hardware

Last year, we took a look at the Cobra iRadar detector and app for iPhone. Now Android compatibility is available for Cobra's device with the release of the iRadar app for Android, available for download in the Android Market.

The Cobra iRadar app for Android offers all of the standalone features that we saw when we tested the iOS version, including GPS warnings for known road hazards, traffic cameras, and speed traps using Cobra's Aura Camera and Driving Hazard Database (data connection required) with Google Maps integration. You can also set a speed warning with notifications when a … Read more

Our utilities update report is a column on updates for Mac utilities that have been released in the past week. Though a utility can be any tool that helps you perform a routine task (including image manipulation and synchronization), our focus in this column is on bringing you those tools that help in troubleshooting Mac hardware and software problems. This week there were updates for some maintenance tools, a couple of hard-disk monitoring tools, and some file recovery and duplicate file management tools.

Maintenance In maintenance utilities this week, the tools Cocktail and Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner have been updated. … Read more

Our utilities update report is a column on updates for Mac utilities that have been released in the past week. Though a utility can be any tool that helps you perform a routine task (including image manipulation and synchronization), our focus in this column is on bringing you those tools that help in troubleshooting Mac hardware and software problems. This week there were only a few updates, for a couple of popular maintenance utility titles, and a new tool that can help optimize SSD performance in some systems.

Maintenance There are few utility updates this week, and the majority of … Read more

Our utilities update report is a column on updates for Mac utilities that have been released in the past week. Though a utility can be any tool that helps you perform a routine task (including image manipulation and synchronization), our focus in this column is on bringing you those tools that help in troubleshooting Mac hardware and software problems. This week there were updates to some maintenance and filesystem tools, including a major update of TechTool Pro, and some hardware and process management tools.

Maintenance Some standard maintenance programs were updated this week. The tools OnyX and Maintenance are made … Read more

After some real-world tests, Microsoft has concluded IE9 is the most energy-efficient of the major browsers on the market.

Microsoft compared its new browser with Opera 11, Firefox 4, Chrome 10, and Safari 5 on an Intel laptop, measuring how many watts the machine consumed with the browser idling, showing a news site, and running graphics-intensive Web tests.

The upshot: IE9 is the most efficient in the test, meaning it'll take the smallest toll on the battery.

"We hope and encourage the industry and other browser vendors to follow us on the path to a more power efficient … Read more

Our utilities update report is a column on updates for Mac utilities that have been released in the past week. Though a utility can be any tool that helps you perform a routine task (including image manipulation and synchronization), our focus in this column is on bringing you those tools that help in troubleshooting Mac hardware and software problems. This week there were updates to some maintenance and filesystem tools, including a major update of TechTool Pro, and some hardware and process management tools.

Maintenance In maintenance utilities this week, the popular tools OnyX and MacPilot have been updated. OnyX … Read more

Our utilities update report is a column on updates for Mac utilities that have been released in the past week. Though a utility can be any tool that helps you perform a routine task (including image manipulation and synchronization), our focus in this column is on bringing you those tools that help in troubleshooting Mac hardware and software problems. This week there were updates to hardware monitoring tools, tools for files and filesystem management, and some maintenance tools.

Hardware In hardware utilities, the popular Hardware Monitor, Hardware Monitor Remote, and Temperature Monitor utilities have been updated to support the latest … Read more

Addressing a major weakness its plan to build its WebM video technology into the Web, Google yesterday released a version of its VP8 video encoder and decoder designed to be baked into hardware.

The hardware implementation of VP8 is called H1 and now Anthill, said Aki Kuusela, engineering manager of the WebM Project, in a blog post. It comes in the form of RTL, or Register Transfer Language, a very low-level description close to how processors actually perform their instructions, and it's available royalty free.

"The H1 hardware encoder can produce good quality with very low power consumption … Read more

Hardware acceleration has become the holy grail of browser development in the past year, as the technology to increase browser performance by tapping graphics cards to help with Web site rendering has advanced from the theoretical to the practical. Despite Opera being a longtime developer and advocate of hardware acceleration standards, and the first major browser maker to demonstrate hardware acceleration in use, no publicly released version of Opera included the technology--until today.

Opera 11.50 (direct download) is a rough alpha, unstable, not for daily use, and limited to Windows computers, but it does have hardware acceleration. This means … Read more