Marvell says Armada chips will power new game platform

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/24/marvell-major-customer-launching-new-game-platform/

Marvell's been teasing potent little processors for over a year now, but we've yet to see the firm's Armada appear in anything we'd actually want... but co-founder Sehat Sutardja just let slip that Marvell silicon will power a genuine game console of some sort. "Approximately 15% of the sequential increase [in quarterly sales] was due to the initial production revenue from our ARMADA application processors, primarily as a result of a major customer preparing to launch a new gaming platform," he told investors in a conference call last week, which roughly translates to "We just sold a load of processors for a new game console, yo" if our business-speak is correct. While there's absolutely nothing connecting this transaction to Nintendo's 3DS (which was confirmed to have a Pica200 GPU), we honestly can't think of a single other game platform slated to launch anytime soon -- so don't be surprised if there's a quad-core Armada 600 under that variably-stereoscopic hood.

[Thanks, Roxanne]

Marvell says Armada chips will power new game platform originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WD intros HomePlug-compatible powerline networking package

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/24/wd-intros-homeplug-compatible-powerline-networking-package/

Western Digital's bread and butter is (and will likely remain) storage, but as we all know, all the storage in the world is useless if you can't access it. It only makes sense, then, that the company would get behind the HomePlug bandwagon for networking all your connected devices over your home's existing electrical power lines. The WD Livewire Powerline AV Network Kit includes two HomePlug AV adapters with four Ethernet ports each, boasting data transfer speeds up to 200 megabits per second. And it's HomePlug compatible, meaning your previous investments in the technology won't go to waste. Available now for $140. PR after the break.

Continue reading WD intros HomePlug-compatible powerline networking package

WD intros HomePlug-compatible powerline networking package originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sharp's e-reader ready to 'rival the iPad' by year's end, may have a 3D future

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/25/sharps-e-reader-ready-to-rival-the-ipad-by-years-end-may-ha/

Sharp is going to launch its brand new e-reader in Japan this fall with US retail availability to follow by the end of the year. Riveting stuff, isn't it? Well, the company's President Mikio Katayama does his best to spice things up by proposing this device will aim "to rival the iPad," and it may well sport a color LCD if earlier indications still hold true, but what's really got us hot under the collar is the potential for 3D down the line. Katayama claims to have witnessed great enthusiasm for 3D -- particularly when it comes to games -- and posits it as a likely future direction for this new ebook reader. Multifunctional devices are what people want, he says, and since Sharp already has a 3D smartphone in the pipeline and a glasses-free 3D tablet display in the lab, we can't see many technical hurdles to the realization of his vision. Let's just hope his depth perception is accurate when it comes to measuring the interest in three-dee.

Sharp's e-reader ready to 'rival the iPad' by year's end, may have a 3D future originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Aug 2010 03:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New study sheds light on painkilling system in brain

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news201882502.html

Repeatedly boosting brain levels of one natural painkiller soon shuts down the brain cell receptors that respond to it, so that the painkilling effect is lost, according to a surprising new study led by Scripps Research Institute and Virginia Commonwealth University scientists. The study has important implications for drug development.

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ImageGrab Is a Powerful Video Screenshot Tool [Downloads]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5620616/imagegrab-is-a-powerful-video-screenshot-tool

Windows: Grabbing stills from a video using a traditional screenshot tool is a tedious hit-or-miss affair. ImageGrab is feature-packed tool for grabbing single stills, a series at set intervals, or scripting your own parameters for custom grabs.

ImageGrab makes it easy to precisely snap a frame directly from the source video itself. You can automate the process by setting ImageGrab to grab frames at a user-specified interval and stamp the grabs with information like the name of the file and where in the original video the grab is from.

If the default settings and toggles aren't versatile enough for you, ImageGrab supports user scripting. We tested both the portable and stable release ImageGrab 4.2 as well as the non-portable and beta of ImageGrab 5.0. Although we were disappointed the beta wasn't portable it was significantly more stable on our Windows 7 test machine than the older 4.2 version.

ImageGrab is freeware, Windows only. Have a favorite tool for snagging stills from a video? Let's hear about it in the comments.

ImageGrab [via Ghacks]

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