Internet & Websites - Page 49

Alright, it is time for some humor. In the list of "really stupid things to do" right at the top would be adding your boss to facebook and then complaining about your Job.

This one goes up there with telling your wife that "yes that does make you look fat" and the ever popular, I just go to Hooters for the food"

Apparently a work ethically challenged employee decided to complain on her facebook page while still in a trial employment period. This is after she added her boss as a friend. The complaint was short and of the usual rant type. It expounds on the horrible things she has to do at work "Sh*t Stuff" and proceeds to call her employer a "pervvy wanker".

Her boss' reply was not so short, it started off bad and got worse from there ending with "you can come in whenever you like to pick up any stuff you've left here. And yes, i'm serious"

Now I feel for anyone that is out of work right now but this actually deserves some sort of stupidity award.

Feel free to laugh.

There are a lot of cool things about the new ZuneHD. One of the biggest is that it is going to use nVidia's Tegra under the hood. It should also have native support for Flash and a few other Codecs that are commonly used for media playback.

These differences have propelled it into the mantle of "iPod Killer" This is really quite a possibility as it certainly has the hardware and the Codec support to back up its bid for the throne. The problem is, how to beat Apple Marketing.

But all that aside one of the things that people are looking to see if can MS improve the interface on the Zune HD. Well someone has managed to get a sneaky little video of the new Zune HD in action. If nothing else we can see some of what we can expect from the new PMP from MS.

Today we had a chance to visit the PhotoFast office here in Taipei to take an exclusive look at one of its upcoming SSD products.

The product in question is the PhotoFast 'Quad'. It has available internal slots for a total of four CFast 32GB SATA cards - and no, they aren't compact flash cards despite how similar they look! They are actually tiny flash cards with SATA connectors. Maximum read and write times inside the video.

In the world of graphics you are usually stuck with x16 mechanical (and electrical) add in boards for your GPU love. This makes it a little rough on many an HTPC builder. Sure you can get a half-height card and even ones with an extra tang for the low profile cases but unless you want to shell out a ton of cash you are still getting an x16 card.

Thankfully, that all may be changing; HIS and Club3D are offering x1 PCI-e cards that won't break the bank.

HIS is offering an ATi Radeon HD 4350 with 512MB DDR2 (Core clock 600MHz Memory Clock 800MHz). The 4350 is a great card for and HTPC or for anyone looking to run just business graphics and features DVI and HDMI out as well as the typical VGA. If you go half height you still get to keep HDMI and DVI.

From Club3D we find an offering from the green team. This is the 8400 GS, again another card with a small foot print in terms of usage. It does not feature an HDMI port only DVI and TV. It also only has 256MB of memory. The benefit to the 8400 GS is passive cooling.

As far as choices between these two the HIS 4350 is better for an HTPC but the 8400 GS can keep your rig quieter. Both cards seem tailor made for the Atom platform as many existing ITX Atom system boards only have a PCI-e x1 slot. A couple of dollars in this area can get you some extra horse power in any Atom Based Nettop or HTPC.

There is some rather concerning news for Facebook users. It seems that a new Blog called FBHive has revealed that they can unmask certain personal information in a Facebook profile even if the user has elected to keep it private.

This could be a bad thing as it can lead to Identity Theft and potentially expose minors to who otherwise might be protected from predators. FBHive has not released details of the hack nor has Facebook confirmed the exploit at the time of this writing.

Read more here

Just this morning I posed a question about the use of the Tegra SoC chip in netbooks. Well the question still stands but the gang over at Engadget has an interesting piece that comes to them from TechVideoBlog. It seems they have a video showing Tegra pumping out some 720p HD content without breaking a sweat.

My issue with Tegra follows in the OS choices and other performance. Right now the only operating systems that Tegra is being used with are Windows CE (which is awful) and Android. The other factor is system performance, it is being reported that you can only have about four tabs of Firefox open before the system slows down. To me in a machine designed for internet usage that is just not enough.

Maybe if nVidia pushes this into portable HD media players it will fit. But in reality HD video on my netbook is not something I can get worked up about.

Read more here.

AMD is holding a new contest and wants to demonstrate the link between gaming and learning. According to AMD, this reinforces AMD Changing the Games commitment to advance youth education through digital games.

Most of the memory industry is in a steady state with little to no new products forecast due to low profit margins. Instead of standing still Crucial has taken the opportunity to refresh their Ballistix Tracer product line.

YouTube has been providing the world with videos of just about everything for so long that it has just about become its own verb like Google.

But the videos have never really been high quality but more of the "webcam" style shots heavy on the pixels with an extra side of grain.

Now it looks like YouTube might finally be taking the wrapper off of its long awaited HD Video selection. According to an article over at Techcrunch.com the words "Watch in HD" are starting to appear below some videos.

Read the more here.

Further to the official announcement from VIA earlier today which introduces their new VIPRO Touch-Screen Panel PC, they have posted up a youtube video which allows you to see it in action.

Ina Fried from the CNET Beyond Binary blog was able to catch up with a couple folks from Microsoft at the Professional Developers Conference last week.

Ina has a quick hands-on look at the latest build Windows 7 desktop and its features including the new taskbar, "Jump List" mini menus and some other stuff which make the upcoming OS that little bit different than Windows Vista.

Take a look at it below and there is another below when you're done.

Inside the Windows 7 desktop, part 1 (CNET)

Alongside this posting earlier in the week, more coverage in the way of some hands on time with Windows 7 surfaces, with Gizmondo sharing an extensive amount of information with us all that includes some videos comparing startup / shutdown times side by side with Vista and a thoroughly written walkthrough which sheds light on many of its unique features and general interface improvements.

A Melbourne-based software developer called ExitReality has created what they are calling the world's first 3D browser.

Lynn from VIA sent us a link to a video they've uploaded which features robots using VIA Embedded parts such as systems based on the Pico-ITX form factor.

The video was shot at the Taipei International Robot Show which was held last week. We weren't able to make it but lucky VIA had a camera in hand and took some pretty cool video for us all to see.

Taiwan hosted the Taipei International Robot Show this past week and it was certainly an exciting event, with over 60 international academic and industrial developers attending.

VIA's commitment to the development of extremely compact form factors, such as the VIA EPIA Pico-ITX boards has placed the company at the cutting-edge of technological progress within the robotics industry. As the world's most compact x86 mainboard, VIA EPIA Pico-ITX boards have become an essential component in modern robots due to the remarkable heat dissipation and robust performance engineered in to the compact design. From hobbyists building kits to military robots, VIA processor platforms can, quite literally, be found at the heart of these amazing machines.

Here's a short video featuring the already very well-known "Johnny 5" building kit robot from Lynxmotion and BEAR, a highly intelligent military robot the Vecna Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot . BEAR has been designed to rescue military personnel out of combat situations and pushes military robotics to new heights of intelligence and mobility.

AMD displayed some jaw dropping photorealistic characters at a press conference in New York yesterday, using the power of a Radeon HD 4800 series GPU with their latest Cinema 2.0 technology.

It appears as if somebody forgot to tell Amazon the launch date for AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 4850 graphics card.

While we were visiting IKONIK this afternoon, we also got an early look at the Ra X10 computer case. Keep in mind that the sample we saw was not finished yet and it still needs some work to polish things up before its release in early August.