Slimming Options for Everyone

Amazon.com’s Kindle Fire tablet will be arriving on consumers’ doorsteps a day earlier than planned, the company announced Monday, and reviewers have wasted no time sharing their own early thoughts about the new device. Originally planned for shipment on Tuesday to those who preordered it, the 7-inch, Android-powered device began shipping on Monday instead.

Source: http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/73756.html

Rui Goncalves Josh Grant Billy Grossi Davide Guarneri

Data integration is critical for companies that need to combine systems and databases after a merger or acquisition, or need to link legacy systems to new business applications. This need is vast throughout commercial and public industries, and the task can be daunting, especially for CIOs and IT managers of small- to medium-sized businesses.

Source: http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/73739.html

Alessandro Puzar Gaston Rahier Steve Ramon Tyla Rattray

You can guess how this one’s gonna go: top marks for performance and a shriek of despair when it comes to value for money. Is there anyone out there who really needs an over-sized six-core CPU that requires its own chubby LGA-2011 socket and tailored X79 chipset before it’ll even switch on in the morning? Could people seriously be persuaded to drop a grand on merely incremental improvements in technology, such as 15MB of L3 cache and a bigger 600MHz Turbo Boost for stock clock speeds up to 3.9GHz? Well now, let’s not get distracted. Even if there were no market — which there is — Intel would probably carry on releasing world-beating desktop chips simply to remind us that its rivals can’t, and we’d probably carry on reading about them. So here goes, a bunch of reviews covering both the i7-3960X and i7-3930K variants, which together represent the absurd awesomeness of Sandy Bridge E and are on sale at Newegg for $1,050 and $600 respectively:

AnandTech: bemoans the absence of an on-die GPU, criticizes the X79 chipset, and dislikes the “performance/functionality tradeoffs”

PC Pro: sedately noted that the i7-3960X shows an “improvement” over i7-2600K in real-world benchmarks, and that “AMD must be sweating.”

HotHardware: regards the 3960X as an “excellent overclocker” despite its vast power consumption, and says it combines with the X79 chipset to make “the most potent” desktop for gaming, content creation or productivity.

Tom’s Hardware: describes the 3960X as a “symbolic king in a crowd full of value,” and the 3930K as the processor moneyed enthusiasts should be lusting over.

ExtremeTech: says “the 3960X is a great chip on a solid platform,” but cautions that only the most demanding gamers and content creators need this kind of power.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Intel’s Sandy Bridge E gets rounded up and reviewed, the E is for Excessive originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Nov 2011 08:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/14/intels-sandy-bridge-e-gets-rounded-up-and-reviewed-the-e-is-fo/

Billy Grossi Davide Guarneri Thomas Hahn Torsten Hallman

Futuremark, arbiter of all synthetic benchmarks that upend message boards and LAN party envies around the globe, is ready to make you feel bad about your rig all over again: 3DMark for Windows 8. But there’s a twist! More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/5stZAXJi8Pw/pc-gamers-get-out-your-penis-rulers-the-next-3dmark-is-coming

Danny LaPorte Mike LaRocco Jason Lawrence Ron Lechien

In the movies, you’d have to construct a pore-perfect rubber mask to defeat a facial-recognition system — or even chop off somebody’s actual face. In real life, all that is needed to defeat the Ice Cream Sandwich Face Unlock on the Galaxy Nexus is a photograph.
Back in October, Google’s Tim Bray denied that it was [...]

Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/11/video-ice-cream-sandwich-face-unlock-defeated-with-photo/

Bobby Moore Blair Morgan Gaylon Mosier Marvin Musquin

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

Electric vehicle momentum swept the states this week as Inhabitat took a spin in the new Rolls Royce 102EX Phantom EV, and we brought you exclusive photos of BMW’s brand new i3 and i8 electric cars. We also showcased six sexy electric vehicles set to hit the streets in 2012, watched a 350MPG EV win the Future Car Challenge, and saw scientists create the world’s smallest electric vehicle from a molecule and four motors. Meanwhile, El Al airlines announced plans to launch a line of hybrid-electric Boeing 737 airplanes, Ryno unveiled a crazy electric unicycle, and a team of students revealed Uganda’s first electric car.

It was a big week for alternative energy as well as Kenya announced plans to tap lava power with a newly Toshiba-built geothermal energy plant and scientists made a breakthrough in using urine as a viable power source. We also looked into a scientist claiming to have achieved cold fusion, a ‘solar cucumber‘ that harvests fresh drinking water from the ocean, and a sun-powered leaf capable of making ice in the desert.

In other news, green textiles advanced by leaps and bounds as scientists wove fabric from 24-karat gold, researchers developed a reusable fabric that administers drugs through the skin, and the University of Kiel’s developed a super-adhesive tape inspired by Gecko skin. We also showcased an incredible set of sculptures made from recycled circuit boards, we watched a crop of styrofoam robots invade Germany’s streets, and we saw an innovative self-powered irrigation system win the 2011 James Dyson award. And just in time for the chilly winter season, we found these oh-so-handy texting gloves which feature conductive fingertips that allow you to touch, tap, or type on any mobile touchscreen outdoors without having to remove your gloves.

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: Rolls Royce 102EX test drive, electric unicycle and a sun-powered leaf originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Nov 2011 20:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/86Vz2I8VKZs/

Pierre Karsmakers Vladimir Kavinov Mike Kiedrowski Darryll King

Space-shooters are usually a fairly fiery affair, with many types of guns, weapon upgrades, power-ups and more. Dodge does away with all of that, while keeping the very essence of a space shooter: Dark background, fast action, and stuff blowing up all over the place.

Your vector-looking spacecraft is the fastest thing on the screen, most of the time. And as the header implies, you have absolutely no weapons; you can’t get any, either. All you have is agility and maneuverability.

Your opponents shoot heat-seeking missiles at you; the missiles lock on and start tracking you. The trick is to dodge the missiles while putting them in the path of one of your enemies, thus letting them have a taste of their own medicine.

There are three types of enemies, at least in the first few levels: “simple” spaceships which fire slow projectiles, “tanks” which seem to be more serious and take more hits to destroy, and “circles.” The circles simply explode, spewing twenty or thirty very fast projectiles. This sounds dangerous, but is actually great once you learn to use them; they are very destructive for tanks, and can even blow up other circles.

The soundtrack is very techno, but it meshes very well with this type of game. Intense fun!

Dodge is a space-shooter in which you have no weapons originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/01/dodge-is-a-space-shooter-in-which-you-have-no-weapons/

Josh Grant Billy Grossi Davide Guarneri Thomas Hahn

Color, the $41-million-in-funding location-oriented photo sharing startup, is susceptible to simple GPS spoofing. With nothing more than a jailbroken iPad or iPhone, you can use FakeLocation to trick Color into thinking you’re somewhere else. Within seconds you can be browsing photos that were snapped thousands of miles away. With a little digging, you can pore through photos not intended for your eyes.

Of course, such a hack isn’t illegal as such — every photo you take with Color is public. With FakeLocation you are simply circumventing Color’s very limited location-oriented security mechanism. It does undermine Color’s usefulness (and uniqueness), though — if nefarious types can sit in their bedroom or basement and eavesdrop on classy dinner parties and wild night club soirees, people might be less inclined to share personal photos with those around them.

Fortunately, both for Color and its users, this is an easy security hole to plug — at least in the short term. The app (or server-side) code simply checks to see if the user has ‘teleported’ an impossibly large distance, without any intermediate steps in between. In the long term, though, Color’s users must be aware that its social graph is completely public. Color’s users must realize that every photo they upload is visible by anyone, from any place.

After the break, just to elucidate a little on Color’s actual business model and ultimate intention, we have two amazing quotes from Bill Nguyen, Color’s founder.

Continue reading Color vulnerable to simple GPS hack, lets you spy on anyone, anywhere

Color vulnerable to simple GPS hack, lets you spy on anyone, anywhere originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 05:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/29/color-vulnerable-to-simple-gps-hack-lets-you-spy-on-anyone-any/

Christophe Martin Mickael Maschio Connor McGechan Jeremy McGrath

Here are some stories from the past week on CrunchGear: Weekend Giveaway: Toshiba 47-inch TL515 Series 3D LED TV Starbucks Merges Their Two iOS Apps, Lets You Gift Your Friends Coffee From Your Phone Warn Friends And Foes With These Nine Aperture Science Test Chamber Labels SocialBicycles Bike Sharing Is Now A Kickstarter Project Ricoh [...]

Source: http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/07/04/week-in-review-independent/

Christophe Pourcel Sebastien Pourcel Wyman Priddy Alessandro Puzar

I have a thing for physics games, and I’ve been known to post the occasional platformer or action game here and there. But Let it Slide is one of the brainiest games I’ve posted to date.

The idea is very simple, and far from original: You get a board with pieces arranged in a particular pattern; you have to slide those around until you get the special piece into its target location.

It’s not even about finding out where the target location is – you can just hover over “dim tiles” and instantly see where you’re supposed to bring the special piece. But getting it there is a whole different story.

There are five tutorial levels, which I strongly recommend you do. Then there are twenty “beginner” levels, but that’s really a misnomer. If those are the beginner levels, I don’t want to know what the intermediate and advanced levels look like!

Every time you finish a level you get a score based on how many clicks it took you – each level has a “par” (the minimum number of clicks it could be completed in), and your performance is compared to that gold standard. Because it’s such a brainy game, getting it right is quite satisfying. I was downright proud of myself when I managed to finish a few levels. All in all, quite recommended, especially if you’ve got a few minutes of quiet. It might actually help you focus better later on.

Let it Slide is an engaging, difficult puzzle game originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 23 Feb 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/02/23/let-it-slide-is-an-engaging-difficult-puzzle-game/

Dave Bickers Anthony Boissiere Frederic Bolley Xavier Boog