One of the things we miss most when touring around the British countryside is watching TV to distract us from all the non-tech naturey stuff. Well someone out there feels our pain, and the result is the 8-inch LCD Freeview Digital TV, which pulls in over-the-air Freeview content along with regular old analog offerings. The [...]

Forget about that puny terabyte RAID system you just set up. If you want to be on the cutting edge in storage, you need to start thinking in petabytes. And if you’re ready for that level of storage, there’s now someplace to get it: EMC has launched its first petabyte array, a version of the [...]

Looks like it’s getting harder to separate Bill Gates the aggressive monopolist from Bill Gates the saintly man of the year. While hobnobbing with the world’s elite at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Gates proposed an alternative to Nicholas Negroponte’s vaunted $100 One Laptop Per Child program: cheap smartphones that could be used [...]

Recent reports that Microsoft intends to re-brand MSN as ‘MSN Media Network’ have kicked up an interesting discussion about Microsoft’s branding and positioning. On the one hand, MSN is their established brand for content. But on the other hand, they’ve begun to re-name all their services products under the banner “Live”. full text: blogs.zdnet.com

We’re a slightly befuddled as to the exact intention of their execution, but Wal-Mart’s officially announced Soundcheck, their latest foray into online music downloads which, instead of competing with the iTunes Music Store or the gaggle of PlaysForSure services out there (including their own), appears to be more focused on small sets of freely downloadable [...]

Yes, it is official, the 14-year old programmers are back, that means concrete proof that we have a new dotcom boom emerging

MIT Media Lab chief Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child project has won a key backer, as the United Nations Development Program announced that it will support the program, which aims to produce laptops that can be sold for as little as $100 each for sale in the developing world. Although the agreement, announced at [...]

Sony has rolled out a new CMOS that the company claims will be able to pack more pixels into smaller sensors without degrading image quality. The ClearVid sensor, already available in some Sony camcorders, rotates pixels 45 degrees, which Sony says allows the company to squeeze more pixels onto a small sensor without shrinking the [...]

We’re not entirely sure what the possibility of Toshiba having indirect access to Blu-ray IP would prove since HD DVD and Blu-ray already share the so much of the same laser technology, codecs, anti-piracy countermeasures, etc., but it is interesting to note that they may yet have a backup plan to capitalize on Blu-ray’s success [...]

Matsushita Electric (aka Panasonic) has apparently decided that it’s ready to completely transition its TV business to digital, and has decided to get out of the analog TV space this year. What makes the timing particularly interesting is the fact that Panasonic still has a somewhat thriving analog business; according to reports, 30% of the [...]

If you pre-ordered your Toshiba HD-DVD player then don

Will the fate of the Broadcast Flag turn on how members of congress use digital audio players? If recent Senate hearings are any indication, it just might, and that may not be such a bad thing. At hearings earlier this week on the Broadcast Flag and the RIAA’s Audio Flag initiative, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) [...]

Sure, Sony managed to apply some high-style to the mouse/VoIP phone the company showed off at CES. But little did they know that Taiwanese manufacturer Sysgration was already upping the ante in the highly competitive phone-mouse market with its own version. And, unlike the Sony, which lacks a keypad, the Sysgration model allows direct entry [...]

Wolfson Microelectronics, which makes the audio chips found in most iPods, is set to unveil a new low-power chip, the WM8985. According to Wolfson, the chip will be 70% more efficient than those found in current iPods. But don’t expect the new chip to give you 70% more playing time on your Apple-issue, factory-installed, do-not-remove-under-penalty-of-voiding-your-warranty [...]

We have to admit that we can count the number of “interactive performances” we’ve attended on one hand, and we can count the number of interactive performances that we weren’t dragged to by a S.O. on no hands. And yet, if we happen to be in Bath, England between the 9th and 27th of February, [...]