There comes a point in every hardware cycle where the PC, thanks to its ability to be constantly updated, begins to pull ahead. Do things a console shooter can’t do. We’re now reaching that point. More
When it comes to home theater PCs, size matters — and it doesn’t get too much smaller than Sapphire’s original Edge HD mini PC, pictured above. In fact, Sapphire saw no reason to fiddle with the Edge’s diminutive form factor when designing the HD2, and instead poured itself into improving the HTPC’s specs. Not only is the updated mini-rig small enough to mount behind your HDTV, but it also packs a 1.8GHz dual-core Intel Atom, 2GB RAM, and a 320GB hard drive. All this (and 1080p VGA / HDMI out, of course) at 30W, “20 times less power than a typical desktop PC,” according to Sapphire. No word on price (or pics, for that matter), but feel free to jump past the break for an official press release with full specifications.
Continue reading Edge HD2 Mini PC is an HTPC that hides behind your TV
Edge HD2 Mini PC is an HTPC that hides behind your TV originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 22:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Google is on a roll this week. It took the tech world by storm with Google+, freshened up the user interface of Google Calendar and just unleashed a new design for Gmail. More
Jailbreaking unleashes the true potential of iOS. That’s an undeniable fact, people. But in order to squeeze every bit of juice from iOS, you need all the best tweaks, enhancements and apps there are. This is what you need. More
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a… fuel-electric hybrid air car? Well, yes actually, but right now it’s more ready-to-go concept than airborne reality. This brainchild of Trek Aerospace designer Michael Moshier and test-pilot Robert Bulaga employs the same ducted-fan tech the duo used in their DARPA-funded, NASA design-assisted, Popular Science ‘Invention of the Year’ winning SoloTrek. Like its predecessor, this hybrid air car is ideal for those close-quartered take-off and landing situations thanks to its enclosed propulsion system — good news for birds, trees and even human heads everywhere. Though still in the design phase, the pair hopes a generous round of funding will propel this 1960s Jetsons promise into a world-class fleet. While we can’t see the DMV rushing to approve licenses of this sort for the common joe, the copter-car should prove beneficial in roadless third-world nations, and maybe even lend a covered-propeller hand to first-world emergency service units. Pay attention billionaires of the world, this flying car’s got your bank account written all over it. PR for the deep-pocketed after the break.
[Image credit via Michael Moshier/Robert Bulaga]
Continue reading Fuel-electric hybrid air car wants to take flight, needs funding to do it
Fuel-electric hybrid air car wants to take flight, needs funding to do it originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
As the world runs short on snarky phone titles (and in fact, starts using a couple of the gems on more than one occasion), we’re left to overlook the moniker here while focusing on what’s important: that display. In fact, the 4.7-inch WVGA Super LCD shown here actually does seem to extend on for Eternity, and if HTC Inside‘s leak pans out, we could be looking at the world’s next WP7 superphone. It’s bruited that this fellow will be shipping with a single-core 1.5GHz processor, 8 megapixel camera (autofocus, dual LED flash), a 720p movie mode, front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera, 16GB of storage, DLNA support, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS and a 1,650mAh battery. That’s a pretty startling list of features, and savvy Windows Phone followers will recognize that the Mango update will indeed be necessary before that front-facing shooter becomes useful. Needless to say, we’ll be keeping an ear to the ground for more, as essentials like price and release have thus far eluded us.
HTC Eternity leaked: 1.5GHz processor, 4.7-inch display, front-facing camera originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Ars Technica’s Anders Bylund does some guesstimating about the total losses incurred by Newscorp in their purchase of MySpace, coming up with a figure of at least $1B, including operating losses since the acquisition.
So all things considered, MySpace has cost Murdoch’s empire something like $1.3 billion. Even if my assumptions are way off, the final cost can’t be less than $1 billion. That fiasco isn’t putting Murdoch out of business: News Corp turned a $2.9 billion dollar profit in the last four quarters and generated $2.2 billion in free cash flow, for example. But it still stings as Murdoch’s dreams of an end-to-end interactive media empire falls apart. And his shareholders have been trailing the broader market as well as rivals Viacom and Disney over those five painful years.
Doing the math on News Corp.’s disastrous MySpace years
You’ve got to hand it to IBM’s engineers. They drag themselves into work after their company’s 100th birthday party, pop a few Alka-Seltzers and then promptly announce yet another seismic invention. This time it’s a new kind of phase change memory (PCM) that reads and writes 100 times faster than flash, stays reliable for millions of write-cycles (as opposed to just thousands with flash), and is cheap enough to be used in anything from enterprise-level servers all the way down to mobile phones. PCM is based on a special alloy that can be nudged into different physical states, or phases, by controlled bursts of electricity. In the past, the technology suffered from the tendency of one of the states to relax and increase its electrical resistance over time, leading to read errors. Another limitation was that each alloy cell could only store a single bit of data. But IBM employees burn through problems like these on their cigarette breaks: not only is their latest variant more reliable, it can also store four data bits per cell, which means we can expect a data storage “paradigm shift” within the next five years. Combine this with Intel’s promised 50Gbps interconnect, which has a similar ETA, and data will start flowing faster than booze from an open bar on the boss’s tab. There’s more detailed science in the PR after the break, if you have a clear head.
Continue reading IBM develops ‘instantaneous’ memory, 100x faster than flash
IBM develops ‘instantaneous’ memory, 100x faster than flash originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
If you don’t want to manage multiple music libraries and would rather just have one, but your iTunes is eating up precious disk space, TuneSpan can migrate your excess media to external drives while still keeping it accessible within iTunes. This way you can move music you don’t listen to very often to an external drive and just plug it in when you want to access the files. More
