Hasta La Gadget!

We admit, we’re pretty jaded when it comes to PC casemods, having seen everything from the inscrutable Edelweiss to Russian Ark of the Covenant-like monstrosities. Jeffrey Stephenson, though, charmed us with his wood-carved Level Eleven case, and now he’s back with Usonian, inspired by the work of famed Fallingwater architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Split-level cantilevered roofs made of teak, mahogany highlights, all that Cherokee Red and Covered Wagon coloring – it’s enough to make an architecture nerd swoon. Beneath all that fine styling it sports an Intel Core i7-875K on a Gigabyte Mini-ITX motherboard, with 8GB system memory. There’s a 256GB SSD along with a 2TB hard drive, so it’s not just built for looks; Wright, after all, emphasized utility over pointless fashion. Still, it’s very pretty to look at. More pics in the source link and after the break.

Continue reading PC modding takes an architectural twist with Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired Usonian

PC modding takes an architectural twist with Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired Usonian originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 May 2011 09:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Many have tried and failed to bring a 3D desktop interface to an otherwise 2D operating system, but that certainly hasn’t stopped others from trying. The latest example to crop up comes courtesy of none other than Microsoft, which recently received a patent for what it describes as a “method and apparatus for providing a three-dimensional task gallery computer interface.” In other words, it’s an interface intended to help you better manage multiple tasks, which the patent suggests could be done in a 3D environment with a floor, walls and a ceiling. Apparently, you’d be able to group multiple windows at various spots in the “room,” which would let you rely on your spatial memory to easily find a given task — with the room getting deeper and deeper to accommodate more tasks. In the patent’s claims, the only means described for navigating around that room is a set of icons that would adjust to suit the 3D environment, although it certainly seems like it could easily be adapted to accommodate gesture controls as well. Hit up the source link below for plenty more line drawings where this one came from.

Microsoft patent details a 3D desktop interface with a room for your windows originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 07 May 2011 12:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What better way for Seagate to celebrate its $1.375 billion dollar purchase of Samsung’s HDD division than to re-introduce the old firm’s breakthrough? Seagate took the Samsung’s 1TB platter prototypes and packed them into a real hard drive, bringing the new technology to market for the first time. These new drives will boast an areal-density of 625 gigabits (78.13GB) per square inch, scoring 1TB platters for the outfit’s next generation of hard disks. Unfortunately, Seagate won’t be cramming four of those 1TB plates into a single hard drive as Samsung originally planned, instead opting to debut the technology in a 3TB external drive under their GoFlex brand. No official specs this time around, but when the turkey was on Samsung’s platter, it spun at 5,400 RPM with a 32MB cache and SATA 6Gbps compatibility.

Seagate copies Samsung’s notes, re-breaks areal-density barrier with 1TB HDD platters originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 May 2011 23:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on December 10, 2009 by CyberNet.

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Twitter is taking the world by storm, and because of that we’re seeing a flood of third-party apps becoming available. One that recently caught my eye was the Adobe Air-powered TweetBubbles, which isn’t designed to be your typical Twitter client. In fact, you can’t even post to Twitter with it. How’s it useful then?

During presentations or events people tend to have a projector set up that will be used to go through some slides. Before the presentation starts the screen normally just sits there blank or maybe on the first slide, and the same thing happens again for intermissions. With TweetBubbles you can capture your audience’s attention by pulling in related Twitter posts by filtering according to keyword. When a match is found a chat-like bubble will appear around the edge of your desktop showing off the tweet that was recently posted.

There are some obvious flaws to this. The big one is probably that you don’t have much control over the contents of the tweets that show up. Once people at the conference see the keyword filter you’re using they could instantly post something that is inappropriate. The good thing is that you’d know who posted it… unless they prepared ahead of time by creating a Twitter account that doesn’t personally identify them.

As far as settings go you can only configure a handful of things like the keyword/hash you want to filter by, how transparent you want the bubbles to appear, and whether you want them to appear on the left, right, or both sides of the screen. That’s pretty much it.

So I’m not sure how many people will actually use an app like this, but I think the concept is awesome. It would surely keep your audience engaged even during “down time” in your presentation, which is something that could otherwise be difficult to do.

TweetBubbles Homepage (Freeware)
[via Technix]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Now that Commodore USA has sufficiently piqued your curiosity with a revamped Commodore 64 prototype, it’s ready to capitalize on the idea. Quite literally, we might add. $595 buys you the basic basic model with an 1.8GHz dual-core Intel Atom D525 chip, NVIDIA ION 2 graphics, 2GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive — which it promises to deliver by “early June” — with hundred-dollar increments adding premium features like an additional 2GB of memory, a Blu-Ray drive, up to 1TB of storage, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth. However, if you’re simply looking for a compact keyboard computer (rather than reliving 80’s nostalgia) there’s another option on tap — a likely rebadged thin wedge of a machine that Commodore’s calling the VIC-Slim. Even at just $395, though, something tells us it won’t be the “wonder computer” of 2011.

Continue reading Commodore USA puts the new C64 up for pre-sales, unveils far-less-retrotastic VIC-Slim

Commodore USA puts the new C64 up for pre-sales, unveils far-less-retrotastic VIC-Slim originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 20:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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