HOT HEADLINES
For most of us in the IT journalism business, Gizmodo's aquisition of a lost fourth-generation iPhone last week is the sort of lucky break we dream about. For the site, however, that dream-come-true could be turning into a nightmare. On April 25, editor Jason Chen arrived home to discover police in the process of executing a search warrant....
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IBM scientists have created a realllllly small 3D map of the world. (How small IS it?) Well, it's so small that 1,000 could fit on one grain of salt (if you take for granted that the diameter of a grain of salt is three-tenths of a millimeter). Of course, this begs the question: how would one measure the distance between New York and Los Angeles?...
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Sony has announced it will cease producing 1.44" drives in March, 2011. Demand for 3.5" drives and disks is larger than you might think—some 12 million disks sold in 2009—but it's time to pull the plug on the ancient standard. Once the workhorse of the computer industry, the floppy disk evolved significantly through...
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Google's Nexus One, which is actually built by HTC, has been a pretty hit in the tech world. It's now available for AT&T, T-Mobile USA, Sprint and Verizon Wireless. Wait, scratch that last one. A few months ago, Google put up a page that stated a Verizon-compatible Nexus One would be available in the near future, and to keep checking back...
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Windows Home Server is right there with Windows CE atop the list of "Microsoft's most under-appreciated operating systems." The OS has been around for a few years now, with HP's line of MediaSmart servers being the closest the system ever came to hitting the mainstream. A lot has changed in the way people view media and consume content since...
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Not long ago, the very last VHS tape was produced. It was the end of an era, for sure. Today, another era is ending, and it's one that we can't believe took this long to finally die. The floppy disc (the 3.5" one, not the ancient 5.25" one) has finally seen its natural end, years and years after they were initially...
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AMD already catered to the professionals this morning with new FirePro graphics cards, and now the embedded market is getting some attention as well. At Embedded Systems Conference today, AMD announced a pair of completely revamped platforms for this highly important, but oft overlooked, market sector. The two new ones are the compact ASB2...
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The OLPC XO sparked a revolution, and it just might have contributed to the eventual netbook craze that's still going strong today. The idea of creating a small, portable, low-cost notebook was just brilliant, and clearly it has struck a chord with consumers. Intel got in on the fun with the Classmate PC, and now the...
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Last Thursday, Valve released "The Passing," a much-anticipated update to its popular Left 4 Dead series that features the protagonists of the original L4D meeting up with the Left 4 Dead: The Next Generation cast. In addition, the DLC promised new weekly "Mutations," new co-operative modes of play, and an as-yet unidentified bug that crashes...
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AMD's FirePro line of graphics cards don't get the same level of attention as the consumer-oriented Radeon lineup, but with the introduction of Eyefinity, DisplayPort and DirectX 11, the "professional" line is suddenly becoming a lot more appealing to anyone. Following the introduction of the FirePro V8800, AMD has today rolled out four new...
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If the BlackBerry Bold 9650 isn't really your cup of tea, RIM has another phone that might just work. There's a new Pearl in town, and it's being simply called the Pearl 3G. In fact, the Pearl 3G is more than just a phone. It's two phones! RIM is calling this their smallest BlackBerry yet, measuring less than 2" wide and weighing 3.3oz. It...
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For whatever reason, Nokia doesn't often dip its toes into the high-end smartphone waters, instead letting other manufactures -- like Apple, HTC, Motoroloa, etc. -- duke it out. But that isn't always the case, as evidenced by Nokia's new N8 handset, the company's first Symbian^3 device. So what's the verdict? We haven't played with one ourselves,...
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According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, you better keep your iPad out of the bedroom if you need to get up early in the morning. The reason? Light emitted from the bright touchscreen display stimulates your brain telling it to stay alert rather than drift off into unconsciousness. It isn't just the iPad that has this effect, but all...
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It has been awhile since BlackBerry lovers had anything new to cheer about, and while the Storm lineup managed to do alright, RIM's bread-and-butter QWERTY phones are still packing the most heat. In an effort to extend the popular "Bold" series this morning, the company has announced that a new BlackBerry Bold 9650 smartphone will soon be...
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Over the last few years, both ATI and NVIDIA have implemented plans to release mobile graphics driver updates at more regular intervals. Historically, notebook users have been at the mercy of the notebook OEM with regard to mobile graphics driver updates, and OEMs have typically lagged way behind the GPU manufacturers. This left many notebook...
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The collapse of Wall Street a few years back and the so-called Great Recession that followed were, it's generally agreed, pretty bad things. As investment banks began to fail and the Dow fell, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) found itself in the uncomfortable position of having to explain how this had...
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S3 Graphics have been making GPUs for longer than you can probably remember. NVIDIA and ATI may get all the attention, but the "Chrome" integrated graphics product is powering a few million devices as we speak. That's pretty monumental, and S3 doesn't show any signs of letting up anytime soon. In an effort to keep on trucking despite...
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It's a chicken-before-the-egg type of scenario. Peripheral companies don't want to support USB 3.0 before USB 3.0 is widely adopted, and PC makers don't want to jump on the USB 3.0 bandwagon before there are a suitable amount of USB 3.0 accessories on the market. Thankfully, Samsung is taking the first leap in this scenario, introducing their...
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The NOOK gets a serious update, the Kindle gets a serious partner in sales. Just another rosy day in the crowded e-book reader market. Up until now, Amazon's record-breaking Kindle has been sold in just one primary place: online. A virtual store with no real shelves, no real boxes and nothing for consumers to touch, see and experience. Amazon...
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MeeGo. YouGo. WeGo. But where does MeeGo...go? Confusion aside, there's word on the street that Intel's new MeeGo (which was the end product when Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin were combined) could be destined for more than it was originally intended for. Or maybe we just all got the wrong idea from the start...
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We still aren't sure we've warmed to the name "Cookie" for a phone line, but considering just how well the "Chocolate" line did for LG, we guess we can't blame them for continuing the tradition of naming their handsets after treats. The latest from the company might just be a serious contender in the smartphone space, with the Cookie Gig boasting...
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Aside from a powerful graphics card and large monitor, one of the best ways to increase the realism and immersiveness of PC games is with a high-quality, multi-channel speaker setup. Hearing sounds that seemingly wiz by your head and being able to pick up on subtle tones coming from different directions, can transform a ho-hum gaming session...
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