Apple Stock fell sharply, does it really look that bad?

Topic: Other Stuff

On Monday the stock market took one of its biggest hits in history. Apple's stock got hit even harder as untimely analyst downgrades sent the stock down 18%. The question though is if things are really looking that bad for Apple and I would say no. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster also does not see Apple's near term performance that bleak.
Sure their is concern of a downturn in consumer spending, but I believe that Apple will still get a big junk of whatever consumers are willing to spend on electronics this holiday shopping season. Read more

Posted on Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:06:14 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Auction Site eBid Turns 10

Topic: Other Stuff

When it comes to online auctions, there is only one real place to buy or sell online -- eBay. Despite the fact that eBay is the top auction site around some other smaller companies are able to last in the market. Auction site eBid is one of the eBay competitors and has now been around for ten years.

eBid says that in August of 2008, it had 1.3 million listings across the US and a steady stream of sign ups put it in second place behind eBay in the number of auctions. eBid offers significantly reduced fees when compared to eBay. Read more

Posted on Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:47:01 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Army Orders $13.3M in Robots from iRobot

Topic: Other Stuff

Most who are familiar with the iRobot company will think of round automated vacuum cleaners when they hear the name. The US military on the other hand thanks of a larger scale robot designed for use on the battlefield called PackBot.

iRobot has announced that it has received an additional order for the Army for $13.3 million in additional PackBots. For that amount, iRobot will deliver 165 additional PackBot 510 robots with FasTac Kit to the Army. The robots will be used to identify roadside bombs Read more

Posted on Fri, 26 Sep 2008 10:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

CyberLink PowerDirector Adds NVIDIA CUDA Technology

Topic: Other Stuff

CyberLink is the latest company to announce it is taking advantage of NVIDIA's CUDA technology for its software. CyberLink PowerDirector now delivers faster video rendering and a better experience when processing HD video.

NVIDIA has been pushing its CUDA technology hard in the market place and software firms are now starting to take advantage. CUDA is the name NVIDIA uses for its C-language compiler. PowerDirector uses CUDA to accelerate video effects like Gaussian radial blur, pen ink, and more. Read more

Posted on Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:07:10 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Windows 7 first Look at PDC 2008 announced

Topic: Other Stuff

Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, will hold a keynote on Tuesday, October 28th at the PDC 2008 introducing Windows 7.
Maybe after the keynote we will know if Windows 7 will make us Windows XP users forget Vista ever existed and we finally can upgrade to something new.
Microsoft will hand out Pre-Beta builds of Windows 7 to PDC attendees. Developers can dive into Windows 7 in 21 different sessions. Read more

Posted on Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:41:06 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Resize Vista Partitions for Free

Topic: Other Stuff

There comes a time for many Windows Vista PC owners when they wish one of the partitions on their hard drive were larger. EASEUS has announced a new update to its free Partition Manager V 2.0 software that allows users to create, delete, format and move partitions without reformatting the hard drive.

Frequently that means you have to purchase software like Partition Magic. The EASEUS Partition Manager is free and works with 32-bit Vista and Windows platforms only. The software tries to prevent users from making a mistake as well when deleting partitions and will ask if the user wants to delete the data bits on the partition or just the partition itself. Read more

Posted on Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

MXenergy Runs eBay Auction for Natural Gas

Topic: Other Stuff

Natural gas users in Ohio have a new way to get the best price on natural gas from MXenergy. The gas company is running an auction on eBay for customers on Columbia Gas or Dominion East Ohio to bid on the rate for natural gas.

According to the firm if bids exceed its 12 month fixed rate excess will be donated to charity. The company says that the eBay auction is a way to allow customers to control their own energy costs. I am wondering how they will determine if bids are legitimate or not. Some jerk comes in and bids a huge sum and they auction is skewed. Read more

Posted on Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

Pretec 64GB and 100GB CF Cards

Topic: Other Stuff

Pretec has announced two new high capacity CF cards it claims to be the highest capacity cards in the world. The cards have 64GB of storage and 100GB of storage. Despite the high capacity, both CF cards are still fast at 233x speed.

The cards use a metal housing and ruggedized construction making them ten times more durable than the typical CF card. Pretec also introduced high-speed 333x 32GB and 50GB CF cards. The 233x 64GB card will retail for $399 and the 333x 32GB card will retail for $630. Read more

Posted on Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:46:06 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

slotMusic MP3 music on microSD

Topic: Other Stuff

A new physical music format has been announced called slotMusic. The new format will be available soon and will come with tracks pre-loaded on microSD cards that can be slipped into portable devices to play high-quality DRM-free music.

Music publishers supporting the format will include EMI Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and Warner. The slotMusic cards will be available at Best Buy and Wal-Mart stores. The cards will be packaged with a small USB sleeve to allow playback on any PC. Pricing and artists for the format are unknown at this time. Read more

Posted on Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:00:00 CDT | by Shane McGlaun

WowWee Rovio gets unboxed

Topic: Other Stuff

The cool WowWee Rovio home surveillance robot gets unboxed already by Robotsrule. As reported the WowWee Rovio is on sale since a couple of days on Hammacher Schlemmer for $299.95.

The unboxing of the Rovio reveals robot from several angles and contains diagrams explaining the functionality. The charging deck and its embedded TrueTrack navigation beacon are shown too along with the accompanying accessories and manual. Diagrams identify the key pieces in each unit including a few to help you understand the TrueTrack beacon technology and the typical home WiFi network configurations that are used with Rovio. Read more

Posted on Sat, 20 Sep 2008 10:23:39 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

Black Hole Maker LHC is Out of Order for Months

Topic: Other Stuff

The CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) aka Black Hole Maker started out so well, that the scientists could actually not believe it. Now about 10 days into operation the LHC is 'kaputt' for at least 2 months.

On Friday several of the super-cooled magnets started to heat up and liquid helium leaked. Read more

Posted on Sat, 20 Sep 2008 10:10:17 CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr