Gregory Sullivan
Gregory Sullivan
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Global microprocessor chip sales are booming. August 2007 came in a 4.5 percent higher than the previous year. It appears manufacturers of devices that use chips are forecasting a strong Christmas season ahead, and are readying themselves to deliver the shiny stuff for under the tree.The increase is better than historical norms, according...
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Norwegian phone giant Nokia announced its intention to purchase Chicago-based navigation software maker Navteq for around 8 billion dollars. Nokia, already the world's largest maker of mobile phones, seeks to expand the mobile services it offers to go along with the hardware.Nokia's President and Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo...
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Tascam, the king of inexpensive multitrack recording, is out this month with a nifty CD player, the CD-VT2, that will either play music tracks as recorded, or allow you to strip out the vocals and sing along with the backing tracks. The idea behind the product is based on vocal/instrument training, and being able to do it with any CD that...
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Sony will offer an ultra-thin flat television starting in December in Japan. It's the first to use the spiffy new organic organic light emitting diode (OLED) technology. It's not cheap for what you get: only 11" at around $1740.00, but OLEDs are wafer thin, use much less power than LEDs or plasma, and are great at displaying fast moving images...
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Viewsonic has added three new monitors to its lineup. All the new screens are priced at under $349. New offerings include 19" and 22" in widescreen format, and a non-widescreen 19". With a Dynamic Contrast ratio of up to 4000:1 (typ), the VX1940w and VX2240w provide many benefits such as enhanced light and dark images and reduced...
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Careerbuilder.com conducted a survey of IT workers, and according to the results, more than half of IT workers are sleeping on the job. And when they are awake, nearly half might be preparing to sleep around, too, admitting at least kissing their co-worker. That's if they're sober, which isn't all the time. Ah, multitasking. Look on the bright...
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Microsoft is updating its Live Search web search service, They're hoping that pleasing users with more relevant search results will help it to crawl out of the distant third place it finds itself in -- behind Yahoo a little, behind Google a lot. Microsoft says its goal is to encourage people who are using its Live Search service...
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Halo 3 had a lot of hype surrounding its release. For a change, the hype was warranted. Microsoft said sales of the video game reached an astounding $170 million in the first day alone. And if you're into apples and oranges comparisons, that dwarfs the opening grosses for many other popular forms of entertainment. Microsoft...
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MIT's Nicholas Negroponte has been touting his idea of giving an inexpensive laptop to kids in developing countries. His One Laptop Per Child foundation started out with a per unit target of $50 by 2010, then became widely publicized as the $100 laptop project. How far have the goalposts moved to date? Well, you can have one for $188 --...
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Sharp Electronics announced the December availability of a Blu-ray format high-definition DVD recorder with a formidable 1 terabyte of hard disk storage. Sharp is aligned with Sony, touting the Blu-ray format for next generation video, while rivals Microsoft and Toshiba back the HD-DVD format. The 1-terabyte model, capable...
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Not long ago, if you wanted to document that a photo was taken at certain time and place, you'd place or hold that day's local newspaper in the picture. But with today's photo manipulation software, nothing in a digital photo can be trusted much anymore. Now a French company, CodaSystem France SA, has demonstrated a system for the verification...
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Internet retail giant Amazon.com today launched its "Amazon MP3" digital music download service. The 2 million songs available come without Digital Rights Management restrictions, and will play on most any device that can handle a sound file. Most songs are priced from 89 cents to 99 cents, with more than 1 million of the...
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A report from Forrester Research paints a bleak picture for sales of next generation DVD players. They estimate that at least another eighteen months will roll by before many consumers make up their minds to buy one; and until then the two formats will fight it out in low-level trench warfare until one or the other is embraced by consumers....
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Stop me if you've heard this one before: Tech visionaries have made a lot of money, and they'd like to spend it on vaguely Star Trek sounding things of doubtful utility until they run of cash. It's Internet 2.0 silly season; in space, this time. In announcing the Google Lunar X Prize on Sept. 13, Google co-founders Larry Page...
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Petko Petlov, a "Security Researcher," has described a flaw in Adobe's common PDF format, and it's a doozy. Unlike the annoying PDF spam that we've all become used to and is beginning to subside, this flaw appears to allow a downloaded PDF to allow others to completely take over your Windows -based computer. He considers the flaw so dangerous...
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Dell Computer announced today that it had inked a deal with China's largest electronics retailer, GOME Group, to sell personal computers and notebooks in their stores throughout China. GOME is big, with 950 locations, and Dell hopes to expand market share in China by selling their products to Chinese customers accustomed to buying in stores,...
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Sharp and Pioneer, two of the consumer electronics industry's most prominent names, have entered into a strategic alliance to develop next-generation DVD , displays, and other audio-visual products. To seal the deal, Sharp will purchase 14.7 % of Pioneer's shares, making it Pioneer's largest shareholder....
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The newspapers are full, every day, of reports of borderline crazy people suing anybody they can think of for bizarre reasons. Every once in a while, you read about one, and think: This is just crazy enough to work. How about suing the entire pay TV industry because you are required to pay for channels you don't want or you can't purchase...
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The Internet is proof that people will look at anything. Well, just when you think you've seen everything, including that goth grandmother's blog, the Internet goes and makes a sensation out of the most mundane thing. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Cheddarvision TV.More than 8,000 people logged on Wednesday to watch a 44-pound wheel of cheddar...
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Any company with a web presence (is there any other kind anymore?) spends a great deal of time and money looking after their network security. Edward Amoroso, chief security officer for AT&T's services division, thinks we're doing it all wrong. In a speech at the IDC Security Forum yesterday, he outlined his vision for dealing with the...
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Sprint Nextel has begun offering customers a device called a femtocell, for both boosting cellphone reception in the home and routing captured calls over your existing Internet connection. It lets you have unlimited calls at home for a monthly subscriber fee, using your existing cellphone. The femtocell device, called an Airave box, is made...
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Remember the good old days, when thieves would smash the window in your car and steal your radio? Well, the days of walking down the street in any big city and seeing "No Radio" signs in car windows are long gone. It's the Global Positioning Satellite devices they're after now. "Police say several things have come together to...
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