IT News HeadLines (Tech Report) 14/08/2010

Swiftpoint mouse held like a pen, sits on your palmrest
The addition of multi-touch gestures has improved notebook touchpads by leaps and bounds in the last few years. However, even the best touchpads struggle to match the precision of a proper mouse. Finding a decent surface on which to use a mobile mouse can be a problem, but...
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New id engine will only be licensed under Bethesda umbrella
id Software has a long history of licensing its game engines to third-party developers. According to CEO Todd Hollenshead, however, that practice will change with the company's latest id Tech 5 engine. Eurogamer has the scoop: "It's going to be used within ZeniMax, so we're not going...
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Nvidia posts $141-million loss for second fiscal quarter
Now we know why Nvidia issued that profit warning last month. Not only was its revenue lower than expected for its second fiscal quarter, but the company also posted a sizable net loss. Here's the extent of the damage:
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Carmack shows Rage running at 60 FPS... on an iPhone
With today's consoles having caused graphical fidelity in games to plateau, it's easy to forget what developers like John Carmack are truly capable of. Everyone got a reminder at QuakeCon yesterday, when Carmack showed a version of Rage running at 60 FPS on an iPhone 4. The video pretty much...
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Friday the 13th Shortbread
Eight is Enough Nvidia posts widened 2Q loss, blames economy SemiAccurate on Nvidia's Q2 financial phone-a-thon and Nvidia's Tegra 3 tapes out Nvidia CEO: We have a CPU strategy Ars Technica reports Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android bit-tech reports Asus has AMD Fusion...
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Release roundup: Cases, cooling, SDKs, and more
This week in our release roundup, we have news from AMD, Antec, iBuypower, and Lian Li. AMD releases ATI Stream SDK v2.2 with OpenCL 1.1. We open this week's roundup with some news for programmers: a new version of the AMD Stream developer toolkit is available....
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Irrational Games unveils BioShock Infinite
A third BioShock game is underway! Unlike the second title, BioShock Infinite is being developed at Irrational Games under the leadership of series creator Ken Levine... and it doesn't quite follow in the footsteps of the original. Check out the trailer Irrational put up earlier today:
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Enterprise SSD controller being jointly developed by Samsung and Seagate
As we've learned from testing a multitude of solid-state disks, controller technology can play a big role in defining overall drive performance. The number of controllers on the market is growing steadily, and Samsung and Seagate have now revealed that they're working on one of their own. Samsung...
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Electrotactile feedback demoed on smartphone display
Touchscreens are becoming increasingly popular on devices ranging from smartphones to all-in-one desktops. Current touchscreens don't offer much in the way of tactile feedback, but that could change thanks to E-Sense technology developed by Senseg and Toshiba. E-Sense runs current through surface-mounted electrodes to simulate texture, pressure,...
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