by Darren Murph, posted Jul 29th 2008 at 9:09PM
It’s hard to say what kind of individual seeks out lighting instruments that even look like eyes, let alone lighting instruments with cloned details of their own eyes, but just in case you know one such person, here’s the perfect FYI for ‘em. Paris-based 5.5 designers are offering a service that enables you to send in images of your eyes (along with a very large sum of money, we presume) in order for the craftspeople to construct eyeball lamps with hints of you splashed all over. Sure gives Rockwell’s one and only jam a whole new meaning, yeah?

[Via ShinyShiny]

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by Paul Miller, posted Jul 29th 2008 at 12:53PM
“Touching is good,” but hacking? Not so much. Nintendo has gone on the war path against five Japanese companies that make their living helping users rip off DS games. Of course, a primary use for such hardware — such as the R4 Revolution, pictured — is homebrew and emulation, but good luck convincing Nintendo (or any large console manufacturer) of that. Details of the actual lawsuit are slim, but Nintendo has brought along with it 54 Japanese software makers to lend a bit of gravitas to the suit. If you haven’t managed to hack your DS yet, now might be a good time to score the requisite hardware — we might be facing a scarcity before too long.

[Thanks, Michael]

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by Darren Murph, posted Jul 29th 2008 at 11:10AM
Should the GTX 280 be a bit too rich for your blood, NVIDIA’s lookin’ out. Introduced (and reviewed) today, the PCIe 2.0-compatible GeForce 9500 GT checks in a few bucks south of $100 depending on where you go and provides a 550MHz core clock, 1,400MHz shader clock, 32 stream processors, 800MHz memory clock, 256MB / 512MB of RAM and twin dual-link DVI ports. Assuming the specifications meet your standards, you’re probably curious about performance. Based on the first reviews, it was found to be “measurably faster than the Radeon HD 3650, and pretty much on par with the GeForce 8600 GTS.” For under a C-note, it’s a solid buy for those okay with being a few steps behind, and HTPC builders will find the low power consumption, quiet operation and small size to be quite appealing. Check out the links below for pages upon pages of in-depth coverage.

Read - Introduction, benchmarks and review
Read - Benchmarks, images and another review

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NVIDIA has just taken a huge charge of up to US$200 million for dealing with a problem regarding faulty die/packaging used in some of its GPUs. We are now seeing the fallout from manufacturers who are suffering with those faulty graphics chips and Dell seems to have been hit hard.

A posting on the Direct2Dell blog has acknowledged that some of the company’s laptops contain these GPUs. If you have one, then there is a higher chance of the GPU failing, with the first signs being random characters on the screen, multiple images, lines across the screen or just no output whatsoever as a final nail in the graphics coffin.

The affected Dell laptops include:

• Inspiron 1420
• Latitude D630
• Latitude D630c
• Dell Precision M2300
• Vostro Notebook 1310
• Vostro Notebook 1400
• Vostro Notebook 1510
• Vostro Notebook 1710
• XPS M1350
• XPS M1530

If you have one of the above machines and are not experiencing any problems then Dell recommends you update the BIOS on the machine. This will help alleviate the issue, but unfortunately the fix involves making your system fans work harder so your machine is noisier and potentially the battery will drain more quickly.

The Direct2Dell blog does say that battery life shouldn’t change, however, stating:

Several of you have expressed concern over potential battery life issues. The reality is that these BIOS updates will not have any noticeable effect on battery life or overall system performance. These updates do not make the cooling fan run all the time. The fan may cycle on more frequently, but when it does, it will run at half or quarter speed.

Read more at Direct2Dell.com

Matthew’s Opinion
If I was a Dell customers with one of these machines I’d be a bit annoyed that my laptop could potentially stop working if the graphics chip gets hot. The solution doesn’t seem that reassuring either as the fans will just come on more to try to cope.

I would actually want to send my machine back and have the GPU replaced. NVIDIA is taking a hit for their faulty processors so why shouldn’t all the GPUs be replaced if owners want them? I know this would cost them an absolute fortune, but they sold faulty goods.

If you do have one of the above machines that has gone wrong, or another make that contained one of these GPUs let us know your experiences and how manufacturers are dealing with these problems. Ars Technica also has a good piece about the faulty chips if you want to know more.

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The good people at Rogers Wireless has decided to take their chances with Apple’s offer of $150 million worth of iPhones, which makes it sound as though you won’t find an iphone 3G shortage in the Great White North anytime soon. While Rogers Wireless won’t be making as much profit as they’d like to each time they sell an iPhone 3G, it is hoped that the magical handset will snag a higher average revenue per user to counter the initial subsidy investment. Just how many iPhone 3Gs does $150 million translate to? Taking an average non-subsidzed price of $450 per handset into consideration, that would amount to a mountain of 333,000 iPhone 3Gs.

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As if San Francisco needed more woes after its network was held hostage by disgruntled former employee Terry Childs. The city’s crisis was adverted when the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, visited Childs in prison to convince him to hand over passwords to the system. Now just when everything seemed to be back on track a bonehead move by San Francisco prosecutors threatens the security of the network once again.

According to an eWeek article, San Francisco prosecutors revealed 150 usernames and passwords in court documents filed as evidence in the case against Childs. A spokesman for the DA office stated that the passwords associated with the accounts have been changed. Prosecutors believe that Childs used the usernames and passwords to gain control of the network and impersonate users.  The listings were removed from the public record soon after they were discovered by the press.

With all of the misteps of the San Francisco IT department, and now city prosecutors, you have to wonder if the city is being run by clowns. The mayor must be buying Alka Seltzer by the truckload from his local Sam’s Club. You can bet he is going to make sure heads roll for this blunder.

Read more from the eWeek article.

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FROM GAMERTELL - Today (July 29, 2008) in Japan, Nintendo and 54 Japanese software companies filed a lawsuit against five Japanese companies who’ve been distributing R4 DS and similar devices which can be used for pirating DS games.
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Star Trek fans can rejoice this week as Cryptic Studios, the developer behind City of Heroes, has been confirmed as the company taking on development of Star Trek Online.

The MMO hasn’t had the most smooth development timeline so far, with the original developer Perpetual Entertainment ceasing work on the title in January. It has taken until now to announce a successor, but that doesn’t mean work hasn’t been continuing the past few months.

The news that Crytpic were involved was meant to be announced when a timer ran down on the Cryptic website, but their plans were scuppered when a job listing in the Game Career Guide gave things away early by clearly stating new staff would be working on the IP.

Fans of the IP will be happy to know that Cryptic will be showing off gameplay footage at the Star Trek convention held on August 10th in Las Vegas. They should also be happy because Cryptic have proved they can make very good MMOs meaning Star Trek Online could turn out to be a real gem of a game.

Read more at Cryptic Studios, found via Gamasutra.com

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Oh, tech manufactuers… why do you think that making a phone or a hard drive look like a powder compact is the way to our hearts? Nothing makes me more annoyed - except covering everything vaguely girl-oriented in pink, perhaps.

As Engadget gleefully reports, Samsung has designed a concept compact hard drive that looks similar to a piece of make-up - and this picture shows it surrounded by make-up, to prove the point. You know, ‘cos we women are so crazy about cosmetics, we’ll buy anything if it looks like we can paint our faces with it.

So far though, this is just a concept - and maybe it should stay that way. I think the design is sleek and all, but I don’t agree with making tech designs gender specific. (Don’t small, sleek designs appeal to men, too?)

How about letting us all buy what we want, whether we’re male or female?

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When manufacturers lay claim to the world’s smallest devices, in whatever category that may be, it usually manages to be just slightly smaller than its closest rival or a previous product iteration. That’s not the case here, however, with Freecom managing to reduce the size of their latest 2.5″ portable hard drive by 27% over the next smallest contender.

The Freecom Mobile Drive XXS is just 109.87 x 79.5 x 13.5 mm in size and weighs just 155 grams. It has no cooling fans inside making it very quiet and low on power consumption. It is also encased in injection-moulded rubber, so it won’t slip out of your hand and is hard wearing. No power adaptor is required and it ships with a small USB 2.0 cable making it very pocket-friendly.

The other surprising feature is the storage capacity; with 160GB, 250GB and even 320GB models available priced between US$110-US$157.

Read more at the Freecom Mobile Drive XXS product page, found via Hexus.net

Matthew’s Opinion
This truly is a tiny drive offering massive storage that should cater for most people’s needs. A credit card placed on top of this device almost covers its entire surface if that gives you an idea of how small it is. The lack of a power adaptor and grip rubber coating should make this a breeze to carry around as well.

The USB cable seems to be the only negative point from what I have read. It is tiny making it easy to transport, but it is also loose meaning easy to lose. If they could have found a way to clip it on to the drive it would have helped as you don’t want to leave the cable plugged in for fear of snapping the connector on the drive.

Freecom have set a new standard of small with this hard disk and others are sure to follow. They’ll be hard pushed to beat it on size though.

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