BlogNerds

WSO2, an open source SOA provider, has combined JavaScript programming and Web services with the launch of its Mashup Server 1.0. This open source offering, which can be downloaded without subscription fees, will allow enterprises to consume, aggregate and publish information in a variety of forms and from a variety of sources. At the same time, WSO2, based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and Mountain View, Calif., has announced the beta release of Mooshup.com, a hosted online version of the Mashup Server, which provides a community site for developing, running and sharing mashups.

Bookmark It!

Hide Sites

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Here’s one that needs little explanation: one pedal activates Star Power, the other one fiddles with the whammy bar. That keeps your arms and fingers free to Guitar Hero, and since the React Standalone Pedal is wireless and works with any PS2 guitar, you shouldn’t have too much hassle tossing this on to your garishly patterned carpet and proceeding to rock. It’s available now for $25.

[Via Joystiq]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Bookmark It!

Hide Sites

Ardvark writes “Google promised some time ago to bid at least the reserve price for the C block of 700Mhz spectrum if the FCC accepted its demand for an open access rule for devices using the band, which the FCC did over Verizon’s objections. If the reserve price is not met the rule will be dropped and the block re-auctioned. It appears now that bidding has stalled just short of the reserve price. It’s assumed that Google has no interest in becoming a cell phone company and with a recession looming the 700MHz spectrum now seems worth a whole lot less. If Google’s strategy was to force the bidding above the reserve but still lose the auction, Verizon could be calling their bluff, threatening them to live up to their word and buy what to Google could be the equivalent of a $4.6 billion ‘doohickey.’” Update: 01/31 16:01 GMT by Z : And just like that, the plot thickens: the C block has hit the reserve price during bidding.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bookmark It!

Hide Sites

The Federal Communications Commission received a $4.7 billion bid for Block C, a swatch of spectrum being auctioned that is mandated to operate as a national wireless network that works with any mobile device. The auction started on Jan. 24, but the FCC won’t announce which company submitted the bid until after the auction closes at a yet-to-be-announced time. Until then, the only information available is the amount of the bid.

Bookmark It!

Hide Sites

Despite how important memory cards have become to daily life a lot of computer still don’t have card readers, or at least a sufficiently robust one. If you are lucky your notebook will come with a 3-in-1 reader that will be able to handle a SD card, but that is about all we tend to see. For many people this is not that big of a deal, because SD has emerged as the most popular type of memory card, but many of use still use other types, like CF, and are picking up smaller cards to use on phones and portable devices, like microSD.

Running down the list, the Media Reader can handle CF (type I an II), MicroDrive, SD, SDHC, miniSD, miniSDHC, microSD, microSDHC, MMC, RS-MMC, MMCmobile, MMCmicro, and five flavors of MemoryStick. The main card style that people may find missing is xD. The Media Reader is an external device that uses USB to connect to any computer.

The design of the Media Reader is simple and effective. It is about 3.5″ x 2.5″ x 0.75″ and weighs very little (71g). It is sturdy enough to throw in a bag and move around with you and the USB cord tucks inside the body so it should not snag on anything. The reader itself slides within the body of the device so that the four card slots can be exposed or hidden away, protecting both the slots and, more importantly, cards you are holding. The USB connector is on a short cord, about an inch long but an extension is included in case you want to connect the reader to a somewhat inaccessible port.

From a speed standpoint the device is capped at 480Mbps due to it being a USB 2.0 device. During testing speeds were sufficient so that even extended transfers were not too painful. The Media Reader is more designed for versatility and travel than speed though.

Overall, Kingston’s Media Reader gets the job done. My only complaint would be that the sliding mechanism is a bit tough to move from time to time so you have to push the reader a harder than you would normally want to. Past that it works well, and since it costs under $20 there is not really much to complain about. The lack of xD support will be an issue with some people, but it has all the other major media cards covered.

Share This

Bookmark It!

Hide Sites

If you think the Apple iPhone is cool, wait till you see the Nuvifone that Garmin announced Wednesday in New York. It combines GPS, mobile phone, still and video camera, and MP3 and video player functionality with Internet access capability. Or it will, anyway, if Garmin can stick to its announced launch schedule and deliver Nuvifone to the market by the third quarter of this year. Assume for the moment that the Nuvifone is available, so I can speak in the present tense.

Bookmark It!

Hide Sites

Quad-core processors from AMD and a hybrid-format optical drive are among the highlights of two new desktop PCs released by Gateway on Wednesday. The Gateway GM5664 and GT5662 both feature an AMD Phenom Processor and DirectX 10 Technology, thereby enhancing the entertainment and performance capabilities of each line. A new Hybrid-SuperMulti drive in the GM5664, meanwhile, allows customers to watch both Blu-ray and HD DVD content. Both are now available through leading retailers. The entertainment-focused GM5664 is priced at $1,149.99, while the GT5662 costs $749.99.

Bookmark It!

Hide Sites

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Peripherals

Tidy, huh? If you’re an iMac or Apple Studio Display owner then you’ll see the immediate appeal of this LowKey Stand from Macessity. Constructed of 0.1085-inch thick steel “power-coated” to match your rig, it neatly hides your new slim Apple keyboard from view. There’s also a powered 4-port USB port up front which helps to offset the stand’s $60 price a tad.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Bookmark It!

Hide Sites

Shipwack writes “Tens of millions of internet users across the Middle East and Asia have been left without access to the web after a technical fault cut millions of connections. The outage, which is being blamed on a fault in a single undersea cable, has severely restricted internet access in countries including India, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and left huge numbers of people struggling to get online. Observers say that the digital blackout first struck yesterday morning, with Egypt’s communications ministry suggesting it was caused by a cut in a major internet pipeline linking it to Europe.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bookmark It!

Hide Sites

VIA had some big news today for all you chip geeks and small form factor geeks out there–a new processor architecture. Codenamed “Isaiah”, this new architecture is touting doubled performance with the same power needs as the previous generation, according to Glenn Henry, the lead CPU designer from Centaur. We have heard of architecture before, but today everything became official.

This will be the follow up to VIA’s popular, but aging, C7, and it will be focused on performance per wattage. It will be mainly in mobile applications, in which the C7 currently has wide use, include some of the original UMPCs (like the Samsung Q1B), the upcoming Cloudbook (aka Nanobook), and even VIA’s Pico-ITX motherboard. The Isaiah should deliver improved performance but is pin-compatible with the old platform, so a single motherboard design could use either the cheaper C7 or the newer architecture and thus be available at two price/performance points.

Isaiah is an x86 processor and it is built on a 65nm process. VIA tells use that it has “64-bit superscalar speculative out-of-order microarchitecture, high-performance multimedia computation, and a new virtual machine architecture,” but what’s more exciting is the prospective performance per watt numbers, especially as new technologies from Intel, like Menlow and Moorestown start to arrive. The processor will be ideally suited for mobile applications, like ultraportable Eee PC-style notebooks, but should also work well in cloud-based desktop computers.

We should see the Isaiah processors arriving at up to 2GHz with a front side bus between 800MHZ and 1.3GHz along with two 64KB L1 caches and 1MB exclusive L2 cache. Wikipedia as more details on the specifications.

Here is the video of Glenn Henry explaining the processor:

Share This

Bookmark It!

Hide Sites