Humble mouse turns 40 and loses its touch
The name was never meant to stick. When Doug Engelbart and his team at the Stanford Research Institute in California designed a computer controller encased in a carved-out wooden block, with wheels mounted on the underbelly, one researcher nicknamed it a 'mouse'. 'We thought that when it had escaped out to the world it would have a more dignified name,' Engelbart recalled later
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Humble mouse turns 40 and loses its touch
New Xbox 360 ‘Jasper’ spotted in the wild
Xbox-Scene reports that some readers now have Xbox 360 games consoles with long-awaited Jasper motherboards. These should run cooler and should mean the end of the Red Ring of Death, which featured on a recent Guardian Technology cover . The Jasper board has the new 65-nanometer version of the ATI graphics chip, which ran hotter than Xbox motherboards could sustain, over the long term. This should run cooler and it also costs less to produce. It's not easy to tell which machines have the new board. However, they have 150W power supplies with a different plug, whereas Falcon boards have 175W power supplies. Maybe someone will figure out the numbering scheme so it will be possible to tell from the box. Jasper boards also have 256 megabytes of Flash memory to store the new avatar-based (Wii-style) user interface, with space to spare. Earlier models had only 16MB of Flash. At VentureBeat , Dean Takahashi (who has written two Xbox books, and wrote our cover story) adds: What exactly was wrong with the older 90-nanometer graphics chips and the boards that came with them? I've gotten some new information about that.
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New Xbox 360 'Jasper' spotted in the wild
Why is there a correlation between searching for PlayStation and obesity?
StateStats is a website that lets you correlate the frequency of Google search results and US statistics, using Spearman's rank correlation. A search for mittens, for example, has a strong correlation with latitude: people who live in Alaska are more likely to search for mittens than people who live in Florida. Search for Microsoft and you'll find the state of Washington comes top, because that's where the company is based. But it's usually much harder to find a connection beyond simple correlation (which does not imply causation), except the most obvious: population density.
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Why is there a correlation between searching for PlayStation and obesity?
Why is there a correlation between searching for PlayStation and obesity?
StateStats is a website that lets you correlate the frequency of Google search results and US statistics, using Spearman's rank correlation. A search for mittens, for example, has a strong correlation with latitude: people who live in Alaska are more likely to search for mittens than people who live in Florida. Search for Microsoft and you'll find the state of Washington comes top, because that's where the company is based. But it's usually much harder to find a connection beyond simple correlation (which does not imply causation), except the most obvious: population density. Silicon Alley Insider has tried a few tech terms, and proclaims that: Internet users in states with high illiteracy rates are more likely to search for MySpace . Searches for Twitter correlate with income, while searching for Yahoo correlates with violent crime and unemployment. Using Google to search for Google doesn't correlate with anything, though it does seem to suggest a degree of stupidity. Most tech terms don't produce any results, presumably because there is no regional data for comparison. However, after trying a few, I found a strong correlation (0.73) between PlayStation and obesity . The correlation for Nintendo is much weaker (0.22). There is data for a wide range of things including age, income and life expectancy. Post a comment if you get lucky…. Computing guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Why is there a correlation between searching for PlayStation and obesity?
Celebrity Squares: Film director Jonas Cuaron on his Apple iBook G4 laptop
What's your favourite piece of technology? I would have to say – mostly for practical reasons – my Apple Mac G4 laptop I bought five years ago. With that computer I did everything for my film – scanned the negatives, edited it, did the soundtrack ... it was the main tool I used for making the film, apart from the camera. How has it improved your life? It's made it so I can do film from home. I always wanted to break down the myth that film needs to be a big production, and I wanted to find a way to make film the same way writers do their books. When was the last time you used it, and what for? I used it yesterday, because now I'm working on a new screenplay. Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years' time? Mine was already obsolete two years ago! It already doesn't do everything I want it to do. What one tip would you give to non-laptop users? To enjoy the fact that they don't have a computer always with them – the problem with a laptop is that you end up addicted to it,
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Celebrity Squares: Film director Jonas Cuaron on his Apple iBook G4 laptop
Celebrity Squares: Film director Jonas Cuaron on his Apple iBook G4 laptop
What's your favourite piece of technology? I would have to say – mostly for practical reasons – my Apple Mac G4 laptop I bought five years ago. With that computer I did everything for my film – scanned the negatives, edited it, did the soundtrack ... it was the main tool I used for making the film, apart from the camera. How has it improved your life? It's made it so I can do film from home. I always wanted to break down the myth that film needs to be a big production, and I wanted to find a way to make film the same way writers do their books. When was the last time you used it, and what for? I used it yesterday, because now I'm working on a new screenplay. Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years' time? Mine was already obsolete two years ago! It already doesn't do everything I want it to do. What one tip would you give to non-laptop users
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Celebrity Squares: Film director Jonas Cuaron on his Apple iBook G4 laptop
Nokia admits defeat in Japan — but Vertu will continue
Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, has decided to stop selling phones in Japan, except for its luxury Vertu brand, reports Reuters . "In the current global economic climate, we have concluded that the continuation of our investment in Japan-specific localized products is no longer sustainable," Nokia executive vice president Timo Ihamuotila said in a statement. The story says the problem is that "Most of the mobile phones used in Japan are part of third-generation networks and boast features such as TV broadcasting and electronic payment functions." The need to develop special handsets means non-Japanese suppliers have only a small share of the Japanese market -- about 5%, according to IDC Japan. But it also means Japanese phones don't sell outside Japan. Sales of Vertu phones are probably not going to be large. Reuters says: "Vertu, founded in 1998, sells gem-encrusted, hand-built mobile phones with prices ranging from 3,500 euros to over 100,000 euros." That sounds like a strange business to me. If your €24,000 phone is obsolete after two years, that's €1,000 a month in handset depreciation. (The original Vertu Signature cost €24,000 -- as hand-made in Hampshire and sold in London.) Can you get the diamonds re-used on a different handset, or do Vertu buyers have so much money they just don't care? Nokia Mobile phones Gadgets Nokia guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Nokia admits defeat in Japan -- but Vertu will continue
In praise of the nerdiest of computer nerds
Julia Raeside on why America wants to have its own IT Crowd
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In praise of the nerdiest of computer nerds
Technophile: BlackBerry Storm
Storm! What a cracking name for a smartphone. Marketing must have hugged themselves when they came up with that moniker. If only it lived up to it. But in truth RIM's BlackBerry Storm is not so much a storm, more of a squall. Here's why. Being a phone these days is pretty straightforward. You do phone calls. You throw in lots of things like clocks, cameras, music-playing capability (though barely anyone uses it) and especially contacts and calendars. That's a phone. For a smartphone, though, you need to go further: email, web browsing, integrated applications such as maps, and dedicated applications for things like Flickr and Facebook and Twitter. All the other stuff - phone calls, cameras, music, video playback - is taken as read. The BlackBerry Storm has all these. Well, sort of - you have to install the applications such as Flickr and Facebook yourself. As it doesn't have Wi-Fi, you'll be doing this on your data allocation. (That's 500MB per month on Vodafone's "unlimited" plan for the Storm, at £35 per month. How does "unlimited" equate to "500MB"?) And this is as good a point as any to discover that it's all about the interface. The Storm has a touchscreen. Actually, no - it has a "prod" screen.
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Technophile: BlackBerry Storm
Technophile: BlackBerry Storm
Storm! What a cracking name for a smartphone. Marketing must have hugged themselves when they came up with that moniker. If only it lived up to it. But in truth RIM's BlackBerry Storm is not so much a storm, more of a squall. Here's why. Being a phone these days is pretty straightforward.
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Technophile: BlackBerry Storm