Droid 4 in the works, codenamed Maserati

Sounds like the upcoming fourth-generation DROID smartphone will be super-fast like the Maserati GranTurismo sports cars. It should come as no surprise that the next Motorola Droid is already in the works. While the company hasn’t announced anything official, rumors indicate that the company has codenamed the device “Maserati” which is supposedly derived from the name of the famous Italian sports car brand Maserati GranTurismo. That said, the Droid 4 sounds extremely “fast.”

So what are the specs? Again, there’s nothing official, but rumors point to the typical DROID slide-out QWERTY keyboard (but sans the D-pad again), a screen somewhere around 4 to 4.3-inches, a removable battery and possible 4G LTE support. As with the previous three DROID models, this fourth-generation instalment will reside on Verizon Wireless.

Unfortunately, that’s it in regards to new information. The current Droid 3 smartphone sports a dual-core SoC clocked at 1 GHz, a 4-inch qHD (540 x 960) TFT display, 512 MB of internal memory, 16 GB of on-board storage, a microSD card providing 32 GB of even more storage, an 8MP camera, Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” and more. That said, consumers will see superior specs in the Droid 4, possibly even Nvidia’s Tegra 3 “Kal-El” SoC (that’s just a guess) and Google’s Android “Ice Cream Sandwich” OS.

With the holiday season just around the corner, it wouldn’t be surprising to see this phone rear its head before the end of the year. If not, perhaps during the Mobile World Congress 2012 event in February.

SOURCE via Device Mag

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A push-start button that can tell if you’re drunk?

The Detroit Free Press is reporting that two companies have joined forces to create a push-to-start button that can automatically sense the driver’s blood-alcohol level. Takata, an Auburn Hills-based parts supplier and TruTouch, an Albuquerque-based firm, have received a $2.25 million grant from the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety to help make the creation commercially viable.

Currently, the device is about the size of a bread box and uses an infrared sensor to determine the amount of alcohol in a person’s system. In addition, the invention currently takes several seconds to function and only works accurately at room temperature.

The ACTS grant should help both Takata and TruTouch work through those issues to create a version of the technology that could conceivably fit behind a vehicle’s start button, take just a few milliseconds to determine someone’s BAC and be able to accurately do so in temperatures as low as 40 degrees below zero. There’s also the equally challenging feat of getting the device’s total cost down to around $200 per unit. The idea is to take the invasiveness of a Breathalyzer out of the equation while still preventing impaired drivers from taking to the road.

SOURCE via Freep

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Google to build a trio of data centers in Asia, earmarks $200 million for expansion

IT specialists in Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong better start polishing their resumes, because Google is rolling into town. Yesterday, Big G announced plans to build a brand new data center in each of the three Asian locales, as part of an expansion slated to cost at least $200 million.

When completed, these complexes will represent the company’s first fully owned and operated data centers in the burgeoning Asia-Pacific region — where, according to Asia policy communications manager Taj Meadows, Google is “seeing large numbers of new users coming online every day”. The facilities in Hong Kong and Taiwan are expected to cost around $100 million each, though the price tag for the Singapore branch remains a mystery.

Google hopes to finish construction in one to two years, though it didn’t say when it would begin — nor, for that matter, whether seawater tunnels would be involved.

SOURCE via Wall Street Journal

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Ninja sockets

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HP revives from the dead, announce new gaming PC with a cool mutant name

Few seconds ago they decided to close down their PC department, and after changing a new honcho overnight, they’re back again. Funny? Well, HP does whatever they like and they don’t give a fuck what you think, or so the new CEO doesn’t. Maybe she has a very dark sense of humour, or perhaps there are events that have conspired to produce one of the most serendipitous pieces of product name irony I can remember.

Barely three weeks after announcing to analysts that they were looking to either spin off its PC business as a separate company or sell it off altogether, HP have launched a brand new gaming PC. It’s called the Phoenix. Yes, Jean would be so proud of this new brand.

The HP Pavillion HPE Phoenix to be exact, but the question is whether or not this is a deliberate reference to the fact that HP were hauled over the coals after their statement about the Personal Systems Group (PSG)? It would be a less than subtle reflection of UK PSG MD* Paul Hunter’s defensive statement that “the team in the UK remains committed to creating and supporting great products and services.”

Look, see, you thought we were dead, but we rise again and all that. That’s zombiecalypse for you guys! I suspect, however, that given the length of time it takes to develop product marketing and the fact HP’s announcement was a surprise to almost everyone, this is just one of those instances of perfect timing. So what of the Phoenix itself? A long trained mutant by the CIA?

There’s not much in the way of specs available at the moment, beyond 16GB of RAM and a “250W graphics card” – which is co-incidentally the TDP of a very nice Radeon HD6970. But it looks acceptably garish and – if my GPU guess is right – has an even more attractive price tag of £949. Especially if the monitor and peripherals pictured are included.

It’ll go on sale next month, but there’s no mention of price, yet. Jean wasn’t available for comment at the moment regarding this new product.

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Wireless network can be used to track your in-house movements

While testing some new equipment, Neal Patwari of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City discovered that breathing actually affects Wi-Fi signal strength. He came to this conclusion after noticing variations in wireless signal strength in certain parts of a room that were seemingly triggered by chest movements.

To prove his theory, Patwari placed 20 in-expensive wireless units around an occupied bed which were arrayed so that they sent 2.4 GHz waves across the sheet, but with one-thousandth the power of a laptop’s wireless card. The units themselves measured signal strength four times a second, thus the makeshift network was able to accurately estimate the person’s breathing rate to within 0.4 breaths per minute after collecting 30 seconds worth of data.

Ultimately Patwari’s test revealed that wireless signals bent around the subject’s chest as it rose with each inhalation, causing them to travel a longer distance and decrease slightly in power. Naturally this discovery is being hailed as a new way to monitor a patient’s breathing without having to cram tubes down into their lungs (which sucks and hurts). Some disagree however, as patient monitoring mostly depends on more input than just inhaling and exhaling.

But now there’s fear that this new Wi-Fi network system could be placed around an entire room or building in order to track user movements within. This scenario is based on a prior study conducted by Patwari and a colleague which revealed that any movement can affect wireless signal strength, and that these changes in strength can be used to track users within a room even if they’re sitting or lying down. Even more, the changes can be measured when the Wi-Fi signal passes through a wall and into another room.

That said, a similar Wi-Fi network could be tailored to spy on shoppers at the mall, on hotel guests, or restaurant patrons no matter what they’re doing. For more information about Patwari’s discovery, head here.

SOURCE via CNET”

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Rumor: Apple to discontinue iPod Classic and Shuffle

Now that Amazon’s mystery press conference is out of the way, we’re eagerly awaiting Apple’s October 4 iPhone 5 event. However, will Apple also be saying goodbye to a couple of devices this year?

Apple said on the invitations that next week’s event is about the iPhone. Most have assumed that this means Apple will finally launch the iPhone 5 (and perhaps the iPhone 4S). However, the fall event is typically for iPods and iTunes, and Apple hasn’t given any inclination that it will be devoting even a small portion of the press conference to music. Instead, it appears as though the end may be near for a couple of the iPod models.

The latest scuttlebutt is that Apple will be killing off some of the iPods we know so well. According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog, the iPod Classic and iPod Shuffle will both disappear this year. The site didn’t name its source, but said that the reasons behind killing off these two versions were to do with numbers (iPod sales make up just 8 percent of Apple revenue) but also the fact that they’re kind of out-dated and unnecessary; the Shuffle is basically a Nano without a screen, while the Classic is devoid of flash memory, instead relying on a platter-based HDD.

The news comes hot on the heels of a report from CNet that Apple might kill the entire iPod line. Don Bell writes that, while it used to be a big money-maker for Apple, now is “really not a bad time for Apple to stick a fork in the iPod.”

“For starters, this year (October 24) marks the 10-year anniversary of the iPod,” he writes. “That’s quite an achievement, but it’s also a nice place to bookend things. I can imagine Apple saying, ‘It had a great run, now go buy an iPhone.’”

Bell also refers back to Steve Jobs’ 2006 advice to Nike CEO Mark Parker. Jobs told him to just “get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff.” So has the iPod, when compared to the iPhone and the iPad, become ‘crappy stuff’?

SOURCE via TUAW

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Samsung develops DDR4 memory with up to 40 percent better energy efficiency than DDR3

DDR3 has just picked up from where DDR2 left. It’s going big and fast and cheap too, which the public needs. However, Samsung has not been chillaxing behind, as the firm has made announcement of a DDR4 DRAM stick that can perform read and write operations using up to 40 percent less power than the old/current DDR3 stuff.

Bandwidth maxes out at 2.13Gbps at 1.2V, while Pseudo Open Drain technology assists in minimizing the battery impact. Over time, Samsung projects the new DRAM modules will hit 4Gbps speeds. It’s working away with server makers right now in order to achieve JEDEC certification, but the target market will clearly be laptops and other mobile devices, where energy-frugal memory like this would best be appreciated.

While they may be getting JEDEC certification this can actually take years to go into mainstream so such announcement will not bother the market of DDR3 in anyway actually. Remember back when DDR3 was announced, it took quite some time to land too. But this DDR4 will be great for server market, where the 40 percent less power consumption will be very obvious when it comes to huge memory.

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Nvidia announces new GeForce 500M chipsets for the mobile warriors

Nvidia is not a no-show at CES, as they did unveil new graphic products from their company. This time around however, it’s something that you can easily purchase off the shelf. Nvidia has unveiled a new line of GPUs at the show that will be the graphics muscle behind some of the best performing notebooks on the market in 2011.

The newly announced GPUs are the GeForce 500M GPU family, and they include the GT 540M, the GT 550M, and the GT 555M, and the more budget 520M and 525M. Those high-end mobile chipsets offer at least four times the performance of integrated GPUs and two times the DirectX 11 performance of competing GPUs. The 520M and 525M are the two mainstream parts in the new line. The new GPUs also support Optimus technology for longer battery life by switching between the integrated GPU and the discrete GPU. That’ll come very handy with new Sandy Bridge laptops.

“GeForce GT 500M GPUs combined with Optimus technology enable the most versatile laptops ever created,” said Rene Haas, general manager of notebook business at Nvidia. “Pairing a great GPU with a strong CPU delivers Optimized notebook performance for consumers.”

The new GPU line also supports Nvidia 3D Vision, PhysX, CUDA, and uses the Nvidia Verde notebook drivers and they support Nvidia 3DTV Play to deliver content from the PC to 3D TVs in the living room. That means 3D getting into mainstream laptops powered by Nvidia.

The GPUs will be used in machines from just about every major computer maker on the planet including Acer, MSI, Alienware, ASUS, Clevo, Dell, and many others. NVIDIA has already announced that it will be working with Tesla to power infotainment systems in the Model S electric sportscar.

SOURCE via Anandtech

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Kingston launches USB 3.0 roadmap, SDHC UHS-I UltimateXX card

Kingston announced at CES their latest range of SDHC cards, the USH-I UltimateXX, which will be on sale later this month. The USH-I UltimateXX is stated as perfectly backwards compatible with Class 4, Class 6, and Class 10 equipment. By using USH-I, the SDHC card is capable of hitting read rates of 60MB/sec and write rates of 35MB/sec, with pricing set for $69.99 (8GB), $179.99 (16GB) and $349.99 (32GB). Sounds like a card that’s storing lots of porn. Anyway, besides launching this USH-I UltimateXX, Kingston also launched their latest DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 USB flash drive, and it has plans to launch an entry-level flash drive in “late Q2 / early Q3.”

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Bigfoot Networks intros Killer E2100-powered motherboards from ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte

Bigfoot Networks stated that they’re targeting motherboard manufacturers, but we never knew it’s going to be this big. The company has announced at CES three partnerships with major mainboard makers, and they’re MSI, ASUS, and Gigabyte. Gigabyte will have their G1-Killer motherboards infused with Bigfoot chips; ASUS will have a ROG Rampage III Black Edition featuring the E2100 on a combined LAN / audio called ThunderBolt; and MSI will probably have them in their upcoming Big Bang lineup. Pricing and release information remain a mystery across the range, but it’s practically a guarantee that we’ll see more of these tie-ups in the coming months.

SOURCE via Bigfoot Network(1) and Bigfoot Network(2)

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Intel’s Sandy Bridge hitting the desktop market

CES sees Intel announcing Sandy Bridge and making giant impact on upcoming laptops, but we see very little for the desktop. No love there it seemed. Nevertheless, desktop manufacturers and custom PC makers have quietly updated their systems with Intel’s new second generation Core processors. Dell’s XPS 8300 and Vostro and Alienware is now available with Sandy, as well as Digital Storm’s entire family, besides Cyber Power’s Gamer Xtreme 1000/2000, and also iBuyPower’s Chimera XLC all having the brand new Core i5 and Core i7 processors. ORIGIN PC also has them ready for you if you want an overclocked Sandy Bridge water cooled but don’t want to mess around with it youself.

SOURCE via Logic Buy, Puget Systems, HotHardware(1), and HotHardware(2)

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Cisco’s CIUS tablet now in Verizon’s LTE list

Verizon US announced their 4G LTE network, and obviously to push that you’ll had to have lots of LTE-enabled devices to push sales. Now, besides lots of LTE tablets and smartphones, Verizon has also added Cisco’s rare business-savvy Cius tablet onto LTE starting this March, besides Cisco’s second generation Integrated Service Router.

Verizon says it’s got about one-third of the US covered with LTE, which offers downstream speeds between 5Mbps and 12Mbps, and will have the other two-thirds covered by 2012. If you’re lucky enough to live in that first one-third, the Cius tablet, which sports a 7-inch diagonal touchscreen and weighs about 1.15lbs, could become your preferred form of business communication as it offers HD video streaming, real-time video, and multi-party conferencing. Very business stuff here.

Cius will also have 3G capabilities for those unfortunate souls operating outside of the LTE sphere, just in case you need to go outstation with it. Verizon isn’t ready to settle on a data plan for the tablet, as its main functions have potential to eat up a ton of bandwidth, but they’re pretty sure employers will be the ones footing the bill.

SOURCE via PCWORLD

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Tron Light Discs as a Lamp

Here’s a light that’s look like a very familiar white Ring, and called “Ring”, literally. The designer is Loris Bottello, and this bioluminescent polymer light is inspired by Tron. The intensity of the light can be adjusted by rotating the disc. Good thing here is that you can’t really kill anyone by throwing this “Ring” like a boomerang.

SOURCE via Design Boom

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Reuse your bike parts for something more useful?

Here’s some funky stuff about ‘recycling’. I’m sure you all know what that thing above is. There’s more below. There’s a scale, a corkscrew, and even a bowl. In a collaborative effort, Triumph Motorcycles and art students reused motorcycle parts into our everyday gadgets (or most people’s daily gadgets at least). If you check the source, there’s even a hat stand made from bike parts. Really amazing stuff, adding classy looks to some very cool designs

SOURCE via Design Boom

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Chrome no longer supports H.264 video playback

Google created a new WebM video standard that’s royalty free and high quality in May 2010, but now they’re ready to fully push this new standard. Though, they’re doing it in a very harsh way, and that is by dropping off support for rival H.264 codec in its HTML 5 video tag in chrome. That’s right. Chrome will not be able to playback H.264 videos anymore. From now on, Chrome users will have to download a H.264 plug-in to play most web video that’s not bundled up in Flash. Talk about open standard. Well, don’t worry; we still have Firefox at least.

SOURCE via Google

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Firefox 4 coming soon?

Last we heard from Firefox 4’s beta was a few months ago, but Mozilla developers have posted the first builds of Firefox 4 Beta 10, which is planned to be the final beta before the release of Firefox 4 RC. What does that mean? Well, the gold for the fourth is nearing the horizon!

The pre-Beta 10 builds arrive as Mozilla is getting ready to put Beta 9 into a freeze and release the software possibly later this week. Even with the revised release schedule in place, Mozilla has fallen behind again: Beta 9 was originally planned for a December 16 release. However, the most recent Beta was not published until December 22.

According to Mozilla’s buglog, Beta 9 has still three blocking bugs that need to be fixed, while there are 227 blocking bugs for Beta 10. In fact, the number of bugs may be overwhelming for the final beta and Mozilla may decide to add Beta 11 to the schedule. In the most recent meeting, the developer team mentioned that there will be “at least” one more beta after Beta 9 and a new release schedule was under development.

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Audiovox AVDBR1 Automotive Blu-ray Player

It’s becoming a common sight to see cars equipped with DVD players and monitors, and now the transitioning to Blu-ray for in-car-entertainment has begun. Audiovox has announce a brand new Automotive Blu-ray DVD player, AVDBR1 which allows you to enjoy high definition movies on-the-go. Great for passengers, but it sucks more to be the driver. Especially when you’re on a long journey trip and you don’t have cruise control.

The player can be installed under the seat or in a storage compartment in the vehicle and connects to any monitor by using either the HDMI, composite or component output. The AVDBR1 has been road tested to tolerate the vehicle’s environment and its small size allows for multiple horizontal and vertical mounting options in the vehicle.

A blue accent light is used to illuminate the slot load disc area and button array. The unit draws its power from a 2-pin, 12-volt connector to the vehicle’s accessory power source and comes with a full function wireless IR remote control. Priced at $349.99, the Audiovox AVDBR1 will be available in Spring 2011.

SOURCE via PC MAG

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Motorola XOOM Tablet up for Pre-order at Handtec

What a surprise. This is fast. CES 2011 just ended but Handtec has already listed the Motorola XOOM tablet for pre-orders. But the bad news here this time is the price tag that they’re asking: a very frightening £659.99 or £549.99 (excluding VAT). Yes, the tablet has a 10.1-inch (1280 x 800) touchscreen display, a 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, a 2.0-megapixel front-facing camera, a 5.0-megapixel rear-facing camera with dual LED flash, a 1GB DDR2 RAM, a 32GB of storage space, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, 720p HD video recording capabilities and 1080p Full HD video playback support, and let’s not forget the all-important Google Android 3.0 Honeycomb, but the price is very disturbing.

SOURCE via Handtec

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NZXT Bunker saves your mouse, won’t save your LCS rig

This ‘bunker’ might look stupid to most people who have a computer at home forever, but not to those gamers that go to LAN parties and LAN tournaments. The NZXT Bunker is a new computer accessory that helps prevent your expensive USB gears from being stolen at dodgy LAN parties with very dim lights. You walk in with your latest Alienware watercooled rig and full of Razer gears. You might pawn everyone back there, but you may also go home with only a rig, or probably not. But with this NZXT Bunker, now you don’t have to worry about losing your mouse, and probably a keyboard as well, just because you had to go for a wee.

The Bunker provides four USN ports under a locking mesh lid, allowing you to lock your USB devices there to prevent them from being unplugged. From now on, it’s either they take only the mat and the bungee, or they take everything, including the tables too. The device will fit into any 5.25-inch drive bay, so remember to spare one bay. What’s more, the NZXT Bunker USB Lock System also supports a sophisticated 20 keylock system that prevents users with the same device from unlocking your lock. Well, that’s one out of twenty for the try-and-error.

SOURCE via NZXT

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