omnilynx writes "With capacity on the rise and prices falling, solid state drives are finally starting to compete with traditional hard drives. However, there are still several issues to take into account when moving to an SSD, not to mention choosing between a widening array of offerings. Anand Lal Shimpi of AnandTech does a better job than anyone could expect detailing those issues (especially those related to performance) and reviewing the new offerings in the SSD arena. Intel's X25 series comes out on top for sheer speed, but OCZ makes a surprise turnaround with its Vertex drive giving perhaps the best value."

ddfall writes "H-Online has a follow-up on the Ext4 file system — Last week's news about data loss with the Linux Ext4 file system is explained and new solutions have been provided by Ted Ts'o to allow Ext4 to behave more like Ext3."

eviltangerine writes "Twitter user stroughtonsmith was dickering around with the carrier bundle files for his developer version of the iPhone 3.0 OS and enabled the USB tethering options. Apparently he has even been able to use his laptop to access the internet over the USB tether. MacRumors comments that while Apple has announced the availability of tethering, it hasn't hashed out the details with the mobile carriers (probably so they can charge more in fees). No word on connection speed, but here are some pictures of his phone while tethering."

thefickler writes "Shell has decided to end its investment in wind, solar and hydro projects because the company does not believe they are financially sound investments. Instead Shell is going to focus on carbon sequestration technologies and biofuels. Not surprisingly, and perhaps unfairly, bloggers have been quick to savage the company: 'Between Shell's decisions to stop its clean energy investments and to increase its debt load to pay for dividends, the company is solidifying an image of corporate greed over corporate responsibility.' Is Shell short sighted, or is it just a company trying to make its way in an uncertain world?"

Al writes "A tiny cellulose-eating bacterium found a few years ago in the Chesapeake Bay has been genetically modified to help it break down cellulose and convert the results into the sugars needed to make ethanol. Scientists analyzed the organism's genome in 2003 and found that it possessed a combination of enzymes that simultaneously break down the tough cell walls in dead plants and convert the remaining cellulose into sugars. Recently, Zymetis completed its first successful commercial-scale trial using the bug. The company ran the modified microbe through a series of tests in large fermenters and found that it could convert one ton of cellulosic plant fiber into sugar in 72 hours. The microbe's main advantage is its ability to naturally combine two major steps in the ethanol process, which the company says could considerably slash the high costs of producing ethanol from cellulosic biomass like switchgrass, wood chips, and paper pulp. The piece includes a video of the company's CEO discussing the project."

krou writes "The BBC is reporting on the first Maker Faire in the UK, in Newcastle. The event saw an incredible gathering of tech DIY enthusiasts showing off their robotic wares. Maker Faire is firmly established in the US; the 4th annual running in the Bay Area begins on May 30. The BBC video shows the fire-breathing horse, Rusty, and Titan, an eight-foot tall fully-animated robot that likes scaring kids. Elsewhere, the Faire also had Ian Sharp's physical realization of the Lunar Lander computer game, low-cost multi-touch displays, and one of the oldest-ever case mods, made by veteran computer enthusiast John Honnibal, who also showed off his old over-clocked kit computer. Pictures from the Faire are also on Flickr, and videos on YouTube."

Apple unveiled the iPhone 3.0 software just now in Cupertino. Here's MacWorld's live-action blow-by-blow coverage. The announcement included new features for developers and users. For developers, the big items were in-app purchasing (for example for game upgrades, map content, and subscriptions) for paid apps only; peer-to-peer connectivity via Bluetooth; giving apps access to hardware via the dock connector or Bluetooth; maps embeddable in apps; and push notifications. For users, there's finally cut-copy-paste available in all apps; search across everything in the iPhone; landscape keyboard; MMS messaging; and voice memos. Developer beta starts today and 3.0 will be available in the summer — free for all 3G phones, $10 for iPod Touch.

Brietech writes "This is a homebrew laptop project based on a Picaxe microcontroller. It has 16kb of RAM, 256kb of storage, sound and a self-hosted development environment! It has a simple CLI, file-system, 'EMAXE' text editor and a programming language called 'Chris#.' Oh, and yes, it runs Linaxe."

gollito writes "Coder Jeff Tchang has developed software written with python that allows users to download pictures from the Eye-Fi card rather than having to use the eye-fi manager software. Running the script at intervals would allow for real time updates to an online gallery." At least one user has responded to the release of this software by getting it (after a bit of tweaking) to run on Ubuntu Linux, and another says it works with BSD. I hope the people at Eye-Fi see this as a good thing, rather than reason for a knee-jerk cease-and-desist letter; when I asked about Linux support at the most recent CES, I was given a good-natured shrug and a reasonable hand-wave: approximately, "We just don't have the developer time for that when most of our users are on other platforms."

An anonymous reader writes "Remember all those undersea cables breaking? PopSci.com introduces John Rennie, who '... has braved the towering waves of the North Atlantic Ocean to keep your e-mail coming to you. As chief submersible engineer aboard the Wave Sentinel, part of the fleet operated by UK-based undersea installation and maintenance firm Global Marine Systems, Rennie — a congenial, 6'4", 57-year-old Scotsman — patrols the seas, dispatching a remotely operated submarine deep below the surface to repair undersea cables.' The article goes on to outline the physical infrastructure of the Internet, including some of its points of vulnerability."

NewScientist has a quick look at where the digital image crowd is headed now that the megapixel wars are drawing to a close. Looks like an emphasis on low-light performance and color accuracy in addition to fun software tools are the new hotness. "For years, consumers have been sold digital cameras largely on the basis of one number - the megapixels crammed onto its image sensor. But recently an industry bigwig admitted that squeezing in ever more resolution has become meaningless. Akira Watanabe, head of Olympus' SLR planning department, said that 12 megapixels is plenty for most photography purposes and that his company will henceforth be focusing on improving color accuracy and low-light performance."

With the announcement coming tomorrow, Macworld has posted their top list of 15 features they would like to see in an iPhone 3.0 update. The list includes some things that people have been asking for since launch (like cut and paste) and things that were once there but have since been silently removed (like push notifications/background apps). With almost 2 years of time to grow and learn, what other things are woefully inadequate on Apple's popular handheld?

Slatterz writes "In an apparent attack of the bleeding-obvious, an AMD rep has come clean and admitted (on behalf of the industry) that notebook and phone battery life figures are completely unreliable. AMD's senior vice president Nigel Dessau says that 'we are not being entirely honest with users about what PC battery life they can expect to actually experience.' He says AMD will now use a combination of idle time (where the machine is left to sit idle, and timed to see how long it takes for the battery to go dead), and 3DMark06 to measure battery life. Great in theory but some of the industry already bases battery figures on a two-test measurement, and the results are still wildly inaccurate."

Lorien_the_first_one brings word that in Europe, a breakthrough for post-4G communications has been announced. A public-private consortium known as IPHOBAC has been developing new communications technology that is near commercialization now. Quoting: "With much of the mobile world yet to migrate to 3G mobile communications, let alone 4G, European researchers are already working on a new technology able to deliver data wirelessly up to 12.5Gb/s. The technology — known as 'millimeter-wave' or microwave photonics — has commercial applications not just in telecommunications (access and in-house networks) but also in instrumentation, radar, security, radio astronomy and other fields."

Al writes "The economy has hit green energy technologies hard, but technologies focused on energy efficiency and clean coal are still attracting money. Over the next few years, venture capitalists say that the biggest winners in clean tech will most likely be companies with technologies that improve efficiency. Such ventures often take advantage of cheap sensors, communications hardware, and software packages to monitor and control energy use both in buildings and on the electricity grid. High-capital businesses are now more likely to succeed if they can attract foreign funding. For instance, Great Point Energy, based in Cambridge, which has developed a process for converting coal into natural gas, has attracted $100m in funding from China."

arcticstoat writes "A new graphics company called Caustic Graphics reckons it's uncovered the secret of real-time ray tracing with a chip that 'enables your CPU/GPU to shade with rasterization-like efficiency.' The new chip basically off-loads ray tracing calculations and then sends the data to your GPU and CPU, enabling your PC to shade a ray-traced scene much more quickly. Caustic's management team isn't afraid to rubbish the efforts of other graphics companies when it comes to ray tracing. 'Some technology vendors claim to have solved the accelerated ray tracing problem by using traditional algorithms along with GPU hardware,' says Caustic. However, the company adds that 'if you've ever seen them demo their solutions you'll notice that while results may be fast — the image quality is underwhelming, far below the quality that ray tracing is known for.' According to Caustic, this is because the advanced shading and lighting effects usually seen in ray-traced scenes, such as caustics and refraction, can't be accelerated on a standard GPU because it can't process incoherent rays in hardware. Conversely, Caustic claims that the CausticOne 'thrives in incoherent ray tracing situations: encouraging the use of multiple secondary rays per pixel.' The company is also introducing its own API, called CausticGL, which is based on OpenGL/GLSL, which will feature Caustic's unique ray tracing extensions."

justechn writes "Tom's Hardware has an article about custom PC maker Puget Systems, who had just finished a custom $16,000 PC for one of their clients. So what exactly goes into a $16,000 system? How about: Four quad-core Opteron processors, 32 GB of memory, Windows Server 2008, Asus Xonar DX PCI Express sound card, 3Ware 9550SX-8LP SATA 3 Gb/s RAID controller, Two Western Digital 300 GB VelociRaptor hard drives in RAID 1, Two 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s also in RAID 1, and Four 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s in RAID 5. Puget went with MagiCool's Xtreme Nova 1080 radiator, Nine 120 mm fans, Four Koolance CPU blocks, Koolance combined pump and reservoir unit, and Cooler Master Stacker 810 case. In addition to all that hardware, it also runs very quiet and very cool. The temperature of the CPUs is 36 C at idle, 45 C at load."

An anonymous reader writes "Jerry had a motorcycle accident last May and lost a finger. When the doctor working on the artificial finger heard he is a hacker, the immediate suggestion was to embed a USB 'finger drive' to the design. Now he carries a Billix Linux distribution as part of his hand."

techprophet writes to mention that a new take on self-healing plastic could provide a long-term solution to scratched screens. The new polymer, developed by scientists at the University of Southern Mississippi, uses UV light to reform bonds between molecules rather than embedded healing agents of similar systems. "At the core of their design is polyurethane, which is an elastic polymer that already has decent scratch resistance. To enhance its ability to withstand mechanical damage, Ghosh and Urban added two more components, OXE and CHI. OXE has an unstable chemical structure (a four-membered ring containing three carbons and one oxygen) that makes it prone to being split open. CHI is UV sensitive. The idea is that, if the polyurethane gets damaged by a scratch, the unstable ring structure of OXE will open to create two reactive ends. Then, UV light can trigger CHI to form new links with the reactive ends of OXE and thereby fix the break in the polymer."

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the University of Miami and at the Universities of Tokyo and Tohoku, in Japan, have discovered a spin battery effect: the ability to store energy into the magnetic spin of a material and to later extract that energy as electricity, without a chemical reaction. The researchers have built an actual device to demonstrate the effect that has a diameter about that of a human hair. This is a potentially game-changing discovery that could affect battery and other technologies. Quoting: Although the actual device... cannot even light up an LED..., the energy that might be stored in this way could potentially run a car for miles. The possibilities are endless, Barnes said.'"