Sony has issued a voluntary global recall of 535,000 Vaio notebook computers after reports of a defect in the devices’ temperature control software was brought to its attention. The flaw can cause the notebook to overheat, sometimes to an extreme degree. The recalled products are from the VPCF11 Series and VPCCW2 Series notebook computers, slightly [...]
Less than a month after the release of the Sprint HTC EVO 4G, many of the smartphone’s users recently found their devices rendered completely inoperable. That’s because a firmware update released by Sprint this week seems to have gone badly awry for an unknown number of the customers who installed it. For those customers, the [...]
Regardless of your take on the iPad as a do-everything replacement device for laptops and netbooks, other e-book readers are gaining a substantial foothold. Devices such as the Kindle and the Nook provide access to volumes of literature and documents without having to lug a fully-functional computer around. However, EBRs do not completely replace the [...]
Personal computing altered the world forever, and now the digitization of biology is poised to bring about sweeping change. Craig Venter’s recent announcement of the first synthetic genome was a huge milestone, but many outside of Silicon Valley remain unaware of the “do-it-yourself biology” movement. This movement consists of smart engineers who like to tinker [...]
A set of PowerPoint slides that appear to contain details about the next version of Microsoft’s Windows operating system surfaced Monday. The slides indicate that Microsoft plans to tackle the long-running problem of Windows’ slow start-up time, in addition to placing cutting-edge technology such as facial recognition in the new operating system. Questions remain, however, [...]
These are not your grandpa’s greenhouses. Anyone familiar with common plastic-enclosed passive solar structures designed simply to hold plants over cold seasons or grow flowers and less-hardy fruits might be surprised about how these humble buildings have transformed into today’s dynamic hydroponic “bio-structures.” The modern high-tech greenhouse represents the timely convergence of some of the [...]
Sadly, it is now impossible to do a review of the iPhone 4 without mentioning the antenna and the reported issues when you hold the iP4 — which is a shame because there is so much more to the iP4 than the antenna. That is not to make light of the potential issue — I [...]
The Obama administration on Monday released a new space policy for the U.S. that emphasizes international cooperation and the advancement of the commercial space industry. “No longer are we racing against an adversary; in fact, one of our central goals is to promote peaceful cooperation and collaboration in space, which not only will ward off [...]
Google is getting ready to launch a brand-new social network called “Google Me,” according to a rumor circulated Saturday on Twitter by Digg Founder Kevin Rose. “Ok, umm, huge rumor,” Rose wrote in his tweet. “Google to launch facebook competitor very soon ‘Google Me,’ very credible source.” Google did not respond by press time to [...]
Intel and Nvidia are locked in a war of words over processor speed. The battle appears to have been triggered by a paper Intel engineers presented last week at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture in France. That paper, entitled “Debunking the 100x GPU vs CPU Myth: An Evaluation of Throughput Computing on CPU and [...]