Earlier Hardware
Speaking in Tech: 'You can't NOT look like a douche wearing Google Glass'
Podcast speaking_in_tech Greg Knieriemen podcast enterprise
It's another episode of El Reg's weekly enterprise tech podcast, hosted by Ed Saipetch, Greg Knieriemen and Sarah Vela. Do only white guys wear Google Glass? Just what did Sarah get up to at school with Reid Hoffman? And what the hell kind of weirdo endorses people for " …
Review: Crucial M500 960GB SSD
When Intel entered the personal computer solid-state drive market it was with the stated aim of making SSDs something more than an expensive luxury.
It implied it would drive prices down to a point where SSDs would become a viable alternative to the standard rattling old mechanical disk drive.
But even the blue-hued chip giant …
Oz chap blows his own Google Glass
A 20 year old Australian tech support chap named Nathan Myers has built his own version of Google Glass.
Dubbed “FLASS”, a contraction of “fake Google Glass”, the device uses a screen pinched from a MyVu Crystal 701, a short-lived late noughties gadget that tried to convince the world to watch video in a pair of glasses whose …
Deep inside Intel's new ARM killer: Silvermont
Intel has released details about its new Silvermont Atom processor microarchitecture, and — on paper, at least – it appears that Chipzilla has a mobile market winner on its hands.
Yes, yes, we know: you've heard it all before, from Menlow to Moorestown to Medfield. Intel has made promise after promise that its next Atom-based …
Peak Apple: Foxconn contemplating life after Cupertino
Foxconn is reportedly planning for an Apple-free future after a massive slump in orders from Cupertino.
Apple's favourite production company is moving away from simply building other people's designs and trying to break into a new market with the introduction of a range of flatscreen televisions.
However, since their …
Asus: PC market still burning, but folks are guzzling our tablets
Asustek Computer Inc is surfing the slabbie sales swell better than most of its peers, if calendar Q1 financials are a decent metric.
The Taiwanese producer of own-branded tabs - it also makes Google's Nexus 7 - pushed up turnover 16 per cent to NT$105,157bn (£2.29bn) in the first three months of 2013.
The bottom line also …
Nokia teases world+dog with snap of new 4G Lumia 928
Pic Nokia nerds are all aquiver about the Finnish giant’s latest smartphone, the Lumia 928 - but it appears to be little more than a Lumia 920 for US operator Verizon.
The 928 model now has a page on the Nokia website albeit with little information beyond a picture of the device which, with the page’s URL, confirms the phone’s …
First, the bad news: EA bags Star Wars games rights
Disney has made good on its promise to farm out future Star Wars games to an outside developer after scrapping LucasArts - and picked much-loved EA.
Electronic Arts will be able to build on its Jedi-inspired online multiplayer game Star Wars: The Old Republic now that the two entertainment giants have signed a multi-year …
Google's Page, LG boss's SECRET confab sparks Nexus 5 rumour
The smartphone rumour mill is in overdrive again after reports that mobe maker LG is prepping a new Nexus phone with Google.
Meanwhile, separate leaked photos have led to rumours that an LG Optimus 2 handset is in the works.
The South Korean electronics firm's CEO Koo Bon-joon met Google boss Larry Page on his visit to Seoul …
TV gesture patent bombshell: El Reg punts tech into public domain
Pics Gesture control to operate next-gen home electronics is the next patent battleground - so last month we asked you lot for hand movements you'd like to see protected from the lawyers as prior art. Here are the most popular, and practical, suggestions.
Many of the gestures submitted were anatomically impossible, or at least …
Don't bake your Raspberry Pi - now you can WATER COOL it
Pic The Raspberry Pi is supposed to help teach kids how to code, but one Londoner has used it to learn how to fabricate a water-cooling rig, after building a liquid-filled radiator to cool his Pi.
Does a Pi need water cooling? The device can certainly be overclocked, and its designers, the Raspberry Pi Foundation, last year added a …
Amazon beats Google to open Chinese app store
Amazon has opened an Android app store in China before Google, with the Android Appstore open for business in the middle kingdom.
Google's Play store has technically been around for a while in the People’s Republic and its Android OS has a huge lead in the smartphone market, but Play has been subject to periodic blocking by the …
Politically-correct 'Fairphone' goes on pre-sale next week
Fairphone, a social enterprise aiming “to bring a fair smartphone to the market – one designed and produced with minimal harm to people and planet” will next week offer pre-sales of its first handset, and if it can find 5,000 buyers the phone will become a reality.
The Fairphone's design calls for it to use minerals sourced from …
VTOL hybrid flying car promises the skies
The flying-car designers at Terrafugia may be behind schedule getting their first commercial model off the ground, but they're already talking up their next big idea: a four-person hybrid car with tilting engines that allow for vertical takeoff and landing, which could be in production by 2025.
Terrafuiga TF-X VTOL flying car …
Next Xbox won't need always-on internet after all
Widespread fears that Microsoft's next Xbox gaming console will require an always-on network connection may be unfounded, if a memo purportedly leaked from Redmond proves authentic.
Ars Technica claims to have had a peek at an all-hands memo sent to every current staffer working on "Durango," the codename for the next Xbox, …
Movie review: Star Trek Into Darkness
You reboot a popular science fiction series, but you cleverly restart the series’ timeline too, to give you not only a fresh, clean page on which to begin writing a brand new mythology, but also a fan-friendly way to tie it all in to the established continuity.
That’s the trick director JJ Abrams - he of Lost fame - and …
Acer reveals 'floating' screen to save desktop, self
Taiwanese hardware giant Acer has made a bold bid to claw back some of the market share it’s been hemorraghing over the past few months, taking the wraps off the Aspire R7 – a tablet/notebook/desktop hybrid device complete with “floating” touchscreen.
The R7’s main talking point is what Acer has dubbed the “Ezel hinge”, which …
Flat mobe battery? Just light a fire
Sick of running out of charge while on long walks, a Swedish tinkerer has crafted a thermoelectric phone charger to revive his smartphone and GPS by burning butane.
Vulture South notes that the setup, posted on Instructables here, is wildly inefficient, but it's a use-in-emergency approach. As David Johansson, the creator of the …
Monitor-makers ponder Android-powered touch screens
Anyone fancy a 21-inch touch screen monitor with an ARM CPU and enough computing grunt to run Android? For about twice the price of a conventional monitor?
Taiwanese analyst outfit WitsView says monitor-makers are considering just such a gadget as a way to fix the sales slump in the display industry. That slump is in part caused …
Plans for fully 3D-printed gun go online next week
Defense Distributed, the pending non-profit that plans to make 3D-printed weaponry available for anyone with such a printer, will release the blueprints for a fully-working plastic firearm next week.
The 3D-Printed Liberator pistol Here at last – your own printed pistol
The handgun, seen by Forbes, uses 16 printed parts that …
You think Macs are expensive? Get a load of this $260,000+ Apple
A hoary old Apple I computer signed by Steve Wozniak is set to fetch at least $260,000 at auction.
The computer comes from the stone age of computing and dates back to 1976, when Steve Jobs had just gotten over his first few acid trips and was beginning to flog computers from his parents' garage.
The Apple godhead sold his …
3D printer spits out CYBORG EAR... but where will you PUT it?
Princeton's finest boffins have managed to print out an ear, and it's not just a simple prosthetic, it's actually an enhancement with a radio antenna built in.
The process of combining electrical circuits with flesh is fraught with difficulties, and building ears is a common challenge given the complexity of shape and their …
Google Glass eye-cam to turn us all into right little winkers
Google Glass users are set to look even more ridiculous following the release of code which allows the headset's wearer to take photographs by winking.
Developer Mike DiGiovanni has released an app he calls Winky, which snaps an image when the user opens and then closes one eye. He has uploaded the Android source code to GitHub …
Mooreslaw: Chopping up chips for the future
Something for the Weekend, Sir? While computer enthusiasts enjoyed something of a golden age of magazines in the late 1980s, with comic-book inspired titles like Bong! and Fart!, those who were lucky enough to be actually working in the field of business or government computing at the time were served by what could fairly be described as an aluminium foil age …
Can't beat the Nexus 7? Join it: Nook tablet gets Google Play store
Tablet maker and bookseller Barnes & Noble is to add Google’s digital shop front, Play, to its Android-based Nook HD and Nook HD+ slates.
To date, the two tablets, which run Android but keep it buried under B&N’s own UI, have sold film, music and ebook content through the company’s own virtual outlets. Software too has come …
Star Trek: The original computer game
Antique Code Show Ah, the simple pleasures of the earliest computer games - and you don’t get much earlier than 1971.
As Star Trek: Into Darkness warps onto UK cinema screens this weekend, we look back at not only the first attempt to bring the franchise to computer screens, but what was arguably one of the most popular, certainly the most …
BlackBerry 10 passes US defence department tests
BlackBerry has secured access to a critical market – the US military – for its new operating system and handsets and version 10 of its Enterprise Service software.
Sighs of relief at the news may well be rattling the windows at BlackBerry's headquarters, because the company has staked its future on secure messaging. Winning …
37,000-machine study finds most reliable Windows PC is a Mac
A MacBook Pro is the most reliable PC on which to run Windows, according to research from PC-monitoring-as-a-service outfit Soluto.
Soluto users install an agent on their PCs. That piece of software keeps an eye on the PC and sends information to Soluto, which then alerts sysadmins about potential problems so they can act before …
Smaller, second-gen Surface slabs to arrive in June?
Microsoft has struggled to make headway in the tablet market so far, but sources say it may be ready to take another crack at it by releasing a new Surface model with a smaller screen as soon as next month.
Inconsistently accurate Taiwanese IT industry newspaper DigiTimes reports that a variety of Asian component suppliers are …
Move over Radeon, GeForce – Intel has a new graphics brand: Iris
Intel is getting increasingly serious about integrated-graphics performance, and to prove it they've done what any self-respecting marketeer would demand: they've rebranded their top-performing parts.
Meet "Intel Iris Graphics", slated to appear in the top-performing parts of Chipzilla's soon-to-be-released "Haswell" chippery. …
FONDLESLAB market DEATH STRUGGLE: Latest rankings in
The latest numbers are in from the battle for global tablet market dominance - and the questions everyone is asking are: Is Apple holding on? Has Microsoft got anywhere yet? Where's Amazon? Has Android crushed everything into tablet paste?
The good news for Microsoft is that Surface broke into the ranks of the top five selling …
Samsung Galaxy chip confusion halts bonking plastered apps
Samsung's Galaxy S4 flagship mobile can't grok data transmitted by stickers sold by Samsung to eager app makers.
Electronics embedded in the labels fire out pre-programmed information when a compatible wireless NFC chip comes within range, and work with Samsung's Galaxy S3.
But a new NFC chip in the S4 is incompatible with the …
Barnes & Noble bungs Raspberry Pi-priced Nook on shelves
In a perhaps desperate bid to drum up sales, Barnes & Noble is selling its Nook E Ink-based e-book reader for a pound less than 30 quid - a discount of £50.
If you want the version with an illuminated screen, it’ll be £69 - £40 less than it usually is. Oh, and the firm’s 9-inch Nook HD+ tablet has also had its price slashed, …
Brit horologist hammers out ‘first’ ATOMIC-POWERED watch
Pic Could this be the chronometrist’s ultimate timepiece, the peak of horological haute couture? British bespoke movement maker Hoptroff today claimed to have produced the world’s first personal chronometer with an on board atomic clock.
The result, says Hoptroff, is a accuracy of 1.5 seconds every 3.15 x 1010 seconds - that’s 1000 …
BlackBerry: THE TRUTH about that 5.1 per cent UK market figure
BlackBerry has rebutted a claim that its UK smartphone market share was just 5.1 per cent during the first three months of 2013.
It says independent sales figures show it notched up ten per cent of the market during that period.
The smaller figure comes from Kantar WorldPanel ComTech, a market watcher, and was released earlier …
Review: Panasonic Toughpad FZ-G1 WinPro 8 tablet
Vid In the UK, Panasonic is not known as a high-street PC player - but the company’s Tough range of products makes quite an impression in the world of business.
Out in the field you’ll spot them in the hands of BT engineers and the like where the manufacturer's rugged laptops, and now tablets, survive the rigours of white-van man …
AMD reveals potent parallel processing breakthrough
AMD has released details on its implementation of The Next Big Thing in processor evolution, and in the process has unleashed the TNBT of acronyms: the AMD APU (CPU+GPU) HSA hUMA.
Before your eyes glaze over and you click away from this page, know that if this scheme is widely adopted, it could be of great benefit to both …
Ultra-hackable Google Glass could be a security nightmare
Google's high-tech Glass headsets might be a gadget enthusiast's dream, but in their current form they're far too vulnerable to malicious hacking, according to one developer who has had access to the devices.
In a lengthy blog post on Tuesday, technology consultant Jay Freeman – who goes by the hacker handle "Saurik" – gave a …
Budweiser's bonkable Buddy Cup brings Facebook to the pub
Are you spending so much time on Facebook that the prospect of actually going out and socializing has become a little unnerving? Don't worry; mega-brewer Budweiser has got you covered, with a new beverage cup that helps merge the physical and online worlds.
"The Buddy Cup brings together the in-bar experience with Facebook, the …
Fanbois vs fandroids: Punters display 'tribal loyalty'
Does how you feel about your current smartphone really inform the handset you’ll acquire two, three or four years hence? The Yankee Group, a market watcher, thinks it might. And that’s good news for Apple. Possibly.
Apple currently sits just behind Google in the future purchasing stakes. According to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, …
Pirates scoff at games dev sim's in-game piracy lesson
Australian games developer Greenheart Games has released a cracked version of its own product – a games business simulation called “Game Dev Tycoon” – as an experiment in education of pirates and their reaction to a game that tells them their software-pinching ways are evil.
The startup outfit detailed its exploits here, …
Japan's naughty nurses scam free meals with mobile games
Japan’s male mobile gaming geeks are being taken for a ride in ever-greater numbers by hungry, cash-poor women who befriend them online before tricking them into paying for an expensive dinner for two.
This particularly devious scam is on the rise in the Land of the Rising Sun as single Japanese women struggle to pay the bills …
