checking colors or planning new home projects? Let's hear about it in the comments.

ColorJive [via MakeUseOf]

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