Author Archives: Christen McGregor

Panasonic brought out the big guns at the Consumer Electronics Show with Justin Timberlake in an attempt to resuscitate the suffering social networking website, Myspace. At last year's E3, Panasonic introduced their new line of TVs that had Netflix and Amazon VOD access, and Facebook support. The company is striving to continue connecting consumers to social media through their TV. To do this, Panasonic and Myspace have collaborated to make Myspace TV.

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The post-holiday sale numbers are looking good for Microsoft's XBOX 360 and Kinect. By the end of Q1 Microsoft reported 57.6 million units were shipped. That number has increased by almost 10 million, with some thanks going to the recent holiday season. In a 2011 roundup video released by Microsoft, the XBOX 360 has sold 66 million units.

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Bodymetrics is showcasing body-mapping technology at CES 2012 this week called PrimeSense 3D. It takes advantage off Microsoft Kinect technology to map users' body size and dimensions. An example of its application is with online shopping through partnered retailers. The software matches a person's measurements exactly with the clothing dimensions.

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Analyzing data of the human genome is no small task. However, with the help of graphic chips, what once took genome sequencing centers days to complete, can be done in six hours. To accomplish this, BGI, a lab headquartered in Shenzhen, China, have given their servers a facelift with Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) built by Nvidia. That's right, the same hardware that outputs images onto personal computers around the world, could account for major advances in the medical field.

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The OLPC project are finally ready for the launch of their next XO Tablet. The XO 3.0, which has been in limbo for some time, will be shown off at CES next week. Marvell and OLPC have collaborated on previous models that are currently in the hands of over 2.4 million children in 42 countries. Chief Technology Officer of One Laptop per Child, Edward McNierney stated the XO 3.0 is a "natural successor" for their current laptops.

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With cloud computing on the rise, BitTorrent Inc., has created its own service to compete with DropBox and other file sharing services. BitTorrent Inc. is widely known for its peer-to-peer file sharing protocol, BitTorrent. Thursday marked an important day for the company with the launch of Share. With other services such as DropBox, SkyDrive, and Box.net available, Share will have some competition, but Share offers its users what others cant.

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Those attending CES will benefit Ford's Focus Electric, which are slated to leave assembly lines in March. Repreve, made by Unifi, is a blend of post-industrial fiber waste and post-consumer waste. Starting this year Repreve will be used in the Focus' seating material. To do this Ford plans to divert about 2 million post-consumer plastic bottles. Of the 2 million plastic bottles, the equivalent of 22 will be used in in each Electric Focus.

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Valve disclosed their Steam sales in 2011 more than doubled the mark set in 2010, marking seven consecutive years of 100 percent growth. Can we stop with the cute "PC gaming is dying", and let the numbers speak for themselves? Steam sales are no where near slowing down based on this new information, and the number of simultaneous users surpassing the five million mark. PC gaming is thriving.

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If Steve Jobs could see the figures for digital downloads today, there would be a big sheepish grin on his face. After promising to reinvent the music industry with the iPod over ten years ago, that promise is now ringing true. For the first time in the U.S. physical sales have been overshadowed by digital downloads. Adding salt to an open wound, digital downloads have not only increased to surpass the competition, but physical sales have actually fallen 5%, Nielsen SoundScan and Billboard reported.

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LG Electronics will showcase their new TVs powered by Google TV at CES in Las Vegas next week. Running on their own L9 chipset, the LG Smart TV is a brilliant mash up between Google's Android OS and LG's Smart TV technologies. The Google TV will feature ARM-based chipsets, allowing for a reduction in power consumption.

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We've all seen the crazy antics in movies that would be nigh impossible to pull off in any other situation than a movie set. Tom Cruise's character in the latest Mission Impossible, Ethan Hunt, strolled into the Moskow Kremlin, set up a faux-transparency screen in a guarded hallway that concealed him and his partner. Now, imagine that sans the special screen used by Cruise's character; an entire event going unseen. Scientists at Cornell University have, albeit on a much smaller scale, allowed for just that.

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In an already wounded market, those in the business for Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) chips are experiencing more downfalls after research done by IHS iSupply. According to the research, DRAM chips, which are used in products such as personal computers and video game systems, is in a state of oversupply. This has put memory suppliers in a bad state.

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