Author: Duncan Geere
ATI unleashes the Radeon HD 4890
AMD has just dropped us word of their latest graphics card release, the ATI Radeon HD 4890, which they’re claiming is the most powerful graphics processor in the world.
The beast runs at 850MHz, has 1.36 TeraFLOPs of processing power, as well as 1GB of GDDR5 memory and the functionality to cram four of these things in the same machine, using ATI’s Crossfire technology.
It’s notably faster than its predecessor, the HD4870, but slower than the dual core X2 variant. Pricing reflects that, with the card retailing between £185 and £200. It’s not a massive leap, just an evolution of existing cards, but it’s certainly a solid upgrade if you’re running a graphics card that’s a couple of years old.
ATI Press Kit
Shure debuts the colourful SE115 earphones
Headphone manufacturer Shure has just dropped us word of a couple of new products that they’re bringing to market.
The SE115s are the latest addition to Shure’s noise-isolating range. They come in blue, pink, black and red, and – well – there’s not a whole lot more detail than that being offered, except that they have ‘enhanced bass’. They cost £100, which seems a tad steep, I must admit. As they’re from Shure, though. you can bet they’ll sound good.
Also announced are a pair of USB condenser microphones – the PG27USB and PG42USB. They come with plug and play connectivity, along with zero-latency headphone monitoring, and monitor mix control.
These are most likely targeted at pro audio professionals and podcasters that spend a lot of time travelling – they’ve got a rugged, portable design. The PG27 and PG42 will cost £220 and £270 respectively, and be available from 20th June.
Shure
Spotify is three years old, hints at future plans
Our favourite digital music service, Spotify, is three years old today. That seems like a lot, considering we’ve only been able to use it in the UK since October, but in that short time it’s already completely changed the way I listen to music on my PC, and made me listen to a much wider range of bands too.
To celebrate the anniversary, as well as the 40th birthday of founder Martin Lorentzon, the company has put up a blog post that talks (in somewhat vague terms) about the future direction and plans for the company.
There’s a lot of hints in the blog post about mobile devices – something that the company hasn’t been keeping very secret. Intriguingly, though, the company also mentions set-top boxes, IM, and social networks as future directions for expansion.
Spotify mentions, too, the possibilities of enhanced social features and pre-release content for premium users – something that could drive greater takeup of the subscription service. That gets interesting in the comments section – with several people saying that if the fee was halved, then they’d pay it. I wonder if they’d get twice the takeup if they chopped the price in half.
The most exciting bit, though? The closing sentence of the post – “We plan to have more detailed information for you in the next few weeks, stay tuned”. If I were a betting man, I’d put money on that being the iPhone application that we revealed in February, a leaked video demo of which is posted below.
Spotify Blog
Nintendo reveals initial offerings on DSiWare
Nintendo has just announced the games and applications that’ll be available at launch for the DSiWare channel on the new Nintendo DSi. The console, which we reviewed here, has functionality allowing for the downloading of new software. Here’s what you’ll get:
- Nintendo DSi Browser – to surf the internet on your DSi
- Paper Plane – guide a paper aircraft through a maze
- Pyoro – catch fruit using a bird’s tongue
- WarioWare: Snapped! – move your hands and face in front of the camera to complete superquick mini-games
- Art Style: AQUITE – help a diver reach the bottom of the ocean
- Art Style: CODE – numerical puzzle game requiring you to turn the DSi on its side
These titles will be available for “Nintendo points” that can be earned either by buying games or by buying them separately. Registering your console will immediately give you 1,000 points free, too. Games and apps will either be free or cost 200, 500 or 800+ points.
HP considering Android for forthcoming netbooks
Top laptop manufacturer Hewlett-Packard, or HP, has confirmed that it’s testing out Android as a operating system for forthcoming netbooks. Normally the platform is only used in phones, and at the time of writing there’s only one phone on the market that uses it.
Android can work on netbooks, as Venturebeat proved back in January. They had a little difficulty with graphics drivers, but if a user wasn’t rendering much more than websites then it could be very effective and very cheap – a great solution for the netbook industry.
HP has said that it hasn’t made any decisions yet on whether to offer it or not, but it’ll be interesting to see how they fare with it. Other netbook manufacturers will almost certainly be watching, too.
(via PC World)
YouTube adds Germany to the blocklist
Not content with banning the UK from its ‘Premium’ music videos, YouTube has now done the same thing to its German users. Users located in Germany will no longer be able to watch content licensed by the major labels, following a dispute with collecting society GEMA.
The situation is exactly the same as the situation three weeks ago in the UK – where PRS for Music demanded higher streaming rates and Google removed access to music videos in protest. That situation is still unresolved.
(via MusicWeek)
Top five April Fool's Day stories
Now that it’s gone midday, we’ll give up on the fake news and go back to the real deal. Before that, though, I wanted to salute a few of the better April Fool’s Day stories from around the web this morning.
5) Guardian now only available on Twitter
4) Moo.com’s super-eco-friendly business cards
3) Warner Bros. acquires the Pirate Bay
2) LoveFilm removes all french-made and french-language films
1) Bigfoot discovered in Windows 7
Have you got a favourite? Email it to us. We want to see it.
Burberry to launch phone handset?
It appears that Burberry will be launching a handset, following a promotional image leaked from a factory in China. The handset appears to be of clamshell design and features the iconic burberry design.
Specs are unknown at this point, though you wouldn’t expect the bPhone to be high-end. I’d guess a 2MP camera, bluetooth, and T9 text input, as well as a couple of hundred MB of onboard storage. No release date for now.
The internet could be run out of capacity within two years
Growth of the internet could outpace its current infrastructure within two years, claims a new report from a clutch of scientists at a university. Unless billions of dollars are invested in new fibre-optic cabling connections within the next six months, internet users could face increasing interruption of service.
“It’s going to be madness,” claimed the project leader, “Amazon will be up sh*t creek without a paddle, eBay will be all at sea, and Twitter users are going to get into a right flap.”
The study is the first to apply the equivalent of ‘Finagle’s Law’ to the internet. It’s a scientific principle which, when applied to the massive dataset collected by the scientists, predicts that things are going to rapidly start falling apart before next Christmas.
The blame has been pinned on spammers, software pirates and child-porn rings, which all use massive amounts of bandwidth – up to a 161 exabytes of data each year. “We think the exaflood is generally not well understood, and its investment implications not well defined,” said a leading industry analyst.
The Chinese government has been the first to respond, changing their one-child policy into a one-strike policy. Under the new system, anyone accessing the internet more than once a day will be disconnected for life. Unless similar action is taken by other world leaders, however, the problem is only likely to escalate.
A few proposals to increase the size of the internet are also on the table, but at a very early stage. One idea would see earth bouncing its communications off the rings of Saturn, using the latency inherent in such a procedure as a storage device.
Another would see the internet being put into a massive zip file, which users would have to unzip manually before use. Linux users are up in arms at this suggestion, demanding that the internet be available as a .tar.gz archive, too. Apple are also rumoured to have plans to launch their own internet, which they claim will be “really fast”.
Wikia Search project abandoned
Following poor traffic, Wikia Search will be shut down, says Jimmy Wales, trustee of the Wikimedia foundation. It was originally intended to be a search engine where users could influence the ranking of results, but recently it’s struggled for traffic – attracting just 10,000 unique users per month ovedr the last six months.
Wales says: “This one is too far away. It was going to take at least a another year to two before it’s usable by the public, and we can’t afford that right now. I’ll return to this again when the economy is good.”
Part of Wikia Search’s decline can probably be attributed to Google SearchWiki, launched last November, which allows users to comment and influence, though not fully determine, the rankings of individual results on Google searches.
Wales also discussed Microsoft’s shuttering of Encarta, commenting that it’s “disappointing to see a center of knowledge going away”. He said that he’d been attempting to contact Microsoft about integrating some of Encarta’s content into Wikipedia. Due to Encarta’s relatively small size, however, “the community probably wouldn’t find it useful. However, the images might be useful.”.
Wikia Search (via Cnet)
