Mobile App of the Day: Reqvu for iOS
Our Mobile App of the Day today comes in the form of Reqvu for iOS.
Your life is full of sound and motion, so why limit yourself to photos? The all new Reqvu is the video app made for Facebook that simplifies and adds more fun ways to make and share videos directly with your friends, and even Facebook groups.
See something your friends would like? Dedicate it to them.
Want to see what your friends are seeing? Make a video request.
See something all your friends would like? Make a video update.
You know what you like and what your friends like. Life is full of moments you can capture and share with the people you care about. Use the richness and vitality of video to share fun and interesting experiences that others will enjoy. Reqvu brings friends closer through video.
You can download Reqvu for your iOS-based device directly from the App Store, or here.
Read More ...
Microsoft enjoys record Q4 2012 with $18.06 billion in revenue
Microsoft have just released their Q4 2012 earnings report, where they had a record Q4 revenue of $18.06 billion, but took a hit with a net loss of $492 million for the past three months. This time last year, Microsoft were enjoying a net profit of $5.87 billion.
The Entertainment and Devices division grew year-over-year thanks to Skype, and saw $1.78 billion of the total revenue thanks to their good work. Microsoft also released their year-end financials, with revenues up $3.76 billion from 2011. Even with the aQuantive arrow to the knee, Microsoft still managed to post a net income of $16.98 billion for the year.
Read More ...
Microsoft updates Bing Maps with 215TB of high-resolution imagery
Microsoft have just updated Bing Maps, which now includes 215TB of high-resolution imagery covering most of the United States, as well as key locations within Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Tokyo. These new pictures, named Bird's Eye, were captured at a 45-degree angle to provide increased detail of buildings and landmarks.
The final type of data uses top-down photography that is projected onto a digital terrain or landscape, again, at a 45-degree angle. This is used to showcase topological depth perception when traditional aerial photography just isn't feasible.
Read More ...
Phase-change memory is nearly here, Micron is the first out of the gate
Micron look to be the first manufacturer to bring phase-change memory (PCM) to the market, a flash-alternative. Micron have said that PCM will be first be baked into feature phones, with smartphones and tablets to arrive later.
Micron seem to be taking a slow and steady approach, before working with higher densities and smaller packages. PCM is a type of non-volatile memory which appears to be best suited for applications where NAND flash is currently used. Most of you probably use something with NAND flash inside, USB flash drives, SSDs, memory cards, and most other commercial products where permanent data storage without a power source is required. PCM also does this.
PCM is different in the way it stores data, it works by triggering a poly-crystalline solid to become amorphous, switching from its once crystalline state. This change happens by applying jolts of electricity to certain areas of the material, creating heat and triggering those state changes. This type of localized "current injection" can be done with great precision, allowing PCM to manipulate individual "cells" as single bits, similar to SLC flash memory.
This has kept a bridge between storage devices and system memory, for that fact alone. But, PCM doesn't have the same kryptonite that NAND flash does, on top of the ability to have the potential to really kick its speed up past current DRAM. If PCM continues its path, we could see it become the norm in PCs in a matter of years.
Read More ...
Microsoft drops support on Office 2013 for Windows Vista, XP
Microsoft have just posted some newer system requirements for their upcoming productivity suite, Office 2013. It seems that the company are cutting support for older versions of Windows, with Windows Vista and XP both not being compatible with Office 2013.
Not only are there stricter OS requirements, but system requirements are a bit higher, too:
- CPU: 1GHz of faster x86 or x64 processor
- RAM: 1GB for x86 or 2GB for x64
- Storage: 3GB of available space
- Operating System: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows Server 2012
- Browser: Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, 9, or 10; Mozilla Firefox 10.x or a later version; Apple Safari 5; or Google Chrome 17.x.
- .NET version: 3.5 or higher
- Multi-touch: A touch-enabled device is required to use any multi-touch functionality. However, all features and functionality are always available by using a keyboard, mouse, or other standard or accessible input device. Note that new touch features are optimized for use with Windows 8.
- Hardware acceleration requires DirectX10-compatible graphics card
Read More ...
Traveling with Technology Tips - Part 1
When traveling to a foreign country with technology, it's hard to know exactly what you will encounter. What power convertors will I need? Is the Internet there the same as in my home country? Do they use a different Ethernet standard? These are all very important and good questions to ask. This article will serve to provide some helpful tips and help you understand just what to expect when traveling abroad. Scroll to the bottom for the list of tips without all the extra words.
So far during my travels in Europe, wireless access and any Internet access for that matter, has been a bit spotty. A fair amount of restaurants do offer free wireless access for its customers and, at least in Italy, they are in no hurry to bring you the bill and rush you out. While it may not be polite to whip out your laptop, I used my iPod Touch to check Facebook and keep in touch with loved ones.
The hostel I stayed at in Rome offered free wireless; however, not all do and you should check ahead before booking. The annoying thing about the wireless offered by my hostel was that you had to have a code from the front desk to log in. Usually not a problem. But, in this case, the code only lasted for 3 hours and then you had to get a new one.
Tip: Check out the wireless offered by the hotel/hostel before booking.
The large majority of the airports I flew through and train stations I have been through so far have not offered any sort of Wi-Fi at all, free or otherwise. One or two offered a few minutes (~15) of free access before payment was needed. Often these airports and train stations have restaurants and clubs in them and I managed to grab internet provided by one of those.
Tip: Snuggle up just outside the nicest lounge in the airport or station and sneak onto their Wi-Fi. If they have a challenge, it can usually be passed using information from your plane or train ticket. A lot of stores use their phone number as the Wi-Fi password, sneaky but true.
As far as power is concerned, it seems more widely offered than Wi-Fi is. As I write this on a train, I'm looking at two power ports for a grouping of four seats. The plane from Los Angeles to Paris had power, albeit in the form of a USB port at each seat. The in-flight entertainment system offered on the Air France A380 I flew on had a USB port to download maps onto a USB drive. This means it had to provide power and was even capable of charging my iPod, something that is often hard to charge due to Apple.
Furthermore, at the bar/toilet booth I was sitting in close proximity to had cabinets that appeared to be designed for laptops. Inside, these cabinets offered a power port for which to charge a device left inside. I believe the nicer first class and business class has AC power available at the seats themselves.
Power ports at some of the airports (read: LAX) were limited and this is where it would be smart to bring a small power strip with you in your carry-on baggage. People will love you if you share a plug with them. It also allows you to strike up a conversation with fellow travelers which helps pass the time of long layovers.
Tip: Bring a small power strip in your carry-on baggage.
Power ports themselves vary continent to continent and even country to country. I don't quite understand why we don't have a standardized electrical plug like we do for Ethernet and the like. But I digress, power convertors are important if you plan to travel to a country that has a different style plug. Furthermore, countries use different voltages for their power. While the US uses 120v/60Hz, Europe (as well as Australia) generally uses 230v/50Hz.
This means that you will additionally need a transformer plug if you want to plug sensitive electronics in. A large majority of laptop chargers can handle a range of voltages, usually 110-240v/50-60Hz, but I don't make any promises that yours will. It is almost always written on the bulky brick portion of the charger. Even still, the converter set I purchased came with a transformer to reduce voltage down to what the US uses so I use that whenever I plug my laptop in.
Tip: Purchase your power converter/transformer before leaving home.
Usually the set will come with plugs for everywhere, not just the place you are traveling. For instance, the one I picked up offered converters for New Zealand, Africa and others. Since they were separate little adapters that were to be used in front of the transformer, I left them at home to save weight and bulk. Some converters/transformers have every plug style built-in. If this is the case, don't worry about this part.
Tip: Leave behind converters that you won't need to save weight and bulk. Usually the converters are labeled with the country they are meant to be used in.
Let's face it, technology is expensive and public transport isn't the safest method of travel. Pickpockets know the routes tourists take and prey upon them. A phrase that I've heard time and time again from people is "Don't take more than you're willing to risk." It gets annoying, but it is very true. If you won't be doing a lot of typing or photo editing, you can most likely leave your laptop at home and make do with a tablet/iPod Touch/smartphone. This has a twofold benefit of saving the weight and bulk of the laptop as well as mitigating the risk of it being stolen, lost or damaged.
Tip: Put technology in your front pockets, along with your wallet or in a backpack. The backpack can be worn on the front of you or locked (or both). Leave behind technology you won't need, such as a laptop, iPod or other device.
Keeping all of your devices charged can also be a hassle while traveling. In a hostel, you probably shouldn't leave your devices laying out to charge as you often share the room with at least three other people. This is another reason not to bring a lot of extra devices that aren't needed. In a hotel, this isn't really a problem.
Due to the issues of charging, I further recommend using a camera that takes regular batteries. You never know when you could run out of power and not be able to find an outlet to charge. Additionally, if you are taking a nice long walk around a city, you don't want to be dependent on running back to the hotel to grab a quick charge. If you bring a camera that uses a rechargeable battery, bring the charger with you in your backpack.
Tip: Bring a camera that uses normal alkaline batteries as opposed to rechargeable ones. Bring at least one extra set with you in your backpack and another in the suitcase back at the hotel. If you bring a camera that uses rechargeable batteries, bring the charger with you in your backpack.
Speaking of cameras, it's always a good idea to bring extra memory cards as well as back up all of the pictures you take. Those darn memory cards keep getting smaller which makes them easier to lose. Back up your pictures by uploading them to cloud storage or even Facebook or put them onto a USB flash drive.
Tip: Bring extra memory cards for your camera. Back up photos you take either by downloading them onto a USB drive/computer or by uploading them to a cloud storage or Facebook.
There is sure to be more that you need to know, but for now this will have to suffice. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to shoot me an e-mail and I will try to answer them to the best of my ability based on my recent personal experiences. There will surely be more that I learn as this trip continues and I will write another article like this to convey the information to you. Until then, I wish you happy travels.
Tips (condensed list):
- Check out the wireless offered by the hotel/hostel before booking.- Snuggle up just outside the nicest lounge in the airport or station and sneak onto their Wi-Fi. If they have a challenge, it can usually be passed using information from your plane or train ticket.
- Bring a small power strip in your carry-on baggage.
- Purchase your power converter/transformer before leaving home.
- Leave behind converters that you won't need to save weight and bulk. Usually the converters are labeled with the country they are meant to be used in.
- Put technology in your front pockets, along with your wallet or in a backpack. The backpack can be worn on the front of you or locked (or both). Leave behind technology you won't need, such as a laptop, iPod or other device.
- Bring a camera that uses normal alkaline batteries as opposed to rechargeable ones. Bring at least one extra set with you in your backpack and another in the suitcase back at the hotel. If you bring a camera that uses rechargeable batteries, bring the charger with you in your backpack.
- Bring extra memory cards for your camera.
- Back up photos you take either by downloading them onto a USB drive/computer or by uploading them to a cloud storage or Facebook.
... Read the rest in your browser!
Read More ...
Patriot Memory Gauntlet Node Adds Wireless Flexibility to HDD Enclosures
Patriot Memory, a global pioneer in high-performance memory, NAND flash, storage, and enthusiast computer products today launches its new wireless personal storage enclosure the Gauntlet Node. Previously announced as the Gauntlet Wifi, the Gauntlet Node will allow users to break free from the hardware limited storage options offered in today's most popular tablets, smart phones, and laptops by offering up to 1 terabyte of untethered external storage.
Providing an extremely flexible wireless storage solution, the Gauntlet Node can be fitted with any new or used 2.5" mechanical hard drive or solid state drive and is hot swappable for no hassle use with multiple drives. Using Gauntlet Connect, available through Google Play, Amazon App Store, and iTunes, the Gauntlet Node is capable of sharing or streaming to 8 connected devices for excellent on the go productivity or entertainment. Powered by a lithium ion battery, the Gauntlet Node can stream movies, music, and photos or transfer data continuously for up to 5.5 hours.
The Gauntlet Node is shipping now to select United States retailers and will be available for an MSRP of $99.99. Availability in regions outside of the United States will be announced soon.
General Details
- DIY external enclosure
- USB 3.0 external data port
- Internal SATA interface
- Built in WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n
- WPA security
- 150 Mbit transfer rate
- Lithium-ion polymer for up to 5 hours of continuous streaming
- Available iOS & Android app for data transfer and sharing
- Supports IE 6 or higher, Firefox, and Safari for web access
Read More ...
Super Talent Announces SuperNova SATA III SSD Series
Super Talent Technology, a leader of NAND Flash storage solutions, today announces their enduring, and most reliable SSD to date, the SATA3 SuperNova.
Whether you're a large corporation or a small company the Supernova provides the advantages to reduce TCO. The SuperNova features thermal conductive silicon padding which prevents overheating and requires less cooling. Increase the speed and lifetime of data along with the most secure encryption on the planet, and the proprietary RAISE technology that virtually eliminates unrecoverable read errors makes the SuperNova the ideal choice.
The SuperNova is ideal for routers, server farms, or simulation applications. If you are looking to access data quickly, remove bottlenecks, and reduce operational costs SuperNova stands in a class of its own. SuperTalent's new SuperNova is available in 128GB and 256GB capacities, the SuperNova begins shipping today.
Read More ...
EUROCOM Launches NVIDIA Quadro K5000M with Panther 3.0
Eurocom Corporation (eurocom.com), a developer of long lifespan, high performance, fully upgradable Notebooks and Mobile Workstations has been testing and benchmarking and is now launching the NVIDIA Quadro K5000M GPU with 1344 CUDA cores and 4GB GDDR5 graphics memory in its Panther 3.0 Mobile Workstation.
NVIDIA Quadro K5000M graphics are manufactured on the newest 28nm kepler based GPU architecture from NVIDIA. Featuring a long list of technologies such as PhysX, CUDA, DirectX 11 and OpenCL, the NVIDIA Quadro K5000M will offer next generation graphics performance for the EUROCOM Panther 3.0 Mobile Workstation.
With a massive 4 GB of dedicated video memory and fast 256 bit bandwidth, users can display extremely complex scenes and models as well as calculate large datasets with ease, on the go, thanks to the EUROCOM Panther 3.0 High Performance Mobile Workstation computer.
The NVIDIA Quadro K5000M has an unprecedented 1344 CUDA cores. CUDA or Compute Unified Device Architecture is a parallel computing architecture developed by NVIDIA. CUDA is the computing engine in NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) that are accessible to software developers through variants of industry standard programming languages. The current generation CUDA architecture (Fermi) GPU is designed from the ground up to support more programming languages, NVIDIA has also introduced several new features:
- NVIDIA Parallel DataCache technology
- NVIDIA GigaThread engine
- ECC memory support
- Native support for Visual Studio
- Professional Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro K5000M
- 5.3kg/11.66 lbs
- Four storage drive capacity, 4 terabytes, RAID 0/1/5/10, SSD, HDD, Hybrid
- Up to 24GB; 3x SODIMM sockets, supports DDR3-1333/DDR3-1600
- Desktop Processors up to Intel i7-990X Processor Extreme or XEON X5690 series; 4 and 6-cores; LGA1366; 32nm technology; 65W-130W
- 1344 CUDA Cores
- 4 GB GDDR5 memory
- 30.4 Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec)
Read More ...
ADATA Introduces XPG Gaming v2.0 Series DDR3 2400G
ADATA Technology Co., Ltd. today announced the start of shipments of the XPG Gaming v2.0 Series DDR3 2400G DRAM modules. These dual channel kits are designed and engineered to bring optimum performance to third generation Intel Core processors and the Z77 platform.
With speed up to 2400Mbps (2400MHz), and transfer bandwidth reaching 19,200 MB/s, the XPG series once again pushes gaming to the next level. The modules support Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) version 1.3, and use ADATA's renowned Thermal Conductive Technology (TCT), combined with 2oz copper 8-layer printed circuit board, for superior heat dissipation. To further ensure reliability, a screw-lock mechanism improves cooling efficiency for long-term use. All XPG gaming modules are RoHS compliant, and come with a lifetime warranty where applicable.
The XPG Gaming v2.0 Series DDR3 2400G DRAM modules will be available through selected channels in the US and Canada for the suggested retail price of US$89.99.
Read More ...
NORCO Automatic Fare Collection Solution Making Public Transportation More Intelligent
To meet the increasing requirements in rail transportation system, NORCO has established a complete transportation products line cover products of great integration, high reliability, diverse interfaces. AFC series include AFC-6571/AFC-6572/AFC-6573/AFC-6574, which are the ideal solution for AFC system.
Automatic Fare Collection System (AFC) is composed of central computer, code/sorting machine, station computer, AFC field apparatus (in/out gate, bidirectional gate, ticket vendor, office ticketing machine and automatic ticket checker), tickets and communication network. In AFC system, industrial computers are mostly applied in gates or turnstiles, automatic and semi-automatic ticket vendors.
NORCO AFC System applies X86 platform with flexible mounting and expansion, supporting third party developers. Further more, because of the semi enclosed environment, ticketing system always has a high requirements upon the volume and performance of system controllers. With low power consumption, good heat dissipation, compact size and fanless structure, NORCO rail transportation series are specially designed for the particular environment of ticketing systems.
Apart from the automatic ticket machine, NORCO rail transportation series products are widely applied in the system of semi-automatic ticket machine, refilling machine and turnstile. From subways to light railways, the installation environment is always complicated, and there are wide differences among different environments. NORCO AFC solution can meet the particular requirements with various interfaces, and always has a satisfactory performance in these applications.
In the application of automatic ticket throughput cutout, non-contact IC card, screen displaying messages, controller of retention device, central controller and alarm, etc, the system needs to apply multi serial ports. Also, it needs to communicate with the network port, USB port and system terminal, at the same time requires high liability and stability. NORCO fanless embedded industrial computer AFC-6571 applies INTEL ATOM N270CPU, with 1.6G GHz, ensures the stable operation and fluent data processing of the system even under the peak flow. This NORCO AFC-6571 has 10 serial ports, VGA,LVDS/DVI dual display optional, and can embed display, alarm and retention devices. In addition, it applies one PCI expansion slot and one mini-PCIE to enhance the system stability.
AFC System Key Features:
1. Railway level standard with stable performance, adapting to a variety of poor working
environment such as wide temperature, dust, moisture, vibration, etc.
2. Rich interfaces, with strong integrate expansion capability, supporting displaying, printing,
alarm and other external devices access.
3. High processing capacity, supporting a variety of Intel high-performance CPU processors.
4. Low power consumption, fanless, with energy saving technology, "ICEFIN" cooling
technology, which greatly reduces system heat.
Read More ...
Available Tags:iOS , Microsoft , Bing , Windows , Wireless , HDD , SATA II , SATA , SSD , NVIDIA , Gaming , DDR3 ,
No comments:
Post a Comment