MSI ECOlution motherboard transforms chip heat into fan power

-from engadget

Okay, try not to let your mind get blown by the possible time-space paradox we’re about to illustrate, but MSI’s supposedly introducing a new ECOlution motherboard at CeBIT with an “air powered cooler” that operates on the Stirling Engine Theory to transform the thermal output of its chipset into the kinetic energy necessary to power that same chipset’s fan. Of course, as the fan cools the heatsink it deprives itself of energy, supposedly the piston affixed to the crankshaft pulls back down, giving it another potential surge when its heat rebuilds. Supposedly it works at 70% efficiency, so we’ll just let the thermodynamics geeks in the audience mull over the possibility and audacity of it all — they certainly seem to have given up on Steorn at this point.

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Wrapup of D day

Engadget was good enough to post an entire wrap up on the nights events here:
This is all from engadget
Live coverage
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates: Historic discussion live from D 2007
Steve Jobs live from D 2007
Steve Ballmer live from D 2007
Palm’s Jeff Hawkins live from D 2007

Apple
iPhone to get third party apps
Apple TV gets 160GB disk… and YouTube too
iTunes Plus and EMI’s DRM-free music hands-on
iTunes Plus DRM-free music now official(er)

Microsoft
Microsoft Surface – surface and gesture based computing lands
Microsoft Surface hands-on

Palm
Palm Foleo hands-on
Palm Foleo gallery
Palm Foleo announced

Etc.
Livescribe shows off Leapfrog Fly-esque pen computer for grown-ups
QiGO announces Internet Content Keys

If there was anything else I’ll add it later on in the day or please feel free to comment on it

Hands-On With Now You Can Find It Locator (Verdict: Never Misplace Anything Again)

-from Gizmodo

I misplace stuff. A lot. The concept of putting my keys, wallet and cellphone in one set place when I get home is foreign to me (possibly because there’s no set place to put it). But with the New You Can Find It Locator from Skymall, it’s no longer a problem.

Seriously, now that we have this, we can throw our crap all over the apartment and still be able to find it.

Now You Can Find It

The NYCFIL comes with a remote and eight keychain tags that you can attach to all your stuff. The keychains work great for your keys, scissors, cameras or anything that’s big enough (relatively, with respect to the keychain) and has something to hook on to. Unfortunately stuff like cellphones wouldn’t work, because it’d make the cellphone huge and there’s nowhere to clip it to. But it also comes with adhesives so you can stick the locators on stuff like your TV remotes (or anything that has a flat surface).

The set also comes with a bunch of stickers to stick on the eight buttons on the remote so you can color coordinate your stuff. There’s enough to cover most of the gadgets in your house, and you in the case where you have eight sets of keys, there are even blank ones so you can write your own.

The locator remote itself runs on two AAA batteries (not included) and has a range of about 10-20 feet. Why am I telling you this? Because you can’t just stand in one place in the house, press the corresponding button, and expect to hear the sound. You’ll have to actually walk around the house and press the button every so often to locate your stuff.

In our tests, the 80% of the locators beeped on the first try, and 100% of them beeped by the second try. With regular usage, the locator units last about a year. It would suck if you couldn’t find something because the beeper was out of juice, so you’ll want to make sure to keep these things with fresh batteries.

And if you’re worried about misplacing the remote itself, there’s a magnetic wall mount that will make the remote beep unless it’s placed back on the mount.

Although it’s a little pricey at $49.95, the fact that I’ll never have to search for more than five seconds for our keys, remotes, cameras, tools and other knickknacks makes this a winner in my book. Time is money, and my time is apparently worth $49.95. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Skymall]

The DeLorean Watch: It’s Retro Time

-from gizmodo

As famous as the DeLorean car is, you’ve probably never heard of the DeLorean Time watch—and for good reason. John DeLorean made this garish silver DeLorean-esque monstrosity for the sole purpose of raising funds for him to build a new sports car, the DMC2.

Each watch was to be $3,495, and by buying it, you were placed on a list for an exclusive early chance to buy a DMC2 when it was available. John unfortunately passed in 2005, so neither watch nor car made it to stores. However, you can still see what the planned watch design was going to look like, except that the dial was hidden in the picture on the left. – Jason Chen

DELOREAN TIME – The DMC2 Wristwatch [Watchismo]

New E-Passport Is Patriotic, High-Tech and Ugly

-from gizmodo

The NY Times reviews the new U.S. e-passport today (if you didn’t want one, apparently you’re too late). It mostly focuses on how ugly the pastiche of American iconography is, but it mentions the new embedded RFID chip holding all of your biographical info and “a digital image of the passport photograph, which will facilitate the use of face recognition technology at ports-of-entry,” according to the State Department’s website.

While the gold bars and circle marking your passport as a magical “e-passport” are on the front cover, the chip is embedded somewhere on the back page. To alleviate fears of skimming the chip’s info, it only works within four inches of a reader—the cover contains shielding material—and the passports use Basic Access Control, which requires a printed PIN to read the chip, which seems like a pretty good idea.

That said, no one can skim my plain paper passport, which is thankfully good for another seven years. – Matt Buchanan

Samsung’s New HDDs are Fast, Silent

No one likes noisy electronics. That’s why Samsung’s new SpinPoint S Series of HDDs is great; they’re fast and quiet. Perfect for devices that are better seen and not heard, such as DVRs and, ahem, Xbox 360s. They’re rated at 2.4 bel in idle mode and 2.75 bel in seek mode, with 1 bel being equal to 10 decibels. That’s pretty quiet, I guess.

The drives come in 80GB and 160GB models and both sport 7,200-rpm speeds. No word on pricing as of yet, but they should be arriving later this month. –Adam Frucci

Samsung [via The Raw Feed]

World Record Transfer Speed Set: 25.6TB per Second

Holy crap. The world record for fastest data transfer was just broken by Alcatel/Lucent, as they were able to transfer 25.6 terabits of data in one second over a single fiber strand. Well, that certainly puts my DSL line to shame.

Of course, this insanity isn’t about to be hooked up to your house anytime soon, but just knowing that they’ve figured out how to do it means that eventually, at some point, people will probably have speeds similar to this when they connect to the Internet. Hell, even 1/10th of that speed would be totally bananas overkill. But I’d take it, oh yes, I would take it. –Adam Frucci

Tenebraex Creates First Ever Color Night Vision Goggles

-from Gizmodo
Okay, so $6,000 may be a lot of loot to pay for a pair of night vision goggles, but Tenebraex’s specs are the first to let you see in color. The goggles can see down to quarter-moon night levels. For anything lower than that, users can switch to the standard monochromatic green vision. The company is hoping to sell these to the U.S. Pentagon. All we need now is a low-priced consumer version for some night-time paint-balling fun. – Louis Ramirez

Seeing Colors in the Night

Students largely ignore RIAA instant settlement offers

-From ARS Technica
By Ken Fisher | Published: March 26, 2007 – 12:13PM CT

While the RIAA is touting a settlement percentage north of 25 percent with its recent campaign against file sharing at US colleges and universities, the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of students are shunning the insta-settlement approach. According to the RIAA, some 116 students have used their new web site to settle copyright infringement claims, but that means that another 284, or 71 percent of students contacted through the program aren’t taking the easy way out. At least not yet.
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The average settlement amount offered by the RIAA is about $3,000, so this latest pre-litigation strategy has drummed up at least $350,000 in revenue by our estimate. That’s no small amount of money, but considering that music sales this quarter were nearly $100 million, one wonders if the haul from this strategy is worth the public image problems that it’s deepening. Then again, public image hasn’t been something that appears to concern the RIAA, but with music sales on the decline, perhaps they ought to be taking this more seriously.

A student who received a pre-litigation letter told Ars that he refused to engage their offer because they offer zero proof of what is alleged. “It’s like receiving blackmail. ‘We know what you did, pay us’ is the message, but they don’t really know me or what I have done,” he wrote. The student wishes to remain anonymous.

He knows that students who ignore the pre-litigation letters are just asking the RIAA to pursue them more, but he hopes that when the RIAA is actually faced with having to produce evidence that they’ll simply come up short. The current approach by the RIAA is to simply tell students that each song shared is a $750 violation, so one’s fine is often calculated based on the number of songs the RIAA says that they’ve shared. Yet the RIAA offers no proof of their claims, while sometimes trying to make students feel like they’re getting a deal.

Despite the low response, the RIAA believes that the program is going well, and they have sent another 405 pre-litigation letters to students at 23 universities. “This is not our preferred course, but we hope that students will understand the consequences of stealing music and that our partners in the college community will appreciate the proactive role they can play,” said Cary Sherman, President of the RIAA, in a statement.

According to the Associated Press, one student received a letter demanding $590,000 in payment. Such letters are apparently only sent to egregious file sharers, for the average settlement rarely tops $5,000. After all, the RIAA wants to offer a good deal, you see.

All Nike running shoes to be iPod compatible by year’s end

-from http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2601
By Prince McLean
Published: 10:05 AM EST

Nike Inc. said last week that it plans to make its entire line of running shoes compatible with Apple Inc.’s iPod nano line by the end of this year.

The comment was made Nike president and chief executive Mark Parker on Thursday as the shoe maker released its third-quarter results, saying it had a soft year with some specialty mall retailers.

The segment overall was down, according to Boston.com, with some companies like Foot Locker Inc. and Finish Line Inc. suffering from slumping sales. Nike, however, said it is poised to make major changes in retail this year with the help of leading retail partners that will build strength.

“I won’t get into specific dates or executions, but you can expect to see some of these new Nike concepts at retail this calendar year,” Parker said

Although the exec wouldn’t disclose details, he hinted at changes to Nike’s Shox and apparel lines, including plans to make all its running shoes compatible with its Nike+ technology by the end of the year.

Nike+ allows runners to track their workouts — including distance, time and calories burned — with Apple’s line of iPod nano digital music players.

In September, Apple said that it sold over 450,000 of the Nike+iPod Sport Kits in its first three months of availability. The $30 kit includes a wireless module that fits into the sole of Nike+ running shoes and a receiver that plugs into the base of an iPod nano