Crave

An Eee PC Netbook based on a Qualcomm processor that runs Google's Android operating system looks promising as an alternative to the millions of Netbooks out there tethered to Intel Atom processors and Microsoft Windows.

An Asus Qualcomm-based smart-book is a promising alternative to Windows-Intel Netbooks

(Credit: Asus)

Asus was showing a Netbook at the Computex conference in Taipei running the Android OS on top of Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor, according to this TweakTown video.

When Asus plans to ship a Netbook based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor isn't clear and Asus is not disclosing its plans (later this year?), but it becomes even less clear when you add Google's Android operating system to the mix. Michael Rayfield, an Nvidia executive, doesn't expect Android Netbooks to appear commercially until next year.

What is clear, however, is that these Netbooks are different from the Windows-Intel variety. Qualcomm is calling them "smartbooks" rather than Netbooks to draw attention to the fact that they will operate more like smartphones: standard 3G connectivity, always-on, and all-day battery life.

And what makes this Asus demonstration at Computex interesting is that all Asus Netbooks to date have run on Intel processors. Obviously, Asus thinks the Snapdragon technology is different enough to warrant a separate design.

Other specification for the Netbook include a 10-inch screen, a built-in Webcam, and a universal 3G radio that supports UMTS and CDMA networks on all frequencies used globally, according to an IDG News report.

The current generation of compunerds is totally screwed. We (yes, I'm one of you) spend at least eight hours surfing the Internet on a daily basis, weekends included! Those YouTube videos aren't going to watch themselves, right?

That's why ergonomics is so important. We need specific keyboards and mice to angle our wrists properly and alleviate all that unnecessary stress--I can't think of a bigger weekend downer than the dreaded "mouse arm."

Thanks to the brilliant minds at Brando Workshop, we now have another ergonomic tool at our disposal. The White Bread Wrist Rest is designed to fit neatly under your hand, elevating your wrist just enough to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome later in life.*

They're sold in individual slices for $6, but you can save $2 by purchasing two. Each one measures about 4.4 inches long, 5.5 inches wide, and a little over half an inch thick. You might not think that half an inch makes a huge difference, and you're probably right. In either case, Brando's got you covered! According to its Web site, the Bread Wrist Rest is also "good for decoration." Can somebody say...twofer?!

*Absolutely not guaranteed

When Apple finally announced the App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch, the door was opened to many possibilities. With its huge library of applications, the one thing that seemed to be missing was a World War II shooter. I'm sure many keen minds tried to bring a real game experience to this portable device, but a good control scheme is essential for a real gaming feel. Because of its lack of buttons, this posed a problem until now. On December 2, Gameloft's Brothers in Arms: Hour of Heroes landed in Apple's App Store.

This is the first WWII shooter to debut in the App Store; it also captures all the action from the Brother in Arms franchise and brings it to your iPhone.

• 13 missions in across 3 historical campaigns: Normandy, Ardennes & Tunisia
• Impressive 3D graphics and crisp clear audio
• The capability to command Jeeps and Sherman tanks to help advance the Allied forces across the battlefield
• A wide range of weapons at your side (bazooka, sniper rifle, machine guns, and so on)
• Use of the iPhone's accelerometer controls to launch grenades and the touch screen to aim at and shoot enemies

This game (check out the video below) will definitely make your morning commute seem a lot quicker.

Netbooks using ARM's next-generation processor architecture will be announced soon, according to a senior executive at the company.

Rob Coombs, director of mobile solutions at the U.K. processor design company, told ZDNet UK on Wednesday that Cortex-A8- and Cortex-A9-based application processors would find their way not only into smartphones--as with most ARM architecture--but also into small, low-cost subnotebooks.

"In the future, we're going to be in Netbooks," Coombs said. "Expect announcements in the next few months."

EPISODE 110

New arms!!

Laser for dental pain

Ultrasound wound cuff

Syringe alternative

One-touch ping

Therapeutic robot

iPhone heart monitor by John Ballinger

What the hell?
Share secrets with interactive plant from Sega

Fug
Ladybud earrings

Gender Gap
2009 Dodge Ram

Pink Watch
Third space-gaming vest now in pink for the ladies

Tool Time (Golf crap edition!)
Bulletproof polos make golf course assassinations a thing of the past

Hello Kitty Watch (Thanks, SuperGenius!)
Hello Kitty USB Webcam sees all

A U.K. company has developed what it calls the smallest snake-arm robot ever, one that is flexible and compliant, like an endoscope, but fully controllable and, like a robot, can be precisely positioned.

The unit will be tested by the U.S. Department of Defense in conducting inspections and work inside confined or cluttered spaces.

(Credit: OC Robotics)

When not in use, the robot coils up into a briefcase-size box where it is stowed. This robot has no "elbows," which allows it to "follow its nose" while maneuvering in tight quarters, according to the developer, Bristol-based OC Robotics, unlike conventional industrial robots, which are virtually useless "because their elbows get in the way." (Videos).

The snake-arm is 24-inches long, with longer units on the way. The tendon-driven arm is comprised of vertebrae, similar to a human spine, with wires terminating at various points along its length. The result is that an operator with a joystick can independently control each of the segments (PDF).

The company envisions dozen of uses for the new snake-bot, including aerospace assembly, nuclear inspection and a variant of invasive surgical called "natural orifice surgery." Yeeoow.

(Credit: OC Robotics)

It's been a big week for small systems.

On May 29, VIA formally announced (here) its "Nano" family of low-power x86 processors. These chips will be especially valuable in small laptops, UMPCs, and so-called mobile Internet devices (MIDs).

Then on June 2, NVIDIA announced (here) its Tegra 600 family, which is also being marketed for MIDs. But Tegra is a very different animal. It's based on an ARM11 processor core, which can run Windows Mobile or Linux but not Windows XP or Vista.

VIA's Nano processor. The chip itself, the silver rectangle in the center, is about 7.7mm x 8.3mm.

(Credit: Courtesy of VIA Technologies, Inc.)

VIA's Nano processors are based on a new microarchitecture that is a giant step beyond previous VIA products and not far behind that of competing parts from AMD and Intel. Unfortunately, in this business, third place isn't a good place to be. VIA's older processors sold in relatively small quantities for low prices. Fortunately, they were very small and thus economical to make and sell.

The new Nano family offers much higher performance, with clock speeds from 1.0 to 1.8 GHz... but it's difficult to know what these clock speeds mean by comparison with AMD's or Intel's, and VIA isn't telling us, at least not directly. In this white paper on the Nano family, VIA only compares the performance of the new chips to its older C7 series.

But VIA does publish some numbers, so I was able to make some comparisons.

Take, for example, the Nano L2100 at 1.8 GHz vs. AMD's 2005-vintage Turion 64 ML-34 at the same speed, as found in the famous Acer Ferrari 4000 (reviewed here by PC World). The single-core ML-34 was much faster despite the clock-speed parity:

Of course, the ML-34 consumes much more power than VIA's processor; the ML-34 has a 35W TDP (thermal design power) specification, whereas the L2100 has a 25W TDP. The L2100 idles at a mere 500mW, but the ML-34 probably consumes at least ten times as much when idle.

To be fair, I'm not sure these are entirely fair comparisons, since VIA didn't publish the details of their system configuration. Also, VIA's performance position probably looks better on simple productivity applications, but I prefer to look at multimedia performance since that's what we usually find ourselves waiting on. It's been a while since we had to worry about out-typing our word processor...

I'm looking forward to seeing some good performance and power figures for Intel's Atom; I think the VIA chips will turn out to be effectively faster but run a little hotter. When I get more data, I'll post a comparison.

But considering that the Nano is generally 60% to 200% faster than the C7 and much more power-efficient than competing products from AMD and Intel, the new product family will likely improve VIA's market position significantly over the next year.

NVIDIA's Tegra, a high-integration processor for handheld gizmos such as mobile Internet devices.

(Credit: Courtesy NVIDIA Corporation)

NVIDIA's Tegra, on the other hand, offers no compatibility with existing PC systems or software, and its performance isn't even in the same class. The Tegra 600 family's ARM11 processor core runs at a maximum speed of 800MHz and, because it's a much simpler design, it offers a fraction of the effective performance of VIA's Nano.

So how can it possibly compete with Nano in mobile Internet devices?

Well, one answer is that Tegra is meant to deliver a much more complete solution with much lower power consumption. Instead of being just a core on a chip, like the Nano family, the Tegra 600 and 650 consist of a CPU core, a GeForce GPU, special-purpose hardware for accelerating digital video decoding and camera functions, and a dual-display controller that supports HDMI, LCDs, CRTs, and NTSC/PAL video. All of that on a chip the size of a dime, as you can see in the photo.

But the real answer is that what NVIDIA means by "mobile Internet devices" is different than what Intel (which coined the phrase), AMD, and VIA mean by it.

What NVIDIA means is basically any device with a size somewhere between that of a smartphone and a laptop, which can be used to access the Internet. But this doesn't strike me as a very useful definition; it boils down to encompassing anything like a smartphone with a larger screen. It's one thing to claim the Tegra 600 family supports a "full Internet experience" as NVIDIA did in advance briefings last month, but with the wide variety of sophisticated Web 2.0 websites out there, it really takes a PC-compatible system to deliver that experience.

Now, there's no doubt that the Tegra 600 and 650 will enable fun and interesting gizmos for people who buy lots of gizmos. (And honestly, I'm exactly that kind of person.) But I believe most people are not going to be interested in them. Anything larger than a cellphone is too big to carry around all the time. Anything with a screen smaller than about 7" to 9" isn't big enough for comfortable web browsing and movie watching. Anything with a screen that large might as well be a full Windows-compatible system.

Now, over time, these segments will inevitably blur together. Moore's Law will let us squeeze more performance into handheld devices. Software technologies like Adobe's Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight will allow more websites to work on simpler systems. Hardware like high-resolution LCDs and OLEDs and tiny projection displays will help solve size problems too.

But for now, I believe the Tegra 600 family is aimed at a market segment that isn't ready to develop, whereas VIA's Nano has a big market ready and waiting for it. The Nano won't sell as well as competing PC processors from AMD and Intel, but it should help raise awareness of VIA among PC buyers and encourage PC makers to keep pushing more functionality into smaller packages.

(Credit: Tresling.org)

First the movie, now the arena? This one is more real than reel because there's even an official Web site with video to promote the idea of Tresling, a sport combining arm wrestling with a board game setup and Tetris. To play, each hook, top roll, and press equates a turn of a block. Clearly, wimps need not apply, since failure to maintain your position will send your blocks tumbling all over the place. Lockjaw and grunts optional.

(Source: Crave Asia)

1999 Psion Revo Plus PDA looks a lot like MIDs today.

(Credit: Miha Ulanov)

The iPhone is a mobile Internet device. Just in case you forgot, ARM wants to remind you that before the Intel Atom processor there was the iPhone and its handful of ARM processors. Yeah, it's a MID too.

Listening to Intel, a casual observer might believe that the world's largest chipmaker is single-handedly creating the class of tiny devices called mobile Internet devices or MIDs.

But ARM processors have been powering small, low-power devices since 1985. There was the Psion series of handhelds, the Apple Newton, Nintendo DS, and, today, products like the Microsoft Zune. All used or use ARM architecture chips.

On a Web page titled Mobile Internet Devices, ARM now posts this marketing message: "It is clear that the future of mobile computing rests in devices that are truly mobile, always connected and providing a rich Internet browsing experience--ARM calls these devices Mobile Internet Devices (MID)." Intel does too.

The Apple iPhone is full of ARM silicon and technically a MID

(Credit: ARM)

ARM lists other devices like the Nokia N95, the BlackBerry 8700g, and the Motorola Q. All powered by ARM silicon.

The Web page continues: "ARM licenses the intellectual property that powers MIDs. This includes all the technology required by the chips at the heart of these devices: the microprocessor, digital signal processing, embedded memory, graphics acceleration, (and) fabric interconnect."

And ARM is not exaggerating. If anything ARM is understating the case. As one of the most understated chip architectures today, few consumers know the name. And almost no one listening to their Zune or iPod or talking on their Nokia phone knows that there is ARM silicon inside. But consumers can hardly miss the flashy Intel, AMD, ATI, or Nvidia branding on their PCs.

And this conspicuous PC-style branding strategy will carry over to Intel MIDs and Netbooks too. Lest consumers forget, maybe ARM should do a little more in-your-face branding.