Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope basically “puts together terabytes of information from telescopes all over the world to make a seamless rendition of the entire known Universe.” Video after the break.

Witness the power of the fully operational Microsoft WorldWide Telescope, as Roy Gould and Curtis Wong walk the audience at TED through this stunning software effort

[via Gizmodo]

Via Techeblog

Share This

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

To conserve space, the Thunderbolt’s “electro-magnetic power train is neatly housed in the rear wheel itself.” On a full charge, the scooter has a 70km range. Click here for first picture in gallery.

This hole, or “anti-engine,” is a not-so-subtle protest against all combustible engines and does a pretty fair job of making us re-evaluate the way we look at modes of transportation and their form factors

[via YankoDesign]

Via Techeblog

Share This

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

This Mini-Kaoss Touchpad Effects Processor from ThinkGeek essentially “acts as if you took several hundred different guitar effects pedals and crammed them into one device.” Video after the break. Click here for one more picture.

Give it any audio input like your iPod or CD player and run your fingers across the touchpad as the Mini-Kaoss pad transforms your music with extraordinary effects. Tap the BPM key in time to your music and the Mini-Kaoss learns the beat of the song and syncs the effects appropriately

Via Techeblog

Share This

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

Sure enough, that 100 quid laptop we heard about early last week is already making the rounds, as the BBC caught up with the ONE at The Education Show in Birmingham, England. Granted, this thing is far from stylish (okay, so it’s downright ugly), but it’s hard to expect too much more given the ultra-low price tag. Satisfy your curiosity by checking out a minute long clip of the unit in action — go on, it’s right there in the read link.

[Thanks, KC]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

Filed under: Laptops

It’s no secret where this tiny bit of patented know-how ended up. Apple’s little port door for the MacBook Air is one of those design elements of legend that could one day go down next to MagSafe and the Click Wheel in the annals of Apple history — even if it’s near impossible to use without picking up the personal. So it’s a tiny ironic that even the dreamer that drew up this patent couldn’t imagine a mac without FireWire, Ethernet and a pair of USB ports. Oh Steve, you ask so much of us.

[Via SlashGear]

Share This

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

In Mickey Mania, “the player takes the role of Mickey and progresses through each level, defeating enemies in the way and solving the occasional puzzle.” ScrewAttack takes a look back at this title after the break.

Most enemies can be defeated by jumping on them or throwing marbles at them. Frequently, the player must jump from platform to platform to advance, sometimes with a time limit (such as escaping a collapsing tower)

Via Techeblog

Share This

Popularity: 2% [?]

Share This

Filed under: Features, Laptops

Sure, more speed is great, but on OS X most bumps don’t have an appreciable effect on everyday work (unless all you’re doing is video encoding). We were more interested in what Intel’s Penryn processors can do for the MBP’s heat envelope, so we maxed out both CPU cores in this brand new machine at let ‘em crank for a half an hour. Our test machine may or may not compare to a later 3rd-gen MBP in terms of heat efficiency, but here’s the quick rundown:

Core Duo (2.16GHz)

• Peak: 195

  Popularity: 1% [?]

  Share This

Filed under: Laptops

It’s already extended Penryn updates to its Precision M6300 laptop and a couple of Inspirons, but Dell’s unsurprisingly not done yet, and it’s now doled out similar upgrades to its Precision M2300 and M4300 models. Those are each now available with Penryn processors ranging from 2.1GHz to 2.6GHz, and for the same price as the earlier Merom processors, even though Dell warns that opting for Penryn on the M2300 might delay your ship date. Otherwise, you can load ‘em up with a max 4GB of RAM and 32GB or 64GB SSD drives, but you’ll have to make do with an NVIDIA Quadro FX 360M for graphics. If that’s not too much of a compromise, you can customize your system right now by hitting up the appropriate link below.

Read - Dell Precision M2300
Read - Dell Precision M4300

[Via Electronista]

Share This

Popularity: 2% [?]

Share This

Filed under: Features, Laptops

We just got our 2.5GHz Penryn / 4GB fourth-gen MacBook Pro. Plenty of power under that hood, but the outward differences are few: it’s got the new, reorganized F-key layout (which we’re not all that fond of), and the trackpad physically the same (with the addition of multi-touch, which works just as well as it did on the MacBook Air). It’s definitely an anticipated upgrade to the flagship, but whether you think the form factor’s still got the longevity necessary to keep you coming back after, what, more than two years on the market with no major changes — well, we’ll leave that to you. We’ll have some updated benchmarks shortly.

P.S. -It includes the same model 60Wh battery they’ve been selling on these for a while, for those puzzled about the battery life changes made to the Apple’s MBP spec page.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Share This

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

So now that the “Vista Capable” lawsuit is a full-blown class action, the judge has unsealed all 158 pages of emails between Microsoft execs trying to sort out what went wrong with the sticker program. While bits and pieces have been blacked out, what remains is still fairly incredible — although Intel’s 915 chipset was initially rejected as incompatible with Vista, MS execs flatly admit that “In the end, we lowered the requirements to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded” and “We are caving to Intel. We worked the last 18 months to drive the UI experience and we are giving this up.” On top of that, it seems that the company was getting direct feedback from retailers that the stickers were confusing, with Wal-Mart appealing directly to HP to pull Vista Capable stickers from low end machines, and an MS exec saying that “I was in Best Buy listening to people and can tell you this did not come clear to customers. We set ourselves up.” That’s pretty damning, if you ask us — and the complete emails, linked below, are full of similar bombshells. Looks like this case may have some serious legs after all.

Disclaimer: Nilay’s a lawyer, but he’s not your lawyer, and none of this is legal advice or analysis.

Read - Seattle Post-Intelligencer coverage of the case
Read - PDF of all the emails

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This