Hasta La Gadget!

Do you have any idea where you head when you’d like to sue everyone on the face of the planet, make yourself look like a Class-A fool and get a mention right here? The Eastern District of Texas (Tyler) District court, that’s where. The freshest meshuggeneh to head on down there and start trouble is Tsera, who’s claiming that Apple, Microsoft, LG, Philips, Bang & Olufsen, iriver, Coby, Cowon and even Meizu are violating a patent that it owns. Said patent is titled “Methods and apparatus for controlling a portable electronic device using a touchpad,” and evidently each of the aforesaid outfits have failed to pay Tsera for using its technology. Before you get all bent out of shape, you should realize that this case — in all likelihood — will simply be tossed out or settled away from the courtroom, but you can bet your bottom dollar that Tsera’s never gonna be satisfied. Or taken seriously.

[Via The Register]

Filed under: Peripherals

Tsera thinks it owns the touchpad, sues pretty much everyone to prove it originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Jul 2009 10:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AMD’s Neo ultra-portable platform was seen as something that just might rival Intel’s mighty Atom in the oversaturated netbook space when it debuted back in January, but up until now, the system has remained largely in the background. Indeed, it has only found its way into a select few machines, none of which have managed to gain any sort of traction beside the sea of Atom-based alternatives. Now, however, it seems as if the chips — which were originally engineered for ultraslim, thin-and-light laptops — may find themselves shoved into an array of nettops and all-in-one PCs. Here lately, a slew of underpowered SFF-type desktops and PC-in-a-monitor type units have found favor with bargain hunters, and Bob Grim, the outfit’s director of client marketing, isn’t looking to miss a golden opportunity. To quote:

“We’ve known all along that this type of technology would really work well in multiple platforms and multiple types of form factors. These CPUs perform better than the Atom processor, and the graphics are superior. These things… can play Blu-rays, they can play games.”

There’s still no word on who exactly plans on equipping their future machines with this here platform, but considering just how tired we are of Intel’s sluggish N270 and N280, we’ll take all the competition we can get.

Filed under: Handhelds, Laptops

AMD’s Neo to hit nettops, all-in-one PCs soon originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Jul 2009 06:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Seymour Cray’s big super computer was crazy. It’s signals between components had to be timed by trimming long cables up to 1/16th of an inch at a time by hand and was basically interwoven with a giant refrigeration system.

Name: Cray-1
Year created: 1976
Creator: Cray Research, Inc.
Cost: $5 million to $10 million
Memory: 4MW semiconductor
Speed: 160 MFLOPS

Building supercomputers was a dream, an aspiration, and a life’s pursuit for Seymour Cray, and his work on the computers that bore his name was the culmination of work he had done for the U.S. Navy, for CDC [Control Data Corporation], and finally for his namesake company. When Cray left CDC in 1972, after his work on the 6600, 7600, and minimally the 8600, he took much of the supercomputer fire with him.

While Cray’s departure from CDC wasn’t overly dramatic, his impact on supercomputing was. Cray artfully designed computers so that each part worked to efficiently speed up the whole, and he usually didn’t rely on the newest experimental components, preferring instead to tweak existing technologies for maximum performance. For instance, the Cray-1 was the first Cray machine to use integrated circuits, despite their having been on the market for about a decade. At 160 MFLOPS, the Cray-1 was the fastest machine at the time, and despite what seemed like only a niche market for expensive superfast machines, Cray Research sold more than a hundred of them.

Form and size were always concerns for Cray, as far back as his days developing the CDC 160, which was built into an ordinary desk. There was also a big concern with the heat that could be generated by so many parts being packaged so tightly together, so Cray’s designs typically involved unique cooling solutions, whether it be Freon on the Cray-1, or Fluorinert, in which Cray-2’s circuit boards were immersed.

Core Memory is a photographic exploration of the Computer History Museum’s collection, highlighting some of the most interesting pieces in the history of computers. These excerpts were used with permission of the publisher. Special thanks to Fiona!

The photos in the book were taken by Mark Richards, whose work has appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Fortune, Smithsonian, Life and BusinessWeek. The eye-candy is accompanied by descriptions of each artifact to cover the characteristics and background of each object, written by John Alderman who has covered the culture of high-tech lifestyle since 1993, notably for Mondo 2000, HotWired and Wired News. A foreword is provided by the Computer History Museum’s Senior Curator Dag Spicer.

Or go see the real things at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

Gizmodo ’79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

Well, that was snappy. Just days after O2 Germany abruptly halted the sales of Toshiba’s 1GHz TG01 smartphone due to an unexplained virus outbreak among new units, it seems as if things are back in gear. Online, anyway. As of this moment, web shoppers can order the Snapdragon / WinMo-powered from the carrier once more, though there’s no word on if retail shops are still keeping their stock in quarantine. Either way, we’d don a mask before waltzing in to inquire.

[Thanks, Fab]

Filed under: Cellphones

Toshiba’s potent TG01 back on sale through O2 Germany originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Jul 2009 23:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on February 15, 2008 by CyberNet.

For some of you who were just able to get your hands on a Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, or Playstation 3, you’re not even thinking about the next generation of consoles.  Analysts are though, and according to some, 2010 will be the shot-gun start for the next round. The last time around, Microsoft had quite an advantage by launching the Xbox 360 a whole year ahead of the PS3 and the Wii. Launch dates looked like this:

• Xbox 360 on November 22, 2005
• Playstation 3 on November 17, 2006
• Nintendo Wii on November 19, 2006

Will Microsoft try and get a head-start again? Perhaps not. In 2010 analysts say launch dates will look like this: the Wii will be first, followed by a new Xbox later in the year. What about a PS4? Well, there’s been no news, and no speculation quite yet. I think Sony has enough to worry about with trying to make sure they’re selling enough of their PS3 consoles. But wait, maybe things are getting better for Sony?

Also in the news recently is speculation that the PS3 will end up outperforming the Xbox 360 this year. Part of this could be due to the fact that it’s starting to appear as though Blu-ray is the clear winner in the high-definition format war. Purchasing a PS3 is one of the more affordable ways to get your hands on a Blu-ray player which could help their sales quite a bit.  Analysts are also predicting that Sony could take back their title as “market leader” in about three years. It’s hard to imagine that given Nintendo’s current success with the Wii and even Microsoft’s success with the Xbox 360, but anything is possible.

Source: Engadget

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