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Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
New trouble for Sony
New trouble for Sony
Nyleveia reported this morning that "A new hack is currently doing the rounds in dark corners of the internet that allows the attacker the ability to change your password using only your account's email and date of birth." Sony responded by yanking the new online password recovery system it had put in place to help verify users' identities. With this system offline, many users who've yet to reset their information since the security breach will still be unable to get back online.
The Sony Playstation Network and the Qriocity service are online, and this exploit won't be a problem for console gamers. But it was an issue for Website users, and it's yet another black eye for an already very bruised Sony. The company claimed that it was putting better security features in place when it announced on Saturday that it was bringing the services back online.
The company has also announced a "customer appreciation" package to compensate customers for the lengthy PSN outage, including 60 days of free subscription and a couple of new Playstation games. At this stage, however, Playstation gamers might just want pick up their toys and find a new playground.
Explosion at iPad plant in China
Explosion at iPad plant in China
The official Xinhua News Agency reported a large explosion rocked the Hongfujin Precision Electronics plant in a high-tech industrial zone west of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, on Friday evening.
Local officials are also looking into the cause of the blast. Apple shares closed down 1.56 percent at $335.22 on the Nasdaq, which saw a broad sell-off on euro-zone debt worries.
The explosion in a key factory owned by Foxconn International Holdings Ltd -- Apple's main manufacturing partner -- could affect the supply of iPads and investors were watching closely. Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said the company was assessing the situation.
"We are deeply saddened by the tragedy at the Foxconn plant in Chengdu and our hearts go out to the victims and their families," he said. "We are working closely with Foxconn to understand what caused this terrible event."
Foxconn representatives did not immediately respond.
Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White said Foxconn's Chengdu factory makes a lot of iPads because some production had been shifted to that facility from factories in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.
Apple's iPad 2 commands 80 percent of the burgeoning tablet market in which Motorola Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd also compete.
Apple sold 4.69 million iPads last quarter and is scrambling to meet staggering demand for the mobile device, but is heavily backlogged. Executives had expected production to ramp up during the present quarter to meet demand.
The plant explosion is the latest setback for Foxconn, the world's largest contract manufacturer and an affiliate of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Ind Co Ltd.
The Taiwanese company made headlines last year after reports emerged about poor working conditions at factories in southern China, which critics say may have helped drive several employees to suicide.
The company pledged to improve employee welfare.
Facing higher wages in the southern China manufacturing belt, the scene of labor disputes last year, some Taiwanese manufacturers have opted to shift some operations to the country's interior, where costs are lower.
Foxconn also has plants in North America and Mexico, as well as in European countries, including Slovakia and Poland.
Game-Changing PCs of Tomorrow: Today!
Time to trade in your Gateway 2000 for one of these machines that could change the way we make our compu-time.
Google Chrome OS Laptop
This summer, we should be getting our hands on retail versions of the first computers to run on Google’s Chrome operating system. The first batch will be made by Acer and Samsung and feature 12.1 inch display screens, standard full-sized keyboards, and—wait—no hard drive. Could this machine totally change the way we compute? Maybe not, but weirder things have happened. Look, millions of people bought those fruit-flavored iMacs.
The Razer Switchblade could be the hardware to reach the unicorn: portable World of Warcraft. Besides boasting the toughest PC name ever, the Razer Switchblade is a portable gaming device with a dynamic tactile keyboard whose keys change based on different game control schemes. You don’t have to do any fanciful programming, either: it automatically recognizes the specific game’s icons and control schemes and transfers their visuals directly to the keys.
There are situations, granted very few of them, when I get to computing outside without an accessible parasol. Clover Systems’ Sunbook could rectify this with a quickness. Its specs are nothing to write home about, but if you’re not sun-averse, you can use it outside without the damn glare getting in your business. I can see this being incredibly useful in outdoor situations you are forced into but don’t want to participate in, such as mediocre high school football games, you can just dial up some Netflix and get lost in Nicolas Cage’s eyes.
Dreamplug PC, $150
The inventor of the Dreamplug PC had a dream. A dream that one day the PC and the electrical plug would be fully integrated. For no apparent reason, the Dreamplug is a four-inch PC shoved inside of an electric plug without a GPU. It’s only $150 (as it should be, with its skimpy specs), but what I am excited about is that it supposedly reduces electrical costs by up to 96%.
Toshiba Dynobook Color-Changing Qosmio T750
The only thing unique about this PC is the cover, which changes colors with a shimmer effect. Yes, this is a game-changer. Anything that moves this industry in an aesthetic direction that matches John Travolta’s TVR Tuscan in Swordfish is a revelation. Although you should’ve been sold at “Swordfish”, specs include an LED backlit display, 2.66 GHz Intel Core i5 processor, and four gigs of memory.
MSI Butterfly
With days spent primarily gaming and typing, I have developed the snarling, wizened hands of a 90 year-old finger puppeteer. My carpal tunnel stings practically every time I use a touchscreen, so I’m grateful to see MSI’s Butterfly PC. The Butterfly all-in-one PC has a repositionable display that slides up and down like an architect’s desk, reducing touchscreen fatigue.
Word on the street (well, Engadget) is that Sony will be releasing a PlayStation Tablet in September. I don’t know if the already-crowded tablet market can accommodate another one, or if Sony will just have a PSPGo-style hardware burnout. I am curious about this curvy prototype design, though, as well as playing classic PS1 games on a tablet. I am more optimistic about the former.
Fujitsu Esprimo FH99/CM
The Fujitsu Esprimo is being touted as the world’s first glasses-free 3D computer. It’ll launch at a staggering $3100, which, when you think about it, is a small price to pay for not having to don shutter shades alone. Besides the 23-inch full HD 3D display, the PC boasts a 2Ghz Core i7 processor, four gigs of memory, and a 2TB hard drive.
CompuLab Trim-Slice |
Israel’s CompuLab has a tiny new PC that it claims can give you the full-size PC experience with at least eighty times the adorability. It’s extremely energy efficient and runs on NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 processor. It also boasts HDMI and 5.1 digital audio outputs, meaning it could be quite lovely as an alternative multimedia device. I look forward to checking it out when it hits retail in April.
Motorola Xoom |
It’s got more features than the iPad and will run on the newest Android OS. Word though is that it’s going to cost about $800. It sounds like a lot, but the comparable iPad is fewer than a hundred bucks cheaper. It’s got a bigger screen and better resolution, too, along with stereo speakers and a front and back camera (all of which the iPad lacks). Whether or not the iPad 2 comes out of the gate looking so sexy will ultimately determine the unpronounceable Xoom’s success.
Eurocom Racer
The Eurocom Racer is being touted as the world’s most powerful 15” notebook. I can neither confirm nor deny, but I can tell you that it is a beast. It can support Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, up to the Intel Core i7 2920XM Extreme Edition with 8 GB of L3 cache. It’s only a matter of time before the line between desktops and laptops is erased completely.
Future Tech That Will Rule Us All
Mobile Video
This is one that is already starting to make some inroads, but look for it to be a major selling point in 2011 for all kinds of mobile devices. As more and more video serving sites move away from Flash towards H.264, more phones and mobile devices will be able to stream content faster and more reliably. We've already removed the television watching experience from the TV - now it's going to be wherever we can get a decent number of bars on our phone. Look for the major providers - Hulu, Netflix, etc - to hop this bandwagon this year.
HTML5
After quite a long period of wheel-spinning, we're actually starting to see some movement in the development of HTML as a markup language. Where previously interactive and multimedia elements needed to be handled by plugins, which proliferated like crazy and caused tons of cross-browser problems, now things like real-time drawing and video can be handled by just one language. The platform isn't stable quite yet, but most experts predict 2011 is the year in which people will really start running with the ball.
Electric Cars
Yes, we know the Prius has been dominating the eco-conscious circuit for nearly a decade now, but we're about ready to make the transition to the next level of transportation: fully electric cars. 2011 sees the Nissan Leaf hit the roads, the first fully-electric car from a major manufacturer. Sure, it may have a pretty limited range, but this is just the beginning - expect to see lots more vehicles, both full electrics and hybrids, push the envelope further towards battery power this year.
Voice Recognition
Voice recognition has been the holy grail for computer interface designers for decades - imagine not having to use your damn hands at all to, say, leave a comment on this article? It would be great! The technology is getting better and better, especially in mobile devices, but there's still some distance to go. Google is investing heavily in this space, acquiring Phonetic Arts, a British company that specializes in natural-sounding computerized speech.
HIV Vaccine
We saw some astounding leaps in the treatment of HIV and AIDS in 2010, with a patient in Berlin having all traces of the virus removed from his system after a stem cell transplant. The procedure that he underwent was expensive and painful, but it's opened the door to a new world of potential treatments for one of the most brutal pandemics of the last 100 years. Many scientists predict that 2011 will see the first steps towards a truly workable HIV vaccine, based on tests in Thailand that show a 30% reduction in transmissal rates.
3D TV
Many networks experimented with 3D TV in 2010, but nobody was really successful with it - the active shutter glasses required to get real third-dimension viewing were expensive and cumbersome, and the install base was just too low. Avatar proved that modern 3D is more than just a fad, so look for 2011 to be the year that the technology comes home in a big way. LG is releasing passive-glasses models this year, and other companies are expected to follow suit. All home 3D really needs is a killer app to sell it the way James Cameron's blue-people epic did.
Touchscreens
This is kind of a no-brainer - the days of the keyboard and mouse are numbered. It's quite frankly ridiculous that we're tethered to an input device that has been fundamentally unchanged for over 100 years, but the QWERTY keyboard is rapidly ending its usefulness. Touchscreens have become a default input device on any number of platforms, and with handwriting recognition and voice parsing improving every minute, it won't be long before all those touch-typing lessons become so much wasted time.
Clouds
The days of keeping all of your data in one place have been over for a while - the innate fragility of hard drives has created a culture of infinite backups, with wise computer owners duplicating their data on all sorts of media. The natural outgrowth of this is to dispense with your hard drive entirely, and as a result "cloud computing" was born. Remote servers provide data, applications and more to networked computers, with the burden being placed on the telecommunications network instead of the hard drive. Expect this to become even more commonplace in 2011, with more services adopting the model.
Chrome OS
Google can be accused of a lot of things, but not trying hard enough ain't one of them. Sure, they have a fair number of misfires (Google Wave, anyone?), but they also have a lot of successes. They've proven that Android can be a success on the mobile market, and now they're stepping into the world of full-scale operating systems with Chrome OS. Designed to work intuitively with web-based applications, Google is testing it with a limited number of test notebooks out in the wild. Expect to see the first dedicated Chrome OS products this year.
Femtocells
As our wireless devices become more and more important elements of our work and social life, the importance of having maximum bars can't be overstated. Walking around looking for service is a major pain in the ass. One possible solution is the increased emphasis on femtocells - small portable base stations that connect to your network through a broadband pipe and communicate with your smartphones and tablets wirelessly. Many pundits are predicting that this data transmission model is going to be the next big thing.
Privacy
This isn't a "technology" per se, but look for the debate about privacy and security to be one of the major movers in the technoogy world this year. After multiple major sites - most notably the Gawker group - have seen their password databases compromised, the traditional methods of authentication are seeming pretty fragile. Look for more sites to use different ways of evaluating your identity - we're already seeing a shift towards using Facebook for these purposes. Now it's only a matter of time before inventive black hats find ways to make that unsafe.