Gregory Sullivan
Gregory Sullivan
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
The on-again/off-again Microsoft/Yahoo! deal is on again - maybe. There's something about being a co-founder of a business that affects how you think. Jerry Yang is a co-founder and the CEO of Yahoo! and he seems to be laboring under the mis-impression that "co-founder" still means "owner." If you want to own a business, you shouldn't make...
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Amazonian beetles, to be more precise. Researchers have long understood that if they could produce a photonic crystal, a diamond-like structure that would allow light to be shunted around inside instead of electricity, that they would be able to make superfast optical computers that used little power and wouldn't generate heat the way your...
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Facebook has 70 million members, so if the owners change something about it the users don't like, the angry virtual mob that appears outside the window with digital pitchforks and torches is something to behold. Facebook's attempt to share information about user's purchases through a utility they called Beacon didn't go down too well, ...
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We love living on the edge. We sometimes take a chance and drink milk from a carton so old that the lost child pictured on it has already been found. We've even been known to participate in beta tests of buggy software. But we're a little leery of monkeying around with web browsers until they're finished, because we don't even...
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Microsoft can't get any traction in the search engine world. Their Live Search utility is mired in single-digit user percentage, and their attempt to vault into a distant but respectable second place by purchasing Yahoo! was rebuffed. They're nothing if not tenacious over at Redmond, and they've got another idea to get you to search with them:...
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OK, now we're just getting silly. The revamped XO laptop prototype is out, as proposed by the OLPC project. (One Laptop Per Child) The last version got bogged down by infighting between its developers over the choice of operating systems, utilities, software, and of course, the ultimate cost of the units themselves, which skyrocketed over...
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Back in the day, it looked like Napster was going to bust the digital music business wide open. They were sued back to the stone age over copyright infringement, and more or less dropped from sight. Apple leaped into the breach, offering legal but locked music for their iPods through their own online store. Well, zombie Napster is back...
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A set-top box that delivers streaming video from Netflix is now a reality. The Netflix Player is made by Roku, and retails for about $100. If you've got access to a broadband connection, have a Netflix rental account, and own a Roku box and some cables, you're good to go. Just not "go everywhere," yet. Setup is simple, and--if you've...
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If you're like us here at HotHardware, you use the Internet for everything. But according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the one thing we're not doing much is letting the Internet make up our minds about what we want to buy. Those decisions seem to be more heavily and directly influenced by offline channels like "friends and...
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You don't usually associate IBM with the solar power industry. But IBM researchers couldn't help but notice that one of the main difficulties in compressing the size of a solar collector, in a miniaturization process called "concentrator photovoltaics," (CPV) is the dissipation of heat. IBM used a lens to concentrate sunlight on a one centimeter...
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Adobe's Flash player has a 98% percent install rate, so I guess it's safe to call it an industry standard for video content. They've just released the latest version, Flash Player 10, nicknamed "Astro," as a beta test. It's got some interesting things under the hood that work in the background to make video playback faster. On the visual...
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A common knock on the wildly popular Guitar Hero console gamer is that it's a shame that people don't just learn how to play the guitar instead. It's easier to play the actual guitar than many songs on Guitar Hero on its most challenging setting, after all. Perhaps the critics were wrong about Guitar Hero siphoning off interest in the actual...
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The good news is an online entity featuring lots of tech news and commentary is worth $1.8 billion. The bad news is that it isn't HotHardware. CBS announced today that they have acquired CNET Networks, which operates a host of Internet sites like CNET, ZDNet, Gamespot, Search.com, TV.com, and many more. "There are very few opportunities to...
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According to Digitimes, who always seem to know someone inside everywhere, VIA will roll out their own dual core processors by the end of next year, and will manufacture their processors using 45 nanometer scale architecture.VIA has also revealed more details of its initial-launch Isaiah-based processor, which will feature a core frequency...
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AMD has announced a management shakeup. They're struggling mightily to compete with industry leader Intel right now. AMD COO Dirk Meyer is reshuffling his executive personnel deck by moving some people sideways, some people up the ladder -- and some were given an empty printer paper box to clean their desk into before being escorted to the...
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It's a good day whenever something bad happens to a spammer. That makes today a beautiful day, as a judge in Los Angeles has ruled in MySpace's favor in a suit they brought against two spammers who ran amok on MySpace pages. The damages awarded were worthy of a deposed Nigerian dictator: $230 million dollars.U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins...
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Hewett Packard must have IBM envy. They've purchased Ross Perot's old technology services company, Electronic Data Systems, for $13.2 billion, so they can claim to be the second place provider of such services to businesses and government, behind IBM. As usual, the first rule of Takeover Club is: you're fired. It's a field dominated...
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Bournemouth, England is getting a big upgrade on their Internet infrastructure. It's the first town in the UK to get a certain kind of fiber-optic service, with speeds up to 100Mbps. Of course fiber-optic Internet service isn't really news. It's the method of running the cable to everybody's home that has people talking. H2O Networks limited...
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The iPhone gets all the headlines, but Research In Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry device is still how the vast majority of business smartphone warriors roll. RIM announced yesterday their next generation smartphone; they call it the BlackBerry Bold. The most striking feature of the Bold is its display. It runs at the same 320x480 resolution as...
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Your Digital Video Recorder might not have found Sarah Conner yet, but it seems to be responsible for the disappearance of six million primetime TV viewers since last May. Some of the miserable ratings of this year's crop of primetime shows could be laid at the feet of the writer's strike, but that really can't explain the whole number. It's...
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Microsoft had all sorts of trouble with the reliability of its XBox 360. Tales of the "Red Ring of Death" gave potential buyers pause, and Microsoft spend a small fortune replacing defective units. One of the main reasons the game console was so fragile is that the 90nm scale GPU ran very hot. 65nm chips to the rescue!Microsoft will make available...
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A bill to ratchet up the penalties for illegally copying and distributing copyrighted music and movies, or infringing on all sorts of other trademarks and service marks, has breezed though a House Committee. The bill would direct the Executive branch to create a department headed by an "Intellectual Property Czar" inside the Justice Department...
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