Posts for 'Sci/Tech ' Category

Bangalore, Apr 6: Apple Inc celebrated the immediate success of its new tablet computer, iPad, as the sales figures sky rocketed on the very first dayApple on Monday, Apr 5 informed that 300,000 iPads were sold on the very first day of its commercial release. This included the pre-ordered pieces too.

"The launch of iPad feels great and it surely will be game-changer," Steve Jobs, CEO Apple said. The company, however, learnt that the world was ready to embrace the new tablet company on Saturday, Apr 3 when a million users downloaded the program for the device.

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Media passes to the mega-hyped Apple iPad launch may have been the hottest ticket in the biz Wednesday. But I and hundreds of thousands of tech enthusiasts and Apple fan boys and fan girls were hungrily plugged in online, sharing instant analysis as each feature was announced.

Social networks -- namely the micro-blogging site Twitter -- allowed for the news to spread, be digested and pontificated upon instantly as Apple CEO Steve Jobs rolled through the tablet computer's list of features. While Apple doesn't provide live video for their media events, the tech community plugged into the event by tuning into the Twitter feeds of journalists in the audience.

This steady stream of information gave me a front-row seat for the long-awaited event, which I was able to share in real time with the readers of freep.com. As Jobs took the stage at 1 p.m., tech personality Leo LaPorte streamed live video using a webcam-enabled laptop from his seat in the crowd at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

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For what seemed like an eternity in the technology world, Google's Gmail service lurked in beta, keeping devotees guessing as to what bugs remained in the system or what life-changing feature the company had yet to unveil.

Five years passed. Gmail added millions of users, a chat function, mobile-phone applications and even a function that lets you undo messages after pressing "send." Yet the e-mail program stubbornly carried a "beta" label, which traditionally means a product is still in prototype mode.

Gmail finally emerged from beta Tuesday, along with Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk. The world continued spinning on its axis. And Google recognized on its Gmail blog that for many people, "the very meaning of 'beta' is debatable" because Web-based "products like Gmail continue to change indefinitely."

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Research In Motion Ltd. Tuesday unveiled the BlackBerry Tour smart phone for Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp., breaking its pattern of releasing devices with an exclusive wireless carrier partner.
The device, which is able to tap faster 3G networks in the U.S and around the world, will give Verizon Wireless and Sprint a high-end business phone comparable to the BlackBerry Bold that RIM sells through AT&T Inc.At $199 after rebates, it is priced at the same level as the new Palm Inc. Pre and coming Apple Inc. iPhone 3G S. Unlike those devices, however, the Tour isn't tied to one carrier.
Carriers like to lock up buzz-worthy phones for a period of time because they are used as a lure to nab subscribers from rivals. AT&T's multiyear deal with the iPhone has been the best example, as 40% of new iPhone users come from other carriers.
Handset makers such as RIM benefit because their device gets marketed heavily and enjoys higher subsidies under what is known as a "hero program."
"From a consumer standpoint, they're fairly good," said Kevin Burdan, an analyst at ABI Research, of the exclusive phone deals. "What you get are carriers who are receptive to bringing the cost down as much as they can."
But the longtime industry practice has come under scrutiny. Four U.S. senators, including John Kerry (D., Mass.), on Monday called for a hearing to investigate whether the exclusivity agreements unfairly restrict consumer choice.

The senators sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission urging the regulator to investigate and scheduled a hearing on the issue for Wednesday.
The Rural Cellular Association, a trade group for niche U.S. wireless players, has sought an end to the deals. Opponents claim the practice hampers innovation and stifles competition.

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T-Mobile has said that the offer for information from its servers is likely to be bogus. The company has said that it is investigating the claim that its security has been breached but initial results indicate that the data displayed on the security forum Full Disclosure is likely to come from a stolen document rather than a full-scale breach of its servers.

"Regarding the recent claim on a Web site, we've identified the document from which information was copied, and believe possession of this alone is not enough to cause harm to our customers," the company told USA Today in a statement.

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HYUNDAI is developing a new hybrid technology using lithium polymer batteries which the car maker claims are lighter, require less space and are 10% more efficient than current hybrids which use either lithium-ion or nickel-metal hybride.

In addition, the car maker presented special fuel-efficient models called Blue Drive at the Los Angeles Motor Show. These are fitted with a 30kW electric motor, an improved 2.4-litre petrol engine and regenerative brake energy and a start-stop system.

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Astronomers have taken the first pictures of planets outside our solar system, according to reports to be published tomorrow by the journal Science.

A team of astronomers led by Paul Kalas of the University of California at Berkeley used the Hubble Space Telescope to capture an image of a planet orbiting Fomalhaut, a star with about twice the mass of the sun located 25 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Piscus

Austrinus- A second group, led by Christian Marois of the National Research Council of Canada's Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, used telescopes at the W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii to take pictures of three planets orbiting a star called HR8799, about 140 light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus.

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Is spending R18 billion on science and technology, as outlined in the department of science and technology's 10-year plan, justified against allocating funds to build houses, improve roads and fight crime?

The question is moot. The social effect of science and technology programmes is likely to be weighed in a review of spending by a new left-leaning ANC government.

The department is modelling its development-through-knowledge agenda in support of economic growth and social transformation on the reconstructions of Japan and Korea, or would-be knowledge economies such as Malaysia and India.

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It used to be that if you wanted to make use of NVIDIA’s multi-GPU SLI solution, you were stuck having to buy a board that was fitted with an nForce chipset. X58 motherboards for Intel’s Core i7 CPU changes that.

This is an interesting move for both Intel and NVIDIA. What NVIDIA has done in effect is certify SLI on X58 motherboards despite there being no nForce chipset in sight.

Did NVIDIA have a choice? No, not really, not if it wanted hardcore enthusiasts to have access to dual/triple/quad solutions on what will be the fastest CPUs going. Intel gets the best of both worlds and is able to offer enthusiasts both NVIDIA’s SLI and ATI’s Crossfire multi-GPU solutions for it’s next-gen CPUs.

Living and working in Silicon Valley can be overwhelming at times. The frenetic pace, the rapid changes, the constant striving can leave many of us anxious and exhausted.

So I appreciate those moments that allow me to take a break from that rush toward the future and remind me what is so amazing about this place. Spending a day at Nvision 2008 was just such a moment.

The three-day conference on visual computing took over a big chunk of downtown San Jose this week, sprawling across several venues and drawing together a vibrant, creative community of programmers, designers, artists, video gamers and dreamers. In pulling together these various threads for a single event, Nvision and its primary sponsor, the graphics-chip maker Nvidia, managed in the conference's first year to reflect both the wonder and the weirdness that makes Silicon Valley special.

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