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ATI Intros Radeon HD 5670: Cheapest DirectX 11 card

After the launch of its high priced 58XX series of graphics cards, ATI has now thrown another trump card in the form of an affordable graphics card HD 5670 which being a DirectX 11 card, is priced at less than $100. The graphics card market has been through many ups and downs but ATI is at it like they don’t want to leave any chance for NVIDIA. This card also support the Eyefinity technology, so now can have a triple monitor setup with a sub $100 graphics card and with ATI Stream technology Windows 7 will work like breeze on it.

Some of the DirectX 11 games that you will be able to play on it are Dirt 2, Battleforge, Stalker, Battlefield and all the previous DirectX 10 and DirectX 9 titles as well. The card is power friendly as well, max power usage is 64W (idle power usage is 15W),

HD5670 based cards would become available very soon at a hardware store near you.

DirectX 11 Graphic Cards Now Available: ATI HD 5870/5850

The next generation of graphic cards ATI Radeon HD 5870 and HD 5850 boasting of DirectX 11 support and ATI Eyefinity technology are now available, these video cards support upto 3 monitors and resolution upto 2560×1600 per display, 6 screen support will eventually come out in November with a new version of 5870 graphics card with 6 mini display ports. HD 5800 series of graphics cards also supports dual, triple and quad ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU technology.

ATI HD 5870 and 5850 GPUs are developed on the advanced 40nm fabrication technology containing massive 2.15 billion transistors and additionally the streaming processor units, texture units and ROPs are almost doubled in comparison to ATI 4870 and 4850 GPUs respectively. My 6 months old Dual Sonic 4870 graphics card is already feeling older, I might even sell it to make way for new GPU chips, the performance that these cards provide and their price point makes them the only graphics card you should buy if you are in a market for a higher end graphics solution as of now.

Power consumption
Apart from double performance ATI has attained another feat in power consumption, 5870 graphics card consumes only 27 watts at idle and 188 watts at full load when used with single display whereas 4850 consumes 27 watts at idle and 170 watts at full load with single display, with two displays the idle power will be doubled.
Price of ATI HD 5870 and HD 5850

The new video cards are priced at sweet $259 for HD 5850 and $379 for HD 5870, the prices will come down a bit once ATI releases new cards in November or if NVIDIA comes out with its lineup of DirectX 11 cards.

India Price would be around Rs 17,000 for HD 5850 and Rs 25,000 for HD 5870.

Google To Launch 'Nexus One' Phone

Google plans to begin selling a cellphone directly to consumers as soon as next year. Called Nexus One, the phone was designed inside Google and will be sold, at least initially, without being subsidised by a wireless partner. According to reports, the phone will run on the search giant's Android operating system and will be sold online. It is being manufactured by HTC, which also built the first Android phone to hit the market, T-Mobile's G1 phone. The phone's pricing, along which countries Google initially will target for the device, couldn't be learned.Google’s Nexus One handset is the most advanced Android mobile device available till date, it uses the latest Android 2.1 OS, and is custom built by HTC for Google. The device is dubbed by Google as a ‘Superphone’ which in my opinion is justified by speed provided by a never before 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, coupled with 512 RAM. These specs made it a great multi-tasker which I am sure you will love to operate. Nexus one also comes with a 5MP camera with autofocus and LED Flash and can record videos at 720 x 480 resolution.

Full Specifications of Nexus One:

3.7-inch AMOLED Touchscreen

1 GHz Qualcomm QSD 8250 processor

512 RAM

5 Megapixel With Autofocus and LED Flash

512 MB Inbuilt memory

4 GB microSD Card, upgradable to 32 GB

Assisted GPS

Proximity sensor

Digital Compass

Accelerometer

Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR

Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n)

1400 mAH battery, up to 10 Hours talk time

It also features voice enabled keyboard that lets you send out your text messages, fill out email or update twitter/facebook by Voice, you can even get driving directions by just speaking into it.

Future Tech: LG Unfolds Flexible Electronic Paper

 

LG has revealed the World’s first 14.1 inch flexible e-paper, that is almost like a traditional paper, as you can turn pages like you do on normal paper, the images remain crisp and text readable while you bend it 180 degrees and you don’t have to discard it daily, thanks to the digital distribution. This e-paper display is  300 mm thick and only consumes power when the image changes so its power friendly too. The technology used behind is slightly different that we have seen before as it uses the TFTs on metal foil rather than on glass, making it more flexible.

 

Not much info is available regarding its availability and price but LG plans to mass produce these next generations displays in first half of 2010.

Is this the Future of Newspapers?

Watch Live Cricket: YouTube Will Stream Live IPL Matches

 

This is one of the great news for the cricket fans worldwide, the famous Indian Premier League will be hosted live on the YouTube for free, and everyone will be able to enjoy the fast paced cricket action that 20-20 is. Google has got broadcasting rights for the IPL Season 3 that is scheduled for 12 March – 25 April which is why this ‘Free Live on Internet’ has been made possible

Global video game sales fell 7 percent in 2009

Though video game software sales were down globally, Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was by far the best-selling game of the year, despite only being launched in November.

(Credit: Activision Blizzard)

Video game software sales across the world's three largest markets--the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom--fell 8 percent in 2009, according to a joint report issued Wednesday by a consortium of industry analyst firms. The UK led the way with a 14 percent plunge.

But one title that can't be blamed for the difficult year is Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The fastest-selling video game of all time turned in sales of 11.86 million copies in the three markets, despite only being released in November.

The annual Top Global Markets report, which is put together by The NPD Group, GfK Chart-Track, and Enterbrain, echoed NPD's study of the 2009 U.S. market, in which the firm reported that industry sales across the board--software, hardware, and accessories--dropped 8 percent, year-over-year. That was in spite of the fact that December was the best sales month NPD had ever recorded for the industry.

According to the Top Global Markets report, video game software sales in the U.S., Japan and the UK totaled 379.3 million units in 2009. Japan had the smallest decline, with software sales just 2 percent lower overall than 2008, though console game sales were down 5 percent. In the U.S., software sales were down 7 percent.

But the biggest blame for the slowing sales in all three markets was due to consumers' eroding interest in PlayStation 2 games. Across all three markets, PS2 software sales plummeted 57 percent in 2009. That's not a huge surprise, given that that console is now nearly 10 years old--Sony has long said the PS2, as well as its current flagship, the PlayStation 3, have 10-year lifecycles. But the PS2 is still selling, and people are still buying games for it, albeit at a much-reduced rate, as the Top Global Markets report indicated.

Tough to follow 2008

Throughout 2009, the video game industry, in the U.S. at least, saw one year-over-year monthly decline after another. And for the year, software sales were down 7 percent. But NPD analyst Anita Frazier tried to put a positive spin on those factors, suggesting in the Wednesday report that it would have been nearly impossible for the industry to show sales gains last year, given that 2008 was a record year across the board for video games.

She did conclude, however, that there is an established relationship between the number of software titles the industry turns out and the average unit sales per title. In 2004, she wrote, the industry had the lowest number of titles launched during the last seven years, but the highest average sales per title. Conversely, in 2009, it was the reverse: the highest number of titles released, and the lowest average sales since 2005.

Top-selling software

Clearly, 2009 was the year of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. But while its sales were significantly ahead of any other title's, it was not the only game that sold well last year. However, on a worldwide basis, it was the only title for either the Xbox 360 or the PS3 that cracked the top five.

The next four best-sellers were all for Nintendo's Wii: Wii Sports Resort sold 7.57 million units worldwide; New Super Mario Bros. Wii moved 7.41 million; Wii Fit Plus sold 5.80 million units; and Wii Fit rounded out the top five with a total of 5.44 million units for the year.

Seagate Unveils USB 3.0 Based BlackArmor PS110 Portable HDD

 

Seagate has introduced its new 500GB HDD named BlackArmor PS110 boasting the latest USB 3.0 specifications and comes along with USB 3.0 Kit which includes a PC express card so that your existing laptops could be equipped with enhanced USB 3.0, the speed increase is phenomenal when compared to USB 2.0 based devices, as you can now transfer a 25GB high definition movie in just 4 minutes compared to 14 minutes with USB 2.0. 

BlackArmor PS110 is priced at $179.99 and you can buy it right now.

We have also seen Asus premium motherboards featuring USB 3.0 ports, by the end of this year it is expected that USB 3.0 will be adopted widely in personal computers and if you haven’t heard it yet, USB 3.0 is also capable of delivering full HD resolutions, so you might also witness display signals being transferred via USB 3.0 along with RGB, HDMI and DisplayPort.

Should You Give Up XP for Windows 7?

Windows XP retained many loyal users during the dark ages of Vista, but the emergence of Windows 7 may signal the end of an era.

The vast majority of PC users still haven't adopted Vista. Eight years after its release--and months after Microsoft officially discontinued it--Windows XP is more beloved than ever.

So will Windows 7 convince XP loyalists to switch? Instead of guessing, we decided to ask them. In August, we conducted an online survey of more than 8000 people who told us that XP was their primary OS. The top three reasons they haven't upgraded to Vista: They're comfortable with XP, Vista lacks features that might justify an upgrade, and they're concerned about driver and compatibility issues.

Vistaphobia ran high among respondents who had tried Windows Vista (62 percent said that their opinion of the OS was somewhat or very negative) and among those who merely knew about it (81 percent were somewhat or very negative). But most respondents said that were keeping an open mind about Windows 7.

In fact, the 26 percent of respondents who said they had already used Windows 7 were quite enthusiastic about it: 73 percent said that their opinion of Win 7 was somewhat or very positive, and only 11 percent said that it was very or somewhat negative. Also, 56 percent said that they intended to move to Windows 7 immediately or eventually. Among respondents who had read about Windows 7 but hadn't used it, 56 percent said that their opinion of Win 7 was somewhat or very positive, and only 12 percent said that it was somewhat or very negative.

Still, a meaningful minority of respondents have no interest in upgrading: 40 percent said that they intended to stick with XP indefinitely. Which brings up another interesting question: When will it become impractical to keep using XP and spurning its successors?

Supposedly, that date has already come and gone: Microsoft formally discontinued Windows XP on June 30, 2008, and it ended mainstream support on April 14, 2009. But the company has continued to permit PC builders to offer downgrade discs that let XP fans install the OS over Vista. It says that manufacturers can ship Windows 7 machines with XP downgrades for 18 months after Win 7's release or until it ships the first Service Pack for the new OS--whichever comes first. In other words, XP downgrades may be available until April 22, 2011 (assuming that Microsoft doesn't extend the deadline further; it has already granted XP so many stays of execution that refusing to grant any more would be a bit surprising.)

Windows XP's final death knell is scheduled to sound on April 8, 2014. On that date, Microsoft says that it will no longer take support calls and issue security fixes. This doesn't mean that no one will run XP on April 9 and beyond--it just means that they'll be on their own. XP holdouts, you've been warned.

New virus-detecting lab on a chip gets even better

A team of engineers and chemists at Brigham Young University has created a silicon microchip they say can reliably detect specific proteins or viruses from even small samples at low concentrations.

Their invention, which is forthcoming in the paper version of the journal Lab on a Chip, works much the way a coin sorter does, only on a microscopic scale, screening for particles purely by size. This renders sample sizes and concentration levels almost irrelevant, because particles are trapped by size, not number, thereby allowing for much earlier detections of viruses.

"Most of the tests that you're given are fairly inaccurate unless you have a really high concentration of the virus," Aaron Hawkins, professor of electrical and computer engineering at BYU and supervisor of the chip design, said in a statement. "One of the goals in the 'lab on a chip' community is to try to measure down to single particles flowing through a tube or a channel."

And now, in just the past few weeks, Hawkins tells me the team has managed to overcome one of their biggest challenges--interfacing the large fluid amounts of the macro world with the tiny fluid amounts of the micro world. He says they've come up with a way to use macro volumes of fluid on their micro chip by gluing plastic reservoirs onto the chip and "precision-aligning them."

The chip works much in the way coin sorters do; volumes of liquids can flow over the chip until they hit a wall, at the bottom of which is a thin slot whose size is precisely a tiny amount smaller than the particle being measured. The specifically sized particles that are trapped against the wall form a line visible with a special camera.

The researchers say that capturing single particles can also be useful beyond the detection of a virus or protein. David Belnap, an assistant professor of chemistry and co-author of the paper, says that a chip like theirs could also advance the pace of research, allowing scientists to consistently obtain pure samples essential for close inspection of viruses and virus behavior.

Mozilla Thunderbird More Secure Than Microsoft Outlook

The French military is now using the Thunderbird client on over 80,000 computers as it finds Mozilla's latest email client more secure than Microsoft Outlook. The department found Mozilla's open source design permitted France to build extensions for security, while Microsoft's proprietary software allowed no extensions to be made.

According to Reuters, "France's military chose open source software after an internal government debate that began in 2003 and culminated in a 6 November 2007, directive requiring state agencies Seek maximum technological and commercial independence."

The military has released some of its work to the public under the name 'TrustedBird' and co-branded it with Mozilla.

The French government is also shifting to other open source software such as Linux instead of Windows and OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office.

Reuters quoted Lieutenant-Colonel Frederic Suel, ministry of defence as saying, "They may move beyond government, because TrustedBird's security extensions make it transposable to large international companies."

Bonica Snapper-XP S5 Digital Underwater Camera – Discover The Outdoors

If God had know that we’d like to snap fish underwater he would have fitted us with shutter, we might as well capture fishy tales from down under with this awesome Digital Camera Mask. This high-quality 5-meg digital camera also doubles up as a cool underwater mask. Splosh!

Philips SBA1500 Portable Speakers

These HOT, HOT SBA1500 speakers from Phillips are unlike any other sound blasters around. Though just the size of a cricket ball, one single speaker has the meat to blast off the jazz in style! The speakers come with their own power pack to amplify the music, which clips together pretty neatly with the speakers for true compact portability. And best bit: These portable balls of power are made to actually live off the power from your music device. So just plug them in and set the ball rolling!

iPhone gets Bluetooth keyboard driver

Apple’s refusal to add a netbook to its range has left many attempting to use the iPhone or iPod touch as a rough equivalent, but ease of text entry continues to frustrate. Happily, where Apple fall short the developer community delivers, with the simply-named iPhone Bluetooth Keyboard Driver. Soon to appear in the Cydia Store, v.1 of the driver allows you to wirelessly connect a Bluetooth keyboard to the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS or iPod touch.

It’s not a perfect solution: it requires that the device be jailbroken first, and iPhone 2G support is unclear at present. You’ll also need an iPod touch with Bluetooth, too, so that counts out the first-gen model. The software implementation isn’t quite perfect either; v.10 lacks support for cut/copy/paste, you can’t highlight text by holding down shift and using the cursor keys, the CapsLock button won’t work and Apple’s own wireless keyboard won’t quick auto-connect.

Nonetheless, this is a huge step forward for turning the iPhone or iPod touch into a mobile workstation, and those who enter large amounts of text may find the combination of the App Store and this new driver irresistible. No word on when exactly it will enter the Cydia Store.

Apple Unveils iPAD: Features, Price and Videos

Apple recently revealed its iPad which in fact being spectacular suffers from the lack of basic features like flash support, camera, USB ports, you will need a port convertor if you want to attach anything to it. Its happening all over again, the Apple joke, first they release a  great but lacking product than later make changes to piss off the early buyers, it happened with the iPhone, iPod Touch and now with the iPad.

Roll Laptop Concept

D-roll is a next generation concept laptop design which is way distinctive from usual laptops in both shape and function. The long tube shape of this laptop, which was inspired from the storage tubes that artists are using for storing large drawings, eliminates perception of the traditional book looking laptops.

Intel Wants to Put the Internet Inside Your TV

Dell Unveils Zino HD Mini PC - Inspiron 400

Dell has officially released their Zino HD Mini PCs which can really make your desktop look more spacious, the small form factor and power that can run your HDTVs with the HD capable inbuilt graphics or optional ATI Graphics card makes it a strong contender for the Media Center PCs, and as its a DELL you can also customize it by adding more HDD space, more powerful processor and dedicated ATI graphics, the base model starts at $229 with 1.6 GHz AMD Athlon, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD, Microsoft Vista  and no Wi-Fi.

A much better $399 configuration is below:

AMD Athlon 2850e – 1.8 GHz

Windows 7 Home Premium

8X DVD+/-RW Drive

3GB DDR2  800MHz- Dual Channel

320GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive

Integrated ATI Radeon HD3200 Graphics

Dell 1397 802.11 b/g Wireless Card

Same configuration with 4 GB RAM and 500GB HDD and ATI Radeon HD 4330 512 MB Graphics card is available for $535.

The dream of taking Internet Become an expert on SEO, consumer behavior, email marketing, web analytics and more Internet marketing fundamentals. Click here. TV to an actual TV seems a no-brainer to consumers: a screen's a screen, and a monitor's just another screen, after all. However, there's more to the technology than meets the eye or fits the couch potato's view. Even so, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) More about Intel made a huge step toward plugging the Internet TV play on Thursday when it unveiled Atom processor CE4100 (code-name "Sodaville") -- its 45nm System-on-Chip for Internet TV.

The CE4100 processor is the first 45nm-manufactured consumer electronics SoC based on Intel architecture. It supports Internet and broadcast applications on one chip, and has the processing power and audio/video components necessary to run rich media applications such as 3-D graphics.

 Where does the World's greatest Brand names came from ?

Adobe - came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind thehouse of founder John Warnock.

Apache - It got its name because its founders got started by applying patchesto code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'A PAtCHy'server -- thus, the name Apache

Apple Computers - favorite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three monthslate in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company AppleComputers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 o'clock.

CISCO - its not an acronym but the short for San Francisco.

Google -the name started as a jokey boast about the amount of informationthe search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol',a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders,Stanford grad students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project toan angel investor, they received a cheque made out to 'Google'

Hotmail - Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the webfrom a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up withthe business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in'mail' and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters "html" - theprogramming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred toas HoTMaiL with selective upper casing.

HP - Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether thecompany they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.

Intel - Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company'Moore Noyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so theyhad to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.

Lotus (Notes) - Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The LotusPosition' or 'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of TranscendentalMeditation (by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi).

Microsoft - coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted toMICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.

Motorola - Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the timewas called Victrola.

ORACLE - Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was called Oracle (acronym for: One Real Asshole Called Larry Ellison)

Red Hat - Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse teamcap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. He lost it andhad to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linuxhad an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone !

SAP - "Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by 4 ex-IBMemployees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applications/Projects"

SUN - founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for StanfordUniversity Network.

Xerox - The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say 'dry' (asit was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying).The Greek root 'xer' means dry.

Yahoo! - the word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book 'Gulliver'sTravels'. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and isbarely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the namebecause they considered themselves yahoos.

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