Skype 4 for Windows now available
Skype has just announced “the most distinctive new release” of its communications software for Windows.
Version four claims to offer far better full screen video calling as well as optimising itself depending upon your PCs specifications. Those with at least a dual core processor, fast broadband connection and Skype-certified video webcam can get up to 30fps high quality video.
More importantly for many will be improved audio quality. Thanks to a new codec, there’s wideband audio quality but using 50% less bandwidth than in previous versions. There’s even super wideband audio for those with compatible headsets and fast broadband…
Orange adds HP Compaq Mini 700 and Toshiba L300 to its 'connected' product line
Since November, Orange has been offering the Eee PC 901, complete with a 3G module, for £25 a month on a two-year contract. It’s an interesting blend of the mobile phone and PC business models, and has presumably proved successful, because the company is rolling out more laptops.
The HP Compaq Mini 700 and the Toshiba L300 have been added to the available range. You’ll get the former for £30 a month, and the latter for £35. They both come with the ‘internet everywhere’ service – meaning ‘everywhere you can get a phone signal’, anyway. That gives 3GB of monthly data allowance – not a great deal for heavy users.
Toshiba lays the smackdown with Snapdragon-powered TG01 smartphone
Who cares about MWC 09 around the corner when when Toshiba goes and blows us all away with an announcement like they did not one hour ago? The Toshiba GT01 is the smartphone that’s going to be on everyone’s lips, hands, ears, mouths and just about every other fleshy part you can stick it.
Why? Well, because it’s essentially taken a look at the iPhone, filled all of the gaps and added a few Tosh twists all of it’s own. The lowdown starts here. First up is the obvious one and that’s the 4.1-inch WVGA LCD that just happens to use the same technology as the high end Toshiba Regza TVs…
iMu Vibrating Speaker – less rude than it sounds
Although the name conjures up memories of the Ohmibod, the iMu is totally safe for work. So long as people don’t get annoyed by you turning the big conference room table into a huge speaker anyway. That’s right – the iMu claims to turn any hard, flat surface into a speaker.
How does it work? Well, it turns music signal into vibrations via a compound called Terfenol-D – developed by the US Navy. Place the Terfenol in an aluminium case, wrap a coil round it and pass a current through, and it’ll vibrate with the current – playing your songs.
The frequency response isn’t great – 70Hz to 30Hkz – but you’ll get 30W out of this thing. I’ve asked if we can get one in to see what it sounds like in person, and how loud you can get it without shattering whatever you’re vibrating. That could be fun. If you’re already convinced, then it’s £50 and available now.
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USA orders Sequoia – "the fastest supercomputer in the world"
Not content with owning the fastest computer in the world, the USA wants to keep its title, so it’s ordered one fifteen times faster. The current fastest, IBM’s Roadrunner, is designed for 1.7 Petaflops, whereas the new one should be able to crank out 20 – that’s 20,000 trillion floating point operations per second. Impressive.
It’ll be packing 1.6 million processor cores, putting my quad-core to shame, and will be based on IBM’s Blue Gene/Q supercomputer. What are they going to use it for? Managing their nuclear weapons stockpile. Yes, they’ve still got that many. It’ll occupy 96 server racks over an area the size of a tennis court, and use 6 megawatts of power.
While they’re building it, they’re building a smaller supercomputer to build the applications that’ll run on the big one. “Dawn” will run at 500 teraflops. The only thing unspecified? How much the whole project’s going to cost. I suspect it won’t be cheap.
(via PC World)
Related posts: Supercomputer beats human at “Go”, celebrates with a Tsingtao | NEC designs world’s most powerful supercomputer, the tights-and-cape-wearing SX-9
Google Earth adds oceans, hits 5.0
James Cook. Ferdinand Magellan. Vasco Núñez de Balboa. Hannu. Want to count yourself among their ranks? You could do worse than installing the new version of Google Earth – which features the oceans.
Previously, 70% of the earth’s surface in Google Earth was just covered with a basic blue blob. It vaguely reflected what was below, but not in any detail, especially when compared to Google’s land coverage. Well, now you can explore the seas in huge detail. You can even go below the surface and view data points – video, photos and text of ocean life and expeditions.
Bargain of the Week: Pentax Optio S12 digital camera
Welcome to Bargain of the Week, where I’ll take a look around the web for the best tech/gadget bargain I can find, and report back to you.
This week, you can get hold of the rather nice Pentax Optio S12 compact digital camera for a penny shy of seventy quid, thanks to it being half price at Amazon.co.uk…
Resident Evil 5 demo pops up for PlayStation3 owners to have a go on for free
We won’t use the fact that the demo of Resident Evil 5 was available for Xbox 360 last week to turn this news into a PS3-bashing exercise. We are so above that. That would be very childish indeed.
However, if you are unfortunate enough to own a PS3 and have jumped through the hoops required to sign up to Sony’s PlayStation Network…
GALLERY: the 24x zoom Nikon P90 super-compact and the latest from the Coolpix range
To begin with, I was a little upset that it wasn’t the D400 SLR that Nikon announced today. I was getting bogged down with a few of the familiar Coolpix product codes and then I noticed the Nikon P90 bridge-type camera – not quite a compact and not quite an SLR.
In reality, of course…
TECHNOLOGY DEATHMATCH: Camera phone shutter clicks vs no camera phone shutter clicks
Not your traditional Technology Deathmatch today but when I saw this post on Wired last week my hackles were raised to the point of crowbaring the issue into my regular Monday feature and, well, here we are – cameraphones: should they have to make a sound when the shutter is released, or shouldn’t they?
See, the deal is that it’s already the case in Japan and they’re looking to make it so in the States after Republican Congressman of New York, Peter King, asked for a new bill to force all mobile phones sold in the US to have no option of a silent camera click. The idea, of course, is that you can’t then take photos of people…
