Daniel A. Begun
Daniel A. Begun
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Sometimes a "very, very, very small minority" can have a big impact--especially if that minority is a very, very, very vocal one. A week and a half ago, Netflix announced that it would be killing off its Profiles feature. But following the outpouring of a not-so-silent minority who were less-than thrilled with this decision, Netflix has done...
Read more...
UPDATE: We heard back from Steve Swasey, Vice President, Corporate Communications for Netflix. Swasey explained that a "very, very, very small minority" of Netflix users actually use the Profiles feature. When we commented that he used the word "very" three times, he joked that a few more "very's" might actually be applicable. He would not...
Read more...
Despite running into a few glitches at the start of the record-setting attempt for the most software downloaded in 24 hours, approximately 8.3 million full copies of Firefox 3 were downloaded during the first 24 hours of its availability. The Mozilla folks are working with the blokes from Guinness World Records to determine if in fact a true...
Read more...
Toshiba recently announced that its lightweight Portégé R500 ultraportable laptop is now available with a 128GB solid state drive (SSD). With this new, but pricey option, Toshiba claims that the Portégé R500-S5007V is now "the world's lightest laptop with a 128GB SSD and DVD SuperMulti drive." That might sound impressive upon first blush,...
Read more...
The yet-to-be-released E.M.A. ("Eternal, Maiden, Actualization") fembot from Sega Toys has been generating quite a lot of buzz on the Internet since it was first announced last week. The decidedly female robot is 38cm tall and is capable of fluid movements via its "5 motors and 12 degrees of freedom." Those movements include dancing and kissing. But...
Read more...
The folks over at Skype are hoping that you want to be a beta tester. Starting today, Skype 4.0 Beta 1 for Windows goes into public beta, and there are a number of significant changes in the new version. The most noticeable transformation from the existing client to the new beta is a much lager default video window for video calls. (Skype...
Read more...
Verizon FiOS customers tend to be the envy of the rest of us non-FiOS, broadband users. Well, that envy quotient is about to go up another notch, as Verizon announced that as of next week, its 50/20 and 20/20 Mbps services will be available "across all of Verizon's FiOS Internet service footprint in 16 states." "Verizon had already offered...
Read more...
LCD monitors were supposed to free up our precious desk real estate as they relegated bulky CRTs to the local landfill. But with the quantity and quality of high-definition content increasing and LCD prices continuing to drop, widescreen LCDs are becoming increasingly prevalent. Now our desks are filling up again--only this time in width,...
Read more...
Gamers, start your tentacles! Today is the day that Electronic Arts releases the long awaited, first step of the Spore evolution: Spore Creature Creator. For the uninitiated, Spore is a single-player, simulation game where you manipulate the evolution of an entire species of creatures from single-cell organisms through the development of civilization...
Read more...
AMD wants to push the envelope of realism in interactive games with its new "Cinema 2.0 experience." Using its upcoming RV770 GPU as the engine driving the demonstration, AMD showed off "the fusion of dynamic real-time interactivity with convincing cinematic digital effects that appear to be real places and things captured on video." "With...
Read more...
Starting today, a select few United Airlines customers will be able to plug their iPods and iPhones into their flight's in-flight entertainment (IFE) systems and watch the content from their own devices on the seatback's 15.4-inch displays--and their iPods and iPhones will also charge while doing it. Using IFE systems developed by Panasonic...
Read more...
If there was any doubt that brainy women could be sexy too, this week's Newsweek article, Revenge of the Nerdette, should set naysayers straight. The article features a group of brilliant, confident, and attractive women who call themselves the Nerd Girls. Here's a snippet of self-promotion from their own Nerd Girl Web site: They're "Beauty...
Read more...
The future of high-performance computing might very well depend on graphics cards. It's not just CPUs that are crunching numbers faster and faster. Today's GPUs are just as efficient at performing floating-point calculations--perhaps even more so, especially when special floating-point hardware is integrated directly into the GPUs: "At the...
Read more...
Update: The news story below was originally posted on Friday, June 13. It is a brief summary of a longer news article written by Cade Metz of The Register. After our article posted we were contacted by Technology Consultant George Ou, who was briefly referenced in our news story. Ou felt that Metz's coverage--and therefore our coverage as...
Read more...
Las Vegas's Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino becomes the second commercial location to sport Microsoft's Surface devices--table-top, multi-touch-input computers. The first commercial implementation of Surface was this last April in select AT&T stores. "Harrah's will deploy a suite of their own customized applications and be the first to...
Read more...
According to Intel, it gets no respect. The company has spent "gazillions of dollars and bazillions of engineering man hours" on co-developing the new USB 3.0 spec and the commensurate USB 3.0 Intel host controller spec; yet Intel is perceived as wanting to keep USB 3.0 all to itself. At least that's the story that Nick Knupffer, blogger and...
Read more...
Upon first glance, today's press release from AMD, "AMD and Havok to Optimize Physics for Gaming," caused us to do a double take. Considering the long-time feud between AMD and Intel, it seemed surprising that any sort of amicable partnership could develop between AMD and an Intel-owned company, such as Havok: "AMD (NYSE: AMD) and Havok...
Read more...
Electronic Arts' Spore could easily be one of the most-anticipated games of all time. Created by Will Wright--the genius behind the Sims series of game titles--Spore has been referred to as "Sim Everything." It is a game where you manipulate the evolution of an entire species of creatures from single-cell organisms through the development...
Read more...
Toshiba's Storage Device Division claims to have produced the first 1.8-inch, 5,400-rpm, SATA hard drive with a 160GB storage capacity. The MK161GSG uses a micro-SATA connector and supports a 1.5Gb/sec SATA interface. The drive is positioned as an ideal addition to the quickly growing small-form-factor portable market, such as subnotebooks,...
Read more...
Yes, you read the headline correct; you will pay more for a new Apple iPhone3G than you would have spent on the previous version of the iPhone. How can this be, you ask? The iPhone3G models are priced a full $100 cheaper than their predecessors. True. But the total cost of a two-year contract with AT&T will wind up more than eating up...
Read more...
The results of a recently published study of workers' instant messaging (IM) use shows that IM can actually improve workplace productivity. This contradicts a widely held belief that IM in the workplace is a hindrance to productivity. IM is often perceived as an interruption, and as such, "it can significantly hinder productivity by disrupting...
Read more...
There should be no doubt as to whether the engineers at HP dream in black-and-white or in color. The question should be: How many colors do they dream in? The answer: over one billion. That's how many colors HP's new DreamColor LP2480ZX LCD is capable of displaying: "The HP DreamColor Display features a new liquid crystal display (LCD) that...
Read more...
