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HARDWARE Compiled by Blaine Flamig

QuickPodGives Your Digicam A Boost

If we had a nickel for every time a Shaq-like giant ruined a good photo op by planting his oversized body in front of our camera, we'd be, well, Shaq-like rich. Enter the QuickPod ($49.95), a 53-inch extension of the shutter button that's ideal for taking self-portraits or making Shaqs a non-factor. The polycarbonate extender works with D-SLRs, retracts to 18 inches, has a quick-release mount, and weighs just 9 ounces. It even includes a built-in mirror for those vanity shots. You also get an adapter that turns the QuickPod into a monopod, wrist strap, carrying bag, and hiking clip. Take that, Shaq.

Rambus Plans For A 1TBps World

Rambus detailed in December at its developer forum in Japan its Terabyte Bandwidth Initiative, which entails “new memory signaling technologies useful for the development of a future memory architecture capable of delivering a terabyte per second of memory bandwidth to a single System-on-Chip.” Rambus says keeping up with video consoles, PCs, and other devices in coming years will require such speeds. To that end, it’s working on such new innovations as a 32X data rate (32 data bits per input clock cycle on each I/O); FDMA (Fully Differential Memory Architecture); and FlexLink C/A, the industry’s first full-speed, scalable, point-to-point command/address link. Rambus has reportedly constructed a prototype to test the technologies, which it believes will start coming in handy around 2010.


Dell Takes Its Business In New Directions

Dell did two things in December to pretty much cover the entire consumer enchilada. First, it cut a deal to sell its systems at 900 Best Buys, hitting the low and midrange buying sectors. Second, Dell started shipping special-edition Horde and Alliance World of Warcraft-themed XPS M1730 notebooks, thus hitting the coveted high-end gaming sector, where gamers will of course pay major bucks for a major-league rig. Beyond bundling the 17-inch notebook with slick WoW artwork, buyers get a WoW-themed backpack filled with enough swag to break a back (beta keys, making-of DVD, etc.) and up to 3.4GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme CPUs, Ageia PhysX cards, 512MB SLI Nvidia cards, HD widescreen display, and plenty more. Not a bad month’s work.


Haier America Expands Beyond Dishwashers


Don’t let the wine cellars, fridges, washing machines, and dishwashers at Haier America fool you. It also sells a damn versatile MP3 player. The $329.99 30GB ibiza Rhapsody has integrated Wi-Fi and A2DP and AVRCP Bluetooth support, and its 2.5-inch screen (320 x 240) plays MPEG-4, WMV, H.264, AVI, MPG, and M4V clips, plus AOL videos you can wirelessly download to the player free. AAC, MP3, WMA, and WAV audio is doable, but there’s also integrated Rhapsody support (Rhapsody To Go is free for 30 days) and an FM tuner. Want more? How about automatic wireless podcast updates, a choice of five colors, and customizable screens and content via AirSkins. Oh yeah, 4GB ($229) and 8GB ($249) flash versions are also available.

Hardware Mole


Samsung Sets Its Sights Big & Small

Shush. Hear your portable devices shrinking? No? You will soon, as Samsung was set to detail at CES a 1.3-inch hard drive. Though there was no word on capacities at press time, 80GB iPod nano-sized music players sound pretty sweet. Don’t fret, discriminators of all things small. Samsung was to also introduce a 3.5-inch 1TB RAID Edition drive and a 2.5-inch 320GB drive at CES. Elsewhere, Samsung has reportedly finished work on its GDDR5 DRAM implementation, calling it “the world’s fastest memory” with mind-boggling 6Gbps transfers. First out of the gate will be 512Mb chips (16Mb x 32), with 24GBps total bandwidth expected in early 2008.



Tech For Hobbies & Health

Physical therapists are turning more frequently to the Wii to help bring patients back to better health. According to Reuters, Robbie Winget, occupational therapist at Dodd Rehabilitation Hospital at Ohio State’s University Medical Center, has been prescribing 30-minute Wii workouts for stroke, spinal cord, and brain injury patients up to three times a week. Meanwhile, Gibson is now making life easier for six-string aficionados via its self-tuning Robot Guitar ($2,499 vs. $1,400 for a standard Les Paul), which only requires spinning the Master Control Knob to a desired standard or alternative tuning, strumming the strings, and letting the Robot do the rest. “Iron Man,” indeed.


Gordon Moore’s Stargazing Gift


We have much to thank Gordon Moore for, and so does the California Institute of Technology and University of California—200 million reasons. That’s the sum Intel’s founder donated to the schools to help build the Thirty-Meter Telescope, which has an estimated $1 billion price tag and is scheduled for operation in 2017. Reportedly, the telescope will be the largest optical-infrared one in existence, consisting of a primary mirror measuring about 100 feet in diameter, three times the size of the current record-holding Keck Telescopes. Cal Tech physics professor Ed Stone stated, “We will be able to see back to the first light of the universe.” Moore previously socked $50 million into the cause.

CHIPWATCH Compiled by DeanTakahashi

Tracking Objects Gets Much Easier With S5 Wireless Wide-Area Location Chips

GPS tracking takes sophisticated hardware, and it often doesn’t work in urban canyons. But S5 Wireless, a Salt Lake City chip startup, believes it can dramatically lower the cost of tracking with “wide-area location” chips. These chips cost less than a dollar to make and can be placed on any object, said CEO David Carter. The chips use tiny 900MHz radios with a 50-mile range and consume just 250 milliwatts of power. Customers can set up radio base stations within a metropolitan region and then use triangulation techniques to fix the location of a particular chip as it sends signals to all the base stations. The chips are accurate within 9 meters and can get a fix within two seconds. They can also send encrypted data back at a rate of 700bps to a central location. However, the chips raise privacy concerns, as they make tracking simple and inexpensive.



Samsung’s GDDR4 Memory Chips Will Keep Up With Graphics Technology

It does no good to have a fast graphics chip if you can’t feed data to it fast enough. That’s why Samsung has launched its newest memory chip, the GDDR4 1.2GHz chip. The chip is designed to be compatible with AMD’s new ATI Radeon HD 3870 GPU. The ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series GPUs transfer data at 72Gbps but consume less power than their predecessors. Samsung offers the 1.2GHz GDDR4 in a 16Mx32 configuration. It also has a 900MHz GDDR3 chip that also works with the ATI Radeon HD 3850 GPU. Both chips are now in mass production.



D2 Audio Creates Intelligent Digital Amplifier Chip For Flat-Panel TVs

D2 Audio has introduced a low-cost digital audio amplifier chip that delivers home-theater sound for flat-panel TVs. The Intelligent Digital Amplifier chip is low-cost and enables speaker designers to create sleek and small speakers that also sound good. Such speakers often have challenging audio playback problems with TVs that have to be solved with DSP (digital signal processing) techniques. The D2 Audio DAE-3 DSP engine does all the audio processing for the speakers, enabling features such as psycho-acoustic effects that can be built into the TVs without adding new cost to the TV. That is necessary because flat-panel TVs are now being placed in secondary viewing locations where there isn’t as much room for an independent home-theater system.

Click here for pricing information for AMD and Intel CPUs.

INTERNET Compiled by Blaine Flamig

Not On Our School’s Computers, Jimmy Wales

We’re getting the impression educators think today’s students can’t research their way out of a paper bag with Wikipedia around. As reported in the New Jersey Express-Times, Linda O’Connor, librarian at Great Meadows Middle School in Easton, Pa., was so concerned that students take Wikipedia as “gospel,” she stuck “Just Say No To Wikipedia” signs on school computers. “They don’t realize I could go on right now and write something about Great Meadows Middle School, and it could be totally bogus,” she stated. For its part, Wikipedia doesn’t recommend students use it as a primary research source, stated Sandra Ordonez, Wikimedia Foundation communications manager. “The best way to use Wikipedia is to get a global picture of a topic,” she stated.


Fastest Rising Search Term? “iPhone” With A Bullet

Because we know you’re dying to know, “iPhone” topped the U.S. and global lists of the fastest-rising search terms in 2007 as entered at Google. Considering the iPhone was merely a source of rumors and anticipation in 2006, the results aren’t too surprising. What is surprising is that “Webkinz” landed at No. 2 on the U.S. list. Evidently, there’s an army of virtual pet lovers among us. Elsewhere, thanks largely to the outlaw-driving catastrophe that is Britney Spears, “TMZ” ranked third. Rest easy, geeks, “Transformers” finished fourth, followed by “YouTube”; “Club Penguin,” another children-based social networking site; “MySpace”; “Heroes”; “Facebook”; and, ugh, “Anna Nicole Smith.”


Jango Jingles The Social Networking Scene

One of the greatest all-time icebreakers is music. Unearth a shared passion for Slayer, and it doesn’t matter if you and your tatted-up neighbor don’t share anything else in common—you’ve got a head-banging buddy for life. That’s the drift of Jango, our favorite new Web pastime. Simple as pie to use (just type an artist’s name and you’re streaming tunes), deliciously customizable (create and tweak your profile, rate songs, etc.), and packing tons of flavor to sample (tune in to other users’ stations whenever you please), Jango is wafting with potential considering it’s still in beta. In fact, Jango says in four months of private testing, 300,000 listeners created more than 600,000 shareable stations. Look for a miniplayer and embedded Jango Jukebox widget soon.


Site Seeing


MIT Smartens Up High School Students

We know how intelligent CPU readers are. Thus, we assume you already know about MIT’s OpenCourseWare project, which offers 1,800 syllabi, 15,000 lecture notes, 9,000 assignments, and 900 exams free online. What you intellectuals may not know is MIT has funneled OCW down to high schoolers via its new Highlights for High School effort that focuses on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) instruction. More than 2,600 video and audio clips, lecture notes, MIT course assignments, and animations are available. Interestingly, MIT guesses 10,000 U.S. high school teachers and 5,000 students already hit the OCW site per month. Unfortunately for budding eggheads, OCW doesn’t grant MIT degrees or certificates.

Arcade Fire Makes Music Videos Cool Again

Fantastically creepy. That’s the best way we can describe Arcade Fire’s interactive video for the pulsating track “Neon Bible” (beonlineb.com/click_around.html). The video keeps your browser’s Back button plenty busy in an attempt to find hidden treasures you missed the first 20 times around. Arcade Fire was pinned with the “experimental” tag way early in its career, and “Neon Bible’s” video is proof positive why. At just 2:16 (minutes:seconds) long, do yourself a favor and view for yourself why MTV is so yesterday.

Software Compiled by Blaine Flamig

SourceForge.net Is Now Taking Bids

Need help customizing Audacity or other open-source projects? Head to SourceForge.net’s newly opened Marketplace. “We’re extending what is already the world’s most open and transparent open-source hub to allow technology professionals to buy packaged support directly from the creators of the software,” stated Mike Rudolph, SourceForge.net VP and GM. After months of beta testing, the eBay-like Marketplace went official in early December for techies looking to buy and sell. Listings numbered about 1,000 at press time. Postings are free, and buyers can contact sellers via email, as well as run background checks on sellers’ experience, reputation, and other traits. PayPal, cash, checks, and credit cards are accepted, thank you.



125 Million & Counting For Firefox?

Using data garnered from Firefox’s application update service, Mozilla COO John Lilly recently estimated the little browser that could has “at least 125 million Firefox users in the world right now, give or take.” Meanwhile, Mozilla has released the first beta for Firefox 3 with added quickness and such UI enhancements as Places, a new bookmarking tool. Meanwhile meanwhile, Jeff Jones, Microsoft Trustworthy Computer Group’s security strategy director, concluded in a recent study Mozilla has fixed more flaws in Firefox than MS in IE during equivalent time periods—199 vs. 87 since November 2004. Mozilla’s Mike Shaver, director of Ecosystem Development, countered that Microsoft “bundles fixes, sometimes meaning that you get a single vulnerability ‘counted’ for, say, seven defects repaired,” whereas Mozilla counts “every defect distinctly.”



EFF Releases Packet-Filtering Detector

Think your Internet service provider is “blocking, jamming, or degrading” your “ability to use particular applications, services, or protocols?” The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) wants to help via Wireshark, software it released in late November to help verify or discount such suspicions. The EFF is also including documentation on how to use the packet-forgery tester. The release stems from EFF accusations that Comcast used packet-forgery techniques to purposely interfere with file sharers’ activities. The EFF says it ran separate tests in October with the Associated Press and others showing Comcast was forging packets “to interfere with its subscribers’ and other Internet users’ ability to use file-sharing applications, like BitTorrent and Gnutella.” The goods are available at www.eff.org/wp/detecting-packet-injection.



Software Shorts



Master Of Your “Seinfeld” Domain

Created by “Seinfeld” fans for “Seinfeld” fans comes “In Pursuit of Nothing” (www.inpursuitofnothing.com), a second-gen interactive DVD game pertaining to all things Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kosmo. We’re tempted to pay the game’s $24.95 price just for the gameboard, which mimics the Monk Coffee Shop booth where the foursome explored nothingness for years. Gameplay boils down to each player pitching in $2 to help cover George’s lunch tab. Answer a trivia question correctly and your share goes down. The first player to reach nothingness wins. Now, put on a puffy shirt, open a box of Junior Mints, and yada yada yada.


Flickr Now Fixes Photos

Partnering with “lovely company” Picnik, Flickr now offers “world-class, Web-based” photo-editing tools to its millions of users. You must enable Picnik’s tools first, but once you do, you’ll like what you find. A new Edit Photo button opens up slider-based Auto-Fix, Rotate, Crop, Resize, Exposure, Colors, Sharpen, and Red-Eye tools, plus Advanced options that require a $24.95 Premium account to use. You can also apply numerous effects, add text and shapes, touch up blemishes or whiten teeth, and add frames to shots. Before long, Flickr may snap your photos, too.


Past & Future Threats Abound

Sigh. If only all those smart little hackers out there could only use their power for good. According to security firm F-Secure, its database of malware signatures totaled about 500,000 at 2007’s end, double what it started with at year’s beginning. Wait, there’s more bad news. F-Secure says it detects 10 to 40 new variants of online banking-related Trojans a day, and we can look forward to the cyber thugs responsible for the Storm worm leasing access to other criminals in 2008. Meanwhile, Web-sense Security Labs’ researchers predict loads of scams, attacks, and other malicious activities will stem from the 2008 Olympics. That’s the competitive spirit.

BIOS Upgrades Available Online

Before you send another motherboard to the landfill, consider upgrading the BIOS and giving your PC a new lease on life. Click here to see the latest updates.