The rise of Apple's iPad and Android tablets has largely left Intel and Microsoft in the dust, in need of technology and marketing boosts to halt the momentum of Apple and Google.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Did Xoom Whiff It on WiFi?
Since it was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show last January, the Motorola Xoom tablet has been hailed as the strongest challenge yet to Apple's iPad. However, it faces two possible obstacles to widespread acceptance: Its price, and its lack of a WiFi-only version. The Xoom has both 3G and WiFi capabilities, and it's offered at a price of $800 without a carrier contract.
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Sunday, February 27, 2011
Chipmakers fight dwindling gains in efficiency
The latest generation of graphics chips have 3 billion transistors and consume about 200 watts of energy. The numbers are impressive -- until you consider that the human brain has the equivalent of a trillion transistors and consumes just 20 watts of energy, or far less than it takes to run a light bulb.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Zero clients for virtual desktops?
Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) has brought renewed interest to alternative endpoints, especially thin clients. After all, if the desktop is running remotely as a virtual machine, why should you use an expensive, power-hungry PC to access it?
Friday, February 25, 2011
Torus is an impressive 3D Tetris game powered by HTML5
You rotate the ring itself with the arrow keys, while a Tetris-like piece slowly (excruciatingly slowly, in fact) descends from the top. As soon as you make a solid line, it disappears.
Not all pieces are Tetris-like; some of them wouldn't really work with a regular Tetris game but are a good fit for Torus' 3D format.
Torus is ideal for playing at the office, because it has absolutely no soundtrack. The game is dead-quiet. It's also very very slow (slow enough for me to mention it twice in one post) so you can safely look away for a moment and then keep playing. Also, as soon as the game loses focus, it automatically pauses.
Bottom line: It's an impressive demo of the power of HTML5; if it were a bit faster, it would have some serious addictive potential.
Torus is an impressive 3D Tetris game powered by HTML5 originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Apple shareholders nix CEO succession disclosure
Shareholders reject a proposal that would have forced the company to lay out a plan for replacing its CEO, in light of Steve Jobs' current medical leave.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
CrunchGear Week In Review: The Bat And The Bees Edition
Here are some stories from the past week on CrunchGear: Video Of Escher?s Impossible Waterfall A La Rube Goldberg Irony: Smartphones Can Save The Honeybees Mimoco?s Latest Puts Your Data On DC Comic Classics HTC Announces The Desire S, Wildfire S, and Incredible S Canjo: You Know, A Banjo Made From A Can
Review: Innovative Radiant Historia Recalls Salad Days of RPGs
It might look, sound and sometimes feel like the classic 16-bit role-playing games of old, but Radiant Historia is a thoroughly modern game with clever twists on questing tropes. 
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Girl Scouts Look To Increase Cookie Sales By Accepting Credit Cards
It's Girl Scout Cookie time again. This time around however, some Girl Scouts in San Diego have a new trick up their sleeves. No longer will the excuse that you don't have any cash give you an out for not buying cookies. It seems everyone carries a credit card these days, so a sampling of Girl Scout troops in San Diego are planning to use...
HP reports mixed quarter on weak PC sales
Hewlett-Packard reported a jump in profit for the first quarter of its 2011 fiscal year but sales were dragged down by weakness in its PC and services divisions. The poor performance from those groups prompted HP to lower its revenue forecast for the year, causing its share price to slump 12 percent after the results were announced.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
FTC Internet Privacy Proposal Slammed By Ad Industry
“Do Not Track” settings planned by the Federal Trade Commission may not go far enough according the Center for Digital Democracy and U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
Lenovo halts shipment of PCs with faulty Intel chip sets
Lenovo on Thursday said it would stop shipments of its latest IdeaPad laptops and IdeaCentre desktops in the wake of Intel's revelation of a flaw in the Sandy Bridge chip-set design.
The PC maker is also offering refunds or the option to replace motherboards at no cost for customers who have already bought PCs that contain Intel's latest Core i5 and i7 processors with the faulty chip sets.
Monday, February 21, 2011
TSA?s Prying Eyes Won?t Look Twice at This Laptop Bag
The security screening procedure at the airport typically provides about as much enjoyment as a graduate-level macroeconomics lecture, so it was comforting to know I had one less hassle when I approached the conveyor belt at the TSA checkpoint the last time I flew: I didn't have to remove my 15-inch MacBook from my backpack.
GroupPrice Targets SMBs For Group Buying
The site hopes to cash in on group buying trend with a business-to-business version aimed at small and midsize business decision-makers.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Microsoft Confirms Windows Zero Day Vulnerability
Proof of concept code released for attack that uses malformed requests to crash any version of Windows, though remote execution appears unlikely.
Daily Crunch: Pre-Valentine Edition
Brainchild?s Kineo Android Tablet Is Teacher?s New Pet Valentine?s Giveaway: New York Readers, Win An Electric Car Love Date From Hertz Bring Me Boba Fett?s Head?Phones Wear Around Your Childhood Friends With These Spaceman Lego Cufflinks Study: Young Girls Are Happier When They Play Video Games With Dad
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Micro-Funding Site Integrates With LinkedIn, Facebook
40billion.com lets entrepreneurs connect to social media to seek funding from contacts.
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Microsoft patches critical Windows drive-by bug
Microsoft has patched three vulnerabilities in Windows, one that could be exploited by attackers who dupe users into visiting a malicious website.
The company also debuted a new defensive measure to help users ward off ongoing attacks that are exploiting a known bug in Internet Explorer (IE).
Friday, February 18, 2011
Lenovo to launch LePad tablet worldwide in June
Chinese PC maker Lenovo plans on selling its LePad tablet worldwide in June, but will first launch the device in China at the end of March, a company spokesman said on Friday.
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Windows on verge of dropping below 90% market share
Windows is on the verge of dropping below 90 percent market share, with smartphones and tablets posing an increasingly serious threat to Microsoft's dominance of the operating system market.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Hands-On
Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play is the phone we have wanted ever since Sony's PSP was invented. It is, in any meaningful way, the first official PSP phone, and we got to play with it at the Mobile World Congress. How does it do?
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Will HTC's Flyer Flip, Flop or Live Up to Its Name?
HTC unveiled its first Android tablet Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Called the "Flyer," it has a seven-inch screen and comes with a stylus. The HTC Flyer runs on a 1.5GHz Qualcomm processor and uses HTC's Sense user interface over Android 2.3, aka "Gingerbread."
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Enhanced SpyEye Trojan Poses New Threats
Features from Zeus crimeware toolkit lets SpyEye grab credit card numbers from hacked PCs and allows users to upgrade plug-ins after purchase.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Global CIO: In Google-Microsoft Catfight, Insults Are For Losers
The hissy-fit between the two companies about copying search results means absolutely nothing in the real world of customers who couldn't possibly care less.
Plextor Ships M2 SSD Line In America: Starts At $180 For 64GB
New SSDs? It's actually been some time since we have heard of any new SSDs shipping, but Plextor has a new patch that is now available in the U.S. The M2 Series of solid state drives are one of the first to market to support SATA 6Gbps, with the 2.5" line using a Marvel 88SS9174 controller. Other key features include a sequential read rate...
Monday, February 14, 2011
Global CIO: $100-Billion Tesco Kicks CIO Upstairs To CEO
As the $100-billion retailer accelerates its use of IT as a strategic weapon in its global expansion, Tesco CIO Philip Clarke will take the reins as CEO on March 1.
Help save the earth in Survivosaur -- Time Waster
The jet-pack is only the beginning here - you, the dino-protagonist, are tricked out to the max with alternative weapons, an optional shield, extra health and more. You use this massive arsenal to shoot at oncoming meteors and explode them in space, thus preventing the extinction of yourself and your kind. But not everything that comes from space is bad - you get bonuses (those little dollars flying in the screenshots), as well as health packs.
Once you amass enough lucre (say, $10), you can hit SPACE and access the in-game accessory store, where you get all of those fancy power-ups I just mentioned. Gameplay is super-simple - you run (or rather, circle the globe) with the arrow keys, and aim and fire with the mouse. But thanks to the power-up system, this game is surprisingly engaging.
Help save the earth in Survivosaur -- Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Daily Crunch: Mega Launch Edition
eStar From Navistar Is Another Electric Delivery Van Obama?s Plan For 1 Million EVs By 2015 Might Be Impossible Apple Patents More Stuff It Will Never Implement U.S. Military Looking To Bring M4 Carbine, M16 Rile Into The Modern Era 8-Bit Mega Man Straps Serve No Purpose; Buy Them Anyway
Microsoft unveils free trial of Mac Office
Four months after it debuted Office for Mac 2001, Microsoft on Tuesday launched the first free trial of the application suite.
The trial version of Office for Mac Home and Business 2011 includes fully-functional versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, the suite's word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and email client.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
White iPhone 4 Conversion Gut Check
Before you decide to "improve" the aesthetic appearance of your cellphone, a checklist needs to be written. Simple questions, such as does it improve the functionality in any way? Will it function worse despite enhanced appearance? Is it worth it? In the iPhone repair world, the iPhone 4 white conversion service is selling fast throughout the U.S. When going through an informal checklist, though, nothing adds up.
Daily Crunch: Pre-Valentine Edition
Brainchild?s Kineo Android Tablet Is Teacher?s New Pet Valentine?s Giveaway: New York Readers, Win An Electric Car Love Date From Hertz Bring Me Boba Fett?s Head?Phones Wear Around Your Childhood Friends With These Spaceman Lego Cufflinks Study: Young Girls Are Happier When They Play Video Games With Dad
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Friday, February 11, 2011
Flight challenges you to fly a paper airplane to London
The background story is not the best - a lonely girl is sending a note to Santa to bring her mommy home for Christmas (not sure why Santa would be in London) - but the game itself is super-fun.
You need to fly your paper airplane as far as it would go, and collect as many stars as you can along the way. The stars, the distance you travel and some other parameters like velocity and altitude help you accumulate money. With this money you can buy cool upgrades for your plane that will help you get it to London that much faster.
The graphics for this game are pretty impressive, but you might want to engage that mute button before you really get into it - the music is rather annoying.
All in all it's a fun little game. There are just two things I still couldn't figure out: What does the pink origami swan do? And what happens when you get to London? Tell us in the comments if you made it!
Flight challenges you to fly a paper airplane to London originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 08 Feb 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Intel: Windows must adapt to tablet age
The rise of Apple's iPad and Android tablets has largely left Intel and Microsoft in the dust, in need of technology and marketing boosts to halt the momentum of Apple and Google.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Verizon iPhone goes on sale (live blog)
Apple's iconic device is now being sold through a second carrier, but for all the pent-up anticipation, the lines are remarkably sparse today. Follow our coast-to-coast live coverage.
Originally posted at Signal Strength
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Astronomers Suggest Crowdsourcing Letters to Aliens
Before trying to contact aliens, maybe we should test the messages on ourselves. In a new paper in the journal Space Policy, three alien hunters suggest designing a standard protocol for writing intelligible letters to extraterrestrials, and building a website where teams can decode candidate messages to ensure they make sense. 
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Daily Crunch: Leisurely Stroll Edition
17x17x17 Puzzle Cube Makes Rubik?s Look Like Child?s Play Mommy Mittens: You Know, For Mommies An Ode To The Graphic Adventure Video: The Automatic Necktie-Knotting Kinetic Sculpture Photographers: You?re Now Officially Free To Shoot In Public Places And Outside Federal Buildings
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TSMC to raise chip capacity, puts mobile computing in focus
TSMC, the world's biggest semiconductor foundry, said on Thursday it expects to expand capacity 20 percent this year as demand for PCs and mobile devices rises.
The company announced capital expenditures of $7.8 billion in 2011 to support that expansion in manufacturing capacity. Today the company produces 11.3 million eight-inch equivalent wafers among the factories that TSMC owns or manages, CEO Morris Chang told an investor conference.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Fixed Intel chip to ship in mid-February
The chipmaker last week stopped shipments of the "Cougar Point" chipset that accompanies its Sandy Bridge processor. Now it says it has a fix for the flaw.
Originally posted at Nanotech - The Circuits Blog
Daily Crunch: Mega Launch Edition
eStar From Navistar Is Another Electric Delivery Van Obama?s Plan For 1 Million EVs By 2015 Might Be Impossible Apple Patents More Stuff It Will Never Implement U.S. Military Looking To Bring M4 Carbine, M16 Rile Into The Modern Era 8-Bit Mega Man Straps Serve No Purpose; Buy Them Anyway
Monday, February 7, 2011
Nasdaq Confirms Servers Breached
Malware may have been targeting insider information from 10,000 senior executives who use the compromised Directors Desk app.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Mac sales climb as rivals HP, Dell lose U.S. share
Apple bucked the U.S. trend last quarter by posting double-digit Mac sales gains as PC giants like HP and Dell lost share, industry research firms said Wednesday.
However, Apple dropped to the fifth spot in U.S. computer sales during the final quarter of 2010 as strong sales to businesses by rivals pushed it two places down the list.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Apple quietly became a key enterprise provider
You won't find many businesses with a more complex, security-conscious environment than JPMorgan Chase. So when the huge bank decided to deploy iPads in its investment-banking arm -- following similar moves by Cr�dit Suisse and Citigroup -- it was more than just a straw in the wind. Apple, long rooted in education, creative endeavors, and (more recently) consumer electronics, is now an enterprise company.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Effing Meteors is a cataclysmic world-destroying physics Time Waster
You're looking at a side-view of a planet, complete with its layers of atmosphere. Above the planet, in space, there are meteors. These are hurtling towards the planet, but they're often not large enough to survive entering through the atmosphere, so they burn along the way.
Your job is to destroy the planet; or more specifically, destroy all living organisms on a given planet. You can do this because your cursor generates a gravity field. So you click one meteorite and hold; soon, that single meteorite starts attracting other meteorites in its vicinity and grows into something larger - a planetoid. Now when you smash that into the planet's surface, it does survive the atmosphere and generates quite a shock - perhaps even enough to destroy the population of that planet.
Once you destroy a planet, it simply "revolves", revealing a new planet. Each planet is different: Some planets shoot back; and there's a planet with dinosaurs that run away from you, and then flying saucers enter the picture and it all gets a bit hard to explain.
Bottom line: This is a really fun game, with innovative graphics. And sometimes you can win a level by simply doing nothing!
Effing Meteors is a cataclysmic world-destroying physics Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Daily Crunch: Crossing Edition
?Ultrasonic? Klang Speaker Concept Only Produces Sound Where Your Head Is Today, A Ban On Headphones While Crossing The Street; Tomorrow, A Ban On Chewing Gum While Walking Are You Man Enough For This iPad Bjorn? Just In Time For Trenta: Send Your Facebook Friends Starbucks Card eGifts Hump Day Giveaway: ThinkFun Solitaire Chess
Online Dating Site Breached
PlentyOfFish.com has been compromised and the company is blaming the messenger.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Global CIO: SAP Transformed: From Stuffy ERP To Real-Time iPad Analytics
Citing impressive across-the-board results, SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott says new strategies and platforms will drive more growth in 2011.
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