The Troll Wall is part of the Troll Peaks Mountain located in the Romsdalen Valley near the west coast of Norway, and it’s become one of the world’s foremost base jumping sites. I’m not going to pretend for one second that I have any clue what kind of alpha balls it takes to engage in this jaw-dropping recreational sport, but I’m guessing one of the most popular post-jumping activities would be to chow down on an incredible meal. And the world’s most ultimate sport now has its most ultimate restaurant located at the base of Troll Wall. The Troll Wall Restaurant was completed last year and this balls-out mesmerizing building comes from the the geniuses at Reiulf Ramstad Architects. The restaurant comes in at just under 7,600 square feet, with floor-to-ceiling windows supported by the angular tall white beams which allow a bounty of natural light to pour into the space. Pure amazingness. For more information on this daredevil team of architects be sure to visit ReiulfRamstadArkitekter.no, and to learn more about Troll Wall itself simply head over to Wikipedia. I’m now having trouble figuring out which is more impressive — base jumping or this building. The Troll Wall is the tallest vertical rock face in Europe, about 3,600-feet from its base to the summit of its highest point, and it has been a prestigious goal for climbers and base jumpers alike. Carl Boenish, the “father” of base jumping, was killed on the Troll Wall in 1984 shortly after setting the world record for the highest base jump in history. Base jumping from Troll Wall has been illegal since 1986.

Source: Inthralld

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The World’s Most Daring Base Jumpers Now Have One Of The World’s Most Stunning Restaurants

BGR is claiming that one of its sources has access to an iPad 3 prototype which, at this stage of development, it may be true. According to them, these debug screenshots confirm some of the speculation about the next Apple tablet: More »

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Alleged iPad 3 Development Photos Confirm Key Details [Rumors]

We’ve known for some time that Microsoft would be bringing official Kinect support to Windows this week, but one thing they kept quiet was the fact that they’d be debuting a new version of the hardware as well.

It’s not tiny, as some hoped, or built into the bezel of a laptop, as we know it will be eventually, but it does improve on the original in a few ways.

The most visible improvement for most people will be a slight improvement of the minimum distance required for the device to operate. The Xbox 360 Kinect required you to be around 50cm away at least, and the Kinect for Windows will go down to 40cm — about 16 inches. That means it can sit on a monitor on a user’s desk and capture movements without the user having to scoot back at all.

Other improvements are of the softer variety. Microsoft has improved the tracking software, providing an improved raw sensor stream, better color/depth synchronization, and more accurate skeletal tracking.

On the downside, the new version costs quite a bit more: the new Kinect for Windows is going for $250, while the 360 version is selling for just $100 at the Microsoft Store right now. The justification for the price seems to be that the new version has been updated to support multiple systems and situations, rather than the standard 360 hardware it’s been running on for the last year. And I’m guessing they’re not subsidizing this price quite as heavily.

The official SDK won’t work with the 360 version, it seems, though you can still download the beta SDK, which works fine but officially can’t be used for commercial applications.

Microsoft says they’ve been working with hundreds of companies and seeing lots of unique applications and ideas, so hopefully we’ll see some of those hit soon. In the mean time our Kinect tag has lots of projects that demonstrate the versatility of the device.

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Microsoft Updates Kinect Hardware For Official Windows Release

For wary Office 365 enterprises who’ve been reluctant to dip their toes into the beta pond, today will certainly be memorable in the IT room: Research in Motion has gone ahead and blessed BlackBerry Business Cloud Services as ready for prime time. The software, which has been in beta stage since October, allows BlackBerry users to easily integrate with their firm’s Office 365 deployment. Users can expect synchronization with their Exchange email, contacts and calendars, along with the ability to remotely wipe or lock their data should the device go missing. Likewise, IT gurus may take advantage of remote administration and wireless activation of the handsets. The software is free and will work for all medium-sized and enterprise subscribers of Office 365. So go ahead and uncork that dusty bottle of champagne, or absent that, feel free to flavor up the Folgers a bit. The press release just after the break, and you’ll definitely want to prepare yourself.

Continue reading RIM welcomes Office 365 users into the fold with BlackBerry Business Cloud Services

RIM welcomes Office 365 users into the fold with BlackBerry Business Cloud Services originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RIM welcomes Office 365 users into the fold with BlackBerry Business Cloud Services

Ask Engadget: What’s the best budget NAS?

Kingston Wi-Drive for iOS hits stores today, lets you create your own portable music server for $130

Tilera sees sense in the server wars, puts just 36 cores in its newest processor

In today’s digital world we’ve all got data, and lots of it. Our libraries are also growing rapidly: where you used to get by setting aside a few bookshelves for your books, CDs, DVDs and VHS tapes, we now require untold server space to preserve our beloved media in digitized form. We also want our data to be itinerant, or at least seem that way. That is, if you want to take a book or disc to another room of your abode, you pull it from the bookshelf and take it with you. Similarly, if you’re working on a document upstairs on your desktop and you want to move to the den with your laptop, you’ll need the proper infrastructure working in the background to enable that kind of wizardry. So, how can we create this “digital bookshelf?” Can you go out and buy it now? Can you build it in your garage? As it turns out, the answer is “yes” on all counts. You could go out and buy a Drobo device but in this case, we’re going to assemble our own. And we’re going to do that with the help of an open source storage platform called FreeNAS. So how involved a process is that? Meet us after the break to find out.

Continue reading How-To: Set up a home file server using FreeNAS

How-To: Set up a home file server using FreeNAS originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How-To: Set up a home file server using FreeNAS

alphadogg writes “Many IT departments are struggling with Apple’s ‘take it or leave it’ attitude, based on discussions last week at MacIT, which is Macworld|iWorld’s companion conference for IT professionals. Much of the questioning following technical presentations wasn’t about Apple technology or products. It was about the complexities and confusions of trying to sort out for the enterprise Apple’s practices. Those practices include the use of Apple IDs and iTunes accounts, which are designed for individual Mac or iPad or iPhone users, and programs like Apple’s Volume Purchase Program, which, according to Apple ‘makes it simple to find, buy, and distribute the apps your business needs’ and to buy custom, third-party B2B apps.”

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Apple Forcing IT Shops To 'Adapt Or Die'

sciencehabit writes “In a new study, neuroscientists connected a network of electrodes to the hearing centers of 15 patients’ brains and recorded the brain activity while they listened to words like ‘jazz’ or ‘Waldo.’ They saw that each word generated its own unique pattern in the brain. So they developed two different computer programs that could reconstruct the words a patient heard just by analyzing his or her brain activity. Reconstructions from the better of the two programs were good enough that the researchers could accurately decipher the mystery word 80% to 90% percent of the time. Because there’s evidence that the words we hear and the words we recall or imagine trigger similar brain processes, the study suggests scientists may one day be able to tune in to the words you’re thinking.”

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Computer Program Reconstructs Heard Words From Brain Scans

MojoKid writes “When AMD announced the high-end Radeon HD 7970, a lower cost Radeon HD 7950 based on the same GPU was planned to arrive a few weeks later. The GPU, which is based on AMD’s new architecture dubbed Graphics Core Next, is manufactured using TSMC’s 28nm process and features a whopping 4.31 billion transistors. In its full configuration, found on the Radeon HD 7970, the Tahiti GPU sports 2,048 stream processors with 128 texture units and 32 ROPs. On the Radeon HD 7950, however, a few segments of the GPU have been disabled, resulting in a total of 1,792 active stream processors, with 112 texture units and 32 ROPs. The Radeon HD 7950 is also clocked somewhat lower at 800MHz, although AMD has claimed the cards are highly overclockable. Performance-wise, though the card isn’t AMD’s fastest, pricing is more palatable and the new card actually beats NVIDIA’s high-end GeForce GTX 580 by just a hair.”

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AMD's New Radeon HD 7950 Tested

For months we’ve been waiting on Razer’s Blade notebook, a $2800, 17-inch beast that we weren’t sure whether to laud or mock. It’s just that it’s kind of a strange thing to see making a big debut when people are more cautious than usual with their money, and PC gaming (as ever) is being declared dead. But after our hands-on at CES, we were convinced that it was at the very least impressive and well-built, and apparently enough other people thought so that Razer sold out almost immediately.

Now, the actual number sold isn’t mentioned, but Razer isn’t a small company and they were going all-out with this thing at CES. But we’ve seen devices launch to sales of dozens, so a strong response to a launch like this is definitely good news.

The company shared the news on their Facebook page, and urges prospective buyers to sign up for a notification email list. Hopefully that $2800 won’t burn a hole in your pocket in the meantime.

Personally, I’m more excited about their plans to disconnect the touchscreen and LCD keys from the laptop, making a customizable piece of hardware you can use with your existing PC. I’m not really down with the small-screen gaming and I like my keyboards a little meatier, so the Blade isn’t for me — but I do have gear envy when I see all those future toys on the side.

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What Recession? Razer’s $2800 Blade Gaming Laptop Sells Out In 30 Minutes

Apple has released a new update for Mac OS X Lion, version 10.7.3. The update’s release notes indicate that it’s a relatively minor bump, with myriad bug fixes for things like smart card logins, printing Word documents using markup, WiFi connection issues, and more. The operating system update also comes bundled with a small version bump for Safari, which is now at version 5.1.3.

In addition to the aforementioned bugs, the 10.7.3 update addresses an issue when authenticating to an SMB DFS share, a graphics performance issue in iMacs that use ATI graphics, compatibility issues with Windows file sharing, and adds support for a handful of new languages (Catalan, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and Ukrainian). As is often the case, the company also added RAW image support for a handful of new cameras and there are a number of fixes listed out for Directory Services.

On top of the 10.7.3 update, Apple also released a security update for Snow Leopard users, the contents of which have not yet been posted to Apple’s security site as of this writing.

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Mac OS X 10.7.3 hits Software Update along with Safari 5.1.3