What's better than billions of transistors? Billions of miniature two-nanometer ones, leaving room for billions more. A team of researchers accomplished just that, using the quantum effect to shrink these semiconductors -- and set a new size record in the process -- while also managing to keep them operating at room temperature (note: that photo above is from a different team's study). The team of South Korean, Japanese, and British researchers at Chungbuk National University expect them to "enhance the capabilities of mobile electronic devices" -- a mighty vague claim if ever there was one. Not one for modesty, lead researcher Choi Jung-bum proclaims that it "effectively changes the paradigm of such devices." With no word on mass production, though, we'll just have to wait and see for ourselves how big of an impact these lilliputian circuits will have.
Europe's already extensive broadband coverage may be expanding even further, now that Eutelsat's Ka-Sat satellite has officially gone into service. The new craft, which launched from Kazakhstan in late December, uses spotbeam technology to generate areas of connectivity that are about 250 kilometers wide, with each beam carrying a total capacity of 900Mbps. Unlike the Hylas 1, its reach will extend far across the continent, providing Tooway's high-bandwidth services to 13 million households in remote locations. Subscribers will have download speeds of up to 10Mbps and upload rates of 4Mbps, though they'll still have to put up with latency on the order of 250ms, making life even more difficult for Eastern European OnLive gamers. Of course, this access won't come for free, but Ka-Sat's 82-beam network structure significantly lowers its operating costs, allowing Eutelsat to offer prices that are on par with market rates. According to company CEO Michel de Rosen, customers should expect to pay around €30 for basic service, in addition to €250 they'd have to spend on a 77cm satellite dish. That's not necessarily a small amount of cash for low-income families to fork over, but at least they'll have an option that didn't exist before. Head past the break for a video about Tooway's Ka-Sat services, along with a full PR.
No matter how large your record collection is, there'll always be days when you're sick and tired of everything you own. There are some pretty easy fixes to this, of course -- streaming music services, internet radio, and even the old fashioned terrestrial variety, but none attack the problem quite as directly as Bronze. The app was co-created by Golden Silvers' front man, Gwilym Gold, in part as a clever way to promote his new track, "Flesh Freeze," a hushed, Robert Wyatt-esque number, which just so happens to be the only song that it's compatible with at present. Bronze combats musical stagnation by altering the music itself, assuring that no two listens of a song are ever quite the same, running an algorithm that jumbles the sequence and presence of elements including the instruments and vocals. The changes are generally fairly subtle from play to play, taking a few listens to really pick up on what's unfolding. At present, it's available as a download for the Mac, with Windows and mobile versions to follow. It's free for now, but that, like the song, should change soon enough.
We've already fiddled with ViewSonic's two new tablets at Computex's pre-show event, but we decided to hit the booth earlier today to get a closer look at the ViewPad 10Pro'sBlueStacks Android virtualization on Windows 7, as well as the ViewPad 7x's funky UI. Starting off with the bigger slate, you'll see in the above video that the Android implementation isn't as good as it sounds -- ViewSonic says it wants to offer an Android experience "similar" to that of actual Android devices, but alas, we beg to differ with the virtual Android's laggy performance plus its odd bugs. The reps assured us that the final product will be much smoother, but then we were further let down by the fact that Android Market is absent. The reason? It's simply because from ViewSonic's point of view the 10Pro's focus is on Windows 7, so the company decided that it wasn't worth all the hassle to obtain a Google Mobile Services license. To sum it up, this whole Android "feature" is very much just a gimmick, and it doesn't look like running native Android on Oak Trail soon will do much good, either.
On a brighter note, the dual-core ViewPad 7x fared way better than its bloated brother. This world's first 7-inch Honeycomb tablet ran surprisingly smooth, and we were glad to see SPB's contribution here with its Shell 3D Android launcher (which we reviewed with much praise a little while back). We managed to get ViewSonic director Max Liu to give us a brief demo of the 7x after the break, and to be frank, the more we look at it, the more we want it. Here's hoping that this tablet will be priced right.
Oh, and did we mention that ViewSonic had a few real Gouldian finches on the show floor? Check out them birds after the break.
The image above is not a mockup. What you're looking at is a screen grab from the Video Game section of Target's online storefront proudly touting "free shipping" on a $299.99 Xbox 360 250GB console with Kinect bundle. Unfortunately, your pulse-quickened click will be met with the existing $399.99 price tag at checkout. So what's going on here? Are retailers gearing up for price drops on the 250GB Kinect bundle ahead of E3 or did Target's arts and charts department just make a mistake? E3 Expo kicks off June 7th, so it won't be long until we find out either way.
Had some doubts that Apple was heading skyward? Those lingering concerns can now be put to rest. Apple has confirmed that it will be announcing iCloud on June 6th, what it's calling an "upcoming cloud services offering." That will be part of the keynote for this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, known to the cool kids as WWDC. This is, of course, where everyone has come to expect new iPhones to come to light, but this year we're thinking the focus will be more on software, and indeed Apple's event notice indicates that the big highlights will be Mac OS X Lion and the next version of its mobile operating system, iOS 5. This is a decidedly non-Apple way to announce something big like iCloud, making us wonder what other surprises Steve Jobs will have for us at the event -- yes, he'll be kicking things off. As ever you can find out as it happens here, live.
Zoho has offered an iOS app for a while now -- at least for the iPhone and iPod touch. Those of you who have been wanting to use the Zoho app on your iPad were out of luck, but that's no longer the case.
Zoho Docs 2.0 has landed in the App Store, and the most notable change is that it's now a universal app. Now you're able to take advantage of the app's mobile productivity powers on your larger iOS device. Retina display support has also been added, as have document sharing options -- which you can utilize in both the viewer and collaboration modes.
Just like the basic Zoho service, the app is available totally free of charge. Paid subscriptions get you additional storage space and start at $3 per month for professional use.