More better PC power! If there was one area of your PC that you could change for the better, what would it be? All right, let's cut to the chase --it's the power supply. Why? Because aside from becoming a bit more stable and a bit more powerful over the years, the average PC power supply remains a metal box with a whole bunch of wires sticking out of it. A plethora of a whole bunch of wires that get everywhere, half of which you may not even need, and some of which may contain more of the wrong type of connectors than the ones you do need.
Antec may have solved all of those issues in one swell foop with its NeoPower 480 power supply. It's tres upscale. Heavy, you wouldn't want to carry it around longer than necessary, but let's start with 480 watts. That's no big deal, 480 watt power supplies have been around for a while. Auto power sensing (100v - 240v AC) isn't even really a new deal. Even the voltage feedback circuitry isn't that rare any more.
But look Ma, no wires!!! Okay, that's an overstatement. The power cabling needed for the motherboard is securely attached to the power supply. Every thing else attaches to the NeoPower via molex connectors in the case. Don't need some of the cabling? Don't plug it in. No need to worry about tucking it out of the way somewhere. There's a special molex connector for fans only --and not just because only the 12v lines are brought out. The PS' internal 120mm fan runs at a variable speed, based on temperature sensing. Connected to the fan power outlet, your case fans will also vary. Can you say, "Why'd it suddenly get so quiet in here?"
There are perks too, like a special PCI Express graphics card power connector. And since it's ATX12V v2.0 compliant it can reduce power consumption by as much as 25% below what that's rat's nest of an old power supply you're using eats up. Are you opposed to saving money? Don't be afraid to check it out. # Permalink
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The SlingBox Media Extender Rocks! Why is This Not Here Already Dept? Get set for the Personal Broadcaster. According to Sling Media, "The SlingBox Personal Broadcaster extends a user's LIVE Cable TV, Satellite TV or personal video recorder (PVR) experience to any of his or her connected personal devices. SlingBox delivers a complete personal TV experience to networked PCs, WiFi-enabled laptops and PDAs, and even video-enabled mobile phones. Any device. Any network. Anywhere in the world."
Google Gaining Ground After the horror of the dutch auction (see a few stories below) Google is kicking back with a share price that is still going up, up, up. (Or at least not down, down, down, as far as we can see.)
The stock started at $85 a share, well below the $135 the company orginally planned to price the pre-market shares, but it does look like people are buying. Current price: $102.
We predict a lot of up and down over the next few days, but for now, things are looking up.
Old Microphones Take a Retro Break Today Dept:There are many reasons why we love the Internet and this is just one of them. A website devoted to all microphone technology from the beginning of time.
Someone must have a lot of time on their hands to do this. But, then again, we can't say it was a wast of time to browse. Enjoy. # Permalink
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The Dock-N-Talk Finally, a tech product that doesn't have an unpronounceable name like QIXO or PhOnE MrT or whatever. The Dock-N-Talk lets you doc your cellphone and use your land line to make cellular calls. It's also a universal charger and supports over 250 models.
Unfortunately in the SF Bay Area, I have the opposite problem. My cellphone never works in my house and I have to call my voice mail all the time to see if anyone called. Would love to dock my cell phone and have the calls route to my land line. Oh well..... # Permalink
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Virtual Gaming Worlds Overtake Namibia Source BBC: "You may think that when you spend time in online game worlds such as Everquest or Star Wars Galaxies, you are just enjoying yourself. Gaming has economic value too, even if it is virtual. But analysis of how long people spend in the games and what they do there has shown that game-playing has a significant economic value too.
"According to the analysis this gaming activity has a gross economic impact equivalent to the GDP of the Southern African nation of Namibia."
Not sure wha that means, but if I were Nmibia, I would feel oddly disturbed by the news. # Permalink
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Dutch Auction Disappoints Where Do We Even Begin Dept:The Dutch auction was designed to be different, and it was designed to let the little guy have a piece of the IPO action. The Google founders wanted something different, something to show that Google was not your average dot com. But after pricing the stock at an outrageous three figure level that scared off the little guy, and thumbing its nose at Wall Street, Google's price has settled into the $85-$90 range and most institutions were left unable to participate around the world, or even in the US.
Much more will follow, and no one knows what the next few days will hold, but the worst part is taking that love for a company almost everyone felt and tarnishing a brand that was doing just fine. # Permalink
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Just when you thought it was safe to use your cell phone again... "We're developing products to satisfy the desire of people who want dramatically improved and entirely new experiences from their mobile phones, not a tiny TV or a mediocre game machine," said Trip Hawkins, Digital Chocolate's CEO and founder, who has a notable history in personal computing and gaming, having founded and built the seminal games company Electronic Arts. "Our first titles set a new standard for production values and ease of use for mobile software and our longer-term goal is to develop software that leverages the fact that mobile phones are the first truly personal computers."
Sign that the end of the world is near..... # Permalink
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THE LATEST NEWS
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Google Goes Tomorrow...... Bill's Rant of the Day: The long awaited, much anticipated, hyper ballyhoed, Google IPO will begin tomorrow. Run out and buy your shares no matter what the price is! Google is expected to produce..., er, eh.... Google quality control has..., eh, um.... Google's inventory levels..., uh, oh.... Yeah, that's right. It's just a dang search engine!!! Are you people crazy??!!
New Trend: Big Screen Gaming North Logan Utah of all places has stumbled onto a major new gaming trend - big screen tourneys at $60 per team of four or $3 per spectator. They took a movie theater, hooked up some XBoxes and went large.
According to MSNBC: "Cinefour theaters in North Logan started a new trend Friday night in video gaming in Cache Valley. Theater managers took four video projectors, set one up in each of four theaters with a Microsoft XBox video game system connected to it, and then let the fun begin for more than 60 people.
"'Tonight blew our minds,' theater co-owner Calvin Timothy said afterward. 'We're definitely going to keep doing this.'
"The game Friday night: 'Halo' a first-person shoot-em-up game in which four people can play on a team against four others. The evening was set up in a tournament format where 16 teams battled each other until the wee hours of Saturday morning to find out who the kings of gaming are in the valley.
"Rick Shurtliff said he drove to Logan from Bountiful just to play in the tournament. He said he often plays four to five hours a night with his friends anyway, so to play it on a huge screen makes it that much better. 'This is going to revolutionize game play,' he said."
Where to Dump Your Dead Technology Finally, a place to dump off your old PCs when even your loved ones know what you are trying to give them is just a bunch of junk. Thank you Offfice Depot!
But don't try and bring in toasters and old vacuums. The program is only for electronics. Source: PC World. # Permalink
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Intel TV Chip Delayed Uh-Oh. Looks like there will be no Intel Inside yet when it comes to High Definition large screen TVs based on a new TV chip technology called LCOS (more on that below). According to NewsFactor Network, "It is a disappointing stumble in what was originally a splashy initiative signaling Intel's larger push into the consumer electronics market. Intel originally announced it had developed chip technology for high-definition big-screen televisions at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in January as its first tangible move in this direction.
"These television chips are based on a technology called Liquid Crystal on Silicon or LCOS, which promises to deliver large screen TVs at a price point that is half of what they cost today -- similar to the way computers continually drop in price thanks to better and faster chip technology.
"Intel originally expected that it would ship the TV chip by the end of the year. It now declines to say when a release can be expected, although according to statements made by a spokesperson, part of the reason for the delay is the company's desire to better differentiate the chip from those under development by competitors." # Permalink
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THE LATEST NEWS
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Harley-Davidson MP3 Player Motorcycle maker Harley Davidson is going digital with an integrated, handlebar MP3 player. According to HD, "Add the latest digital audio technology to your radio-equipped HD motorcycle. Hours of music can be stored on the removable Secure Digital memory cards, and the electronic design means no moving parts for skip-free operation on rough roads. This unique player is designed for easy fingertip operation, with large back-lit buttons and easy-to-read illuminated LCD display. Four soft-touch buttons control play functions and allow easy operation while wearing gloves."
What SP2 doesn't like.... Courtesy of a story on ZDNet, here's the link to the Microsoft Knowledge Base article outlining which apps are being slapped around by Windows Service Pack 2. Most of the issues are related to SP2's automatically activated firewall which MS seems to have created it by ignoring the concept of networking. Horror of horrors, among the list of problems, "According to eBay, some features of its toolbar application will not work after installing SP2, and its Enhanced Picture Service will not work at all." It's the end of civilization as we know of it!
Gmail? According to CNN, reporting on the contents of an interview in Playboy with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, "Google's Gmail service, with one gigabyte of storage, has 200 times more storage than the company's primary competitors."
So let's see... My personal computer has 880GB of storage... Google has 1GB and that's 200x more than it's competitors? Ya think Google really has such a small disk, or did Playboy airbrush this interview a little too much, or was CNN distracted while reading the article?
If there was one area of your PC that you could change for the better, what would it be? All right, let's cut to the chase --it's the power supply. Why? Because aside from becoming a bit more stable and a bit more powerful over the years, the average PC power supply remains a metal box with a whole bunch of wires sticking out of it. A plethora of a whole bunch of wires that get everywhere, half of which you may not even need, and some of which may contain more of the wrong type of connectors than the ones you do need.
Why is This Not Here Already Dept? Get set for the Personal Broadcaster. According to Sling Media, "The SlingBox Personal Broadcaster extends a user's LIVE Cable TV, Satellite TV or personal video recorder (PVR) experience to any of his or her connected personal devices. SlingBox delivers a complete personal TV experience to networked PCs, WiFi-enabled laptops and PDAs, and even video-enabled mobile phones. Any device. Any network. Anywhere in the world."
After the horror of the dutch auction (see a few stories below) Google is kicking back with a share price that is still going up, up, up. (Or at least not down, down, down, as far as we can see.)
Take a Retro Break Today Dept:There are many reasons why we love the Internet and this is just one of them. A website devoted to all microphone technology from the beginning of time.
Finally, a tech product that doesn't have an unpronounceable name like QIXO or PhOnE MrT or whatever. The Dock-N-Talk lets you doc your cellphone and use your land line to make cellular calls. It's also a universal charger and supports over 250 models.
Where Do We Even Begin Dept:The Dutch auction was designed to be different, and it was designed to let the little guy have a piece of the IPO action. The Google founders wanted something different, something to show that Google was not your average dot com. But after pricing the stock at an outrageous three figure level that scared off the little guy, and thumbing its nose at Wall Street, Google's price has settled into the $85-$90 range and most institutions were left unable to participate around the world, or even in the US.
North Logan Utah of all places has stumbled onto a major new gaming trend - big screen tourneys at $60 per team of four or $3 per spectator. They took a movie theater, hooked up some XBoxes and went large.
Finally, a place to dump off your old PCs when even your loved ones know what you are trying to give them is just a bunch of junk. Thank you Offfice Depot! 
"These television chips are based on a technology called Liquid Crystal on Silicon or LCOS, which promises to deliver large screen TVs at a price point that is half of what they cost today -- similar to the way computers continually drop in price thanks to better and faster chip technology. 
Motorcycle maker Harley Davidson is going digital with an integrated, handlebar MP3 player. According to HD, "Add the latest digital audio technology to your radio-equipped HD motorcycle. Hours of music can be stored on the removable Secure Digital memory cards, and the electronic design means no moving parts for skip-free operation on rough roads. This unique player is designed for easy fingertip operation, with large back-lit buttons and easy-to-read illuminated LCD display. Four soft-touch buttons control play functions and allow easy operation while wearing gloves."
According to