May 1st, 2008

Asus recently announced the M70 notebook, which combines a number of unusual features. The M70 is the first to offer a 1TB hdd (2×500GB), a Blu-ray disk player with a 1920×1200 resolution screen. The product is positioned as an entertainment appliance and described as having the ultimate high-def feature combo.
ASUS M70 Redefines Full HD with Ultimate HD Feature Combo - Asus news release, April 14 2008
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May 1st, 2008

HP researchers are earning their pay these days. They’ve found the elusive Memristor - apparently they were poking around in the basement & found it hidden in a corner.
Actually, prof Leon O. Chua theorized the existence of the memristor back in 1971 in a paper entitled “Memristor-The missing circuit element“. HP’s work proves that electronic circuits have 4 fundamental components: the familiar resistor, capacitor, inductor, and now the memristor (aka memory resistor).
The memristor should find practical applications as a possible replacement for D-RAM and in AI.
Demystifying the memristor - HP Labs news release
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April 30th, 2008

Grand Theft Auto IV went on sale yesterday and some gamesites have already reviewed & rated it. Most give it an enthusiastic ten.
Gamespot for example says the game has a “superb character-driven story - Liberty City really does feel alive”.

And IGN sez “Grand Theft Auto IV is ..a big leap forward” & “a ‘10′ is not a score we give out very often”. IGN also provides a handy Google-style clickable map of GTA IV missions, secrets etc…

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April 30th, 2008
Trusted Reviews tested 4 inkjet printers with 5 papers and 5 different inks, looking to see how well printed images stood up after 12 months.
Their conclusion: the best results came from the Canon Pixma MP600 printer with original ink - paper didn’t seem to matter much. And if you’re too cheap to buy brand names and insist on generic/3rd party ink to save a few pennies, try Cartridge World.
The Inkjet Investigation Part 3 - Trusted Reviews, 29th Apr 2008
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April 30th, 2008

A diner in Hong Kong artfully poses his brand new black Eee PC 900 with the main course. Still life with grouper. Fish, yum.
黒いEee PC 900
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April 29th, 2008

ComputerWorld put some traditional hard disk drives up against a couple of those new-fangled solid-state drives and got a bit of a surprise. SSDs are supposed to shine in the areas of power consumption, weight, faster data access and lower boot times, as compared to those ancient electro-mechanical HDDs. However, CWorld’s test show that there’s not a lot to get excited about, as the 2 technologies deliver roughly similar results. And after factoring in the higher costs for the solids, CW’s conclusion is that they’re not quite ready for prime time … ’bout the same as what Walt Mossberg said a couple of months ago.
Performance showdown: Flash drives versus hard disk drives - ComputerWorld, April 29 2008
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April 28th, 2008
Interesting and mildly ironic of Microsoft to use Apple hardware, in this case a MacBook Pro, during a Microsoft-sponsored event. The event was entitled “Business Leadership and Digital Innovation for Future Graduated” with Event ID: 1032372709 held in Belgium April 24 2008 and featured Steve Ballmer as keynote speaker.
Might be a trend - a while ago MacBooks were spotted at IBM. Image thx to Flickr.
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April 27th, 2008
The New York Times reviews the state of the smartphone in the U.S. and finds that the 40% market share enjoyed by Research In Motion to be in some jeopardy. The rival Apple iPhone has grabbed a 17.4% share in just 6 months, and, even worse, a 79% customer satisfaction rating, compared to 54% for the BlackBerry.
But not to worry, as R.I.M. is fighting back. First by dissing the all-glass keyboard-less iPhone by saying “It’s hard to type on a piece of glass”, and by developing the next-gen 3G BlackBerry code-named the Meteor.
…not that this matters to the rest of the world, which is overwhelmingly Symbian, with some Linux.
BlackBerry’s Quest: Fend Off the iPhone - NYT, April 27 2008
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April 26th, 2008

Nokias’s new 5320 XpressMusic music phone features voice recog where one can request a song by saying the artist’s name or the song title.
XpressMusic is of course Nokia’s brand for music phones and features things like “great audio quality”, dedicated music keys and a standard 3.5mm jack. The 5320 implementation of XpressMusic supports MP3, M4A, eAAC+, and WMA music formats.
Nokia 5320 XpressMusic
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April 25th, 2008

iPodObserver speculates on what the forthcoming iPhone might look like. Basically a shiny black plastic back replaces the current shiny metallic back.
Not big news, but other sources say the second-gen iPhone will have GPS, and a flush headphone jack. Dimensions to be 115×63x12.5mm, as compared to 115×61x11.6mm for the current model. And have 3.5G.
Rumor: New iPhone to Sport Case Redesign - iPodObserver, April 3rd 2008
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