Items tagged with Lock
It may seem a little odd, but the smart lock might be the next big competition ground. With August launching last week, Goji has introduced this week the Goji Smart Lock. It's the first electronic deadbolt to provide a new level of home-access control and information-including picture alerts-via smart phones so that homeowners feel more confident and secure about who is coming and going from their homes. The Goji Smart Lock is the only lock that has a built-in camera to send homeowners real-time picture alerts via text and email to give them visual confirmation of who is activating their lock. It's just another step in home automation becoming more mainstream. The Goji Smart Lock works with Bluetooth...
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What Nest did for the thermostat, August will do for the conventional door lock. The door lock is one of those things that has largely gone untouched over the years. Sure, there are very expensive editions out there that support wireless home automation and remote unlock systems, but the vast majority of people are using a typical key-lock that was designed many decades ago. Yves Behar, a famed designer who prefers to put his touches on consumer electronics, has helped to engineer August -- it's a smart lock that doesn't rely on Wi-Fi. The Smart Lock is the first product from August, a company building products that make life simpler, allowing physical environments to seamlessly respond to user...
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Your notebook probably has one. Your monitor might, and your desktop might as well. We're referring to a lock slot, and if you work in a corporate environment, it's almost a safe bet that your equipment is all locked down by these common locks and cables. But what about tablets? They're so thin and so small, and that makes them the perfect (but unfortunate) target for theft. But if you're really, sincerely worried about that now, there's an answer. The new iPad Lock is the first of its kind. It's a case, with a built-in locking port on the side. It's a hard, clear plastic case with a built-in lock slot. Once the case and cable are locked together, thieves can't detach the case without damaging...
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For what feels like forever now, Kensington's iconic notebook lock slot has become a staple of the PC universe. Regardless of brand, model, size or price, it seems like this little slit finds its way onto practically each and every portable computer that hits store shelves. Now, at long last, Kensington itself is updating the standard, with a slimmer, stronger design aimed at providing higher physical security without compromise.The MicroSaver DS Keyed Ultra-Thin Notebook Lock is certainly a mouthful, but it promises to prevent against theft and protect valuable assets like never before. Of course, this introduction begs the question: "So, are those of us with the old lock slot now less secure?"...
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**Update: We have just added new images that were taken live at the event. - We’ve been spending some quality time with the folks at AMD today in sunny Austin, TX. The team here has been giving us a run-down on their upcoming Phenom II processor along with the enthusiast platform they’re calling “Dragon”. In short, the Dragon platform is a combination of an AMD Phenom II X4 processor, Radeon 4800 Graphics cards and an AMD 7 series chipset based motherboard. However, today’s discussion was keenly focused on AMD's upcoming Phenom II X4 processor, two models of which will launch in early January that will be socket AM2+ compatible. In addition, some time in Q1, AMD will launch...
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Do You Have What it Takes to Beat the Pros? Top 1508MHz Dual Channel DDR2 and win some cash Taipei, Taiwan, GIGABYTE – Wanna win some cash? From November 7TH to Dec 30th, 2008, GIGABYTE would like to invite you to show off your overclocking skills in order to beat the pros and win USD$ 1,500 CASH. Fugger and Vapor (Freestyle Champions of the GIGABYTE Open Overclocking Championship, GO OC 2008) challenge you to beat their record memory frequency overclock of 1508MHz Dual Channel DDR2 on one of GIGABYTE’s latest P45 Ultra Durable 3 motherboards. So tune up your GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 3 motherboard and visit the GIGABYTE website for complete contest details, and get ready to win some...
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NVIDIA’s and AMD’s graphics board partners usually take differing approaches when releasing factory overclocked variants of each company’s respective high-end GPUs. When NVIDIA launches a new part for example, their board partners typically have factory overclocked versions at the ready, and at launch, it’s sometimes easier to find overclocked cards than stock reference models. AMD’s board partners, however, don’t usually take the same approach. When AMD launches a new ATI Radeon, the first batch of cards to hit typically follow the reference design to the letter, and custom, factory overclocked models don’t arrive until some time later. That’s what happened with the Radeon HD 4870 X2. At launch,...
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NVIDIA’s and AMD’s graphics board partners usually take differing approaches when releasing factory overclocked variants of each company’s respective high-end GPUs. When NVIDIA launches a new part for example, their board partners typically have factory overclocked versions at the ready, and at launch, it’s sometimes easier to find overclocked cards than stock reference models. AMD’s board partners, however, don’t usually take the same approach. When AMD launches a new ATI Radeon, the first batch of cards to hit typically follow the reference design to the letter, and custom, factory overclocked models don’t arrive until some time later. That’s what happened with the Radeon HD 4870 X2. At launch,...
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OCZ Technology Introduces the HydroFlow CPU Waterblock for Liquid-Cooled Systems Sunnyvale, CA - September 25, 2008 - OCZ Technology Group, Inc. a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and computer components, today unveiled the “HydroFlow” HF-MK1 Waterblock for superior CPU watercooling. Designed with the highest possible exchange rate between the block and coolant, the HydroFlow can be easily integrated into any enthusiast system and help efficiently lower the processor temperature."The HydroFlow HF-MK1 targets the highest possible thermal exchange rate between a solid body and the surrounding fluid, while maintaining enough cross sectional area...
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Gasoline being given away? In this age of $4 a gallon gasoline in the U.S., and much higher prices in Europe and elsewhere, would you riot over it? All right, it wasn't a riot, but it sure as heck was gridlock.Electronic Arts was trying to promote the Mercenaries 2: World in Flames game. And the promotion was free gasoline (or petrol, as the BBC prefers). Publicity they wanted, and publicity they got, but not all positive.Lynne Featherstone, MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, said: "Whilst a lucky few might have got free petrol, hundreds of residents have faced misery". The Liberal Democrat said: "Trying to recreate Venezuelan-style fuel riots on the streets of London is completely...
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Italy has been showing BitTorrent no mercy lately. First, Italy shuts down the country's largest BitTorrent tracker site, Colombo-BT.org, a couple of weeks ago; and now it is trying to block country-wide access to The Pirate Bay--the Swedish-based BitTorrent site that claims to be "the world's largest BitTorrent tracker"--by ordering all Italian ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay. According to TorrentFreak, the initial country-wide blocking of the site was successful: "An insider working at an Internet provider in Italy told TorrentFreak that all the relevant large access ISPs in Italy have complied with the request to block the popular BitTorrent tracker." However, The Pirate Bay was quick...
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Preliminary news regarding AMD's upcoming 45nm Phenom processors has been trickling out for the last few months, but other than some basic information about the manufacturing process, code names, and socket, concrete details about the processors themselves has been scarce. Just the other day, however, a post in a Chinese discussion forum--itocp.com--shed some light on the stock performance and overclockability of an early 45nm Phenom sample.If the information in the post turns out to be true, and all indicators at this point are that it is, the chip used for their experiments has a default clock speed of 2.2GHz, with 2MB of L2 cache (512KB per core x 4), and 6MB of shared L3 cache, which...
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LifeLock, which is an ID theft protection service, but which has both been written about earlier in unflattering terms as well as sued by Experian, has been sued again, this time by a competitor. On Wednesday NAMESAFE sued LifeLock over search ads that it said were purchased by LifeLock, which used the NAMESAFE trademark yet directed users to LifeLock's web site. According to a press release issued by NameSafe on Friday, "We have discovered that LifeLock has been sponsoring advertisements on most major search engines including (among others) Google, Yahoo, Lycos, MSN, Dogpile, and AOL, that deceptively led consumers to Lifelock.com. Specifically, when you searched 'Namesafe.com' in any major...
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BFG TECHNOLOGIES ANNOUNCES TWO ‘OCX’ OVERCLOCKED GRAPHICS CARDS WITH THERMOINTELLIGENCE CUSTOM COOLING SOLUTION8800 GT OCX and 9600 GT OCX run faster out-of-the-box and operate significantly cooler than stock boards Lake Forest, IL – (June 3, 2008) – BFG Technologies, Inc., the leading North American and European supplier of advanced NVIDIA-based 3D graphics cards, power supplies and other PC enthusiast products, announced today the BFG GeForce 8800 GT OCX and BFG GeForce 9600 GT OCX 512MB PCI Express 2.0 graphics cards.Each new OCX edition features the highest stable clock speeds and a ThermoIntelligence custom cooling solution. The custom fansink enables the graphics processing unit (GPU)...
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A recent issue where MSN Messenger and Windows Live were blocking YouTube has now been resolved. Microsoft has laid the blame on an unnamed partner that is allegedly responsible for blocking unsafe content. Thankfully the situation has now been resolved and Microsoft is assuring users that there won’t be a repeat of such an issue:"Microsoft did not request to block any of the URLs that were accidentally blocked," it said in the blog. "The blocks were made by our partner as a result of their process to block harmful URLs. We are still investigating the specific reason our partner made these incorrect blocks and we will work with them to improve their process for detecting harmful URLs while...
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Just last week, we posted an evaluation of a Radeon HD 3650 card by Diamond Multimedia, where said manufacturer decided to one-up ATI's reference specifications by raising the amount of on-board memory to a full one gigabyte. The results, unfortunately, were not overly favorable as the memory happened to be of the inexpensive, low-speed DDR2 variety.Today, however, we take a look at two more HD 3650s, one each from ASUS and HIS, where the emphasis was placed more on clock speeds than on memory buffer size. While the default speeds set forth by ATI's reference specifications were listed as 725 MHz for the GPU core and 800 MHz for the memory, the two cards represented in this article...
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Pirate Bay has announced plans to Danish ISP Tele2 over their court ordered block of their web site that began in February. Pirate Bay set up a sister site with trackers called The Jesper Bay to prove just how ineffectual the block was, and as a result the block was more or less an exercise in futility.“The court case was initiated by the IFPI - the infamous anti-piracy organization that represents the recording industry. The IFPI later tried to use the “landmark decision” to force Swedish ISPs to do the same, but failed. In fact, it seems that filtering traffic to The Pirate Bay is actually illegal according to European law.”Pirate Bay claims that if they win damages from the case, they...
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Blockbuster is offering to buy Circuit City. They made the offer privately in February, and made it publicly today; a defacto appeal to Circuit City shareholders to pressure the board to sell. If you were on the Lusitania, would you accept a ride on the Titanic? Circuit City is struggling, Blockbuster still has rental-movie money to throw around, but can read the video-on-demand writing on the wall. Let's play Corporate-Speak Bingo with Chairman and CEO of Blockbuster Jim Keyes' statement. "Our proposal offers Circuit City a significant premium to its existing stock price and creates a game-changing retail concept with a sustainable competitive advantage. We believe the combination...
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When Apple formally announced plans for an iTunes rental service it was only inevitable that a conflict between Blockbuster and Apple was to occur. We weren’t entirely sure how this conflict was going to be waged, but now things are becoming clearer: Blockbuster is developing a set-top box to compete with the Apple TV.“The product would be an offshoot of Movielink, the online film service Blockbuster acquired last year that allows consumers to watch films licensed from the major studios on their PCs.Delivering movies to TV might be the most audacious attempt yet that Blockbuster is making to reinvent its brand as digital delivery weakens the viability of its retail footprint. But by offering...
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The Tibetan riots are undoubtedly not the kind of publicity China wants prior to the Olympics. In attempt to stem the flow of information, China has blocked access to some sites.China has blocked access to Google News and YouTube in an apparent attempt to stop the spread of video footage related the rioting going on in several cities in Tibet, including the capital Lhasa. Demonstrations in the city started on March 10, a day commemorating the anniversary of a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule after which the spiritual leader of the country, the Dalai Lama, fled to India.China has said the Dalai Lama is to blame for rioting in the country, and puts the civilian death toll at 13, while adding...
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The iPhone isn't cheap, and it's really not cheap when you factor in the two year ATT Wireless contract that is a non-negotiable part of your purchase. That could change. The US House of Representatives is holding a hearing today regarding legislation that would require carriers to allow you to bring your device to their plans without penalty. The bill would require wireless carriers to offer consumers the ability to purchase subsidy-free wireless equipment without a long-term service plan at a price no higher than comparable plans offered with subsidized equipment. The bill would also require carriers to prorate early termination fees to ensure that the carrier recovers the cost...
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Need to access older versions of certain Office files and suddenly can't? Did you install SP3?If you need to access old Microsoft file formats for early versions of Word, Excel, or Powerpoint -- but you've suddenly and dramatically found yourself unable to do so -- there's an intentional reason from Microsoft behind that conundrum, according to a bulletin put out by Microsoft last month.The reason for the unexpected incompatibility is that, by default, the SP3 update, which became available in mid-September, blocks the file formats used by these older desktop productivity tools from Microsoft.Moreover, the same also holds true for the file formats used in older versions of products that...
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