Daily technology digest!

[DrEvil]

EcoloCap claims nanotube-infused Lithium-X battery has 99 percent efficiency, fuels our long-range EV dreams

The more we hear about the next generation of rechargeable batteries, the more nanotechnology seems integral to the case, as scientists work to improve the capacity of electrodes in the popular Lithium-ion chemical battery structure. Silicon nanowires are an exciting future possibility, and one current solution uses nano-structures made of iron phosphate. But the firm we're highlighting today, EcoloCap, has decided to revisit our versatile friend: the carbon nanotube. The company has just spread the word that its Nano Lithium X battery can generate a minimum of 200 amp-hours with a single cell (a Tesla requires 6,831) at half the cost of a traditional Li-ion and with greater than 99 percent efficiency. Truth be told, we don't know if the tech actually exists, and we'd never even heard of the company before today -- but if this solution does materialize with the voltage to match its longevity, it'll bring a badly needed eco-boost of competition to a market with far too few players.

[DrEvil]

Enso's zenPad is the cheap Android tablet you've always wanted, available now

With so many concept Android tablets floating around lately we were inclined to just ignore this one -- until we learned two particularly interesting aspects: it starts at $155, and it's actually shipping now. It's the zenPad from Enso, a five-inch, 800 x 480 Android 1.6 tablet with 8GB of storage (on a replaceable microSD) that, for an additional $25, comes with GPS. It's powered by a 667MHz Samsung 6410 processor, pledges six hours of battery life, and has WiFi built-in while an external 3G adapter is just another $35. That means a fully max'd out unit with GPS and 3G would set you back $210 -- plus $25 for shipping. And yes, they are shipping now, as evidenced by a number of the things popping up on eBay. Sure, it doesn't look as fancy as the Dell Mini 5, but you won't have to fly to Shenzhen to get one. Video demonstration embedded after the break, but the footage was apparently encoded using some demo software, so beware nagging audio intrusions.We were guessing this was a rebrand of something, and thanks to commenter Raikus it looks like this is a Smit MID-650, which eviGroup's Wallet was also said to be based on -- at more than twice the price. Also, we (well, you really) seem to have taken down Enso's site thanks to traffic. Oops! Hit that eBay link if you're desperate to Buy It Now®.

[DrEvil]

Google's 1Gbps broadband offer brings out the crazy in municipal officers around the States

You'll be aware by now that Google's cooking up an experimental high speed broadband network, which is currently in the process of collecting applications and nominations from interested communities. Given the limited coverage planned -- anywhere between 50,000 and 500,000 people -- there's understandably a lot of competition to get your small town on Google's radar, and city officials all around the USA have been doing their utmost to grab some publicity for their locale. Duluth mayor Don Ness can be seen above taking a dip in Minnesota's icy Lake Superior (with his unfortunate underling Richard Brown taking a fish to the face), while others have held parades, danced, invented a "Google Fiber" flavor of ice cream, and even swam with sharks for the sake of that precious fiber. Duluth, however, is the only place officially endorsed by a senator, and you can see Al Franken promote the city's virtues on video after the break.

[DrEvil]

Digital Storm's Davinci workstation gets down with Core i7-980X, Quadro graphics

Creative professional. Hear that much? If that's how this all-too-structured world views you, you just might be due a new rig -- particularly if you're thinking of stepping into 4K territory. Digital Storm is offering up a rather unique solution in its Davinci, which opts for a 3.33GHz Core i7-980X Extreme Edition (yeah, that new Intel chip) instead of a more traditional Xeon. You'll still get an NVIDIA Quadro FX 1800 (768MB) GPU, 12GB of DDR3 memory, Windows 7 Processional and one of the nicer liquid cooling systems that we've seen, which may or may not be enough to sneak a little Crysis in between edits. Too bad the base price base rings up at $4,995, but look, that next indie film you're producing is totally hitting it big.

[°o.O-hash94-O.o°]

Google's 1Gbps broadband offer brings out the crazy in municipal officers around the States

You'll be aware by now that Google's cooking up an experimental high speed broadband network, which is currently in the process of collecting applications and nominations from interested communities. Given the limited coverage planned -- anywhere between 50,000 and 500,000 people -- there's understandably a lot of competition to get your small town on Google's radar, and city officials all around the USA have been doing their utmost to grab some publicity for their locale. Duluth mayor Don Ness can be seen above taking a dip in Minnesota's icy Lake Superior (with his unfortunate underling Richard Brown taking a fish to the face), while others have held parades, danced, invented a "Google Fiber" flavor of ice cream, and even swam with sharks for the sake of that precious fiber. Duluth, however, is the only place officially endorsed by a senator, and you can see Al Franken promote the city's virtues on video after the break.

hey there r some ppl on less than 1MB also!
i just switched to 4MBPS....just cant imagine how fast will be 1 GBPS!

[DrEvil]

yeah...what a coincidence...i also shifted to 4Mbps yesterday...are u in Pakistan and using WATEEN??

[°o.O-hash94-O.o°]

yeah...what a coincidence...i also shifted to 4Mbps yesterday...are u in Pakistan and using WATEEN??

no man here in KSA although i am a pakistani!
but i am not gettin full 4mbps some problem with phone line in my area !

[DrEvil]

HTC EVO 4G is Sprint's Android-powered knight in superphone armor

We've been rumoring a WiMAX "HTC Supersonic" for a while now, and Sprint just dropped the hard news: the phone will be dubbed the HTC EVO 4G, will be released this Summer and it's easily the best specced phone we've ever witnessed. The hardware is of quite obvious HD2 descent, but with Android onboard and some nice aesthetic tweaks, the EVO 4G takes on a life of its own. The handset is centered around a 480 x 800 4.3-inch TFT LCD, with a Snapdragon QSD8650 1GHz processor under the hood (the CDMA version of the QSD8250 in the HD2 and Nexus One), and even a helpful 1GB of built-in memory and 512MB of RAM -- hello app storage! Even the battery is bigger than the HD2, and the camera is an 8 megapixel monstrosity with flash, that's capable of 720p video, and is augmented by a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera for good measure. The phone features HDMI out (though you'll need an adapter for turning it into a TV-familiar HDMI plug), 802.11b/g WiFi, and an 8GB microSD card. There's that still-rare Android 2.1 underneath an updated version of HTC's Sense UI. But... despite all these wild features, what actually  sets the EVO 4G apart is the fact that it's Sprint's first 4G phone. The handset runs a combo of EV-DO Rev. A and WiMAX, with calls still being made over CDMA and the EV-DO / WiMAX options for data. Interestingly, it sounds like concurrent data and voice use might be possible for the first time on CDMA carrier in this way (killing AT&T's well-advertised differentiator), though Sprint says that's still in the testing phase. One other new feature is the Sprint hotspot app, another MiFi-style connection sharing number, which is obviously aided greatly by the WiMAX on board and can support up to eight concurrent users. Follow after the break for our hands-on impressions and videos of the phone in action, including an up-close-and-personal test of the touchscreen keyboard. Below you'll find galleries of the phone by its lonesome and up against the Nexus One and iPhone 3G.

[nid404]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/ptech/04/02/ipad.preview/index.html?hpt=C2

If u plan to buy an ipad

[DrEvil]

Toe Mouse!

You know what, the more we look at this thing, the less crazy  we think it is. While the concept of mousing around your desktop on foot may appear foreign at first, we imagine we can get used to it after a while. Not that it's designed for lazybones like us anyway, as the wireless Toe Mouse concept is primarily intended to help out people with upper limb disabilities, who aren't able to navigate in the usual manner. Just to score some extra flair points, designer Liu Yi also points out it has a "streamline model that symbolizes the motorboat surfing the internet." So it's not just practical, it's also poetic.

[DrEvil]

Firefox 3.7 Alpha 4 out NOW!

What's new in Firefox 3.7 Alpha 4:
Privacy:
· Web sites can no longer use :visited styling to determine the browsing history of a user.
User Interface:
· Currently loaded web pages are shown in the location bar autocomplete list, allowing switching to existing tabs.
Stability:
· The beta version of Adobe Flash is now run in a separate process on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6).
SVG :
· SVG attributes which are mapped to CSS properties can now be animated using SMIL. .
Video:
· Full-screen video on Windows is now rendered using hardware acceleration when available.
Plug-Ins:
· Mozilla has implemented the Core Animation rendering model for plugins on Mac OS X. Plugins which also support this rendering model can now draw faster and more efficiently.
HTML :
· HTML form controls can be resized by the user.
Performance:
· Linux builds are now built with -fomit-frame-pointer, improving page load times on average by 4%.

[DrEvil]

Apple iPad: Is international shortage the result of success?

I strongly doubt Apple gave itself too aggressive targets. What this appears to me is that the company is having supply chain issues and can’t meet existing demand — which may very well be below internal targets for the device.

Second, what defines success for the iPad? Three hundred thousand units? Five hundred thousand? A million? There is no historical comparison for this device to base estimates — nothing that even comes close. It’s an anomaly.

Apple, then, is shooting in the dark as much as we are when it comes to statistically determining what can be defined as a “success.” It’s whatever Apple says it is. Which means the spin machine keeps on churning.

(Were you expecting Apple to say the iPad didn’t meet expectations? It has no good business reason to say such a thing.)

I think the iPad is a fine device and will do well for Apple in the long-term. But my gut’s telling me that it’s taking people a lot more time to warm up to it (and the new market niche it has created) than we, and perhaps Apple, could have hoped.

[DrEvil]

Linux Foundation rallies MeeGo support

The Linux Foundation has announced that twenty seven companies or organisations are pledging their support for the MeeGo mobile Linux platform. Among the companies are distribution creators such as Novell, Linpus, Mandriva, Xandros and Turbo Linux and hardware companies such as Acer, ASUS, ST-Ericsson and Cisco. Game developers EA Mobile and GameLoft are planning to release games for the MeeGo platform and automotive systems developers and embedded Linux companies such as BMW Group, PixArt, MontaVista and Wind River will also support MeeGo.

Tomorrow sees the start of the Linux Foundation's Collaboration Summit in San Francisco, which will be hosting MeeGo project meetings. It is expected that the Foundation will announce new members at the opening of the summit. The first release of MeeGo code was made at the end of March, although the release does not include the "MeeGo User Experiences" but boots into terminal mode to allow developers to test the MeeGo infrastructure.

[DrEvil]

Google CEO says company tends to create enemies

(Reuters) - Google Inc's chief executive Eric Schmidt said the company's "disruptive" business created enemies for world's No.1 search engine, and he said that governments were keeping a close watch on the firm.

"Every government sort of has some group that's busy trying to figure out what we're up to. Because information is power," Google CEO Schmidt said at an event at the company's headquarters on Tuesday in response to a question about Google's weakness and challenges.

"We're quite disruptive, and in the course of that disruption we tend to create enemies, which are hopefully not intended on our part," Schmidt said.

Google has increasingly clashed with regulators and other technology companies.

Last month, the Internet search giant relocated its search site from mainland China to Hong Kong, in response to censorship in China and a cyberattack that it said originated in China.

Google has also come under the scrutiny of the United States Federal Trade Commission which is looking into the competitive impact of the company's plan to acquire mobile advertising company AdMob for $750 million.

And Apple Inc, once a Google ally, recently announced its own plan to compete with Google in the mobile advertising market.

Schmidt's comments were made at the end of an all-day event at Google's Mountain View, California headquarters on Monday at which the company hosted about 400 information technology managers and pushed for the adoption of Internet-based software at their organizations.

He said Google has a couple of million enterprise customers for the Google Apps software suite and was adding about 3,000 business per day.

At the event, Google also unveiled new versions of its Docs package of online productivity software, adding improvements such as the ability to view changes that other users make to a document in real time.

The event comes as Microsoft Corp, which dominates the market for productivity software, is expected to roll-out a new version of its Office products with web-based features by June.

Google sells companies an enterprise-grade version of its online applications, including Gmail and word processing, for $50 a year per user.

Google's Apps business -- which the company has said is profitable and generates hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue a year -- is a tiny portion of Google's overall business, which yielded almost $24 billion in revenue last year.

[DrEvil]

Conspiracy : Adobe & Microsoft sabotaged the iPad ?

Apple iPad jailbreak released Microsoft iPhone OS 3.2 version of Safari: The exploit reportedly takes advantage of a gaping security flaw found in iPhone OS 3.2’s version of Safari that was originally coded for Flash playback but was left unfinished after disagreements between Apple and Adobe reached a boiling point.

Last month, Adobe secretly reached out to Microsoft as tension between Apple and the Flash creator began to grow. In these secret meetings, Adobe revealed the security flaw to Microsoft and began working together towards a sabotage of Apple’s upcoming tablet device. As iPad preorders have already been released for shipment, Apple is reportedly unable to patch the exploit before the devices reach consumers’ doorsteps. The latest Windows 7 security update released earlier this week will allow iPad owners to simply connect the devices via USB to their PC and the jailbreak will begin automatically.