Portables (Games)

PSP Go With 16GB Memory and Bluetooth Leaked 190

Lyonhrt writes "Engadget and Gizmodo have spilled the beans on the news of the new UMD-less PSP Go that comes with 16GB of memory and a slide screen; also among the features will be built-in Bluetooth and an undisclosed memory slot. The console will be sold alongside the PSP-3000, but there are no details on price at this time. This is obviously Sony's answer to the lost battle with the PSP Homebrew and Hacking Communities, which have cost many thousands of lost sales with custom firmwares."
Desktops (Apple)

New Mac Clone Maker 'Quo' To Open Retail Store 296

bughunter writes "Cnet is reporting that Mac clone maker Quo Computer plans to open its first retail location, selling Mac clones, on June 1st. To start, Quo will offer three desktop systems: the Life Q, Pro Q, and Max Q. While details of the components are not yet available, founder Rashantha De Silva said they are looking at Apple's system configurations for guidance. Pricing has also not been finalized on the desktop machines, but the company is looking to start pricing at less than $900. While Quo is starting off with the desktop machines, De Silva said it is looking at offering an Apple TV-like media server and a smaller computer similar to the Mac Mini. He acknowledges that Quo will likely face opposition from Apple, much like Psystar. 'They probably will (sue us),' De Silva said. 'There are others doing this, but we have a different attitude. There are thousands of people in the "Hackintosh" market, but many of them are creating bad products. I don't think anyone wins in that environment.'"
Hardware Hacking

Developer Creates DIY 8-Bit CPU 187

MaizeMan writes "Not for the easily distracted: a Belmont software developer's hand-built CPU was featured in Wired recently. Starting with a $50 wire wrap board, Steve Chamberlin built his CPU with 1253 pieces of wire, each wire wrapped by hand at both ends. Chamberlin salvaged parts from '70s and '80s era computers, and the final result is an 8-bit processor with keyboard input, a USB connection, and VGA graphical output. More details are available on the developer's blog."
Hardware

Credit Crunch Squeezing Data Center Space 84

miller60 writes "Many companies have saved money by leasing wholesale 'plug and play' data center space instead of building their own facilities. But the credit crunch has slowed the construction of new data centers, and analysts say this will create a shortage of data center space in 2010 in key markets like northern Virginia and Silicon Valley where demand exceeds supply. The situation is already becoming critical for companies with large space requirements, as indicated by a flurry of leasing recently in northern Virginia, where the remaining space may be quickly absorbed by government stimulus projects."
Portables

OLPC Spinoff Pixel Qi Merges E-ink With LCD 78

MaryBethP writes with some tasty prototype photos and info about the new OLPC spin off "Pixel Qi" that is combining the best of e-ink and traditional LCD displays. "The screen can work as a traditional backlit LCD when indoors, can have that backlight disabled to be perfectly visible outdoors (shown after the break), and, as its pièce de résistance, can be toggled into an energy-efficient 'epaper' mode. How exactly the company is fitting these seemingly disparate slices of technology into a single 10.1-inch screen is something of a mystery, but we're guessing much will be answered next week ahead of a planned product launch by the end of the year. Color us intrigued."
Graphics

ASUS Designs Monster Dual-GTX285 4GB Graphics Card 212

suraj.sun writes to mention that ASUS has just designed their own monster graphics card based on the GeForce GTX 295. While the card retains the GeForce GTX 295 name, same device ID, and remains compatible with existing NVIDIA drivers, ASUS has made a couple of modifications to call its own. "the company used two G200-350-B3 graphics processors, the same ones that make the GeForce GTX 285. The GPUs have all the 240 shader processors enabled, and also have the complete 512-bit GDDR3 memory interface enabled. This dual-PCB monstrosity holds 32 memory chips, and 4 GB of total memory (each GPU accesses 2 GB of it). Apart from these, each GPU system uses the same exact clock speeds as the GeForce GTX 285: 648/1476/2400 MHz (core/shader/memory)."
Communications

Palm Pre To Sync Seamlessly With iTunes 178

Wired is reporting that Palm's new handheld device, the Pre, will be able to sync automagically with Apple's iTunes. Thanks to a team of ex-Apple engineers the Pre will sync everything but iPhone applications and some of the older Fairplay DRM music. "It does it by faking out iTunes, making the jukebox software think that it is connected to a real iPod. Hook it up and you'll be given three options: USB mass storage device, charging only or iTunes sync. This is a ballsy move from Palm, and we totally love it: a big fat middle finger at Apple. Apple will, we are sure, be readying its legal attack dogs as I write, and don't be at all surprised if an iTunes update pops up around June 6th. This fight just got a lot more interesting."
Games

Ubisoft CEO Expects Set-Top Gaming, New Apple Hardware 45

GamesIndustry reports on comments by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot about what to expect from the coming generation of gaming hardware. In addition to greater integration between game hardware and set-top boxes, he said he doesn't expect Apple to stop with the iPhone as a platform for games. "We will see more customers coming to the videogame industry, and they will not only come to the basic consoles like we have today, but they will start also to come on all the boxes that you see under the TVs. TV boxes will be more powerful, and with accessibility, will help to take more people. So we will see more consoles on which we will be able to put product." Guillemot continued, "... because you saw new interfaces with the Wii, with the Wiimote, and also with the DS, with the stylus, what we see for the future is that there will be also big announcements in interfaces. And it will not only happen on consoles, but it will also happen on those TV boxes as well."
Power

French Fusion Experiment Delayed Until 2025 or Beyond 272

An anonymous reader writes "The old joke is that fusion is the power of the future and always will be. But it's not looking so funny for ITER, an EU10 billion fusion experiment in France. According to Nature News, ITER will not conduct energy-producing experiments until at least 2025 — five years later than what had been previously agreed to. The article adds that the reactor will cost even more than the seven parties in the project first thought:'...Construction costs are likely to double from the 5-billion (US$7-billion) estimate provided by the project in 2006, as a result of rises in the price of raw materials, gaps in the original design, and an unanticipated increase in staffing to manage procurement. The cost of ITER's operations phase, another 5 billion over 20 years, may also rise.'"
Data Storage

Windows 7 Hard Drive and SSD Performance Analyzed 248

bigwophh writes "Despite the fact that Windows 7 is based on many of the same core elements as Vista, Microsoft claims it is a different sort of animal and that it should be looked at in a fresh, new light, especially in terms of performance. With that in mind, this article looks at how various types of disks perform under Windows 7, both the traditional platter-based variety and newer solid state disks. Disk performance between Vista and Win7 is compared using a hard drive and an SSD. SSD performance with and without TRIM enabled is tested. Application performance is also tested on a variety of drives. Looking at the performance data, it seems MS has succeeded in improving Windows 7 disk performance, particularly with regard to solid state drives."
The Courts

Allegedly Rigged Product Demo In SAP Suit Goes Missing 210

narramissic writes "Waste Management sued SAP in March 2008 over a failed ERP project. Now, well into the pre-trial discovery process, a presale product demonstration software package that Waste Management says was a key element of the 'false representations' SAP made to 'induce Waste Management into entering a software licensing and implementation agreement' has gone missing. Naturally, both sides say the other has it. And SAP, for its part, says it has 'searched extensively' for the system and wants it 'as much or more' as Waste Management, since it 'will help SAP disprove WM's fraud claim.'"
Communications

45-Year-Old Modem Used To Surf the Web 622

EdIII writes with this awesome snippet from Hack a Day: "'[phreakmonkey] got his hands on a great piece of old tech. It's a 1964 Livermore Data Systems Model A Acoustic Coupler Modem. He recieved it in 1989 and recently decided to see if it would actually work. It took some digging to find a proper D25 adapter and even then the original serial adapter wasn't working because the oscillator depends on the serial voltage. He dials in and connects at 300baud. Then logs into a remote system and fires up lynx to load Wikipedia. Lucky for [phreakmonkey] they managed to decide on a modulation standard in 1962. It's still amazing to see this machine working 45 years later.' Although impractical for surfing the Internet today, there is something truly cool about getting a 45-year old modem to work with modern technology. The question I have, is what is the oldest working piece of equipment fellow Slashdotters have out there? I'm afraid as far back as I can go is a Number Nine Imagine 128 Series 2 Graphics card on a server still in use at my house which only puts me at about 14 years."
Power

Revived LHC Could Run Through the Winter 164

Jack Spine writes "When you are powering nuclear particle beams that could drill a hole through 30 metres of copper, you don't want to be paying a premium for electricity. However, Cern scientists are determined that the delayed experiment will get some workable results, and so are preparing to run the machine throughout the winter."
Data Storage

SATA 3.0 Release Paves the Way To 6Gb/sec Devices 248

An anonymous reader writes "The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) has just released the new Serial ATA Revision 3.0 specification. With the new 3.0 specification, the path has been paved to enable future devices to transfer up to 6Gb/sec as well as provide enhancements to support multimedia applications. Like other SATA specifications, the 3.0 specification is backward compatible with earlier SATA products and devices. This makes it easy for motherboard manufactures to go ahead and upgrade to the new specification without having to worry about its customers' legacy SATA devices. This should make adoption of the new specification fast, like previous adoptions of SATA 2.0 (or 3Gb/sec) technology."
Displays

A Widescreen Laser Projector In Your Pocket 189

Edis Krad writes "Redmond based company Microvision is in the last stages of developing and releasing a portable, laser-based projector, code-named 'Show WX.' The projector has a resolution of 848 by 400 pixels (WVGA) and, since it uses laser-scanning rather than LCD to form the images, it does not require a lens to focus, allowing it to display images virtually in any surface. The device comes with its own user-replaceable battery, which means you could take it with you anywhere you want. Although there is no pricing information on their website, according to this local news video, it could cost at least $200."
Earth

Painting The World's Roofs White Could Slow Climate Change 712

Hugh Pickens writes "Dr. Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by President Obama as Energy Secretary, wants to paint the world white. Chu said at the opening of the St James's Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium that by lightening paved surfaces and roofs to the color of cement, it would be possible to cut carbon emissions by as much as taking all the world's cars off the roads for 11 years. Pale surfaces reflect up to 80 percent of the sunlight that falls on them, compared with about 20 percent for dark ones, which is why roofs and walls in hot countries are often whitewashed." (Continues, below.)
Cellphones

Using WiMAX To Replace a Phone? 169

vigmeister writes "I've decided to explore the possibility of using a netbook/MID as a phone while eschewing the services of a cellphone provider. Now that Atlanta (where I live) has WiMAX from Clear, I ought to be connected to the Internet everywhere within the city (once I sign up). Theoretically, this should mean that I will be able to use my netbook as a cell phone. Of course, there are some very real issues to overcome and I am simply putting this experiment together to see if it is something that is realistically possible. This could possibly extend to uncapped 3G connections (if they exist any more) as well. Are there any obvious problems you would foresee? Is there anything I have missed or any other questions I should attempt to answer in this 'experiment' of mine? A major issue is, of course, the fact that my pseudo-netbook has to be carried everywhere and always left on."
The Media

Wikipedia Launches a New Mobile Interface, Seeks Help 70

hampton2600 writes "The Wikimedia Foundation is proud to present our new mobile site optimized for modern high-end phones. The interface is focused on being clean and easy to read on your mobile device. We currently officially support reading on the iPhone and Android phones. The new gateway is written entirely in Ruby (using the Merb framework) and the Git repository can be found here. We are looking for open source help with supporting other phone types and translations into new languages. Currently 8 languages are supported, but we'd like to support all languages Wikipedia supports. This is an active project and we are looking for new features, etc. from the community."
Wireless Networking

AT&T Says 7.2Mbps Wireless Coming This Year 141

CWmike writes "AT&T will upgrade to High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) 7.2 wireless networking technology later this year, offering faster (up to 7.2 Mbit/sec.) network speeds to new compatible laptop cards and smartphones due to be released at the same time, the company said today. Current HSPA download speeds can theoretically reach 3.6 MBit/sec, according to AT&T executives who commented on the planned upgrade in April. AT&T did not comment on which laptop cards and smartphones will be compatible with HSPA 7.2 other than to say it will introduce 'multiple' devices later this year. Could this be one of the big iPhone announcements to come from WWDC?"
Intel

Intel's Nehalem EX To Gain Error Correction 80

angry tapir writes "Intel's eight-core Nehalem EX server processor will include a technology derived from its high-end Itanium chips that helps to reduce data corruption and ensure reliable server performance. The processor will include an error correction feature called MCA Recovery, which will detect and fix errors that could otherwise cause systems to crash — it will be able to detect system errors originating in the CPU or system memory and work with the operating system to correct them." Update: 05/27 19:11 GMT by T : Dave Altavilla suggests also Hot Hardware's coverage of the new chip, which includes quite a bit more information.

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