Did you know that Microsoft makes hardware, besides the Xbox360 and Zune. Well they do and it’s quite a bit of amazing hardware. They used to make routers even, and their were rumors of things like Microsoft branded PC’s and LCD’s that even I had hoped would come to light, small rumors of HDMI cable and other pieces of hardware. But all in all the hardware division from before even the Xbox360 was mainly known for making some of the best keyboards and mice on the market, only comparable to Logitech in quality.

Rumor has it after the release of a SideWinder mouse, the SideWinder branded peripherals might be making a gaming revival. The latest rumor is the SideWinder X6 might be seeing the light of day coming in September, featuring some pretty wicked features. Unfortunately the keyboard itself and it’s features all remain rumor for now. But for those of us that love crossing our fingers and praying for them to come true.

Glowing red key’s, a detachable number pad that can snap to the right or left side of the keyboard depending on user preference. It also has programmable buttons and 2 large knobs located at the top which are thought to also be programmable for doing things like rotating through guns in an FPS, rotating through your playlist in iTunes, stuff like that. The sad thing is we’ll have to wait until September to find out if this really is a 79$ SideWinder X6, or just another rumor for the great rumor cloud of nothingness.

Source: PCInpact

You know there’s rumors that Apple is making a play for the big league and Microsoft might be in trouble. But if you look at the numbers it’s kind of like saying Hydroxycut was the solution to obesity and then looking at the percentages of the population that are overweight still. But hell even those numbers don’t go to show just how big of a lead Microsoft continues to have on a daily basis over it’s nearest desktop competitor.

The latest numbers from Microsoft are, and I quote, “the fastest annual revenue growth since 1999”. How big exactly, $60.42 billion dollars big in this past fiscal year, but that’s not the “big number” that matters. The Vista licenses sold since it’s launch 18 months ago is the number that’s astounding. For an OS that's been poorly received and with XP still hanging on and people still buying XP in droves, the fact that Microsoft reported surpassing 140 Million licenses since last April.

Ok at the rate Vista is moving it will be several years before it catches up to XP, but then again XP was one of Microsoft’s biggest operating systems of all time. That’s a pretty major amount of software to have moved especially considering how poorly reviewed and received Vista has been.

Source: Microsoft

Yes you read it correctly this is not your average CPU cooler. Now don’t go hiding your gold anklet and other jewelry just yet as it isn’t gold flowing inside this amazing littler cooler. No this new company Danamics’ has a bit of magic up it’s sleeve and no they didn’t grab a liquid terminator for it’s inner liquid either. This isn’t the first liquid metal cooler we’ve heard of as it was rumored to be coming soon to closed loop GPU coolers soon. But this is the first of it’s kind to actually hit the market is of itself quite an achievement.

The actual internal metal blend is still unknown as they aren’t releasing it to the public. But there are only so many metals that it could be especially when very few liquid metals are non-deadly. Just to make things a bit cooler is the fact that the metallic liquid is pumped through the heatsink completely without moving parts via the use of a “multi-string” electromagnetic pump. On the sad part of the news is the fact that the pricing and availability haven’t been released yet. On top of that theirs no performance data on it’s dissipation yet. But after the previous liquid-metal GPU cooler discussions it might just be one of the best coolers you can buy. Then again it might be filled with liquid terminator metal and try to take over the world.

Source: Engadget

No your not looking at the Next-Gen cutting edge DNA testing Star Trek Tricorder. No this little space age looking gadget is the Microsoft Wireless Arc Mouse. Microsoft has had one of the most extreme range of hardware products. Especially when it comes down to mice and keyboards. But this latest Arc Mouse is one of the most extreme and amazing looking ones I’ve seen to date.

It’s set to go on sale for $59.95 and will combine some awesome features to make it extremely portable, including the ability to fold up and the fact it’s completely wireless. The mouse will be available in two color, the red as shown above and a black model for those that prefer the simple less flashy colors. While an exact release date isn’t known, it’s expected to hit before this holiday season. I think the only thing that would make this more amazing to me is if they told me it was part of their laser line sensors.

Source: MaximumPC

The Valuable Group may not be a name that you know from the past but it’s owner Sanjay Gaikwad thinks he can make the now defunct MovieBeam service a worldwide phenomenon. As a bit of a refresher course, MovieBeam is a set top box from which you can stream some pretty heavily compressed HD content as well as SD movies on demand.

It’s a big move from this Indian Conglomerate to take MovieBeam that failed in the US after Disney and other media giants poured over $100 million into it. Somehow Mr. Gaikwad want's to use that same amount of cash not only to relaunch MovieBeam, but to launch it in 3 markets consisting of North America and the UK as well as “other overseas markets”. But they might be able to do it, why? Experience for one, as they already offer digital movie delivery in India and South Asia via satellite. So with them planning to roll out all 3 markets and relaunch the MovieBeam vision within the year, who knows maybe we’ll all be streaming exercise movies working out on ellipticals from our brand new cutting edge MovieBeam (Made in India), set top box.

Source: Variety

Well the next time your hanging out on your oceanfront property and you see a bright light floating in the sky, it might be a UFO, or it might be a very identified art project dreamt up by artist Peter Coffin and constructed by the London based Cinimod Studio. As you can see below it’s a pretty big piece of “art”.

The unit measures a whopping 7 meters across and is constructed of aluminum covered in 3,000 ultra-bright programmable LEDs. What really kicks things off is the fact it has a builtin 6kw generator to provide it’s power making it a completely self contained UFO. On top of that the fact it’s also remotely controlled via SMS just makes it more amazing. What’s a little bit more obscure is the fact their trying to say that on July 4th it “flew” along the coast of Sopot, Poland… Now unless it was in a plane I don’t forsee that being true, but then again they did post the video below as “proof” but then again I’ve seen flying Honda civics on youtube.

Source: Engadget

Now you might have heard about my desire, and I mean deep desire for one of VoodooPC’s new Envy 133’s units. Well it looks like these beautiful laptops are packaged in boxes and cloth wrapping deserving of such a well designed piece of hardware.

The latest pictures come straight from Voodoo’s founder Rahul Sood himself. It’s like a kitty finding the perfect cat tree to play with that perfect thing to entertain us.

For those of you that don’t remember the laptop itself sports an ultra shiny carbon fiber coating. Which the packaging protects via the cloth bag, top that sex appeal with some awesome accessories that were also shown off in the latest post from Voodoo PC’s boss. The laptop will come with several accessories such as the Voodoo Aura power connect, including 2 removable power cables just in case one ever goes bad you have a back up. Also when you hook up the Ethernet cable to the Voodoo Aura power connect the logo lights up to let you know when your IP Address is ready.

The next accessory is the Voodoo Presentation Adapter which is a lot more than just a simple HDMI to VGA adapter. This little adapter slides into the HDMI port and then automatically adjusts the display to support a projector as well. Finally you’ll also see the Voodoo ESATA optical drive which has a built-in cable that folds in underneath the device and hides in place.

Their’s a LOT of pictures of the Envy on Rahul Sood’s website, from every angle and of every add-on and piece. It’s definitely worth a look

Source: RahulSood

This is interesting, in a recent report from the Entertainment Merchant’s Association, their 2008 Annual Report on Home Entertainment Industry has shown some interesting numbers regarding usage of Blu-ray on the Playstation 3. As you might recall the Playstation 3 has been the cheapest Blu-ray player for quite some time. In fact from day 1 it has been the proverbial Discount Blu-ray plus gaming device. This recent report shows that 87% of all Playstation 3 owners use their device for Movie viewing. Which sort of backs up the whole “PS3 is more video player than game machine”.

This news from the report is probably music to Sony’s ears considering it’s a stark difference from the NPD survey last year that showed only 60% of owners knew that the PS3 even had a Blu-ray drive or what it was. This all may in the end be a moot point because even Sony has admitted that most people will stay with DVD and Bluray will not see the adoption that DVD saw from VHS because most people are content with DVD quality even on their HighDef televisions as one recent survey showed that 22% of owners think their watching HD content even when it isn’t. And with Toshiba offering to “surpass even Bluray’s quality” with their upcoming Super-UpConverting DVD Technology they might make it a moot point for Blu-ray as a Movie platform.

The real question I have is how many of those Playstation owners own more than 1 game, or even use the PS3 as a gaming console vs the other consoles. I can almost guarantee the difference is vast. But any Sony sponsored review of that would be about as believable as those diet pill reviews that we all know mean just about squat. But regardless it would be interesting considering the forums during the launch were a wash of people in Audio/Visual getting PS3’s for the cheapest route to HighDef and not for the gaming functionality. While the 360 might have the great media extender and functions. At heart it’s first a game console then a media hub. Sony has since day one been the opposite.

Source: Engadget

Ok maybe not fashionable but in the past if their was a nuclear war their were only 2 guaranteed protections from the rigors of a post-nuclear attack. Those 2 things were several feet of concrete or lots of lead inserts. And as we all know lead in itself isn’t exactly good for you and it’s heavy as hell. And we can’t exactly see carrying a concrete bunker around with us wherever we go after “da war”. Well it looks like your term life package might have a solution for after that war that drops tons of particle ionization and nuclear radiation on our world.

Radiation Shield Technologies is working on a new fabric named Demron, which is being toted as one of the only materials capable of protecting from both ionizing/nuclear radiation as well as X-Ray and low energy gamma emissions which are the 2 deadliest results of a nuclear war. What’s amazing is it does all of this without the need for lead inserts or anything of the sort, the fabric itself does all the protecting. But don’t start thinking their going to start making Demron bikini’s and blankets for the family just yet. Especially when this biological, chemical and radioactive blocking fabric that utilizes nano technology comes in at around 60 lbs for a 36” x 30” blanket. At that weight a suit would probably come in at around 120lb. Talk about doubling your body weight instantly. But hey, your protected from just about every thing the world could throw at you as well not having to worry about lead poisoning coming from protection.

Source: DangerRoom

You know something as simple as wearing a pair of designer sunglasses doesn’t sound tricky. That is unless your me and loose every frigging pair of glasses you’ve ever owned, I got my last set of glasses from amazon, and think I got ripped off from the third party guy that was selling but they were really nice. That was until I made the subtle mistake of dropping them off the top of my head somewhere. The sad part is since I live in the Caribbean not having glasses is a bit of a necessity especially since tint for your cars down here is illegal, I know don’t ask their idiots.

I’ve been looking at some replacement glasses because I want a nice set but I decided since I’m going to have to buy a new set I might as well buy a different style or name brand. I have a bit of a hot spot towards the nine west sunglasses that eyeglassescontacts offers but theirs a few other brands that are just as nice. But there's a hell of a lot of choices, the main issue though is my nose is REALLY sensitive so I have to make sure that the glasses I end up getting are feather light. My fiancee has been wanting a pair of kate spade sunglasses but the one you see above is pretty much the only great looking one especially for her as she’s a small girl :).

But this time around I’m going to make sure I take a lot better care for them, I mean theirs nothing like loosing a 110$ pair of glasses because you weren’t paying attention and it slipped from your forehead, somewhere. The problem is those little neck straps supposedly protect you from loosing them, but they make you look like a complete geek, what’s the sense in having awesome sunglasses and ending up with an nech strap making you look like a geek.

Solar energy for households is an interesting concept one that has been pretty much a one trick pony for the most part. Namely centered around photovoltaic panels and that was pretty much all that came out of the solar energy for the homes. Well that and solar heated water heaters.

The solar curtains could possibly the future of housing … but it’s a bit of an odd move considering curtains while near windows don’t really catch all the sunlight considering their inside the house. That sort of makes the image above that showcases the design a bit odd, I mean curtains outside. While the idea of embedding flexible solar panel particles inside of the curtains is a great idea. I mean if we’re going to be blocking light from the inside of the house we might as well take advantage of the light that's being blocked. But to be completely honest I only really see this as being fully utilized when the nano-photovoltaic transparent window panes are ready and we can have the windows and the curtains all sucking in that good ol’ sunlight energy.

Soon enough every inch of our houses will be able to be photovoltaic, Curtains, Window Panes, Theirs Photovoltaic paint in the works for the outdoor walls, then theirs also the roll-able and shingle based photovoltaic panels for the roof. But at the what seems like the rate of a slow tectonic drift it will probably be a very long time until we see all of these technologies culminating on joe-shmoes house and not just the uber rich and researchers houses, I wonder when a trip including some Chicago travel plans will include driving past 100% energy efficient houses. Seems like that would indeed cover 100% of the house with some form of photovoltaic absorption can you say “off the grid”?

Source: Inhabitat

Well it looks like the scifi push for domed cities has fallen on the hearts and minds of some farmers in Kent, England. The group of farmers are setting out to build something enormous. 220 acres of greenhouses all in one giant area with all that soil you’d think that they would be growing something in all that soil. But you would be wrong you won’t see the little plants needed for all natural weight loss pills growing in the soil in this greenhouse. You will however see plants growing but it will be in the form of 1.3 million plants growing hydroponically. The entire lot of seven greenhouses will be able to increase the UK’s green vegetable supply by around 15%. That’s a lot of growth from one single expansive farm project to boost an entire nation by 15%.

What’s even more interesting is the fact that during the dry season the greenhouse unlike many others will be fully self sufficient during the season via the ability to collect rainwater from October throughout April.

Source: Gizmodo

Intel has been holding off on the USB 3.0 spec from the rest of the industry on the terms that the spec isn’t ready and that they don’t want the different manufacturers following somewhat different revisions and ending up with incompatibility. Well it looks like 2 big companies are sick of waiting and AMD and NVIDIA are getting together to produce a new standard of their own that will compete directly against USB 3.0. It sort of feels like a pharamaceuticul manufacturer getting pissed that safe diet pills have been on the drawing board for to long and just said “screw it we’ll do it ourselves!”. Their first meeting to discuss the new standard is said to be taking place this week.

This looks like a new type of war, this time between the behemoth that is the USB standard and whatever they call this AMD/NVIDIA hybrid technology. If theirs 2 companies that can pull it off it would be AMD and NVIDIA. It’s a bit of a funny thing when you think of it however… AMD is also ATI … So technically it’s AMD/ATI/NVIDIA joining forces, that's one hell of a graphics powerhouse and technology powerhouse getting together to form this new standard. It sure will be interesting to see how the 2 standards will line up considering the fact that it’s basically AMD vs Intel like in the processor arena. The other question is if this will force Intel’s hand to rectify the delays of USB 3.0 and finalize the specification to get it to market before NVIDIA and AMD can get moving on their platform.

Source: DailyTech

Don’t you just love technology research departments, I mean Microsoft Research is awesome but Intel’s Research has just announced something that’s pretty amazing any way you look at it.

The robotic hand developed by Intel research and development does something no robotic hand or body part before has ever done that might stand to shape the way robotics interact with the world around it. The system uses something called electrolocation that works by sending out weak electrical impulses from the fingertips of the hand which sends feedback as it approaches the object itself. Kind of giving the hand intuition about the object that it’s preparing to grasp.

This is a bigger invention than diet pills were to those that believe in them, I mean this could easily revolutionize the way all robots interact. Imagine prosthetics that use this process to send back feedback to the user about the object his hand is approaching, combine that with something like heat and general pressure sensors and this might be better than a regular hand.

Source: Gizmodo

Engadget got a hold of the ultra sexy very small Samsung SC-HMX20C today a very very impressive camcorder that does just about everything a tech loving video junkie could want. Including its #1 feature full HD 1080p recording. Top that off with the more sexy features like 8gb of onboard flash storage so you don’t even need a flash card or DVD to start recording. Add to that a bit of touchscreen UI and walla you have a camcorder that looks to be pretty amazing.

There's a bunch of pictures of the camera and I’m hoping that when they post some highdef videos to test the camera that it is a bit more than just videos of kids on swing sets or a kitty running around. Theirs not much on Engadget’s site yet besides a slew of pictures of the very sexy camera, but theirs also a few videos coming. What’s also pretty nice is that for $850 you can get this very sexy piece of hardware which is definitely not bad for a FullHD 1080p (1920x1080 resolution), with that 8gb builtin flash and touchscreen LCD controls.

Source: EngadgetHD

Remember a few days ago VoodooPC’s website was set ablaze well it turns out their was a good reason. Well they’re back with some major fire in the shape of hardware that’ll make any geek grin in the biggest of ways. It’s like an awesome set of cutting golf shoes shoes to tiger woods. These new products are minimalist looking yet look like something between a cross of a super hot macbook pro and … I don’t know it’s just hot!

2 Products were announced the Envy 133 is the Laptop that you see above that has that nice slim sexy appeal. To the right you see the desktop model, which has the same sort of sexy appeal and minimalist look as the laptop, but the Omen desktop as you can see stands proud with a pretty awesome looking screen at the top. I swear these might be the 2 sexiest computers I’ve seen in… forever. I think the only thing missing from the lineup now that they have the black and white model laptops and the desktop is a sexy all in one unit which would fit nicely with these 2 current products. For more images check the source.

Source: Engadget

Billboards with facial recognition software just dripping of awesome yet scariness. There’s been rumors of “smart billboards” coming for a while now originally it was just an idea of combining cameras with billboards to record who was looking at them. But it’s as I said getting a bit more advanced with several advertisers also adding in facial recognition software to record other things besides the pictures but also important information such as age and gender and while they don’t mention it most likely race as well and other factors.

Quividi has supplied camera equipped ads to McDonald’s in Singapore and Ikea in Europe but the technology is now moving toward coming the US now. It’s already begun deployment in New York for the A&E show “The Andromeda Strain” mini-series as well as in Philadelphia in train station based ads for Philadelphia Soul. But that’s just the beginning with a company named TruMedia deploying similar technology to about 30 locations throughout the US in Missouri, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, it’s an interesting concept, if mothers tend to be walking around between a certain age with kids and walk past they could display children's clothes and other advertisements that might fit her demographic.

As the systems currently exist they aren’t recording and saving video but the possibility hasn’t been ruled out and considering the way the system operates it’s just a flick of a switch to activate it I would suppose. Racial data and profiling is also being discussed for future advancements in the targeting of the ads being displayed.

At this rate we’re just around the corner from guys walking around in the V for Vendetta masks, ok maybe not yet it’s not that extreme, as it currently is it’s just a tool lets just hope they don’t take the concept to lengths that would deem it … less than favorable. I mean these are billboards in public locales so unless they start profiling me and displaying porn when I walk past it’s fine, when they start watching me from my cable TV box then I’ll get concerned myself.

Source: Techdirt

You know while girls around the world worry about the small stuff like mineral makeup and geeks worry about net neutrality. It might be the privacy paranoid advocates getting what they were thinking. You see in an “industrialized nation” ya that's all their giving us no specifics. A group of researchers secretly tracked the location of 100,000 people to determine the pattern of their movements. The 100,000 people were chosen at random from a lot of 6 million wireless subscribers in the mysterious country.

Now the US is an industrialized country, but as far as i know something like this is considered breaking our privacy rights and completely illegal. I mean where ever this took place through the use of cell tower triangulation and other “tracking devices” on the bright side the studies author says that it didn’t betray the users privacy because the study did not know the peoples identity or their phone numbers, in essence they were just blips moving on a screen.

On the bright side the study did have some interesting facts that hadn’t ben proven before with the Northwestern University research showing that people are homebodies who live and stay within 20 miles of their homes and are rather habitual about their movements. The study stands to provide improvements to future public transit systems as well as in the advancement of containing and fighting contagious diseases.

Source: MSNBC

Computex has really been an interesting time for the gadget geeks in all of us. Mainly because of the dozens of netbooks the manufacturers have brought forward to get us geeks to drool. But laptops aren’t the only tiny toys slipping into Computex that came in tiny packages and impressed in a big way.

The latest of these “Pico projectors” as their known is from Foxconn (yah the guys known for some pretty decent motherboards) the PD-W1001 features a 0.3-inch Texas Instruments DLP chip as well as WVGA (854 x 480) resolution not to mention a miniscule 25 lumen output. Best of all it comes in the tiny package you see above measuring it at a miniscule 55x46x26 millimeter package and only 65 grams. Now had it not been for the miniscule resolution and lumen count this might have been more than just another pretty toy, maybe if they could crank it up to a solid 100Lm and 720p I’d be truly interested. For now it’s pretty much only really helpful for work presentations.

Source: AboutProjectors