|  |  |  | | | | | Maximum PC - All Articles | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Blackberry's Playbook arrived at our offices today, and we just started putting the device through its paces. There's a considerable amount of negativity around RIM's first tablet device. We'll withhold judgement until we've spent at least a full day with it, but we will admit to being disappointed that there's no native email client on the device. That feels like a shortcoming. On the plus side, the screen is pretty amazing, and standard internet performance is surprisingly snappy. More into to come as we unearth it. For now, here are a bunch of photographs of our shiny new thing. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Valve's generally incredible at keeping secrets (we think they may actually be removing knowledge of Half-Life from our brains at this point), but we thought we had Portal 2's main feature set pretty well figured out. Single-player, co-op, custom levels. Yep, that about covers it. Turns out, we were wrong. There's more. In this case, though, it's not necessarily a pleasant surprise.
Shortly after installing the game and bounding through its menus like frenzied, frothy mouthed wolves, many players happened across an option titled "Robot Enrichment." One click spirited them away to an in-game store that housed all manner of microtransaction-based cosmetic upgrades for co-op mode's cybernetic co-stars, Atlas and P-Body. Thing is, some of those microtransactions aren't so "micro." Skins, for instance, will run you $4.99 a piece, and hats will set you back $2.49. Emotes, meanwhile, break the piggy bank slightly less at $1.99. Apparently, each item becomes tradeable to other players after "a few" days, though how exactly that works is currently untestable for obvious reasons. Also, some items can be unlocked via achievements, but early reports seem to indicate that such a method will leave your hat rack barren and your skin rack... wait. Skin rack? We really hope that's not a thing. And if it is, please don't tell us. We'll keep our innocence, thanks. So, to review, purely cosmetic digital objects that one could solidly argue are a teensy bit over-priced. Is it time throw down your portal gun and pick up a pitchfork? Well, not quite. After all, these items are completely optional. No one's forcing you to spend money – except via the ever-powerful Jedi Mind Trick that is peer pressure. However, we're also not entirely sure how we feel about Valve's less-than-subtle nickle-and-diming here. Everyone needs to make money, yeah, but we don't get the impression of coin-cup-rattling desperation from Gabe Newell and co. Also, let's not forget TF2's strange obsession with hats. Depending on your point of view, the possibility of a similar situation here could be cause for celebration or months of mourning. So yes, it's a very sticky situation. What do you think? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  If you're anything like us, and we pray you are, then you're positively brimming with brilliant ideas that beg to be recorded before your megamind moves on to the next revelation. Or maybe you just think it's cute to record your cat's meow. Whatever your recording needs, chances are your Android device did not come stocked with a voice recorder. As we prowled the app-i-verse for a suitable remedy, we desired something with a little more panache than a the basic speak-and-save audio recorder. With features such as Dropbox archiving, basic editing and playback controls, Tape-a-Talk Pro Voice Recorder gave it to us.
Although it hits you with plenty of features, Tape-a-Talk doesn't sacrifice a simple and intuitive interface to implement them. Try out the free version, which lets you upload recorded audio to a variety of third-party apps, such as Dropbox, Evernote, AndFTP, Gmail and others. You can set the bit and sample rates for recording WAV or compressed 3GP files, pause and resume recording, record in the background (even with the display off), and set the audio clips as ringtones. 
Once you step up to the ad-free Pro version for 3.99 euros ($5.77 today), you're granted dictation machine features like fast forward/rewind during recording, a home screen widget, default email settings for recipient and text, big buttons mode, and basic editing, where you can cut a file based on start and end points. 
Our Samsung Galaxy Tab ran Tape-a-Talk Pro like a dream; we didn't experience any crashes or glitches. The audio quality was nice, and we really appreciated the editing and various export options. We do, however, wish for MP3 recording, instead of or in addition to 3GP. What do you think of Tape-a-Talk Voice Recorder? 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Google is forging ahead with their quest to promote the WebM open video codec. To those ends, Google has announced that all new videos that are uploaded to YouTube will be encoded in WebM in addition to the other supported formats. Google is also working hard to get the entire 6-year backlog of YouTube videos converted to their preferred format.
WebM is a based on the VP8 video standard and Vorbis audio. If you ask Google, they claim the standard is completely unencumbered by patents, unlike the current codec king H.264. Others are not so sure, and patent pools are already being assembled to challenge WebM. But that isn't stopping Google. In addition to the new videos, El Goog has already transcoded videos that make up 99% of the views on YouTube, which amounts to about 30% of the total number. In the interests of compatibility, Google reminds us that H.264 support is not going away (even though it was yanked from Chrome). Videos will continue to be encoded in multiple formats, and development continues on Google's HTML5 video player. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The brand new tablet/smartphone/GPU you grabbed last week is the cat's meow. But what happens to it - or to any of the devices you once treasured- when you don't want or need them anymore? Where do they go? Is there a reliable, "green" way to dispose of them? And hey, does one extra electronic gadget in a landfill really put the big hurt on the environment? As you'll see in the pages ahead, there's a whole bunch of stuff not to like about the way we deal with our old and unloved electronics. We toss way too much of it. We recycle some of it, but even then the machinery behind that recycling is flawedand we're only beginning to understand the dangers that come from the hazardous materials that lay inside. Changes are afoot, but the evidence of an apatheticpast and present, like the e-waste itself, is piling up. 
The Break Down: What's Inside Your Tech Let's start simple by looking at one of today's most ubiquitous electronic gadgets, the cellphone or smart phone. While there's no validated evidence to suggest the persistent use of cell phones will trigger brain tumors – despite lots of hype to the contrary – the cell phone is far from green. Indeed, it houses a lot of stuff you certainly wouldn't want to sprinkle on your cereal. Stuff like copper, gold, lead, nickel, antimony, zinc, beryllium, tantalum, mercury, arsenic, and coltan (more on coltan in a moment), among others. While most of these materials are part of the finished item, others play a critical role in the production process and remain onboard afterward. Some are found on the circuit board, others in the display. Or in the battery. Or in the wiring or the solder that flows between all of the above. And let's not forget the glue that holds so much of the innards together. Or the packaging, which in many instances is the very definition of excessive. Or the plastic shell, which contains crude oil, natural gas, and chemicals. 
Image courtesy Chris Jordan Also generally less than green are the methods in which some of the "ingredients" are acquired. Coltan, for example, a vital element in the production of cell phone-level capacitors, is currently the subject of much controversy. The majority of coltan is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where human rights organizations claim the people who mine it live and work in deplorable conditions, surviving on less than $1000 a year and digging underground without safety equipment or supplemental air supplies. Animal rights organizations claim the regional gorilla population is impacted in two ways – by dwindling food supplies in the mining zones and because some are used as meat to feed the miners. Add to that the UN, which says that most of the parties involved in the mining and sale of coltan are also involved in the local civil war. Not exactly a glowing summary of earth friendliness. The Numbers: How Much E-Waste Are We Talking About? 
But here's the thing – this whole cell phone business wouldn't be quite so overwhelming to fix if so damn many of them didn't end up in the garbage. Once trashed, a cell phone travels to the local landfill, where it's compacted, smashed, crunched, and/or burned until everything that was once safely ensconced inside spews out and over the course of months, years, and decades, leaches into the air, ground, and water. And in large doses, the stuff inside a cell phone – as is the case with most electronics – has been linked to critical health concerns such as cancer, birth defects, brain afflictions, and damage to the nervous, reproductive, digestive, lymphatic, and immune systems. Even the brominated flame retardants that coat the plastic case of many cell phones, guarding against the accidental ignition of the materials inside, become potentially toxic once said case is compromised. Granted, a single cell phone lying in a single landfill isn't of tremendous concern. But we're not talking a single cell phone. How many are we talking? Well…the United Nations says sixty percent of the world's total population owns at least one. Think about that for a moment. Perhaps even more telling are recent reports claiming a whopping five billion mobile phone subscriptions are currently in place worldwide. Now, consider how many of these users are already on their second, third, or fourth cell, and you begin to get the picture. But the truly scary part? Most reliable estimates say that no more than ten to fifteen percent of all cell phones are recycled. And that figure applies only here in the good old (cut good old?) USA. One can only imagine how that figure varies in countries where recycling is a virtual unknown. Ultimately, one can say with some confidence that literally billions of cell phones have been discarded over the course of the last three decades, all of which are now in the process of breakdown.
The Tech Stockpile Of course, cell phones play but a minor role in a very big story – the story of electronics at the end of their life cycle. The story of e-waste. Let's check out some numbers. There are, right this very moment, more than a billion computers worldwide. Two hundred million televisions were sold is 2009 alone. Eight million dashtop GPS units were purchased in 2008. One hundred and ten million digital cameras were sold in 2009. Apple blew out 20 million iPods in just the first quarter of that same year. Indeed, according to a November 2010 report published by think-tank Demos and penned by author Elizabeth Grossman (a journalist specializing in environmental and science issues and the author of "High Tech Trash"), there are three billion electronics products currently in use in America alone. That's a fifty percent increase since 2007 – and a turnover rate of 400 million per annum. 
Clearly, these are staggering figures, and certainly more proof – as if we needed it – that we live in a disposable society. Back in the day, an electronic item such as a table top radio might very well have held its place inside a home for decades. Not necessarily because it was better built than today's radios – though many would say it was – but because there weren't a ton of home and personal entertainment options apart from radios. Moreover, evolution moved at a much slower pace. It took some time to build a radio, and even then there were only a precious few options to enhance. Ultimately, there simply weren't many truly compelling reasons for a consumer to move to a newer model. Contrast old school radios to, say, the television marketplace of the last decade. First, we dumped our bulky, energy-sucking CRT TVs. (CRT technology, by the way, is widely considered to have the foulest environmental footprint in the entire electronic world – each display housing several pounds of lead and copious quantities of toxic goodies such as mercury, cadmium, and arsenic.) We then jumped on the flat-panel bandwagon, but soon thereafter we discovered the joys of true 1080p high-definition. And many of us changed over yet again. Now, for better or worse, there's 3DTV. All in the span of ten years. 
Now think about the length of time you keep any of your modern electronics before you give them up, either because they're broken or more likely because they've been supplanted by something faster/better. Five years? Two? Look at the iPad as an example. Between the release of the original and the release of the follow-up, complete with its slimmer build, upgraded CPU, superior cameras, and other incremental improvements that Apple maniacs worship, there was just a single year. Apple sold fifteen million original iPads. But now, for many, they're passé. And let's not forget – not all unused products are immediately given the heave-ho. Consumers tend to stockpile stuff they don't use any longer. Admit it – how many old game consoles or cell phones or laptops or TVs or cameras or cd players, Walkmans, record players, spare monitors are sitting around your house right now because you'll either use them again one day (fat chance), or because you just don't know what to do about it? There are a lot of people like you. In a 2005 study commissioned for HP by market research firm Penn Schoen Berland, it was said that sixty-eight percent of consumers stockpile used or unwanted computer equipment in their homes. In a 2008 EPA study of select electronics sold between 1980 and 2007 –specifically items like televisions, computers and peripherals, hard copy imaging devices such as printers and scanners, and cell phones – it was found that more than 235 million units had accumulated in storage by 2007. We're willing to bet dollars to donuts that figure has increased substantially since then, given the onslaught of portable, personal devices in the past few years. The Alternative Option: What Happens When Tech is Recycled? 
The answer, of course, is recycling. And reusing. And renewing. And that's where things get interesting. For starters, there's no doubt the process, when carried out in a responsible, forward-thinking manner, works. We asked the folks at Illinois-based Intercon Solutions, a progressive recycler that specializes in electronics and recycles everything it receives – no reselling, remarketing, land filling, incineration, or exportation – to give us the lowdown on what happens to our friend the cell phone when it hits the Intercon facility. And they told us. But not without first advising us that Intercon, like many of today's top-rung facilities, prefers the term "de-manufacture" to "recycle," - and for good reason, as you'll soon see. When Itercon first receives a cell phone (or a smart phone or an MP3 player – the process is similar), it places the item with others of its own type and weight. This continues until 25 pallet-sized boxes are filled, at which point item teardown begins. Intercon cautions that although teardown may look similar to a standard assembly line, it's actually a "de-assembly" line where individual items are de-manufactured or disassembled – by hand. In any case, plastics, glass and all the different metals found in smart phones and MP3 players are separated. Then each metal – gold, silver, lead, aluminum, iron, copper, brass, palladium, rhodium, and more – is further sorted into individual lots. 
Once separated, each component is passed on to one of Intercon's domestic smelting partners, all of which must meet the requirements of the company's ISO 9001 and 14001, OHSAS 18001, RIOS, R2, and NAID AAA certifications. (Perhaps a mention on what the eff these certifications certify?) There are no offshore handoffs. The plastics, glass, and metals are smelted into bars, ingots, or sows, while the glass, lead, and precious metal items are recycled back into new electronic circuitry. The plastics are, interestingly, remanufactured into parking bumpers. You see, recycled plastic from items such as cell phones have traditionally been used in the fabrication of asphalt roads and composite decking. But parking bumpers, we're told, aren't nearly so prone to leaching. One more thing: Intercon has recently developed a "reverse engineering" method for recycling and reusing what was once considered a wholly unrecyclable product – Styrofoam. Though Styrofoam (also known as polystyrene) isn't exactly electronic in nature, it inevitably goes hand-in-hand with the packaging of said electronics and takes hundreds of years to degrade once trashed. In our minds, the less Styrofoam in the trash, the better.
Irresponsible "Recycling" 
Ultimately, the big problem with responsible recycling is not that it can't be done, but that it often isn't. For all the Intercons, there are seemingly oodles more non-Intercons. Is there any guarantee that the item you dutifully send for recycling will be recycled properly? Apparently, in many cases, the answer is no. The people of Ghana know this all too well. You see, Ghana, along with regions of India, Nigeria, China, and several other remote locations, have become the world's electronic dumping ground. There, old, unused, unloved, and outmoded electronics arrive by the boatload, often under the guise of recycling. Sadly, the word "recycle" means something very different there than it does here. An August 2008 Greenpeace report chronicles the process, and its findings are far from uplifting. In this unregulated and often unmonitored environment where the average annual wage is expressed in the hundreds of dollars, tech products are burned over open flames to separate the plastic from the more valuable metals. Products with little or no value are dumped in nearby pits. Needless to say, the threat of escaping toxins is not a threat at all – it's a reality. Eighty percent of the children in Guiyu, China, another region that receives recyclable electronics, are known to have elevated levels of lead in their blood due to the toxins found in these electronics. 
Image courtesy Greenpeace
Worse still, the Greenpeace study (a study that has since been corroborated by other organizations) determined much of the hard labor is performed by teenage boys, some as young as eleven. Most toil through each long day bereft of protective equipment and with little or no knowledge of safe handling procedures. Arguably of equal concern is the widespread abuse of the otherwise wonderfully humanitarian "Bridge the Digital Divide" program, wherein nations of wealth pass along older yet fully functioning tech to impoverished peoples. The theory being, of course, that a circa-2000 computer means a hell of a lot more to a Ghanaian schoolhouse than the busy New York executive who parted ways with it. Yet, according to Greenpeace and its sources, anywhere from twenty-five to seventy five percent of second-hand "reusable" goods that land in developing nations are in fact broken beyond repair and of use to no one. That these devices then end up in the tech killing fields we cited earlier comes as no surprise. E-cycling and Health Hazards 
So, why do such practices exist? Greed. XYX Recycling picks up a load of goods and instead of dealing with it as it should, it merely chucks it on the next boat to Ghana. Out of sight, out of mind, money in pocket. In all fairness, electronics recycling is a comparatively new idea, and regulations are continually being initiated to ensure the procedure is conscientiously carried out. Penalties are levied and wayward recycling practices are now being monitored more closely than ever. Case in point: On Feb 18th of this year, two recycling businesses, Toronto-based Metro Metals Corp. and Avista Recycling, Inc., were hit with a $31,600 penalty and ordered to properly dispose of the goods at their own cost for relabeling 913 CRT-based monitors as scrap plastic and attempting to ship them off to Vietnam. And in June of last year, the City Council of the town of Plymouth, England, was fined £8,000 ($13,000) for allowing unauthorised firms to remove and sell unwanted computers from its waste plants. It was determined the council breached the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive by allowing firms to take charge of electronics without first ascertaining if those firms were bona fide recyclers. Having said that, the disposition of electronics clearly has a long way to go, as does the manufacture of such products. After all, wouldn't it be nice if all the components in our cell phones and tablets and PCs wasn't such damaging stuff in the first place? Certainly it would, and not just for us consumers either. Truth is that the even the production of high-tech electronics – and in particular semiconductors – can be extremely hazardous to one's health. 
Image courtesy Greenpeace You see, there's a secondary reason for those clean rooms and protective bunny suits you see portrayed in tech industry television advertisements. Sure, they keep the product free of contaminants. But they also serve to shield the employees. Without such safeguards, workers en masse would be exposed to the chemicals involved in semiconductor manufacture. For many years now, reports of miscarriages, skin disorders, and incidents of cancers such as leukaemia or lymphoma have buzzed about the industry. In 2004, for example, a jury ruled IBM was not responsible for fatal cancers that developed in two former employees at a disk drive factory. The suit claimed harsh chemicals in the factory caused the deaths, and though IBM was ultimately cleared, it's one of several similar allegations levelled against the company. More recently, Samsung came under fire in 2010 for the death of a former employee who succumbed, at the age of 23, to blood cancer. This was but one of several deaths and afflictions attributed to Samsung's Onyag, South Korea semiconductor facility.
A Long Way to Go: Progress Towards Accountable Recycling 
Barbara Kyle, National Coordinator of the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, a San Francisco-based organization that promotes green design and responsible recycling in the electronics industry, says producers are taking steps to improve the manufacturing process, but cautions there is a very long way to go. Kyle tells us that the ongoing elimination of high-concern chemicals such as halogenated flame retardants "is a good start, but understand that this industry uses many, many chemicals that are barely tested for hazards before they are put into commerce." Elizabeth Grossman believes the entire process – from product conception to afterlife – should be in harmony. "As someone said to me when I was working on High Tech Trash, it should be as easy to recycle a computer as it is to buy one – this should be true of any piece of consumer electronics – and part of what will make this happen, in addition to making the recycling easy and convenient for consumers (whether for individual, workplace or school use), is to have product design evolve to make the equipment last longer and be designed for extended life through technology upgrades, and ultimately to be made of non-toxic and reusable materials." But if manufacturers are only beginning to develop a methodology to reduce or exclude toxic materials while keeping costs in line and to ensure truly green and perhaps semi-immortal machines, the hard, cold truth would appear to be that we, as a people, simply aren't doing enough in the meantime to ensure large-scale accountable recycling. 
E-Waste Protester at CES, Image Courtesy Abby Seiff We mentioned the recycling ratio for cell phones earlier – a dismal ten to fifteen percent. This figure appears to be the norm for all forms of electronics and high-tech devices. According to the EPA, in excess of 372 million electronics products units, weighing 3.16 million tons, were disposed of in the USA in 2007 and 2008 alone. Just fourteen percent of this was destined for recycling, leaving fully eighty-six percent to be burned or compacted. Computer users, sadly, might be the worst of the bunch – the Electronics TakeBack Coalition calculated that in 2007, some 112,000 computers were discarded in the U.S. each and every day. Like the manufacturers, it would seem the population in general needs incentive (rebates, discounts, rules, penalties) to make recycling an integral process. Yet in many states, because it's legal even right now to toss your tech gizmos in the trash, so most of us apparently believe it's true. E-Waste on the Federal Level 
The Olusosum dump site in Lagos; Image Courtesy of Greenpeace. But all is not lost. Approximately half the states in our union have now enacted some form of ban against the dumping of most common electronics products. Most legislation doesn't go so far as banning the export of e-waste to third-world countries, but it's definitely a start.
On the federal level, the recently introduced Responsible Electronics Recycling Act of 2010 proposes hefty fines for those who wrongly export electronic waste to developing countries. Critics say the bill doesn't have enough bite, but proponents claim something is better than nothing. Furthermore, on November 15, 2010, President Obama issued an electronics recycling presidential proclamation, announcing he was creating an interagency task force within the federal government "to prepare a national strategy for responsible electronics stewardship, including improvements to federal procedures for managing electronic products." Barbara Kyle, whose organization is involved with the "e-Stewards Program," a new certification standard that keeps member recyclers on their toes and helps consumers identify those recyclers that adhere to its vigorous standards, believes a fully regulated environment is mandatory if we're ever to see true change. "It's been very instructive to look at the results from each of the states," says Kyle. "We see much higher recycling volumes from most manufacturers in states where the law requires them to meet certain performance goals. So most companies do only what's required under the law." "There are a few exceptions, but looking at the numbers from Texas, which has a relatively weak computer recycling law that doesn't specify any level of performance, speaks volumes. Last year, Dell collected ten million pounds in Texas, while HP collected about 45,000. Dell and HP have roughly the same market share but clearly made wildly different efforts here. Yet Lenovo – a fast growing company – collected only ten pounds. Yes, ten. What's the lesson here? Pass strong recycling laws, or you won't see much recycling by these companies."
Takeback: Which Companies are Playing Nice & Green 
One other consumer option that's just recently getting play is "takeback." Essentially, takeback is just that – electronics manufacturers taking back products at the end of their life cycle and thus reducing the need for independent recycling. According to Kyle, "Strong takeback means two major things: Making the effort to actually get products back to recycle them, and making sure the products are recycled responsibly – not just exported to developing nations." Kyle once again gives the thumbs up to Dell, among others. "Dell is currently making the most effort to take back their old products. Back in 2001, they were the target of our campaigning – they had no free takeback at all. Now they do more than other companies even in states where the law doesn't require them to. For the TV companies, Samsung has been a leader in some states doing takeback, and in committing to use vendors certified to the e-Stewards recycling standard. Best Buy – which is also a TV manufacturer – has also been steadily growing their takeback program and is working with e-Stewards." Greenpeace, in its own study that ranks the most dominant tech producers in terms of their environmental footprint, rates Dell mid-pack, while praising Nokia and Sony Ericsson and slamming Nintendo and Microsoft. Read the Greenpeace guide for yourself. Newsweek, meanwhile, which ranks the top 500 largest publically traded companies in terms of their greenness, says tech is one of the cleanest sectors of all and rates Dell and HP in the numbers one and two positions. You can see its full 2010 Green Rankings here. Though all of the above paints a murky picture, it also paints a picture of obvious transition. And certainly, there does appear to be enough independent whistle-blowers, responsible manufacturers, and government intervention to ensure the future is at least better than the past. But right now, there are steps you can take to help. 
Ghana Scrapyard; Image Courtesy of Greenpeace. 1. Do not toss any electronic item in the trash. 2. If you're in the market for a replacement device, first consider the options. Is your current product upgradeable? Do you really need those new features? 3. Buy products that are part of a manufacturer "takeback" program. 4. Sell your old but functioning products on an online classified ad site, or donate them to a responsible local charity or organization. And don't forget – you may be eligible for a charitable donation receipt. 5. Patronize manufacturers and retailers that have strong green principles. Check their websites and the links in this article. 6. Try to purchase sustainable/upgradeable devices. 7. Give yourself a cool-down period before jumping on the Next Big Thing. And if the cool-down fails, quietly ponder the gobs of cash you've sunk into the "latest and greatest" in the past. And be sad. 8. If your state doesn't have an e-waste law, contact your local representative and ask why. (Here's a list of those that do) 9. Check the e-Stewards site for a roundup of recyclers that meet the vigorous e-Steward requirements. 10. Consult the EPA page for lots of good information on recycling, takeback, and donation programs. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  It was probably inevitable. Samsung has responded to Apple's legal action with strong words, and the promise of retaliation. The South Korean technology giant has a broad and deep patent portfolio of its own, and insinuated that they believe Apple is infringing one several of their own wireless patents. Samsung also reminds us how insane the situation is considering Apple is Sammy's second largest component customer, to the tune of billion in annual sales.
A Samsung official spoke to the AP saying, "Apple is one of our key buyers of semiconductors and display panels. However, we have no choice but respond strongly this time." Apple gets many components for the iDevices from Samsung. Engadget reports that Apple paid Samsung nearly $5.7 billion to Samsung last year. So Apple has made a serious assault on one of their supplier's main businesses. We can only imagine how awkward it's going to be the next time Apple needs millions of NAND flash chips. Keep an eye out for Samsung's counter-claims. There's probably a room full of lawyers at Samsung HQ furiously working on the giant pile of paperwork right now. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Rovio, the Finnish developer of the Angry Birds mobile game franchise has announced a new installment of the popular bird launching game. Before you get your hopes up, the new Angry Birds Magic will only be available on Nokia phones running the newest "Anna" update, and will require users to interact with NFC tags to unlock levels.
NFC, or Near Field Communication, is a short range wireless technology that can be used to transmit data. Attendees at the upcoming WIMA NFC Conference will get the 20-level game to try out. Only five levels will be playable at first, then users must seek out another player with an NFC enabled phone to exchange codes. Each friend unlocks another five levels. No NFC toting friends? Rovio and Nokia will be hiding NFC tags in various items in the real world. No indication as to just what kind of items they might be. We suspect a commercial tie in of some sort. This game feels like more of a tech demo right now. No word on if it will come to other platforms, like Android which does have NFC support in 2.3.3 Gingerbread. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Sonos arguably builds the best, most affordable multi-room audio system on the market, and the company today announced two new developments that render its product even better. The first is a free Android app that allows you to control its Zone Players with any Android device, and the second is a software update that adds support for Apple's AirPlay.
Sonos demonstrated the Android app for us yesterday, but we haven't had an opportunity to try it for ourselves. It adds a new feature—voice search—that's not available on the company's first- and second-generation dedicated controllers, nor is it available on the apps the company developed for the iPhone and iPad. When you want to hear music from a specific band in your collection, just speak the band's name into your phone to call up an album or track list. Unfortunately, that's the extent of voice support for now. You can't use voice commands to change modes, control individual Zone Players, call up your favorite Pandora station, or even change the volume. The Android app does, however, allow you to control the volume of any Zone Player using the volume buttons on your phone. That's something else you can't do on the iPhone because Apple does not expose that function in its API. Sonos also announced today the availability of version 3.4 of its Sonos software, which adds support for Apple's AirPlay. Sonos's engineers achieved a clever workaround here: Most audio devices—including the Zeppelin Air, the Marantz NA7004 network audio player, and Pioneer's new VSX-1021-K A/V receiver—require a part manufactured by BridgeCo to support AirPlay. This makes it virtually impossible to add AirPlay support to legacy hardware (the Marantz NA7004 didn't ship with AirPlay support, but the hardware was there. Turning on AirPlay support entails installing new firmware—for which Marantz will absurdly charge you $50). To stream audio from your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to the Sonos system, simply plug an Apple Airport Express ($99) into the line-in of any one Zone Player. Once you've done that, the music can be streamed from your iOS device over the proprietary Sonos network to any or all the Zone Players in your home. What's more, Sonos says you can stream different songs from your iTunes library to different Zone Players, a feat that isn't possible on other AirPlay-compatible devices we've tested. Now if Sonos could just get around to supporting 24-bit FLAC files and offering Slacker Radio, they really would have the best, most affordable multi-room audio system on the market. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 
I've seen the light, and it's dark. Intel's new Thunderbolt technology, formerly code-named Light Peak, is making its debut as something more like Copper Peak. Instead of the futuristic fiber-optic cables we were promised, we're getting plain old copper cables that would be passably familiar to Thomas Edison. Score another victory for electrons. They may be tiny, but they're wiry. (Ahem.) Not easily will they be shoved aside by photons (which, after all, are massless). Someday, fiber optics will replace most of our copper, but that day has not yet arrived. Who snuffed out the light in Light Peak? One culprit is Intel's intrepid Light Peak engineering team, which managed to wring more throughput from copper than expected. Thunderbolt combines PCI Express with DisplayPort on a single serial cable with two bidirectional channels, providing 10 gigabits per second per channel. That performance matches Intel's initial goal for an optical cable. Such speeds are not new for copper—10-gigabit Ethernet has been around for years—but sustaining that performance over long cables without data errors is difficult. Consequently, Thunderbolt's copper cables are limited to about 3 meters. For longer runs, Intel will introduce extended optical cables later this year. The other culprit working against photons is cost. Electrical connections are cheaper than optical connections, which matters a lot to the PC industry's razor-thin profit margins. It's not that copper wire is cheaper than glass fiber. It's that photons can't replace electrons entirely. Microprocessors and memory chips are electrical circuits, which need electrons. Although optical cables can carry data signals as photons, each cable termination requires a special interface chip that converts photons into electrons or vice versa. 
It turns out that Intel is the only source for Thunderbolt interface chips, because Thunderbolt is Intel's proprietary technology. It's a "standard" only in the sense that anyone can implement Thunderbolt on a computer, display, or peripheral—if they buy the chips from Intel. Lack of competition tends to keep costs higher. Thunderbolt is more thunder and less lightning than many people expected. Still, it's an important step toward a photonic future. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  The countdown timer on Alienware's 'Discover' portal teasing visitors to "be the first to know" has finally reached zero. So what was the big news? An Alienware triple-play consisting of three new laptops designed to redefine mobile gaming. These include the enhanced Alienware M11x R3, the new M14x, and the soon to be available M18x.
"Our teams have designed these systems with the features that are most important to gamers -- uncompromised graphics performance, latency-free wireless HD streaming to HDTVs, and lifelike 3D gaming," Dell said in a blog post. "All three platforms offer the latest in gaming technology, and feature second-generation Intel Core i processors to deliver the most immersive high-performance gaming experience imaginable." The flagship M18x will launch with the title of "most powerful 18-inch gaming laptop in the universe," a claim Alienware intends to back up with an Intel Core i7 Extreme processor factory overclocked to 4GHz, dual-graphics technology, and a handful of unannounced specs that will most likely include oodles of RAM and a solid state drive (perhaps two in a RAID 0 configuration). The M14x is a 14-inch laptop that weighs less than 6.5 pounds. Traits of the M14x include second-generation overclockable Core i7 processors, Nvidia GeForce GT 555M graphics with up to 3GB of video memory, optical disk drive, and optional Intel WiMAX technology or Verizon LTE. Finally, the M11x is all about portability and boasts second-generation Core i processors, Nvidia GeForce GT 540M graphics, and the same broadband connectivity options as the M14x. All three laptops comes with HDMI 1.4 for hooking up to 3D-capable HDTVs and SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports. Image Credit: Alienware | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  AMD appears to be attacking the entry-level and mainstream graphics card market with a vengeance. The chip maker last week rolled out is ultra-affordable Radeon HD 6450 priced at $59, which coincided with the launch of Nvidia's budget-oriented GeForce GT 520. Now AMD is following up that launch with the release of two more sub-$100 videocards, the Radeon HD 6570 and 6670.
According to PCMag.com, the Radeon HD 6570 sells for $79 and boasts 480 stream processors, 24 texture units, 8 ROPs, a 650MHz engine clock, and either 512MB-2GB of DDR3 clocked at 900MHz or 512MB-1GB of GDDR5 clocked at 1000MHz, both on a 128-bit memory bus. Meanwhile, the Radeon HD 6670 sells for $99 and features many of the same specs, but comes clocked at 800MHz (engine) and includes 512MB-1GB of GDDR5 clocked at 1000MHz, also on a 128-bit interface. Image Credit: AMD | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Feeling snubbed by the royal family in Britain because you didn't receive an invitation to the wedding of Prince William to university sweetheart Kate Middleton? Dry your teary eyes, because even though you can't be there in person to see the royal couple exchange their vows, you and perhaps billions of others can tune in to YouTube to watch the event unfold in real time.
According to Reuters, the wedding will be streamed live on www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel and be accompanied by a live multimedia blog put together by royal officials. This marks a first for a British royal wedding and is expected to draw up to two billion viewers. "Staff at Clarence House and St. James's Palace will provide a live commentary with historical information, interesting links, additional photographs, and video footage as well as an integrated Twitter feed," the palace said in a statement. YouTube is also inviting viewers to submit their own video of congratulations to the couple as part of an official video "Wedding Book." Image Credit: Zazzle | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  It stands to reason that if you sit around all day playing videogames and not much of anything else, you're going to put on some weight. That much is obvious, but according to a new study, the lack of physical exertion isn't the only reason why frequent gamers pack on the pounds. The study found that playing games compels people to eat more, even when they're not hungry.
Teenage subjects of the Canadian-Danish study, which was published last week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, spent an hour sitting in a comfortable chair, and on a separate occasion spent an hour playing a videogame, the National Post reports. Here's where things get interesting. After a round of gaming, the subjects consumed an average of 80 calories more at a pasta lunch. That might not sound like much, but according to Dr. Jean-Philippe Chaput, the study's lead author, an additional 50 calories per day adds up to 62 pounds over 10 years. "It's a worse story than just being a sedentary activity," said Dr. Chaput. "When we play videogames, yes, we burn few calories, but we also eat more." Researchers say that one possible reason for this is that the mental exertion from playing a game triggers the need for an edible reward, and these are typically comfort foods high in sugar and fat. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Never mind that the DRAM market is in shambles, so much so that some, like OCZ, have decided to get out of the RAM game altogether and focus on more lucrative components. There are still some companies willing to cater to enthusiasts with high-end kits. G.Skill is one of them, and today the memory maker announced what it claims is the world's fastest 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 memory kit rated at 2300MHz at CL9.
The new kit is the latest in G.Skill's award winning Ripjaws-X family and will ship soon to authorized retail partners around the globe, G.Skill says. "The 2300MHz Ripjaws-X 8GB gives you extreme speed and you can also enjoy the big capacity simultaneously. It not only delivers record breaking overclocking performance, but also broadens your choices for building up an extreme performance workstation and a gaming machine," said Michael Chao, senior R&D manager at G.Skill. No word on how much the new kit will cost. Image Credit: G.Skill | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Verizon on Monday said that it is getting rid of early termination fees for its DSL service as part of an attempt to simplify its plans for broadband service with easy-to-understand bundles. High-speed DSL customers can now build upon two double-play pricing tiers, the first being an entry-level service that supports 500Kbps to 1Mbps speeds for basic tasks like sending emails and photos. The second tier kicks things up to 1.1Mbps to 15Mbps for more advanced tasks like online gaming and downloading movies.
"Weve enhanced the value and simplified our HSI bundles by pricing them aggressively and removing any contract requirements and early termination fees for Verizon services going forward," said Eric Bruno, Verizon vice president of product management. "With these refinements, our high speed Internet service offers the best value in broadband." The basic tier starts at $19.99/month, or $14.99 if ordered online, while the enhanced service runs $34.99/month, or $29.99/month when ordered online. There is a catch to these simplified plans. In order to qualify for the above pricing, customers must subscribe for a Verizon landline voice plan. For those that don't, basic DSL service will run $29.99 and the enhanced service jumps up to $44.99. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  A court has ruled that debt collectors mustn't hop on Facebook to send people messages demanding repayment for money owed. The ruling came after Melanie Beacham, who was late on car payments, filed a lawsuit against MarkOne Financial for allegedly sending her a message on the social networking site, as well as contacting her friends via Facebook. Turns out that was a big mistake.
According to the lawsuit, MarkOne Financial representatives hounded Beacham by emailing her, texting her, and calling her at home, on her cell, and at work a grand total of 23 times in a single day, the Orlando Sentinel reports. But when an employe tracked Beacham down on Facebook, a judge ruled that the company went too far. It marks the first time a court has made such a ruling and serves as a warning to other debt collectors thinking about using social networking sites to recoup money owed. "That is something we've been fighting for, and we finally got a court ruling on that," said Billy Howard, Beacham's attorney and head of the consumer protection department at the Morgan & Morgan law firm. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Are you in the market for an entry-level notebook built around a second generation Intel Core i processor? If yes, you can now expand your search to include MSI's CX640 and CR640 mainstream notebooks. The two notebooks are now shipping to online retailers in North America, the company announced Monday.
Let's first look at specs common to both models: a 15.6-inch LED display, Intel Core i3/i5/i7 processor, up to 4GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive storage, and two USB 3.0 ports. Talking of the differences, there aren't many as the two notebooks are more or less identical but for one major difference - the graphics. The$679.99 CX640 features GeForce GT 520M graphics, while the $629.99 CR640 only has integrated graphics. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Maybe Joe Gamer and his friends aren't as enthused about 3D gaming as Nintendo hoped they would be. In an interview with USA Today, Nintendo of America president, Reggie Fils-Aime, revealed that consumers bought just shy of 400,000 Nintendo 3DS units in the first week after the handheld game console launched. Fils-Aime tried to put a positive spin on the sales figures, but compared to Nintendo's other systems, the 3DS isn't having the same kind of impact.
"We are very satisfied with this start and we look forward to the momentum that we will build on Nintendo 3DS with the launch of the E-Shop, the launch of the 3D trailers for Hollywood movies, and the launch of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in mid-June, as well as the launch of Netflix later on in the summer," Fils-Aime told USA Today. It very well may be that the 3DS needs time to mature before it comes into its own, but in the here and now, the numbers aren't knocking anyone's socks off. For the sake of comparison, the original DS sold a little over 500,000 units in its first week of sales back in November 2004, but according to Fils-Aime, comparing the two isn't fair. "It really is apples and oranges. When we launched DS we launched going right into the Thanksgiving week," Fils-Aime explained. "From a pure timing seasonality, you are not going to be able to compare the two launches." You can read the full interview here. Image Credit: Nintendo | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  As of today it's official, Samsung is out of the hard drive business and significantly richer as a result. Samsung reportedly hoped to pull in $1.5 billion but was willing to entertain offers below $1 billion. Turns out the company didn't have to, as Seagate stepped up to the plate with a $1.375 billion offer, half of which it will pay in cash and the other half in stock. Samsung will also receive a 9.6 percent stake in Seagate, but there's more to this deal than hard drives, cash, and stock.
The two sides also used the deal to extend and enhance their existing patent cross-license agreement, ensuring that the two remain BFFs after money changes sides. In addition, Samsung agreed to provide Seagate semiconductor products for use in Seagate's enterprise solid state drives, solid state hybrid drives, and other products. Other terms of the deal include: - Seagate will supply disk drives to Samsung for PCs, notebooks, and consumer electronics
- Expanded cooperation between the companies to co-develop enterprise storage solutions
- A shareholder agreement under which an executive of Samsung will be nominated to join Seagate's Board of Directors
"We are pleased to strengthen our strategic relationship with Samsung in a way that better aligns both companies around technologies and products," said Steve Luczo, Seagate chairman, president and CEO. "With these agreements, we expect to achieve greater scale and deliver a broader range of innovative storage products and solutions to our customers, while facilitating our long-term relationship with Samsung." This is one of those cases where both sides appear to come out ahead. Samsung, which was losing money on its hard drive business, suddenly receives an infusion of cash and stock, but there's more here than a simple sale. The deal was just as much about a "broad strategic alignment" as it was the sale of a diminishing HDD business. Image Credit: Flickr (Robert Scoble) | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Word on the Web is that Lenovo is talking with several OEMs, including Wistron and Compal Electronics, in hopes of contracting one to build smart TVs. This is new ground for Lenovo, but not uncharted territory for OEMs who also dabble in notebooks, like Samsung and LG. Lenovo's desire to follow them into the living room underscores the convergence of PC technology with entertainment devices.
According to news and rumor site DigiTimes, Lenovo has relationships with Quanta, Wistron, and Compal, all three of which build notebooks for Lenovo. Compal also produces 10.1-inch tablet PCs for Lenovo, while the company has subcontracted the production of handsets to Wistron NeWeb, a subsidiary of Wistron. It's a toss up as to which one of those production partners would build a smart TV for Lenovo, and it's also unknown what specific features the company would be looking for. Many companies use their own platforms and offer much desired features like Netflix, social networking, streaming music, and other popular features baked in. Image Credit: Lenovo | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  It's amazing how far smartphone technology has come. What started off as glorified dumb phones has evolved into bona fide mini-PCs that fit into your shirt pocket, and the hardware inside improves with each new generation. The next big upgrade is dual-core processors. AT&T's Atrix 4G from Motorola has a dual-core chip, but we're still very much living in a single-core smartphone world. That will change in 2012 as more smartphone makers jump on the multi-core bandwagon, including Samsung.
According to Samsung South Korea, the smartphone maker "will be releasing a smartphone that boasts performance levels matching desktop PCs." That's because this upcoming device will come equipped with a dual-core processor running at 2GHz, a good 800MHz faster than the those speedy 1.2GHz single-core chips in today's high-end smartphones. "It is easier to manufacturer a single 4GHz CPU unit instead ofa dual-core 2GHz CPU unit, but Samsung is opting for the dual-core as it is better optimized for smartphone products," Samsung said. "Dual-core facilitates multitasking using smartphones by allotting the workload on two separate cores." Sounds good to us, though here's hoping battery life also benefits from an efficient dual-core design versus a single-core chip. | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | |  |
