An anonymous reader writes "This article by two developers at Intel provides an introduction and overview to Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), a standards-based technology for transparent network device connectivity that allows devices from various vendors to "just work" when plugged into the network, eliminating the administrative hassle typically associated with networking devices and making them programmable entities that can be controlled across the network. Intel has been a strong supporter of UPnP, and has released an open-source SDK for the development of Linux-based UPnP devices, hosted at SourceForge, which has been used in a number of UPnP products that will soon show up on the market."

prostoalex writes "Japan's major telecom provider NTT DoCoMo plans to use fuel cells for its 3G phones. 'Users of cellphones with a fuel-cell battery would carry a cigarette lighter-type fuel container to refuel the battery', says Reuters."

rkohutek writes "This whitepaper came out of my employer's desire to deploy high speed wireless internet to an underserved, mostly rural area. Although very easy to do on the ground level, I found it to not be a cake walk when it came to actually making it a viable network case -- in a "normally" deployed wireless network it is very easy to spoof an IP or MAC address and hop on the network and get free bandwidth. This is not acceptable and the acronym WARTA, Wireless Authentication, Routing, Traffic control, Accounting was thought up to cover the things that we needed to do. Read on for how we managed to make it work using Free Software: HTML or PDF." Update: 06/07 20:42 GMT by T : He sends along word of this mirror as well.

real gumby writes "Shades of E.E. "Doc" Smith! Thomas Gee has made an 802.11 antenna from an old floppy disk and a paper clip. He credits this site for the inspiration (featuring an antenna from an old ice cream spoon). As MacPlus comments: "It's stylish, effective, and doesn't detract from that `everything computing' ambience in your home."" Warning: French. Update: 06/07 18:27 GMT by T : (Not Fremch ;))

i4u writes "Pioneer develops a wearable computer jacket with organic film electro-luminescent (OEL) display. On the photo, Kayoko Tanaka, a PR staff member of Pioneer, tries on a prototype of a wearable computer, a jacket with a built-in display in its sleeve in Tokyo Thursday, June 5, 2003. Pioneer works on this technology since 2001. I also found an article in the Taipei Times from 2001. Back in 2001, the jacket looked a bit fake compared to the one shown today. When the computer display jacket hits the market is unclear."

David writes "Techware Labs recently had the opportunity to spend some time with Intel's new 800 MHz front-side bus (FSB) processor family. The review includes a overview of the features in this processor family, Intel's new Springdale and Canterwood chipsets, and an analysis of processor scaling within this family. The article focuses on how the relationship between CPU and video card affect various aspects of performance."

fixit! writes "This guy built his own CPU and VGA card. The site is in German. Here is the Babelfish translation of the site."

Ken@WearableTech writes "Checking the Court's Opinion site every day has paid off. Verizon's action on the FCC's number portability ruling was dismissed by the D.C. Court of Appeals. The court found that Verizon had waited far too long to bring the challenge and it also sided with the FCC's interpretation of the Law rather than Verizon. Barring any other action we may see number portability this year. Unfortunately, Verizon is already lobbying to have the law changed. But it was also nice to see Cingular was on the FCC's side of the case."

EconolineCrush writes "Futuremark and NVIDIA have been embroiled in a spat over various cheat/optimizations in 3DMark03 for several weeks now. Last week, the soap opera appeared to be over; Futuremark and NVIDIA released a joint statement in which Futuremark clarified that NVIDIA was optimizing its drivers for 3DMark03 rather than cheating. This story, however, appears to be far from over. Tech Report has uncovered a new series of optimizations in NVIDIA's Detonator FX drivers that affect image quality in even Futuremark's latest 3DMark03 build. What's more, if you rename the 3DMark03 executable, the optimizations disappear."

Sean Burford writes "The South Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (SAPAC) has unveiled its new AU$1.7 Million supercomputer named Hydra. It is an IBM 1350 Linux cluster with 126 compute nodes (xSeries 335), 1 head node (xSeries 335), 1 storage node (xSeries 345) and 1 managment node (xSeries 345). Hydra has a peak theoretical performance of 1.2 Teraflops, and has currently benchmarked at 682 Gigaflops. The current benchmark places it in the fastest three supercomputers in Australia and equivalent to the current number 80 in the world. The cluster has a total of 258 2.4Ghz Intel Xeon processors and 258GB of RAM. SAPAC expects to achieve a benchmark closer to 700 Gigaflops with further tuning. Hydra is hosted at The University Of Adelaide, who already host a 40 node cluster of Sun e420 machines."

An anonymous reader noted a review of the Samsung LTM295W. Quick excerpt "The contrast ratio of 600:1 is amazing, and takes the cake for being the highest Iâ(TM)ve seen to date here with the site. I was pleased to see a more than acceptable brightness level of 450cd/m2. The response time isnâ(TM)t anything to snuff at, standing at 22ms. For viewing angles everyone should be pleased with 170/170 (W&H). The last mention is the pixel pitch which sits at .4935(h) X .4935(w). The optimal resolution while in PC use is 1024 x 768 @ 75Hz although the maximum is 1280 x 768 @ 75Hz." Not the highest resolution, but still, quite impressive.

An anonymous reader writes "Being a long time TiVo-head and a talk radio junkie, I've been waiting for the first commercially available PVR for radio (PAR?). PogoProducts finally released just such a product, which they call 'Radio Your Way'. After seeing the announcement on Slashdot I quickly placed my order and have now been using it for about a week. The following is a quick rundown of the good and the bad."

Saxton writes "Just announced by hiptop.com's T-Mobile Rep, the awaited Color Sidekick will be available at CompUSA and 1-800-TMOBILE tomorrow. The thread is here. Now available is a data-only plan for $29.99, and you can now use any other T-Mobile price plan with the Sidekick. Anyone meeting me at CompUSA tomorrow morning?" Here is my Review of the Original device, which I still think is among the most useful portable electronic devices I've seen. I'm looking forward to testing out the new version to see what improvements have been made to an already great unit.

ssyladin writes "CNN is running an article about the future US army battle dress, code-named 'Scorpion'. It says that "..soldiers of 2011 will step into wired uniforms that incorporate all the equipment they need. The uniforms will monitor vital signs and plug them into a massive network of satellites, unmanned planes and robotic vehicles the military has planned." There will be sensors to monitor heartrate and blood-pressure, built-in tourniquets, a HUD to connect to GPS info, overhead maps, infrared and starlight cameras, and even the venerable M16 rifles are slated for an overhaul."

DavonZ writes "I have just released a small review/information on the Sharp Zaurus SL-C750 and the Dynamism English conversion. This is one sweet unit. You can check it out at nvmax.com."

dughutch asks: "My church currently uses a small business color laser printer (Minolta 2200), but alas, it can not handle the load of our growing congregation. We are looking at buying a higher volume color laser printer and I wanted to ask the Slashdot readers for any and all information on possible solutions relating to this question, including, but not limited to: cost, volume, repairs, and outsourcing?"

John Henning writes "When comparing CPUs, is it enough to look at MHz? Of course not; architecture matters, as do caches, memory systems, and compilers. Perhaps the best-known vendor-neutral CPU performance comparison is from SPEC, but SPEC plans to retire its current CPU benchmarks. If you would like to influence the benchmarks that will replace the current set, time is running out: SPEC Search Program entries are due by midnight, June 30."

liam193 writes "CBS MarketWatch is reporting that Palm has agreed to buy Handspring for $169M. If you were purchasing a PDA right now, would you choose Palm, Handspring, or avoid them entirely? I guess one of my concerns is that Handspring has some really cool features that Palm may want to keep. Any merger spells elimination of product lines. So what gets dropped? Palm which has probably a nicer "case" style or Handspring with its less desirable case but some features you don't find on Palms."

Nexum writes "MacCentral has the scoop on the entire iTunes Music Store being powered by Apple Xserves. Is this the first really big implementation of Apple's server hardware? I have to admit, that even being a big Apple fan I didn't think that the Xserve hardware would be powerful enough for the severe pounding that the iTMS must have been getting. This seems like great news for Apple being able to show that they can be a real serious force in the server arena, to which they are practically a total newcomer to." I wouldn't see any reason to doubt that hardware and Mac OS X software could handle iTMS. I mean, it's heavyweight hardware, and Unix software. Still, good to see actual examples of Xserve sites in the wild.

Ian Bell writes "HowardChui.com just posted a review on Microsoft's new Orange SPV which is the first commercially available Smartphone. The SPV stands for Sound, Pictures, Video and you can download games like Doom or listen to MP3s on the speaker or even chat to your friends using the built-in MSN Messenger. But for all that the SPV features, there is no Bluetooth support. It still looks like a killer phone and I like that it is smaller than the PocketPC phones currently on the market."