We Gather Light To Scatter
News on Tech Products Nov. 25, 2008
Airports Adopt New Laptop RuLes - TRAVELERS FORCED TO
unpack their notebook computers
at airport screening stations received some relief in August as the Transportation Security Administration began letting people with "checkpoint friendly" bags leave the hardware inside. Such bags or cases must have a laptop-only section that completely unfolds to lie flat on the X-rayscreening
conveyor belt, the TSAsays. The bag cannot contain metal snaps, zippers, or buckles inside, underneath, or on top of that laptop section; nor can it sport pockets on the inside or outside of the laptoponly part of the case.
Some 60 bag manufacturers expressed interest when the guidelines were unveiled several months ago, and 40 tested prototypes at one of three airports the government
agency deSignated.
Although the TSA says some current bags meet its criteria, particl,llarly sleevelike carrying cases that lack pockets or zippers, most will be new products.
Even if a bag meets the guidelines, however, nothing is guaranteed. "Given TSA's t{se of random screening
protocols, TSA reserves the right to re-screen any bag or laptop," the agency says. - PCWorld
Intel Release New Core Chips - InterconHIGH-END LAPTOPS and desktops could become faster and more power-efficient when Intel releases CPUs that are built around its new Nehalem microarchitecture. Intel began sales of its high-end Core i7 desktop chips in Tokyo late Saturday night, bringing to market a series of processors that are significantly more powerful than any of the company's current desktop products.
In a move intended to stoke demand among Japanese PC enthusiasts, shops in Akihabara, Tokyo's main electronics district, stayed open past midnight to put the first Core i7 chips on sale. The launch preempted a San Francisco news conference planned for Monday, as signs increasingly point to softening global demand for computers.
"This is a major new architecture for Intel and to be able to launch it here first to the user--community that Akihabara supports is a really exciting thing for us to do," said Steve Dallman, vice president of sales and marketing and general manager of Intel's worldwide reseller channel organization, shortly after the midnight launch. He was referring to the PC hobbyists and gamers who crowd the areas electronics stores in search of components to build their own computers.
"One of the features in the new processor I think they are going to be very excited about is Turbo-mode," he said. "There's also Turbo-tuning, which allows them to go in for the first time and tune 20 different parameters to optimize the performance of the processor."
The 3.2GHz Core i7 965 Extreme Edition is priced at US$999, while the 2.93GHz Core i7 940 and 2.66GHz Core i7 920 are priced at $562 and $284, respectively. Additional versions of Nehalem targeted at other market segments, including laptops, are expected to be released next year.
Several hundred people crowded stores that were open from around 10pm until 1am Sunday morning to check out the new chip and buy it. It was offered alongside compatible motherboards and other components.
"We ran-out of the high-end ones, the 965 processors, and the motherboards above ¥40,000 (US$410)," said Keisuke Kurashi, manager of the Faith store in the electronics district.
Core i7 is the first chip series based on Intel's Nehalem architecture to hit the market. Manufactured using a 45-nanometer process, these chips differ from Intel's existing products in several ways, most notably with the inclusion of an on-chip memory controller and faster links that connect the processor with main memory.
Yahoo Zimbra Desktop: Offline Web E-Mail - Web-based e-mail accounts are incredibly useful and convenient unless you're offline. The first Web e-mail provider to crack the problem is Yahoo with its Zimbra Desktop. The free Zimbra software allows you to connect to an AOL, Gmail, or Yahoo account or to any server through POP or IMAP. When you're online, you have the advantages of an online account--no waiting for the client to send a message to the server or to pull new missives off the server. In the background, Zimbra is caching your e-mail for you to look at when you're offline. Zimbra, which Yahoo purchased last year, was one of the pioneers of Ajax-based Web apps, but its interface is starting to look a little outdated. www.zimbra.com
Google set to release a Wikipedia contender
Knol: Google's Wikipedia
Most of the information in Wikipedia is completely accurate. Some of it isn't. The problem is knowing which is which--and part of the trouble derives from Wikipedia's mostly anonymous, wisdom-of-crowds
approach. If you feel more comfortable getting information from a single, identified source, then Knol, Google's foray into building an online encyclopedia, may (someday) be for you. On Knol, it's obvious who wrote an article--frequently the author's picture is beside it. And the writer can include biographical information to help you evaluate whether the person knows what he or she is talking about. Knol is promising but young, and its information so far is pretty thin.
Knol is a Google project which aims to include user-written articles on a range of topics. The project was led by Udi Manber of Google, it was announced on December 13, 2007 and was opened in beta to the public on July 23, 2008 with a few hundred articles mostly in the health and medical field.
Knol pages are "meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read", according to Manber. The term knol, which Google defines as a "unit of knowledge", refers to both the project and an article in the project. Several experts see Knol as Google's attempt to compete with Wikipedia, while others point out the differences between the projects. knol.google.com
