Intel Mini-ITX mobo targets ‘nettops’

August 19th, 2008

Intel has announced a mini-motherboard aimed at a new category of mini-PCs dubbed “nettops.” Interestingly, the “Desktop Board D945GCLF2,” powered by a 1.6 GHz dual-core Atom Processor 330, is built in the Mini-ITX format pioneered by Intel competitor Via Technologies.
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Intel kicks off $400,000 techology contest

August 19th, 2008

“Technology is a tool to address some of the world’s most pressing challenges,” proclaimed Intel Chairman Craig Barrett at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco today. And with those words, Barrett launched a contest that will award $400,000 to the “most innovative ideas for applying technology” to global health care, education, economic development, and the environment.
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Testing Debian’s Lenny KDE beta CD

August 14th, 2008

Lenny (aka “testing”) appears poised to displace Etch as the popular Linux distribution’s “stable” branch next month. To see how Lenny was coming along, I loaded the latest preview (beta 2) of its KDE system image onto an available Thinkpad, and took it for a spin.
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Tiny, 6-chip ‘open’ computer runs Linux

August 6th, 2008

Embedded designer Paul Thomas is showcasing a tiny, open-sourced computer at LinuxWorld in San Francisco this week. Would-be “Linuxstamp” enthusiasts can obtain pre-built boards for the hefty sum of $120 directly from Thomas, or they can download the design for free and build it themselves.
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HD A/V networking does 1394 over UWB on coax

August 5th, 2008

The 1394 Trade Association has adopted a new standard for in-home networking of high definition (HD) multimedia content over coax. “1394 Over Coax” combines Ultra Wideband (UWB) communications technology with 1394 protocols, and supports data rates up to 800 megabits/second.
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Linux set to dominate MIDs

August 4th, 2008

The Linux OS, in the form of Moblin, LiMo, and Maemo, looks ready to take the lion’s share of the Mobile Internet Devices (MID) market and is set to capture unit volumes of 50 millions units per annum in 2013, reports market analyst ABI Research.
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Linux mobile phone software alliance swells

August 3rd, 2008

The LiMo Foundation, an organization formed in 2007 by Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung, and Vodafone to develop a Linux-based mobile phone software platform, announced this week that its membership has swelled to over 50 companies.
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KDE 4.1.0 disappoints

July 31st, 2008

Learning that KDE 4.1.0 had been released by the KDE Community, I hastened to download and install this latest, greatest Linux desktop on the Ubuntu-powered Black Tower. Put generously, the results were highly disappointing!
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Handheld GPS market thriving

July 31st, 2008

Outdoor GPS devices and solutions are quickly gaining momentum, driven by user-friendly devices and converged solutions, reports market analyst firm ABI Research.
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Caltech unveils ‘microsopic microscope’

July 30th, 2008

Caltech claims its researchers have “turned science fiction into reality” with their development of a single-chip “microscopic microscope.” Although it doesn’t have any lenses, the device is said to provide magnification comparable to that of sophisticated optical microscopes.
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Micro-mobo spec gains high profile advocate

July 29th, 2008

A tiny embedded motherboard standard inspired by Intel’s recently introduced Menlow silicon platform has gained a high-profile advocate. Advantech, Taiwan’s top industrial computer maker, claims to be the 11th company to “actively” support the 70 x 70-mm Qseven computer-on-module (COM) standard.
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Commercial vs. DIY embedded Linux discussed

July 28th, 2008

A panel of embedded Linux specialists will discuss the pros and cons of commercial vs. do-it-yourself (DIY) embedded Linux implementations, at next week’s LinuxWorld conference. The session is part of the conference’s Mobile and Embedded Linux track.
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BIOS merger targets ‘billions of devices’

July 24th, 2008

Long-time PC BIOS leader Phoenix Technologies is acquiring embedded BIOS specialist General Software. The companies expect the acquisition to help Phoenix tap into a market consisting of billions of mobile and embedded devices.
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Solving global warming the open source way

July 22nd, 2008

An effort to rapidly reverse global warming is leveraging the collaborative methods of Linux and other open source software. Cquestrate aims to develop a cost-effective, “open” way to produce and introduce lime into the sea, where it will efficiently sequester dissolved CO2.
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House-cleaning robot gets pet Roomba

July 4th, 2008

A Silicon Valley homebrew robotics club has added vacuuming capabilities — via a small vacuum-bot stowaway — to its prototype house-cleaning robot. In a newly released video the Readybot picks up clutter from a family room floor, and then releases its pet Roomba to perform the finishing touches.
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Nokia acquires Symbian: so what?

July 3rd, 2008

The mobile phone operating system world was rocked recently by the announcement that Nokia had acquired all of the shares of Symbian that it didn’t already own, and that it planned to transition the OS to an open-source licensing model. How significant is this move?
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Xandros acquires Linspire

July 2nd, 2008

Two highly vocal — though not particularly successful — U.S.-based desktop Linux vendors have become one. The formal announcement that Xandros has acquired Linspire came today, following several days of static on the blogosphere.
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First 12 Microsofties, then and now

June 27th, 2008

Today was Bill Gates’s last full-time day at Microsoft. To commemorate the event, Microsoft released a pair of photos showing 11 of the company’s first dozen employees — the so-called “Albuquerque Group” — back in 1978, and now.
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Surviving Slashdot despite cheap web hosting

June 25th, 2008

Since its launch last December, DeviceGuru.com’s stories have made it onto Slashdot about once a month. Unfortunately, the site’s “budget” web-hosting service balks at delivering the resulting traffic spikes. What to do?
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Review: Roku’s rockin IP-radio

June 23rd, 2008

Having recently been bit by the Netflix STB bug, I couldn’t resist checking out Roku’s latest SoundBridge “network music player.” In less than 10 minutes of fooling around with the device after its arrival, I was ensnared!
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Via debuts Mini-ITX 2.0

June 19th, 2008

Via Technologies has launched gen 2 of its signature mini-motherboard standard. Mini-ITX 2.0, an evolutionary update to the seven-year-old 170×170mm form-factor, introduces new and emerging buses and interfaces such as PCI Express, SATA, Gig-E, and HD A/V, while preserving backwards-compatibility with the original standard.
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Monkey’s brain controls robotic arm

June 17th, 2008

Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh have demonstrated a robotic arm being operated by a monkey’s brain activity. Signals transmitted by a microcontroller implanted in the monkey’s brain enable the animal to robotically feed itself pieces of fruit in an effortless and natural manner.
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Handheld radar device ’sees’ through walls

June 11th, 2008

Motorola-backed startup Camero has introduced a handheld radar device that can “see” through walls. Weighing about six pounds, the laptop computer-sized gadget is intended for use by military, law enforcement, fire, and rescue personnel.
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Top ten disruptive technologies

June 1st, 2008

Market researcher Gartner Inc. has come out with its prognostication of the top ten disruptive technologies for the next five years. Included on the list are multicore processors, social networking, web mashups, cloud computing, augmented reality, and more.
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Robot climbs walls electrostatically

May 30th, 2008

R&D think tank SRI International claims to have created the first robots to use electrically-controllable adhesion (”electroadhesion”) to reliably climb walls.
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