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I actually found out about this through Digg but the actual article is from MailOnline. This has to be one of the most touching news I have heard in the past 6 months or possibly more. How would you feel if you had a old daugther who was born brain damaged said to you “I Love You” for the first time in 6 years?

With the help of modern technology, a £17,000 MyTobii Smartbox machine from Sweden, which tracks the eye movement of the person, in this case little 6 year old Elke Wisbey’s, detects which icon she is looking at and speaks out the word or phrase for her. Her first word, or phrase rather, is “I Love You”. At first her parents thought the system was “stuck” but when her father asked her if she said “I Love You” to them, she answered “Yes”.

I’m very happy for her and her family now that their local newspaper helped raise the money to buy the machine for them. Though this girl has severe brain damage but she quickly learned to use the machine to play games and even surf the internet with it.

I hope that this technology will become more affordable for even the less fortunate people with brain damage. It makes a huge difference because this will help bridge the communication gap between these people and their relatives.

Incoming search terms:

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Its been a while since I found anything interesting news regarding OLED or organic light emitting diode technology which consumes less energy than traditional LCD panels. Mostly small size displays and mobile devices. Samsung blew my mind by its demostration of its 40 inch OLED panel. The panel displays in full HD of 1920×1080 (1080p) with a 1 million to 1 contrast ratio. From the two images, the quality seems really bright and sharp, that’s all I can say by just looking at the images. But what I am really impressed by it is that its only 8.9mm thick! But unfortunately this is not mass production ready yet and even if it was, you wouldn’t want to know how much it would cost for a 40 inch OLED panel based on what Sony’s 11 inch OLED display for well over $1,000 USD anyway.

Now I would like to see Sony coming up with its own 40+ inch OLED panel sometime soon.

By the way, I really love that “Please don’t touch it” sign at the bottom.

And you think that’s all Samsung has to showoff? Think again.

It is also showing of a translucent OLED panel with a transmittance of 30% and resolution of 840 ×504, though the panel is actually a combination of 4 smaller 12.1 inch panels. Although its not in full HD I can see this being applied for different places such as having a TV while you shower, or having Christmas themed pictures displaying through the “window” panels or anywhere there are translucent objects.

Sources from Tech-On!:
40 inch OLED Panel
Transparent OLED Panel

I recently found this site that sells all kinds of cables from HDMI cables for your HD TV, COAX cables, digital camera cables, computer monitors’ cables and the list goes on. Aside from cables, the site also sells cable racks, cabinets, surge protectors and shelves as well as tools and equipments to deal with the cables like cable cutters, electrical tape & tie wraps. I can surely say that this site is all you need to go to with all the cable related needs. The list of products that you can purchase is extensive.

As a full HD TV owner, first thing I looked at was the HDMI product page that range from HDMI female/female coupler which connects the two male ends of two HDMI cables to make a longer cable and HDMI female/HDMI male right-angle adapter which I have never seen. It would complete the HDMI product page if it had the HDMI selector, a device with similar similar concept as a multi-port USB hub which you can connect multiple HDMI sources like PlayStation 3, Blu-ray player and satellite systems to one single HD display device (HD TV for example), was available for purchase as well.

In terms of the site design, showmecables isn’t the flashiest site out there. But it is very easy to navigate through different categories/pages. I recommend this site to anyone who are looking for cables, and I mean any types of cables, I’m pretty sure showmecables has them!

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I was reading an article on cnet and I have to agree completely with what David Carnoy have mentioned about the present and future of the Sony PlayStation. The current PlayStation 3 has just started to take off with the lowered production cost (chip shrunk from 90nm down to 45nm) and with slightly more games worth purchasing. Sony should get back or at least break even from the investment and money lost from selling each console under cost when it first came out. That won’t be possible however, if Sony started researching on a completely new processor chip from the ground up as it would need to inject a huge chunk of money for research and development all over again, well before Sony could profit from the current console. Therefore it makes much sense for Sony to stick to the current chip design and modify it.

As a PlayStation 3 (60GB with Spiderman 3 Blu-ray DVD) owner since November 2007, I would prefer to hold on to this console for at least a few more years as oppose to buying a new console every 2 years because I’m just not ready to make another expensive purchase, just like most of us normal consumers who would like to make purchases at the cheapest possible price unlike the hardcore gaming fans who will rush to get new consoles/games on their very first release days. I too agree Sony should improve the current console, not just on the technical side but the look and feel of the console as well. The PlayStation 3 console is huge, though its surprisingly quiet. It would be great if its size could be reduced to the same side as the slim PlayStation 2. I think the slim version of the PS2 is one of the sleekest console of all time, if not THE sleekest. And I assume by the time it can be shrunk to that size, the price will drop as well?

Sony should ignore and forget about Microsoft from releasing an XBox 720 or XBox1080 (I personally like the name XBox1080 as it would match with the current Full HD format). Why? What happened to the earlier versions of the XBox360? Remember the infamous Red Ring of Death? How many times did someone you know had to send back the console for a repair or a new one? Don’t get me wrong, I am not a PS3 fanboy and certainly not here to bash XBox360, at least not in this article and I don’t see a point in bashing it anyway as I heard from people the newer versions are much more stable than the older ones. I just want to point out that history would repeat itself if Microsoft rushed into releasing a new console. And even if a new XBox is released with better graphic capabilities, its not all about the graphics. First if a game has great graphics but no actual playing value, the game would still not be worth purchasing, well most of the time. Take the Nintendo Wii for example, it doesn’t have the graphics compare to the XBox360 and PlayStation 3 but its the best selling console these days. The reason is because it is innovative and it suits a broader range of audience from non gamers, casual gamers and to the hardcore gamers. To me its basically a tweaked GameCube!

But then again, imagine what the PlayStation 4 can do with a completely new chip.

What do you think?

Have you ever experienced a scenario where one of your frequently used programs stopped working because one of your hardware’s drivers was out of date? And what are drivers?

Drivers are software that all the PCs need in order to communicate with hardware such as printers, fax machines and scanners. One example of such scenario would be for example, in PC gaming, say you had a video card and assume you never updated your driver except the time during the initial installation when you started using your current PC for the first time. You wanted to play a fairly new game, chances are you would need to update the driver of your video card. Without updating your driver, you would not be able to either start the game or play the game in a stable way.

Now you know that your hardware are constantly in need of the most up to date drivers, you might ask, is this going to be tedious work to check for new drivers for all your hardware? Uniblue’s driver update tool called Uniblue DriverScanner will help you do all the scanning. You can get the free trail version from their site as well which scans your entire computer’s hardware/devices and displays to you which drivers are out of date, up to date and the total number of drivers you have installed. Full version will allow you to download required/recommended drivers by clicking the “Download Driver” button. If you are worried that the new driver will cause problems to your computer, the scanner also gives you the option to backup all your drivers as well as ones you have selected to perform a backup. When something goes wrong, you know have the backup to restore to previous stable state.

With this software, you will not have to worry about which driver for which hardware is out of date. With a touch of a button, it will scan your entire computer and inform you which drivers need to be updated. Instead of letting your frequently used programs to tell you they need driver updates and stop you from using them, let this scanner tell you what you need to update before you use those programs.

Next time you want to buy a movie on the PSN, short for PlayStation Network, you might want to think again before you make the purchase. According to Sony, once you have purchased a movie, it can only be re-downloaded once and that’s with the assistance from SCEA’s consumer services. While I understand why Sony would want to implement such restriction on movies because of pirating/copy right issues. It is a major turn off for us consumers because we cannot keep what we rightfully purchased. Then what’s the point of purchasing online? Might as well buy the physical Blu-ray DVDs which you can watch anytime and don’t have to worry about re-purchasing them. I for one will continue to purchase physical Blu-ray DVDs for the foreseeable future.

And again it comes down to one question, even if there’s no DRM restriction on purchasing any content on PlayStation Network, do you rather have a stack of hard drive disks storing all your movies and contents or a stack of Blu-ray DVDs. I will go with the latter, at least for now and until someone invents affordable storage devices equal to or smaller than the size of a disc.

Source from: DaileyTech

The $8 billion dollar Large Hadron Collider, a system that will help test and answer some of the universe’s questions such as the Big Bang theory, was hacked last Friday. The system that was hacked was reportedly “one step away” from a control computer but did not cause any major damage.

There were many people rejecting the machine and the experiment because they believed if something went wrong, it would create black holes that would eat up the earth. Well I don’t blame them since not everyone is a scientist. Well, we are still alive after the initial test.

I just checked the CERN web site and it wasn’t working for some reason. Hacked again? Or too much traffic?

Scientists invovled in this experiment have been receiving death threats from phone calls and emails.

Source: news.cnet.com

Sony PSP-3000 will be released in Japan on October 16th. The newest version features faster response time, higher contrast and color depth that result in better display quality. It also has an anti reflective screen, I’m guessing its something similar to the TFT technology on most of Sony Ericsson’s cellphones starting from the T630. Video-out option now supports outputting to analogue televisions as oppose to only progressive televisions.

Display improvement aside, a built-in internal microphone will also included in the new PSP located just below the screen which supports Skype.

The new PSP will come in three colors – Piano Black, Pearl White (my favorite) and Mystic Silver. Again in two trims – the basic version with the PSP, AC adapter and a battery while a value pack will have all those plus strap, cloth for cleaning the screen, a nice pouch (specially the white one) and a 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo which is something extra. It used to come with a 256MB one if I remember correctly.

I am happy Sony is adding so much more features to the PSP, features that will actually be useful! Unfortunately I’ve already got one, the oldest version in Pearl White.