Saturday, March 27, 2010
by Aazar Shahzad
Some of the hard specs on Nvidia's completely next-gen Fermi graphics cards have been out there, but this is what you can actually buy around April 12: The $500 GeForce GTX 480 and $350 GeForce GTX 470.Nvidia's calling the GTX 480 the "fastest video card in the world" with 480 processing cores (ha) and 1.5GB of video RAM. It eats up 250W of power, so stringing together 2 or 3 via SLI would require a small power plant in your PC. Slightly less ridiculous is the GTX 470, with 448 cores, 1.28GB of RAM and pulling 215W, for $350. Nvidia's benchmarks obviously show it crushing some of ATI's top-of-the-line 5000 series cards, but we'll leave the hardcore benchmarking to our nerdier friends out there (which should be coming shortly).
Nvidia's promising "tens of thousands" of the cards will be available at launch, and you should start seeing them sometime around April 12, though you might find 'em earlier.
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by Aazar Shahzad
Quim Gil of Nokia's Maemo team has dropped some knowledge on the folks chatting up the upcoming MeeGo release in the official Maemo forums, and it sounds like there are at least a couple critical points to be aware of for N900 owners and would-be ROM flashers when the first developer preview drops next week. To quote Gil, "nothing beautiful, stable or fully featured" will be a part of that initial release -- and to be more blunt about it, "99% of you don't want to install that release in your N900." The good news, though, is that Nokia seems to be aware of the importance of a dual-boot solution to MeeGo devs working with N900s in the long term, and Gil reports that a proper setup for that "will come at some point" -- it's just not on their short-term radar. We can totally understand that; we've no doubt there's still tons of reconciliation to manage between the legacy Maemo and Moblin ecosystems, and that's presumably priority one as they march toward a May release of what's being billed as a MeeGo 1.0 release.
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Friday, March 26, 2010
by Aazar Shahzad
While I was at CTIA 2010 this year, I was bombarded by businesses who can somehow turn a profit by selling skins for mobile devices. Most of these businesses looked the same, but one of the most unusual ones that I saw was from a company known as iaPeel, “the only consumer printable skin system”.
All the user has to do is download some special software, and then he or she can put their own image on their skin. From there, it is as easy as printing off a deskjet printer.
These iaPeel skins are available for all kinds of mobile devices, and they are very easy to put on. They also have “a built-in precision alignment system that ensures a perfect fit every time”.
Not only are the iaPeel made from a durable material, but you may notice how the skin of this frame blends perfectly with the image on the device’s digital wallpaper. This is all part of the software.
The iaPeel doesn’t have a distributor as yet, but really should. I’m going to help them as much as I can. The cost is estimated to be $29.95 MSRP pakage, with 12 retail packages per box, 4 boxes per case, and one case minimum order.
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Wednesday, March 24, 2010
by Aazar Shahzad
An authentic design inspired by military and commercial planes and helicopters provides a flying experience that's more realistic and more fun, with important controls that look, feel and work like the real thing. The force feedback joystick allows you to control your aircfraft with confidence as you feel its movement as well as its reaction to air turbulence and g-forces. The dual throttle allows you to precisely control multi-engine aircraft using the split lever. Rudder pedals with toe brakes give you true-to-life control, especially when rudder control is essential such as performing definsive maneuvers and crosswind landings, or piloting helicopters. Interactive, programmable throttle-base buttons integrate with simulation software and illuminate red, green, amber or off to indicate the status of critical aircraft systems, just like they would a real cockpit.
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by Aazar Shahzad
WD's My Book Studio Edition II dual-drive, quad-interface external storage system for Mac offers optimum performance for creative professionals. Lightning-fast FireWire 800 or eSATA interfaces combined with RAID 0 (striping) yields the speed you need for fast, smooth video and audio editing, rendering complex 3D objects or special effects, and saving huge blocks of data in record time. Set the system to RAID 1 (mirroring) for the peace of mind in knowing that if one drive in this two-drive system ever fails, the system continues to run and your data is safe. Includes automatic data backup software, user-serviceability, a 5-year limited warranty, and works with Apple's Time Machine.With the ever increasing size of my digital photo library I needed to increase the size of my back-up drive. I use this unit with a Mac and set to a RAID 1 configuration for mirrored storage. RAID 1 knocks down the usable area to 931 MB. It seems to work with Apple's Time Machine back-up program and OS 10.5. I did reformat from my Mac as I have always found I have to do for external drives. After about a month, everything seems good.
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