specification

Intel is offering more specifics on the features of future Windows 8 tablet at a conference in Beijing. It's a laudable goal, but can Intel make it happen this year?

Underneath the glass will be beat an Atom Z2760 "Clover Trail" chip: dual-core capable with "burst mode" (for quick bursts of performance when needed) and Hyperthreading -- the latter allows a dual-core chip to behave in quad-core-like fashion in some cases. … Read more

If there were any concerns about whether MySpace will continue to live on as a service that's tied to music culture, the new owners are trying to put that to rest. One of them being pop star Justin Timberlake.

Specific Media, which earlier today purchased MySpace from News Corp., announced Timberlake's involvement as both an owner and shaper of where the company plans to take the social network.

"As part of the deal, Emmy and Grammy winning artist Justin Timberlake will also take an ownership stake and play a major role in developing the creative direction and strategy for the company moving forward," Specific Media said in a follow-up release. "Specific Media and Timberlake plan to unveil their vision for the site in an exclusive press conference later this summer."

In the meantime, the company says MySpace will become "the premiere digital destination for original shows, video content, and music."

How much of an investment Timberlake put in to the deal, which is rumored to sit at $35 million, is unknown. … Read more

Social network MySpace has been sold once again.

The buyer is digital-media company Specific Media, which purchased the site from News Corp. for an undisclosed sum. As part of the deal, News Corp. will take a minority equity stake in Specific Media.

AllThingsD's Kara Swisher, who first reported the sale earlier today, said Specific Media paid $35 million.

In a statement about the sale, Specific Media CEO Tim Vanderhook said: "Myspace is a recognized leader that has pioneered the social media space. The company has transformed the ways in which audiences discover, consume and engage with content online."

"There are many synergies between our companies as we are both focused on enhancing digital media experiences by fueling connections with relevance and interest," he said.… Read more

We are predisposed to like any program that makes life easier, especially if that means collecting a lot of useful information in one place. That's exactly what Computer Specifications does. It's an extremely simple program with few features, but if you want a quick look at what's going on with your machine, you might find that it does exactly what you need it to do.

The program's designer didn't waste any time on aesthetics; Computer Specifications' interface is about as bare-bones as it could be. There's a series of text boxes displaying information and … Read more

VidImage Splitter provides a helpful tool for converting videos into photos. With a simple layout and impressive results, this program is a great tool for taking a digital snapshot of a film.

The program's interface features a welcoming, intuitive design that never leaves you guessing. The program's commands are perfectly labeled, which makes for easy, confident navigation. The steps between choosing a video and cutting that film into photo files are few and are helpfully laid out. You can organize the program like a camera with a timer, setting it to capture a shot every few seconds or … Read more

According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, since January 2005 there have been more than 252 millions records containing sensitive personal information compromised because of security breaches in the U.S.

Most of these breaches were because of the loss of computer equipment, more specifically the hard drive. When a laptop is stolen, chances are the information contained on its hard drive is worth a lot more than the value of the computer itself. And thousands of laptops are stolen each year.

For this reason, the Trusted Computing Group released Tuesday its final versions of three storage specifications designed to enable … Read more

A couple of recent articles dovetail nicely about how specifications, and what those specifications describe, influence how people make buying decisions.

The first is from a study looking at how choices between competing products are made, first based on subjective criteria, and then when specifications are introduced.

In an initial experiment, Christopher Hsee and colleagues asked 112 students to choose between one of two hypothetical cameras: one boasted better resolution, the other having superior vividness. Based on sample photos taken by the two cameras, but without detail on the precise resolution specs, most participants (74 percent) chose the camera that … Read more

Listen, if you're buying speakers, the best thing to do is listen to them. If you can't, you'll learn a lot perusing specifications.

Online shoppers need the most info, but even brick-and-mortar buyers can predict quite a lot about a prospective speaker's performance and system compatibility by looking at the numbers. Tech talk gets you woozy? No problem, the main points of interest would be the dimensions of the speaker and how much the thing weighs.

Hint: bigger and heavier speakers almost always sound better than small, lightweight ones.

So far, so good, but woofer size also provides clues about how much bass a speaker will produce. Bigger woofers make more bass than smaller ones, but the cabinet's size is almost as important a factor as woofer size in determining bass quality/quantity. Multiple woofers may look impressive, but they're less reliable predictors of bass oomph; we've tested lots of skinny speakers with two, three, four, or more drivers that didn't make much bass. The cabinets were too damned small, four 3-inch woofers don't make as much bass as one 6-inch woofer in a larger box.

You might hope the frequency response specification, "38 Hertz -- 22,000 Hertz," would predict how much bass the speaker would make. The first part of that spec, "38 Hertz" refers to the bass output--the lower the number--the deeper the bass. Ah, but since there wasn't any reference to the tolerance of the spec, it's just about useless. Some manufacturers include a "+/-" after the frequency response number, something like 38 Hertz - 22,000 Hertz +/- 3 dB, and that helps a bit. Any speaker that reaches 50 Hz or lower can be considered "full range" and doesn't necessarily need to be partnered with a subwoofer--for music. Multichannel (5.1, 6.1, 7.1) home Theater applications almost always require subwoofers.

I have less to say about tweeters, other than to recommend buying speakers with tweeters; a fair number of pricey "sound bar" speakers are tweeterless. That's not to say they will sound bad, just not as detailed and clear as speakers with decent tweeters. … Read more

This is an efficient, easy-to-use tool to help you figure out the details that make your computer tick. BIOS Agent is a lightweight freeware application with a clean and well-designed interface that lets you get the information you need with only a few button presses.

The program can retrieve information on the type of BIOS your computer runs and chipset type, as well as information on CPU, ROM, and RAM. Once you've gathered the details you need, you can save the report in TXT format or print it. There's no installation required for BIOS Agent, and it should … Read more