Monday, April 30, 2012

Inhabitat's Week in Green: biophotovoltaic table, giant rubber ducky and cushions of shredded cash

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green.

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Buon giorno! Milan Design Week 2012 is in the rear-view mirror now, but we're still sifting through the incredible furniture, lighting and technology that was showcased all throughout the city this year. Inhabitat sent a couple of correspondents to report on everything that was on display, and they didn't disappoint. We featured a nifty biophotovoltaic table that uses moss to generate electricity through photosynthesis. We also caught wind of a digital camera that IKEA unveiled in Milan that's made of cardboard. And given our love for terrariums, we were pretty excited to find this pendant lamp that doubles as a vegetable garden at this year's fair. But the star of the Milan show this year had to be British designer Tom Dixon, who rolled out countless innovative lamp designs, including the gorgeous Etch Light, which casts geometric shadows all over the room -- and he even invited visitors to design their own flat-pack lamps!

Continue reading Inhabitat's Week in Green: biophotovoltaic table, giant rubber ducky and cushions of shredded cash

Inhabitat's Week in Green: biophotovoltaic table, giant rubber ducky and cushions of shredded cash originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sunday, April 29, 2012

NVIDIA unleashes GeForce GTX 690 graphics card, loads it with dual Kepler GPUs, charges $1k

ImageWould you look at that? NVIDIA hinted it would be coming today, and it looks like the tease is living up to the hype. The company stormed into the weekend at its Shanghai Game Festival by unleashing its latest offering, the GeForce GTX 690 -- and oh yeah, it's packing two 28nm Kepler GPUs! Trumping the recently released GTX 680 as the "worlds fastest graphics card," it's loaded with a whopping 3,072 Cuda cores. The outer frame is made from trivalent chromium-plated aluminum, while you'll find thixomolded magnesium alloy around the fan for vibration reduction and added cooling. Aiding in cooling even further, the unit also sports a dual vapor chamber and center-mounted fan. It'll cost you a spendy $1,000 to pick up one these puppies come May 3rd, and you'll likely be tempted to double up -- two can run together in SLI as an effective quad-core card. With that said, NVIDIA claims that a single 690 runs 4dB quieter and handles about twice the framerate as a duo of GTX 680s in SLI -- impressive, but we'll reserve judgement until we see it for ourselves. check out the press release after the break if you'd like more information in the meantime (...and yes, it runs Crysis -- 2 Ultra to be exact -- at 57.8fps, according to NVIDIA).

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading NVIDIA unleashes GeForce GTX 690 graphics card, loads it with dual Kepler GPUs, charges $1k

NVIDIA unleashes GeForce GTX 690 graphics card, loads it with dual Kepler GPUs, charges $1k originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lane Becker On How To ?Plan Serendipity? In Tech And Business [TCTV]

Screen Shot 2012-04-28 at 12.23.13 PMLane Becker has been a familiar figure in the Silicon Valley tech scene for years, as the co-founder of startups such as Adaptive Path and Get Satisfaction, and an advisor at early-stage venture capital firm Freestyle Capital. Becker recently added "New York Times Bestselling Author" to his list of descriptors, when the book "Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business" which he wrote with his Get Satisfaction co-founder Thor Muller debuted at the number six spot on the NYT's best seller list.

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Can You Die If Someone Squeezes Your Testicles Hard Enough? [Science]

Today it was reported that a woman killed a man by squeezing his testicles. My immediate question was: can you die if someone squeezes your testicles hard enough? I asked Dr. Irwin Goldstein, urologist and San Diego Sexual Medicine's director. Here's the answer: More »


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Friday, April 27, 2012

Acer's Q1 2012: World's fourth biggest PC maker made just $11.2 million in profit

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Acer's Q1 financial report reveals that the fourth biggest PC maker in the world is feeling weak after posting a very modest profit -- three months after it declared a $212 million loss for 2011. Turnover for the first three months of this year was NT$113 billion ($3.8 billion) and profits after tax were NT$331 million ($11.2 million). In context, the company suffered an 11.4 percent decline in revenue quarter-on-quarter, but still made NT$118 billion ($40 million) in profit during Q1 2011, a spectacular collapse of 72 percent year-on-year.

Reuters is suggesting that the problem is in part due to increased hardware costs caused by the Thailand floods, but the company isn't giving anything away. Instead its terse announcement just advised that the company grew its global PC market share by 0.8 percent to 10.9 percent, while in the EMEA region it grew 2.4 percent to 13.5 percent, adding that it is the only one of the "big five" that's seen any increase at all. You can read the scanty details for yourself, after the break.

[Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons]

Continue reading Acer's Q1 2012: World's fourth biggest PC maker made just $11.2 million in profit

Acer's Q1 2012: World's fourth biggest PC maker made just $11.2 million in profit originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung's Q1 2012 profits nearly double year-over-year on higher margins for TVs and phones

Samsung's Q1 2012 profits nearly double year-over-year on higher margins for TVs and phones

The numbers for Samsung's first quarter of 2012 are in and as it expected they are up sharply over the same period from 2011. After predicting profits of 5.8 trillion won it managed to top that, notching an operating profit of 5.85 trillion won ($5.16 billion US) for the quarter, a 98 percent gain over a year ago. Phones accounted for 73 percent of the profit, contributing 4.27 trillion won to the bottom line. As the world awaits the debut of what we assume will be the Samsung Galaxy S III May 3rd powered by its Exynos 4 Quad CPU, there's clearly no shortage of demand for the Galaxy S II and Note. Sales of chips and TVs decreased from last quarter, but like its competitor LG, growing sales of high res tablet panels (we wonder which one that might be), 3DTVs and OLEDs increased profitability. Specifically, the high end 7000/8000 series of HDTVs increased sales by 50 percent from last year, while the company plans to focus on "region-specific" LED models for emerging markets, and high end (and high priced) flat-panels for developed markets.

We're listening in to the earnings call at the moment, and we'll let you know if there's any other details that come out of what is mostly boring numbers talk. So far it's all pretty businessy, although in response to a question executives did confirm that they expect the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note to occupy different segments in terms of size. So there you have it -- the Galaxy S III will (shockingly) not have a 5.3-inch screen. Also, it predictably is trying to continue the trend of global launches, although that hardly puts to rest the issue of how long we may end up waiting for carrier-specific versions here in the US. Check out the rest of Samsung's details in a press release and a few slides from the report embedded after the break.

Continue reading Samsung's Q1 2012 profits nearly double year-over-year on higher margins for TVs and phones

Samsung's Q1 2012 profits nearly double year-over-year on higher margins for TVs and phones originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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