Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

MSI converges everything with 24-inch 3D HD Wind Top all-in-one

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/23/msi-converges-everything-with-24-inch-3d-hd-all-in-one-wind-top/

Now here's a spec sheet maven's dream: MSI has just announced its new Wind Top all-in-ones, and the top model brings every modern spec you can think of. Full HD resolution, 3D capabilities with 120Hz refresh rates, Intel processors up to Core i7, and even multitouch adorn its list of goodies. The new flagships will be known as the Wind Top AE2420 in the 24-incher category and AE2280 in the 22-inch class. They're joined by a selection of high-efficiency machines, such as the AP1920 and AE1920, which promise to cut down the electricity bills for "environmentally-minded business users." That's still hardly scratching the surface, though, as MSI is really preparing a small army of AIOs to display at CeBIT, and you can bet the house we'll be there to touch and ogle at their latest and greatest.

MSI converges everything with 24-inch 3D HD Wind Top all-in-one originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SanDisk ships 60GB / 120GB G3 SSD to North America and Europe

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/23/sandisk-ships-60gb-120gb-g3-ssd-to-north-america-and-europe/

Lookin' to get your flash on, are you? Fret not, as SanDisk has just announced that its 60GB and 120GB G3 solid state drives are headed out to retailers as we speak. Both North America and Europe are getting served simultaneously, with the drives promising sequential performance of up to 220MB/sec on the read side and up to 120MB/sec on the write side. You'll also be thrilled to know that the G3 range supports the newest Windows 7 TRIM feature, which enables the drive to "continuously manage its resources and retain optimized performance throughout its lifespan." Those anxious to supplant their existing 2.5-inch HDD can snag one now from the web for $229.99 (60GB) / $399.99 (120GB), while those who prefer ye old B&M sales will have to wait a few weeks still.

SanDisk ships 60GB / 120GB G3 SSD to North America and Europe originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LIDAR-equipped robot maps dangerous areas in 3D so you don't have to

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/23/lidar-equipped-robot-maps-dangerous-areas-in-3d-so-you-dont-hav/

Looks like the kids at MIT might have a little competition for their LIDAR-equipped 3D mapping drone. Researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology have teamed up with the University of Missouri-Columbia for a prototype robot that uses light detection and ranging (similar to RADAR, but with lasers) to map areas and send the 3D data to a nearby laptop. The technology not only provides detailed info on floor plans and physical structures (such as possible structural damage) but it can also "see" people inside a space. There are many possible applications for this, from spotting terrorists hiding in caves to seeing if your new internet girlfriend really looks like her profile pic, or -- and this is especially important in the modern era -- seeing if your new internet girlfriend is actually a terrorist (we wondered why she wanted that first meeting to take place in a cave). "Once you have the images, you can zoom in on objects and look at things from different angles," says Dr. Norbert Maerz, associate professor of geological engineering at Missouri S&T -- an ability that we wish we had while browsing PlentyofFish.com.

LIDAR-equipped robot maps dangerous areas in 3D so you don't have to originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Interesting - @brandweek CPG Brands Top Most Trusted List - http://bit.ly/cGIW5a

The Inevitable - @adage - Most TV -- Broadcast or Cable -- Saw Ad Revenue Fall Last Year - http://bit.ly/cB5tWo

LocalWineEvents Indexes Wine Tasting Tours and Dinners [Wine]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/bZFOx-WXfc0/localwineevents-indexes-wine-tasting-tours-and-dinners

If you're looking for a place to taste a variety of wines and even wine and food pairings, you'll want to check out LocalWineEvents to find local wine tasting events and meals.

Unless you're on the mailing lists of the companies and vineyards that put on wine tasting events and meals, you're essentially out of the loop when it comes to finding out about them. LocalWineEvents indexes tasting events by state and city and provides an overview of the event including the cost—whether a flat fee, a per ounce fee, etc.—as well as the menu for the event and whether or not food will be served. In addition each entry has contact details in the form of a web site, phone number, and/or address.

You can browse listings in a variety of ways searching—by events at a location you enjoy visiting or put on by a particular company whose events you have enjoyed. Alternately you can hit up the local calendar and browse by day to see what's going on during the time you have available.

LocalWineEvents is free and requires no signup to use, you contact and pay the event host directly. Have a favorite service for finding out about local food and drink-related events? Let's hear about it in the comments.

LocalWineEvents [via TechCrunch]

BetterMe Helps You Give and Receive Honest Feedback Without the Awkwardness [Advice]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/gSoDS8CP2Hk/betterme-helps-you-give-and-receive-honest-feedback-without-the-awkwardness

It can be awkward asking for honest feedback from the people around you, but knowing how others perceive us is important to self improvement. New service BetterMe helps you solicit advice from others without putting them on the spot.

If you're wondering, for instance, if you talk too much during meetings, BetterMe can help you find out without cornering a co-worker to ask. Just sign up for a free account, then send an email to your colleagues via the service asking how you come across in meetings. They can respond to you anonymously and honestly, no hard feelings. Log in to your account to see responses and get feedback.

BetterMe can also be a tactful way to handle sharing feedback with others. Is the entire office annoyed at the team member who yaps away loudly on her cell phone all day? Use BetterMe to send a gentle—and anonymous—email to call her attention to the issue. Conversely, you can also use the site to send a verbal pat on the back to someone who's done a great job and deserves some praise.

Sure, there's the possibility that someone will misuse the service to deliberately hurt someone's feelings, but we think the premise of BetterMe is a great one. Many of us would love to get an honest opinion on everything from personality quirks to a new haircut, but don't want to corner our friends. BetterMe gives us a great way to ask others to help us improve without making them feel uncomfortable. Keep in mind that there's still a time and place for a good face-to-face, and in many instances confronting someone is actually important. For the other times, BetterMe is an interesting option.

BetterMe [via MakeUseOf]

Unofficial Better Gmail for Chrome Bends Gmail to Your Will [Downloads]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/lmAQD5K52oQ/unofficial-better-gmail-for-chrome-bends-gmail-to-your-will

Chrome: We love Gina's Better Gmail Firefox extension, a bundle of user scripts that improves the Gmail experience. Now that Google's beefed up support for Chrome extensions, reader Dimitar Gruev has taken a shot at bringing an unofficial Better Gmail to Chrome.

Almost a year ago our own How-To Geek put together a version of Better Gmail for Chrome, but that was way back when Chrome didn't even have extensions (his were all bundled into a single user script). This new Chrome extension is an unofficial Better Gmail for Chrome that was inspired by Gina's Firefox extension and our earlier Better Gmail for Chrome bag o'scripts.

Once installed, access Better Gmail's options by clicking the wrench -> Extensions -> Better Gmail Options. Tick the boxes of the features you want activated and you're good to go. You can choose to hide little used fields like "Invite Friends," remove ads, show the number of unread emails in the favicon, and more.

Gruev says future versions of Better Gmail will hide spam count, move to next message on delete or archive, and include support for POP3 email. A big round of applause goes to Gruev for putting this together. What kinds of features do you hope for in future versions of Better Gmail? Share your ideas in the comments.

Better Gmail for Chrome [Chrome Extensions Gallery]

MIT Teaches Computers to Turn Sloppy Sketches Into Search Queries [Tablets]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/j-6phC4CjlU/mit-teaches-computers-to-turn-sloppy-sketches-into-search-queries

The compound sketched here is acetaminophen. Most wouldn't know that offhand and might struggle through messy Google searches in an attempt to find out. But what if our computers understood the sketch and we just had to voice our question?

Some folks at MIT figured out a way to turn what sounds like a sci-fi fantasy setup into reality. You grab a tablet computer, a smart whiteboard, or another device which allows for stylus-based input and draw out a molecule, a compound, or a circuit design. Then you ask your computer whether such an object exists anywhere in a database or on the Internet and if so, to identify it. Your trusty pal will not only be able to interpret your sloppy sketch and convert it into a query, but it will also be able to adjust to additional questions or demands for modification—even if you're simply pointing at the screen. What if you added an element here? What if this wasn't here? Is there something similar?

There's still plenty of work left to be done on this software—currently chemistry is its main topic—but we should soon see it developed further and adapted to other fields such as electrical engineering. I just can't wait for the day when I can doodle instead of trying to figure out how to Google search for "that thing with four triangles and a hexagon-like thingie on the side with the squiggly tail." [PopSci]

Inside Google's Secret Search Algorithm [Google]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/zzkIcilnJp4/inside-googles-secret-search-algorithm

Wired's Steven Levy takes us inside the "algorithm that rules the web"—Google's search algorithm, of course—and if you use Google, it's kind of a must-read. PageRank? That's so 1997.

It's known that Google constantly updates the algorithm, with 550 improvements this year—to deliver smarter results and weed out the crap—but there are a few major updates in its history that have significantly altered Google's search, distilled in a helpful chart in the Wired piece. For instance, in 2001, they completely rewrote the algorithm; in 2003, they added local connectivity analysis; in 2005, results got personal; and most recently, they've added in real-time search for Twitter and blog posts.

The sum of everything Google's worked on—the quest to understand what you mean, not what you say—can be boiled down to this:

This is the hard-won realization from inside the Google search engine, culled from the data generated by billions of searches: a rock is a rock. It's also a stone, and it could be a boulder. Spell it "rokc" and it's still a rock. But put "little" in front of it and it's the capital of Arkansas. Which is not an ark. Unless Noah is around. "The holy grail of search is to understand what the user wants," Singhal says. "Then you are not matching words; you are actually trying to match meaning."

Oh, and by the way, you're a guinea pig every time you search for something, if you hadn't guessed as much already. Google engineer Patrick Riley tells Levy, "On most Google queries, you're actually in multiple control or experimental groups simultaneously." It lets them constantly experiment on a smaller scale—even if they're only conducting a particular experiment on .001 percent of queries, that's a lot of data.

Be sure to check out the whole piece, it's ridiculously fascinating, and borders on self-knowledge, given how much we all use Google (sorry, Bing). [Wired, Sweet graphic by Wired's Mauricio Alejo]

10.1-inch ThinkPad X100e surfaces with Atom N450 processor

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/22/10-1-inch-thinkpad-x100e-surfaces-with-atom-n450-processor/

Well, here's a bit of an interesting development. While we've been seeing Lenovo's ThinkPad X100e out and about for a while now, it's always been with an AMD Neo processor and an 11.6-inch 1,366 x 768 display. According to a spec list that recently turned up on Lenovo's own site, however, it looks like the company may also have another version of the laptop in store that's even more netbook-like. That one not only includes a lower-res, 10.1-inch screen, but an Atom N450 processor as well -- something that had been rumored to be headed to Lenovo netbooks as far back as December. Unfortunately, there's no indication of pricing or availability, although it does seem a bit late in the game for this to simply be a slip-up of some sort.

10.1-inch ThinkPad X100e surfaces with Atom N450 processor originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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DigitalRise X9 multitouch tablet reviewed, overpriced (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/22/digitalrise-x9-multitouch-tablet-reviewed-overpriced-video/

Hey, what's this? That DigitalRise X9 tablet we've heard to much about has been reviewed -- on video, to boot! The Atom-packing, 2GB slate doesn't look nearly as iPad-esque as we'd been led to believe from previous photos, and the much-ballyhooed multi-touch functionality doesn't seem quite as snappy as we'd like, but who knows? Maybe you've got $800 in your pockets and an urge to do some stylus-based computing: hit the source link to get started. As for the rest of us, I'm sure we'll be satisfied watching the thing in action after the break.

Continue reading DigitalRise X9 multitouch tablet reviewed, overpriced (video)

DigitalRise X9 multitouch tablet reviewed, overpriced (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Casio's GPS-equipped EX-10HG camera gets a price, launch date

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/22/casios-gps-equipped-ex-10hg-camera-gets-a-price-launch-date/

Last we saw Casio's GPS-equipped EX-10HG it was still in prototype form at CES, but the company was back with it again at PMA this week, and thankfully was a bit more talkative this time. The big news is that the camera will be available in October of this year, and will cost "around $400." That will get you a 12.1-megapixel camera that not only does geotagging of photos (with some accelerometer-based assistance when a GPS signal isn't available), but can even double as a navigation system in a pinch -- although it's still not exactly clear how fully functional that aspect of the camera will be.

Casio's GPS-equipped EX-10HG camera gets a price, launch date originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Seagate ships 3.5-inch 2TB 6Gbps Constellation ES hard drive

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/22/seagate-ships-3-5-inch-2tb-6gbps-constellation-es-hard-drive/

Seagate's no stranger to the world of SATA 6Gbps, and if you really, really needed another option, here you go. The aforesaid company has just shipped what it calls the industry's first 2TB 6Gbps SAS enterprise drive, complete with a 7200RPM spindle speed and some sort of "best-in-class" reliability. And given the kind of thing that Seagate's own CEO recommends you use its drives for, you can be certain that you'll need that. Mum's the word on pricing, but 500GB and 1TB versions are also out there for those with less to archive.

Seagate ships 3.5-inch 2TB 6Gbps Constellation ES hard drive originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung PMA roundup: hands on HMX-U20, eyes on AQ100 and SL605

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/22/samsung-pma-roundup-hands-on-hmx-u20-eyes-on-aq100-and-sl605/

Samsung's curvaceous HMX-U20 was on display at PMA, but unfortunately one of its key selling points -- the optical 3x zoom -- was not working on the floor model.The picture itself was hard to see from the small LCD, so for now we're just gonna comment on the shape, which though unique and purported to be more ergonomic, to us seems like it'd be a pain in the pockets (of course, they didn't let us pocket it to find out, but we digress...). Also at the show were the waterproof AQ100 and scratch-resistant SL605, but unlike Sony's frosty setup, these weren't touchable. Don't let that stop you from enjoying the pictures below -- and don't forget our earlier hands-on impressions of the TL350 and TL500!

Gallery: Samsung HMX-U20 hands-on

Gallery: Samsung AQ100 and SL605 eyes-on

Samsung PMA roundup: hands on HMX-U20, eyes on AQ100 and SL605 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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