Currawong writes "At AppleTalk Australia, one of our members, unable to upgrade his production mirrored-drive-door G4 to a G5 due to software & hardware incompatibility, has instead has both over-clocked and made significant cooling modifications to his machine. He replaced most of the fans, including adding 4 ultra-quiet Verax fans, so the machine would run quieter, as well as cooler, in his studio. For those interested in how he over-clocked his machine, we've also posted his guide on how to do it."

~*77*~ writes "TV tuners are gaining popularity for simple TV watching on your home PC, as well providing capturing capabilities intended to rival Tivo style devices. BigBruin.Com has new reviews taking a look at two TV tuners in the $50 range... An internal, PCI device from Leadtek... And an external, USB 2.0 device from Transcend... Head to head testing decide whether either is worth your time or money."

JMZorko writes "Apple has extended the repair program to widen the serial # range yet again for iBooks experiencing the dreaded, dreaded (and did I say dreaded?) video problems. It now includes serial #s up to the UV342 range (which, sadly, mine is in .. here I thought I finally got one that would stay with me for awhile, sigh)."

MBR writes "MBReview has taken a quick look at Intel's new high-end LGA775 processors, the 3.40GHz Extreme Edition, and the 3.60GHz 'E,' now known as the 560. They've covered some of the questions about pin frailty of the new LGA socket, as well as cooling issues that might arise from these new processors." ("LGA" stands for Land Grid Array, which moves pins from the processor to the socket it sits in.) Update: 06/19 20:50 GMT by T : Reader Chi-Energy points out that besides the new processor packaging, Intel has also just released its i925X and i915 chipsets, PCI Express and DDR2 DRAM for the desktop, and links to this review showcase with benchmarks at HotHardware.

BGT writes "Gmail has for sure caused a furor by offering announcing 1 GB of space for free. But they are still in the beta stage and you cannot sign up for an account yet. Now India-based Rediff claims to be the first to actually start offering 1GB of space for free, with their Rediffmail service." (Spymac mail users might disagree with the "first free gig" claim.) Signing up for a rediffmail account was straightforward; the site has an intelligent add-a-contact interface when you send email to a new address, but lacks the searchability and multiple-label capability of gmail.

VL writes "Over the next several days, you'll be hearing a lot about Intel's significant upgrade to the Pentium 4 platform. Soon enough, that brand new Canterwood board you have will be yesterday's news as two new words will be on the lips of all enthusiasts... Grantsdale and Alderwood."

Alien54 writes "Small swiss company RoundShot has released an interesting new item, the 360 internet Livecam. The Livecam is a digital 360 camera, capable of 70 megapixels. The Swiss company claims the Roundshot Livecam uses a high-resolution digicam designed for pro photography, as well as slit-scan technology, which apparently allows for 'seamless panoramas' of up to 360 degrees. The cam is also capable of a high zoom factor, zooming up to 20x. Apparently, the cam has 'far-reaching" applications, most importantly in tourism, weather stations, corporate websites, airports, sports clubs, construction sites and private residences.'"

Diety_in_A_Minor asks: "How would one set up a wireless network on a campus such that restrictions can occur by classroom? My back of the napkin solution would be to relate MAC addresses to class schedules, and have the DHCP server allow access to student-registered MAC addresses only during specific times. Although possible, this solution requires tremendous maintenance. What other solutions are there? One class in a building will require restrictions, while both classrooms adjacent to it need open access."

not-so Anonymous Anonymous Coward asks: "A few years ago, while finishing our basement, we wired each room of our house with two CAT-5 and two RG-6 cables. All of the cables were run to a central place in the basement, with the intent of building a "cabinet" to house and better organize the cables. Well, it is time. As you can see from the pictures, it is a jumbled morass of spaghetti. So I'd like to get ideas from the Slashdot crowd as to how to finally organize this mess, build the cabinet, etc., etc. No doubt there are many other readers in a similar situation, wanting ideas for organizing all the communications/network cables in their home."

prostoalex writes "Spokane International Airport is getting wireless connectivity just before the city will expand WiFi coverage to 100 blocks in Spokane downtown. It will be the largest urban Wi-Fi zone in the United States, said Bob Conley, a founder of Vivato, the company that made the antennas for both installations. Vivato's press release mentions the service will be useful not only to casual downloaders. The downtown 'Hot Zone' will improve city services by facilitating intelligent policing, quicker fire and rescue response, and will support e-government initiatives and a more productive mobile workforce."

An anonymous reader asks: "I have a client that needs a server with quite a bit of storage, reasonable level of reliability and redundancy and all for as cheap as possible. In other words they need a server with a RAID array using a number or large hard drives. Since SCSI is still more expensive than ATA (or SATA), I'm looking to using either an ATA or a SATA RAID controller from Promise Technologies. While I had initially was planning on using SATA drives, I have read some material recently to make me rethink that decision and stick with ATA drives. What kind of experiences (good and bad) have people had with SATA drives as compared to ATA drives, especially in a server type environment?"

generic-man writes "According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Carnegie Mellon University has announced this year's inductees for the Robot Hall of Fame. On October 11, the Hall welcomes Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet, Astroboy, C3PO, Honda's ASIMO, and a 'pioneering mobile robot called Shakey.' They join R2D2. the Mars Pathfinder rover, and other robots from the class of 2003."

JamesD_UK writes "The BBC is running an article about a surfboard developed by Intel with an embedded, solar powered, wifi capable, laptop with web cam attached. It features a 1.7GHz processor and a 80GB hard drive. The camera is able to create videos and transmit them through an access point located on the beach. Jools Matthews of Gulfstream surfboards designed the board itself and pro surfer Duncan Scot helped with the design of the board to make sure that the board still performed well with the extra weight. The board debuts at the Gold Coast Ocean Festival 2004 from 18 to 20 June at Croyde beach in North Devon."

tbray writes "Dave Edmondson wanted to play MP3's in his car; his solution was perhaps a bit over the top. But then, why wouldn't you want an E450 in your trunk? Check the pix."

Anonymous Writer writes "EmperorLinux is distributing the Sharp Actius RD3D autostereo laptop with Linux pre-installed, dubbing it the 'Molecule'. Almost all the hardware features can be utilised under Linux; the autostereo 3D display (most importantly), CD-RW/DVD-RW combo drive, Ethernet port, audio hardware, PC Card slot, 4 USB 2.0 ports, FireWire port, Sony Memory Stick slot, Compact Flash slot, SD slot, and internal floppy dive. The only built-in feature unsupported is the internal 56 Kbps modem, however a supported 56 kbps PC Card modem is available as well as a WiFi PC Card."

A reader writes: "In the June (paper) issue of Scientific American, there is a mini-article descibing the energy being wasted by power supplies in computers. Those things are only 60-70% efficient in converting line-voltage AC to low-voltage DC, and there are so many millions of them out there that a modest efficiency increase could trim $1billion or more from the annual energy costs of the USA. Well, various governmental agencies are seeking to get improved power-supply efficiency into the marketplace. The central "clearinghouse" site is at efficientpowersupplies.org, and details of their contest are in this PDF."

to_kallon writes "As game devices, cellphones leave something to be desired. Most of the games found on them are rudimentary, with flat, cartoonish graphics and simple scenes. But that is going to change. Soon cellphone owners will be able to play games with realistic three-dimensional graphics rivaling those on PC's and game consoles."

An anonymous reader asks: "We are in the process of getting new laptops and I was wondering if anyone has used RFID for inventory control of them? Like many places laptops have had a way of going MIA. In an ideal world I would like to be able to get a 'real time' update of where the tags are located. I also would like to know when a RFID tag goes by a fixed location such as a door. What are people's experience both good and bad with RFID? Is this realistic? Where do I start? Had this been done with open-source?"

Dr.X asks: "It seems as users get bigger and better monitors and video cards, the standard for web resolution is slowly approaching 1024. There is a fairly in depth answer over at Google stating that we are likely to be safe at 800x600 but when will we hit 1024 as the standard. What's Slashdot's opinion?"

rueger asks: "Almost from Day One I've found the Palm desktop and handheld software to be sorely lacking. The Address Book only allows you to record one address, not one for home and one for work, and only lets you sort or search by name and company name, not by city for instance. The calendar won't let you link contact names to appointments which again seems an obvious missing feature. I've been looking for a software replacement that would add these features and more, and still sync with my Palm (well, Clie). Outlook is not a possibility for all of the usual reasons. What I've found is that there are some very nice PIMs out there, but most won't hot-sync. Those that do, like Time & Chaos, have no more functionality than the Palm software, and lack some features that I use. What are other handheld users turning to? Is there an Open Source replacement?"