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A car group in Tokyo recently drove an electric car 1,003.184 kilometers (about 623 miles) on a single charge, breaking its own record for greatest distance traveled without recharging.

The Japan Electric Vehicle Club has asked Guinness World Records to certify the event, held at a track in Shimotsuma, Ibaraki Prefecture, last month.

The modified Daihatsu Mira ran on a Sanyo lithium ion power system containing more than 8,320 batteries. The car ran for 27.5 hours at about 25 mph. Seventeen drivers took turns at the wheel.

Guinness recognized the club's 345-mile journey from Tokyo to Osaka in November 2009 as the longest on a single charge, according to Kyodo News.

I'd like to know how many times the drivers stopped--and how this affected battery performance. Also, how do you fit more than 8,320 batteries (albeit small ones) into a car as tiny as the Mira? I doubt that there was much leg room left.

(Via Gizmag)

The silicon powering the Google TV technology is a window on Intel's future and an affirmation of its new credo: integrate, integrate, integrate.

The CE4100 is a system-on-a-chip, or SOC, which essentially means all of the various features of a computing device are packed onto one piece of silicon. Intel historically has not focused on this kind of highly-integrated chip, but rather ultra-fast processors designed for PCs and servers.

But designing Intel chips is now becoming an exercise in how many disparate features can be squeezed onto the proverbial head of a pin. In this case, the CE4100 turns a TV into a versatile computing device. "We are transforming TVs from essentially a dumb display device to smart computing device," Eric B. Kim, senior vice president at Intel, said in a phone interview Wednesday.

Intel is not taking its eye off performance, though. "High performance is needed to deal with large screens, multiple streams of high-definition audio and video. Google could not do what they want on today's SOCs," said Kim. "This is not something that you hold in your hand. This is something you plug into the wall," he said, referring to other chip designs that emphasize power saving features over performance.

Intel's CE 4100 has an Intel Atom processor at its core but also packs a bunch of extras such as both graphics and display processors, audio digital signal processors, and one-gigabit Ethernet.

(Credit:Intel)Intel is also touting the technology's support for Adobe's Flash player. "Our view is that both HTML5 and Flash are great, so our solution supports both. (Therefore) products built with our silicon run everything," Kim said, referring to Apple's lack of support for Flash on some its products.

The Sony Internet TV, the first TV lineup incorporating the Google TV platform, will use the CE4100 chip. The initial models from Sony are slated for the U.S. market in the fall of 2010. The lineup will include both a standalone TV and set top box-type unit incorporating a Blu-ray Disc drive.

And Logitech will introduce a companion box that brings Google TV to existing HDTV home entertainment systems. This will also use the Intel chip.

Intel on Tuesday provided more color to its plans for supercomputing chips that would eventually compete with offerings from Nvidia. Intel said it will provide further details next week at a supercomputing conference. In the wake of Intel's cancelation of the "Larrabee" graphics chip project in December of last year, Intel is now focusing on an analogous project targeted at supercomputers, a market that is generally referred to as high-performance computing or HPC.

"We are...executing on a business opportunity derived from the Larrabee program and Intel research in many-core chips," Bill Kircos, an Intel spokesman said Tuesday, writing in a blog posted on Intel's Web site.

"This server product line expansion is optimized for...segments such as high-performance computing," he wrote. Intel Vice President Kirk Skaugen will provide further details next week at ISC 2010 in Germany.

Kircos reiterated that Intel has no plans to bring out a discrete graphics chip like the Larrabee chip for gaming PCs. "We will not bring a discrete graphics product to market, at least in the short-term," he wrote.

But the prospect of a many-core chip from Intel is intriguing, as this is a market graphics chip supplier Nvidia is targeting in a big way with its Tesla products.

In December of last year, Intel said it had reached a "milestone" with an experimental 48-core chip. "It has 48 cores hooked together in a network that mimics cloud computing on a chip level, and supports highly parallel 'scale-out' programming models," Intel said in December.

The chipmaker said at that time that it would build "100 or more experimental chips for use by dozens of industrial and academic research collaborators around the world." The goal is to develop new software applications and programming models for future many-core processors, the company said.

Originally posted at Nanotech - The Circuits Blog

a professor at University of Tennessee's department of electrical engineering, says graphics chips will be used increasingly in supercomputers to boost performance.

(Credit:University of Tennessee)

China has muscled into the No. 2 spot on the list of the world's fastest supercomputers thanks, in part, to specialized Nvidia graphics chips: a technology that Intel is now pursuing to keep pace with this new trend in high-performance computing.

China's Nebulae supercomputer is located at the recently constructed National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen, and achieved 1.271 petaflops/s (1.271 quadrillion floating point operations per second) running the Linpack benchmark, which put it in the No. 2 spot on the widely reported Top500 list. The latest list was formally presented Monday at the International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany. (Jaguar, a Cray system at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, retained the top spot.)

Nebulae achieved this "in part due to its Nvidia GPU (graphics processing unit) accelerators...Nebulae reports an impressive theoretical peak capability of almost 3 petaflop/s--the highest ever on the TOP500," according to a press release Friday.

Though Nebulae also uses Intel Xeon processors, those are so-called commodity processors that are also employed in standard server computers. So, Intel--despite canceling its Larrabee graphics chip project--is pursuing a technology that leverages Larrabee R&D. On Monday, Intel said the first product of this kind, code-named Knights Corner, will be made on its future 22-nanometer manufacturing process--using transistor structures as small as 22 billionths of a meter--to pack more than 50 processing cores on a single chip.

On Tuesday, I spoke with Jack Dongarra, Distinguished Professor at University of Tennessee's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Innovative Computing Laboratory. Dongarra introduced the LINPACK Benchmark, which is used as the primary yardstick to measure supercomputer performance.

Q: Are GPU accelerators in supercomputers a trend we'll see more of in coming years?

Jack Dongarra: This looks like this is going to be one of the modes of high-performance computing. Taking commodity processors (such as standard Intel or AMD server-class processors) together with specialized accelerators, in this case graphics processors.

How much do GPUs generally boost performance?

Dongarra: A board by Nvidia can give an order of magnitude greater performance than the commodity processor.

But programs must be written to take advantage of this, it just doesn't happen, correct?

Dongarra: There's nothing automatic about it. You have to write a program that explicitly passes information to the GPU and tells the GPU what to do. That can be easy or hard. In most cases it becomes a challenge to write an efficient program to do the operations. Part of the issue there is that the connection between the commodity part of the computer and the graphics processor is a very thin pipe. So, you have to pass information and think of a very thin straw through which you're passing a lot of information. And once you move it over there, you have to do a lot of operations to gain back any benefit.

And what's the future hold for GPU supercomputing?

Dongarra: Two things will happen. One, the connection will improve slightly. And then ultimately what's going to happen is that the graphics processor is going to be integrated into the commodity processor. So, you'll have a chip that has both the commodity processor's cores plus the graphics processors or an accelerator for doing floating-point arithmetic embedded into the chip itself. It's a path a number of companies are pursuing. Intel is one. AMD is another. Companies would like to pursue that path because it does provide the best performance but it does require another ratchet up in chip design.

Dongarra added that chips have been designed in the past with accelerators, though, of course, the chip-manufacturing technology at the time yielded different results. "There were companies that made these things that attached to mainframes," he said, citing Floating Point Systems, a company founded in 1970.

the venerable dialog box, long a staple of software design, faces extinction or at least endangered-species status inFirefox.Mozilla designer Stephen Horlander has published Firefox interface mock-ups that illustrate how the browser could look with some options set through a preferences tab rather than through a preferences dialog box.

The designs are experimental, but some of the work is proceeding already. For example, Firefox's new interface for managing add-ons uses this "in-content" interface, and Firefox's about:config controls have appeared in a browser tab for years.

Firefox's user interface could be shedding some of its dialog boxes. This mock-up shows some ideas.

(Credit:Stephen Horlander)Moving away from dialog boxes is by no means universal, but it is common. Dialog boxes can be confusing, sometimes blocking access to the rest of the software until they're closed and sometimes staying open while hidden behind other windows. Some software, such as Photoshop, is moving toward "non-modal" controls that often live alongside content in the manner of a toolbar.

The Firefox in-content approach is one of many interface changes under way as Mozilla works to release Firefox 4. Among other changes are hardware-accelerated graphics and text; "app tabs" that load Web applications in all browser windows; support for multitouch interfaces; and the new Firefox theme that among other things puts the list of tabs along the top of the browser rather than underneath the address bar.

News via cnet.com

The developer's build of Google's Chrome browser now includes WebM, the open-source and royalty-free video technology that allows browsers to use cutting-edge streaming-video features without publishers paying a dime.

In the new Chrome dev released Thursday for Windows, Mac, and Linux, Google has baked in support for the VP8- and Ogg Vorbis-powered, next-generation WebM codec.

Which is better at compressing video, H.264 or VP8? Some sites such as Quavlive offer comparisons.

(Credit:Screenshot of Quavlive by Stephen Shankland/CNET)The developer's build of Chrome is now the third major browser to support WebM, along with versions of Firefox and Opera that are still in development. Chromium, the open-source fountainhead of Chrome, added rudimentary support in mid-May. Google has yet to indicate when WebM support will be made available in the beta version.

Google acquired the VP8 codec when it purchased On2 Technologies in February. The successor to the VP6 codec, which gained wide distribution when Adobe included it in its Flash Player, VP8's biggest claim to fame so far is that Google is releasing it royalty-free. Unlike fees tied to the H.264 codec, which is owned by the MPEG LA consortium of 26 companies that charge for the codec's use, Google will spare VP8's users such as Mozilla steep royalty fees.

Several other companies have begun to incorporate WebM into their products, including Logitech, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments. Some believe WebM has the potential to become the standard audio and video codec for HTML5, although that debate is far from settled.

While the WebM news is big, there were also other changes made to Chrome dev. Google says it has fixed a bug that caused the browser to crash when changing networks or waking from sleep mode across all platforms. Mac users specifically should see several minor bug fixes, including the repair of a crash that occurred when downloading a file with no tabs open. Also, there's now a preference on Macs for the tab key to cycle through only form fields, or form fields and links, too.

Google also published an update to the beta channel Thursday that addresses multiple bugs that negatively affected stability for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The full changelog can be read here for the developer's channel and here for the beta channel.

Scammers are distributing apps for Windows Mobile-based smartphones that have malware hidden inside that makes calls to premium-rate numbers across the globe, racking up expensive bills unbeknownst to the phone's owner, a mobile security firm said on Friday.

The apps--3D Anti-Terrorist game, PDA Poker Art, and Codec pack for Windows Mobile 1.0--are being distributed on as many as nine popular download Web sites, including DoDownload, GearDownload, and Software112, according to John Hering, chief executive and founder of mobile security provider Lookout.

Someone has copied the programs and repackaged them with the malware inside, he said. Once the app is installed the virus wakes up and starts dialing premium-rate numbers like in Somalia and the South Pole, Hering said. He added that victims may not know about the problem until they get their phone bill and see that it's $50 or $100 higher than it should be.

Auto-dialer scams are common in Russia and other countries but are still relatively rare in the United States. But that will change. Six months ago, Lookout saw four pieces of malware per 100 phones. Now, that figure has more than doubled to nine pieces of malware for every 100 phones, Hering said.

Hering said Microsoft had been contacted about the issue, but that the problem is not due to any vulnerability in the Windows Mobile software and therefore can't simply be patched.

"Users need to be aware of what they are downloading and make sure it is a reputable source and from a reputable developer," he said. Lookout is one of a growing number of companies that offer software and services to help protect mobile devices from malware and other threats.

Microsoft is aware of the issue and is currently investigating it, said Jerry Bryant, group manager for Response Communications at Microsoft.

"As always, Microsoft continues to encourage customers to follow all of the steps of the 'Protect Your Computer' guidance of enabling a firewall, applying all software updates and installing antivirus and antispyware software," he said. "While Microsoft does not have a mobile AV product we do detect and protect in certain scenarios. The general protect guidance also applies to mobile phone users: http://www.microsoft.com/protect/."

The hidden auto-dialing malware incidents are noteworthy because they signal a shift from attackers seeking mere notoriety to profit-motivated fraud, Hering said.

"What took 15 years for malware to evolve on the desktop is accelerated on the mobile platform," he said. "We're seeing it move from early proof-of-concept (malware) to things that are driving profit

Windows for Linux

news via cnet.com

Windows are open! (How ironic is that statement?) Yes, Windows is still the de facto norm, but users are more willing to try alternatives. Whether it's Linux's perfect storm of opportunity or simply evolution, Linux's openings make it unstoppable now more than ever.

Create Netbook Apps and Win!Big prizes for groundbreaking apps in the Intel® Atom™ Developer Challenge

Windows of opportunity, that is. No one can predict history, but when we look back to today, we may see through these windows more clearly. These are windows of opportunity for Linux -- windows, ironically, at Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) expense.

Economy, customer satisfaction, and technical excellence all present windows that, coyly played by the Linux "collective," could be the turning point for Linux and Microsoft that changes what today some call "balance" (I don't!) forever.

The Economy

Two uncertain years have taken their toll on people's and business' willingness and ability to budget for new PCs or even upgrade existing Operating Systems. This is golden for Linux since it is free. Not so golden for Microsoft.

Fewer sales of Microsoft's OS means more opportunity for Linux. Vista, Microsoft's replacement for XP, was panned by critics as clunky and expensive. Clunky normally wouldn't stop the Microsoft upgrade cycle, but bad reviews and a soft economy contributed to soft sales. Yes, they were good, but mostly from sales of new PCs with Vista pre-installed. Even with that, the economy took some air out of the normal huge revenues Microsoft may have expected. The needle measuring Microsoft's momentum has been nudged.

Linux also has a great opportunity in the government sector as the economy plays heavily there. Schools are laying off teachers and slashing budgets. New computers aren't even on their radar, and a Vista or "7" update is hardly chump change (disregarding for the moment that old hardware hardly qualifies to sustain Windows 7).

Schools could completely "upgrade" a computer lab for free by replacing Windows with Linux. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) factors in too -- and I'm not going to pretend a Linux conversion is free -- but when real green dollars are at stake, Linux gets the edge.

Linux offers even greater value factoring in the wealth of free software available. OpenOffice is almost completely Office-compatible, and costs ZERO compared to the US$200-$600 price for Microsoft's Office suite. When money is tight, this basic right of computing (office suite) for free works to Linux's advantage. Or users can use other cloud-computing versions of office suites for free too -- with Linux! Microsoft's stranglehold loosens.

It's possible this window of economic opportunity will remain for the forseeable future. There are articles ([1], [2], [3], et al.) opining the face of the economy may be changed forever. People are more discerning. It no longer holds that to use a computer one must have Windows and Office. A changed economy changes Microsoft's foothold. Window for Linux.

Customer SatisfactionConsumers are more technically savvy as each new generation grows up surrounded by technology. They see technology as an extension of their lifestyle and demand more from technology than ever. They've seen markets where the norm is choice, (e.g., cellphones, cable, landlines) and expect the same from computers.

Yes, Windows is still the de facto norm, but users are more willing to try alternatives. Linux is emerging as an alternative to Windows for those who can live without some of the mainstream applications not available on Linux (e.g., Photoshop, Exchange).

Users who look may find that Linux will fulfill their computing needs completely and with much more transparency (fewer intrusions by the OS, fewer reboots) and with much more modest processing power requirements. After a few months of "reboot free" Linux, they may not only use Linux, but also spread the Linux word. Window for Linux.

Technical Excellence All bias aside, I claim Microsoft, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), and Linux all offer excellent technology. However, Linux (in my opinion) gets the edge, because it is based on multi-user technology from the ground up (Unix).

Even if an evil payload is delivered to a Linux user, the default environment prevents OS mayhem. Because of Linux's architectural underpinnings, default access is restricted. A user may gum up his allocated universe, but other users (remember, it's designed to be multi-user!) remain safe, as does the operating system itself.

This provides more than safety for users and system -- an uncompromised system gives the best chance at recovering the compromised user. A compromised Windows user usually means a compromised system.

Linux runs well on modest hardware. Linux allows for configurable graphical interfaces, but those are components on top of the core. Because it's modular, Linux is infinitely configurable. Linux is fleet-footed technology ready to perform any job.

Technical excellence and superiority is a nuanced discussion beyond the scope of this commentary. Still, Linux easily competes at the big-boy level. You can argue for any of the big players as most excellent, but it doesn't matter. Linux competes. Window for Linux.

No Time Like NowWindows are open! (How ironic is that statement?) Whether it's Linux's perfect storm of opportunity or simply evolution, Linux's openings make it unstoppable now more than ever. Consumers mete out dollars more carefully and with more consideration than ever before. When money is tight, people think twice (okay, maybe 1.5 times, but hey! no flow!) about how they spend, or even whether they need to. Linux at no retail cost is an attractive alternative -- users are primed to take that second look.

After a couple summers of discontent that was Vista, people look for something better. Vista clunked, Linux shines (my opinion) and users who try Linux may be pleasantly surprised. Part of that surprise is Linux's technical excellence. It's seamless, reliable, and a computing workhorse for no-nonsense users.

Open windows may bring a fresh breeze to the Linux world. Open windows may gain purchase for Linux market share. Open windows may tip the balance in ways unknown. It seems like Linux has been at a crossroads forever. Maybe now Linux emerges. It is time.

Elbert Hannah lives in the Chicago area and does production and scheduling support for a large financial firm. He wrote the most recent edition of O'Reilly's Learning the vi and Vim Editors. He has used Linux and worked actively in the open source community for over 10 years. In and around the house, he has more than 10 instances of Linux and as many versions and distros. He doesn't like technical religious wars and prefers things to be sorted out by merit. He loves the Beatles and thinks the greatest album recorded is Abbey Road.  

HTC Hero Specs - HTC Smartphone Wiki

Brand: Sprint

Browse Sprint devices Manufacturer: High Tech Computer

Browse all devices manufactured by High Tech Computer Hardware+Designer: High Tech Computer Expected+

Release_Date: October, 2009 Physical-Attributes Dimensions

(width x height x depth): 56.2 x 112 x 14.35 millimetres

2.2 x 4.4 x 0.6 inches Bounding-Volume: 90.3 cubecentimetres Software;Environment Embedded:Operating-

System: Google Android 1.5

Browse devices running this OS Operating:System-Kernel: Linux 2.6.27 Microprocessor,-Chipset CPU-Clock:

528 MHz CPU: Qualcomm MSM7525

Browse devices based on MSM7525 Width+of-Machine:Word: 32 bit CPU;Core: ARM1136EJ-S Level_1-cache:

16KiB data cache / 16 KiB instruction cache Instruction+Set: ARMv6 Memory,-Storage:capacity RAM;type:

mobile DDR SDRAM RAM-capacity: 288 MiB ROM_type: Flash EEPROM ROM;capacity: 512 MiB Graphical_

subsystem Display:Type: color transflective TFT display Display-Color_Depth: 16 bit/pixel (65536 scales) Display;

Diagonal: 3.2 " (81 millimetres) Display-Resolution: 320 x 480 (153600 pixels) Viewable-Display:Size: 1.77 " x

2.65 " (44.93 x 67.4 millimetres) Dot;Pitch: 180.9 pixel/inch (0.14041 millimetre/pixel) Audio:Subsystem Audio-

Channel(s): stereo sound Analog/Digital Converter

(Recording): 16 bit nominal quantization

44100 Hz sampling frequency Digital/Analog Converter

(Playing): 16 bit resolution

44100 Hz holding frequency Microphone(s): mono sound Loudspeaker(s): mono sound Audio-Output: 3.5mm plug

Cellular;Phone Cellular+Networks: CDMA800, CDMA1900 Cellular-Data_Links: cdmaOne, CDMA2000

1xRTT, CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rel. 0, CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev A Cellular-Antenna: Internal antenna Call:Alert:

40 -chord melody (polyphonic) Vibrating_Alert: Supported Speakerphone+: Supported Control;Peripherals

Positioning+Device: Touchscreen & TrackBall Primary_Keyboard: Not supported Directional_Pad: Not supported

Scroll_Wheel: Not supported Interfaces Expansion;Interfaces: microSD, microSDHC, TransFlash, SDIO

Supports High Capacity (SD 2.0/HC) memory cards with capacity of up to 32GB USB: USB 2.0 client, Hi-Speed

(480Mbit/s)

USB Series Mini-B (mini-USB) connector Bluetooth_(802.15): Bluetooth 2.0 + Enhanced Data Rate, Internal antenna

Wireless:LAN/Wi-Fi_(802.11): IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, 54 Mbit/s

Internal antenna Infrared-Gate: Not supported Multimedia-Broadcast Analog;Radio: Not supported Digital_Media+

Broadcast: Not supported Satellite:Navigation Built-in+GPS-module: Supported GPS_Protocol: NMEA 0183 GPS+

Antenna: Internal antenna Complementary_GPS+Services: Assisted GPS, QuickGPS Built-in-Digital:Camera

Sensor:Type: CMOS sensor Resolution: 2560 x1920 pixels (4.92MP) Autofocus-(AF): Supported Optical_Zoom: 1

x Macro_Mode: Not supported Built-in+Flash: Not supported Camcorder: 352x288 pixels Recordable+Image-

Formats: JPG Recordable+Video;Formats: 3GP, MPEG4 Power;Supply Battery_Technology: Lithium-ion

battery Battery:Build: removable Additional:Details Built-in+accelerometer: Supported Additional+Features:

built-in digital compass

HTC Sense interface

Bluetooth stereo audio profile (A2DP) Google Search

Google Maps

Gmail

Google Calendar

Google Talk

HTC EVO

HTC HERO 2 Should have simular specs

Some of the specs that instantly make the HTC EVO *THE* Android sensation of the moment:

• 4G connectivity
• 4.3-inch display
• 8MP Camera with flash
• 1.3MP front-facing camera
• HDMI Out
• 1GHz Snapdragon processor
• 1GB Built-in memory
• 512MB RAM
• Android 2.1
• HTC Sense