Category: Tech Update
Nvidia Introduces Sub-$200 DirectX 11 Graphics Card
Posted by Dejoe John in Tech Update Monday, 12 July 2010 09:56 1 Comment
Nvidia on Monday introduced a graphics card priced at US$199 that will bring high-end gaming and Blu-ray 3D movie playback to desktops.
The GeForce GTX 460 is Nvidia’s most inexpensive desktop graphics card based on the company’s Fermi architecture, which provides better multimedia performance than its predecessors. The card includes 336 processing cores and 768MB of graphics memory.
It is also Nvidia’s cheapest graphics card to support DirectX 11, a set of tools to bring realistic images and sound when playing games or watching movies on Windows 7 PCs. The hardware will decode Blu-ray 3D movies for playback, provided PCs have the relevant drives.
The graphics card will have two outputs for displays. One graphics card will be able to play a movie across two monitors, said Justin Walker, product manager at Nvidia.
The card will also be able to harness the parallel-processing capabilities of graphics processors to improve gaming and application performance, Walker said. That is partly done by native hardware support for DirectX 11. Nvidia also offers CUDA, a set of programming tools to develop and manage parallel task execution.
Nvidia already offers three GeForce GTX graphics cards based on Fermi priced between $279 and $499. The fastest performer and most expensive card, the GTX 480, has also been called out for being excessively hot, though the company disagrees. Testers and PC makers have said that the excess heat generated by the GTX 480 leads to consumption of more power to cool a system.
Walker said that the GTX 460 does not generate much heat. The graphics card draws up to 150 watts of power, according to the company.
The card will likely compete on price with Advanced Micro Devices’ ATI Radeon HD 5830, which was priced under $250 on launch, but is now priced at $199 on retail sites like Newegg. The Radeon card, announced in February, is compatible with DirectX 11.
The GTX 460 768MB version will be available worldwide starting Monday. A variant of the card with 1GB of graphics memory will become available on Monday for $229.
Facebook Adds Face Recognition to Photos
Posted by Dejoe John in Tech Update Monday, 5 July 2010 12:44 No Comments
Facebook has started a limited test of a new photo-tagging feature that blends an element from point-and-shoot digital cameras into the social networking world.
It’s about time, too, for any mass-photo-uploader on Facebook knows just how long it can take to run though every uploaded shot to tag one’s friends in the picture.
Here’s what we mean. While Facebook does allow other users to tag themselves in a person’s shots, the procedure for doing so is still fully manual: You click on an area of the photograph you want to tag, select a name from your entire list of friends, save the tag, and repeat the process.
Or, at least, that was the old way to do it. Facebook’s new feature—which has yet to roll out to the site’s entire audience—is a built-in face recognition system for pictures uploaded to the site.
Facebook won’t automatically tag your friends for you per se. However, users included in the trial will find that the faces of people in their photos are automatically selected alongside a prompt that asks the user, quite simply, “Whose face is this?”
“With this new feature, tagging is faster since you don’t need to select a face. It’s already selected for you, just like those rectangles you see around your friends’ faces when you take a photo with a modern digital camera,” writes Sam Odio, Facebook’s product manager for Photos. “All that’s left for you to do is type a name and hit enter. Cool, huh?”
According to Odio, more than 100 million photographs are uploaded to Facebook each day. That’s quite a bit of tagging. Unfortunately, there’s been no indication by Facebook as to when the trial period might end for its new auto-discovery feature or, for that matter, when said technology could roll out to Facebook as a whole.
However, Odio says that this is just the first of many improvements for browsing, uploading, and tagging Facebook photos. Stay tuned… and tagged!
[source:PCMag]
After iPhone 4, What’s Next for Apple?
Posted by Dejoe John in Tech Update Sunday, 27 June 2010 19:50 1 Comment
Now that Apple has successfully launched this year’s iPhone, what can we expect next from Cupertino? Here are five strong candidates:
1) Apple TV, take two: Apple’s set-top box has never garnered much respect from reviewers, consumers, or even the company itself. Steve Jobs famously (or infamously) referred to the device as a “hobby” back in 2007 at the Wall Street Journal‘s All Things Digital conference. Living room entertainment has changed dramatically since then–video streaming, in particular, has gone mainstream with the burgeoning popularity of Netflix and other online movie sites–and rumor has it that Apple TV will soon undergo a similar transformation. Engadget recently reported that an upcoming Apple TV box will feature 1080p HD video, cloud storage (rather than the hard drive found in today’s model) for movies, TV shows, and music, and cost as little as $99. The device had better impress because competition in this space is intense. In addition to Internet-ready TVs and Blu-ray players, set-top boxes from Roku, and upcoming devices like the Boxee Box, the next Apple TV will have plenty of challengers. Oh, and a little company called Google hassomething in the works too.
2) iPod fall classic: It happens every September. Apple refreshes its iPod lineup at a music-oriented shindig in San Francisco. At last year’s event, Apple introduced the video camera-equipped iPod nano, and announced a few minor upgrades and price changes to the rest of the iPod family. While the era of the standalone digital music player (excluding the iPod touch) is drawing to a close, there’s still some life left in the genre. This year’s happening could bring a Web-based iTunes service borne from the Lala online music streaming service, which Apple bought in late 2009 and shuttered last month. Long-suffering Windows users, forced to use the bloated and slow iTunes desktop client, would certainly rejoice.
3) iPod touch meets iPhone 4: Or Apple might dote on the iPod touch and pretty much ignore the rest of the iPods. Since the multi-talented touch is really an iPhone without the phone (or camera), it’s likely the next-gen model will adopt the iPhone 4′s slimmer shell and some of its capabilities. How about an iPod touch with a front-facing camera for FaceTime video chat? Considering the touch’s popularity with kids, and the fact that it already has Wi-Fi (required by FaceTime), video chatting is a natural. As for the iPhone 4′s rear-facing camera, no, the touch won’t get it. Apple needs some product differentiation, after all.
4) MacBook upgrade: Too boring? Perhaps, but Macs still sell like hotcakes, even though Apple is obviously more focused on its mobile devices these days. The entry-level MacBook did get a minor upgrade recently, as did the pricier MacBook Pros. But what about the ultra-thin MacBook Air? Apple’s once-hip-but-now-forgotten laptop isripe for an upgrade, although some critics believe the Air’s time has passed.
5) iPad 2: OK, the iPad is still new by Apple standards, which is fond of annual (or even longer) upgrade cycles. Still, Apple’s tablet is crying out for a front-facing camera, particularly since the shiny new iPhone 4 has one. Tablets and video chat are made for each other, and the camera-less iPad is strangely ill-equipped in this area. Plus, competing tablets will almost certainly include a Webcam. It’s unlikely a new iPad will debut by the end of the year, however. January 2011 is a safe bet though.
Google Moves its Encrypted Search
Posted by Dejoe John in Tech Update Sunday, 27 June 2010 19:49 1 Comment
If you’re paranoid about snoops discovering your Web search terms and results, you’ll have to start pointing your browser to another URL to use Google encrypted search.
The search giant announced in a blog post on June 25 that its encrypted search service moved fromhttps://google.com to https://encrypted.google.com.
The encrypted search, which gives a user the option to use SSL to prevent packet sniffing, was moved to accommodate “better serve our school partners and their users,” Dave Girouard, president of Google Enterprise says in the blog post.
Previously, school administrators — or anyone else, for that matter — who wanted to block encrypted searches at https://google.com would also block Google authenticated services such as Google Apps for Education.
Why would schools want to block encrypted searches? Using the service “creates an obscured channel between a user’s computer and Google,” which allows students to bypass a school’s content filter, Girouard said.
That makes it harder to block adult content, a policy of many schools.
Google’s change should make it easier for school IT staff to comply with the Children’s Internet Protection Act, which requires schools to implement measures to address minors accessing “inappropriate matter,” among other things.
Users report ‘fault’ on iPhone 4
Posted by Dejoe John in Tech Update Sunday, 27 June 2010 19:45 3 Comments
The iPhone 4 integrates the antenna into the case
A number of users are reporting problems with their iPhone 4.
Apple’s latest device went on sale on Wednesday, with hundreds of people queuing outside Apple’s flagship store in central London for the launch.
The issue relates to the mobile phone signal, with users reporting a drop in signal strength when the phone is held.
The casing of Apple’s latest phone is made of stainless steel, which also serves as its antenna.
Richard Warner, who bought his iPhone 4 on Wednesday morning, contacted BBC News, saying that he thought the phone was “useless in its current state”.
“Apple have created a phone that has an antenna on the bottom left-hand side of the phone.”
“This means that when you hold it in your left hand, the signal bars slowly fade until there is no signal,” he wrote.
‘Complaints’
A number of videos have been posted on video sharing site YouTube complaining about the reception issue.
One video had an American user running a speed test, with hands on and hands free.
In it, the user ‘awington’ says that, while holding the phone “it won’t even run the test when I am holding the phone… once I let go, it makes a connection and runs the test.
“Hold it a second time, and the upload test will not start.”
Social networking site Twitter was full of chatter, with numerous tweets on the reception problems.
The issue might stem from the way the integrated antenna is constructed. One section provides mobile reception, while another is for wi-fi.
Some users have speculated that touching the bottom of the phone bridges this gap, affecting signal strength.
However, it is not yet clear whether the problem affects all phones, or if the signal deteriorates when the phone is making a call or only when held in standby mode.
When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 4 at Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, he described the integrated antenna as “really cool engineering”.
Apple has yet to make a comment on the current controversy surrounding the latest version of its popular phone.