Gregory Sullivan
Gregory Sullivan
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Analysts at Gartner have estimated that there are already one billion computers in use worldwide right now. That's a big number, but it's the estimated rate of growth in PC ownership that jumps off the page in their report -- 12 percent a year. That means by 2014, they estimate two billion people worldwide will be able to leave bizarre comments...
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Polaroid got famous for making instant cameras and film for the impatient photographer. They've fallen on rough times as the digital camera has made capturing a photo and seeing it on a little screen almost instantaneous. But what if you want an instant artifact of your snapshot? Polaroid's betting you'd find a use for a little battery-powered...
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Tired of playing Trogdor and Freebird over and over? Maybe help is on the way. Representatives of the remaining Beatles are in discussions with the makers of both the Guitar Hero and Rock Band video games. Activision and MTV Games are after a deal for the most sought-after catalog of music ever. A final deal would be worth several million...
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Microsoft's security updates for June seem to be having a profound effect in the ongoing battle against crooks who steal passwords and usernames, then use their ill-gotten info to cash in the imaginary gold MMORPG players accumulate for real money. One password stealer, called Taterf, was detected on 700,000 computers in the first day after...
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Ask the trivia question: What was the first computer? Most people would immediately answer: ENIAC. But ENIAC wasn't really the prototype of the modern computer, as it couldn't be reprogrammed to perform different tasks without taking it apart and rewiring it. A much more likely candidate for the first computer that resembles what we think...
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The idea of being invisible has captivated scientists and comic-book writers alike for many years. As Einstein told us, it's going to be pretty hard to do. But it's somewhat easier to make something invisible to sound waves. Researchers in Spain have developed a material that directs sound waves around an object so that they re-form...
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Intel has been tinkering around with DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) cells, reducing their size and getting rid of the capacitors that were necessary components of their tiny integrated circuit. In doing so, they may have demonstrated a way to remove the SRAM (Static Random Access Memory)cells from the processor and replace them with the...
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Facebook and MySpace perform important functions for their users. But when you get right down to it, they exist and are popular because they are amusements. Serious business is not discussed on a page with glitter fonts and Linkin Park music videos that auto-play. There is a social site that's all business --LinkedIn-- and it's received an...
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Verizon has a good thing going with their FiOS bundled service packages.(fiber-optic service that can simultaneously deliver TV, fast Internet and telephone) Its appeal is based around the very fast upload and download speeds that their fiber-optic cable can deliver. They've become a kind of de facto alternate for cable TV and Internet...
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HotHardware told you yesterday about the Associated Press' hardline approach to linking to their news service stories and excerpting their copy. AP seems a little sketchy about the way in which the doctrine of Fair Use is generally understood on the Internet. As if in an attempt to double down on what is fast becoming a public relations debacle...
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Silicon Valley wants you. They'll pay you big bucks, and you'll occupy a central position in the world of the data center. But you'll have next to nothing to do with software. Server farms that serve the Internet are not just digital problems. Their immense size, energy use, and complexity make them mechanical engineering problems above all...
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You run into an interesting problem if you're a computer manufacturer. You're supposed to make your units better and faster all the time, of course, but overall the price you charge for your rigs generally gets cheaper. That means you could sell more units year over year and still end up with less revenue because each unit is worth less. It's...
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Verizon offers discounts to their customers if they bundle services like Internet, television, and landline phones. But with up to 15 percent of US homes now foregoing having a landline at all, Verizon realized they were missing out on opportunities to offer a package of services to people who have said goodbye to copper wires forever. They've...
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As the old expression goes, I don't know what Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang is smoking, but I want some. Yesterday Yahoo! announced that they had finally really absolutely unequivocally indubitably without question stopped talking to Microsoft about a takeover by, or joint venture with the Redmond giant, and that they had signed a deal with Google...
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We told you about Dell's attempt to get in on the mini-notebook market a little while ago. Just a glimpse of the lipstick red competitor for the wildly successful Asus Eee PC sent us all into a tizzy. After all, we keep telling manufacturers over and over again we want a smaller, cheaper, sturdier unit to lug around with us that can...
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Steve Jobs says the next version of Apple's OS, nicknamed Snow Leopard, will concentrate on easing programming for parallel processors. Of course multi-core CPUs already pose challenges to use all the available processing capacity they're capable of, but in addition to that, Jobs is proposing using the OS to grab available graphics processing...
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Everyone's fascinated with the Apple iPhone. Apple's announced their new, third generation (3G) model is coming out on July 11, and all the news outlets have been pawing over the details of the handset and the plan. The iPhone has the potential to be one of those concepts that becomes the name people use to refer to all items of its type,...
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There's always quite a race to display things. Look at the ferocious competition and impressive innovation between the makers of plasma screens, LCD screens, rear-projection sets, you name it. I guess you can still buy Cathode Ray Tubes, too, if you like technology from the last century. They all have their pluses and minuses, of course,...
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According to Digitimes, AMD isn't going to bother releasing two 65 nanometer scale dual core chips they had in the development pipeline. AMD originally planned to launch two 65nm dual-core Phenom processors codenamed Kuma for the desktop PC market in May or June this year, however the company has recently suspended the plans and will let its...
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The DVR is the greatest invention since fire. But especially since a substantial amount of programming became available in high-definition, its seems we're constantly having to erase something in order to make room for the next show we want. Iomega has been solving various storage problems for a long time, and if you use the DVR supplied by...
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Back in 2006, Hewlett-Packard bought Voodoo, makers of exotic gaming rigs. That had people scratching their heads about what HP was going to make under their newly acquired nameplate. Apparently it wasn't just exotic gaming desktops they were after; it's the straightforward exotic lappie market they wanted as well. HP rolled out a bunch of...
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Freescale Semiconductor has a new kind of Random Access Memory they'd like you to consider soon: MRAM. They've spun off the part of their business that's been developing MRAM chips and gotten $20 million in funding from a handful of VCs to push the technology forward enough to make it commercially available. What's MRAM, you ask?MRAM stands...
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