A nice bit of news for once from the world of graphics cards and hefty expense…

Despite the fact that no-one you know bought a PhysX card, if you’re a PC gamer with a relatively recent NVIDIA card, you’ve already got one. Or, at least, you will soon. Spooks.

[From NVIDIA, CUDA and PhysX Article // PC /// Eurogamer]

If you have something like a GeForce 8800 or higher, you will be getting much better ragdolls in your games, as a portion of your graphics card’s… err… graphical processing… can be given over to running physics simulations. We’re probably going to lose a bit of graphical oomph (a tiny bit, not a huge chunk) but at least we will see things happening on screen more realistically, gravity-wise.

The same article from Eurogamer also notes that when you upgrade your card, you could potentially (if you have a motherboard that can do it, anyway) dedicate your old card to physics stuff and your new card to just visuals. Fantastic, although the people I hand my old video cards down to will not be happy…

And now filed under “I should have placed bets on this happening years ago…”

Nasa’s Phoenix lander has unearthed compelling evidence of ice on Mars, mission scientists believe.

Chunks of a bright material found in a trench dug by the craft have disappeared over four Martian days, suggesting they have vapourised.

[From BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Mars probe makes 'ice discovery']

Phoenix, using it’s scraper shovel type thing, uncovered some white stuff on the ground. 4 days later, parts of it had gone, and since salt and cocaine doesn’t just disappear (unless some random famous person known for drug abuse happened to be on Mars at the time…) it has to be water.

They found the bits in the Dodo-Goldilocks trench (Who names these important things?!) and some more similar features at Snow White 2 (Seriously, who does it!?), which makes me wonder how long it will be until the Google Copernicus Center will be fully operational on the surface instead of on the moon where it was originally planned…

Got $22 Million?

Whatever your feelings are about Comcast, you’ll be helpless but to fall in love with the media giant’s 10 million pixel display at the new Comcast Center in Philadelphia. The media wall covers an area of over 2100 square feet and uses four-millimeter LED lights, packed together as one giant, seamless array. It plays all manner of video, and even cool segments where three-dimensional-looking dancers seem to hover in thin air at five times the resolution of HD television.

[From DVICE: This is what 10 million pixels look like]

Yes, it’s a stupidly huge wall which stretches around the room. No, there aren’t many practical uses for such technology. Yes, that’s $2.2 per pixel. No, that’s not too much to spend. Yes, it’s still damn cool.

From the great bods that do the Firefox thing…

Thanks to the support of the always amazing Mozilla community, we got more than 8 million Firefox 3 downloads in 24 hours. That’s more Firefox downloads than we’ve ever had in a single day — an impressive feat indeed!

From Spread Firefox Download Day 2008

Well done Firefox on a successful attempt. It still needs to be confirmed by the Guinness people, but it’s an achievement none the less.

As for you lot that didn’t download the software, get Firefox 3 Here!

The Web is all about innovation, and Firefox 3 sets the pace with dozens of new features, including the smart location bar, one-click bookmarking and blindingly fast performance

[From Firefox web browser | Faster, more secure, & customizable]

Yes, it’s time to download the Firefox 3 browser, and this time there’s an actual reason to do it on launch day. They are trying to get the Guinness world record for the most downloads of a piece of software in 24 hours.

You don’t have long left, as the Firefox people themselves say…

Please download Firefox 3 by 17:00 UTC on June 18, 2008. That’s 10:00 a.m. in Mountain View, 1:00 p.m. in Toronto, 2:00 p.m. in Rio de Janeiro, 7:00 p.m. in Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Rome and Warsaw, 9:00 p.m. in Moscow, and June 19, 2008 at 1:00 a.m. in Beijing and 2:00 a.m. in Tokyo.

[From Spread Firefox - Download Day]

I’ve already downloaded it for the PC, and it works pretty well.

John Chow is a lucky, lucky man. Firstly, he has a stupidly popular blog showing how he makes money online (among other things), but also he runs The Tech Zone, which is a perfect excuse for him to do such things as saying:

I’ve just finished uploading my booth babe pictures to the TTZ Gallery. You can check them out here and see the other 2008 Computex galleries here.

[From The Tech Zone Computer Hardware Reviews]

That’s right. John goes around the world to Computex and gets to see some damn good hardware, whilst also taking a time out to take photos of assorted beautiful women employed to promote the products. And now John has explained what kinds of Booth Babe you can encounter, putting them into groups:

1. The Floor Babe
2. Roaming Floor Babes
3. Demo Babes
4. The Roaming Demo Team (like the A-Team, but no Murdock in Drag…)

He even shows duelling booth babes at neighbouring stands. Like a cat fight but using volume alone.

Well, I am jealous of you John. Bordering on envy and possibly hate…

Apple have unleashed possibly their worst kept secret ever.

Apple (United Kingdom) - iPhone:
Introducing iPhone 3G. With fast 3G wireless technology, Maps with GPS, support for enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange and the new App Store, iPhone 3G puts even more amazing features in your hands.

Now, I have already said in the past that I wouldn’t have minded getting my own iPhone, but eventually I turned away, partly because of the excessive cost of the unit excluding the contract, partly the fact that it was a futuristic phone that did NOT have 3G. Now, with 3G, a decent GPS feature among other improvements, it’s enticing. The much lower initial cost is now comparable to other handsets.

BBC NEWS | dot.life | A blog about technology from BBC News | Hands on with iPhone 3G:
Questions to Greg Joswiak about refunds for anyone who has just recently bought the old iPhone were met with little sympathy as he pointed out that news of the 3G version was ‘hardly the best kept secret in the world”.

I do have to say it’s probably not a leaked secret. 3G has been such an asked for and complained about problem of the original iPhone that it was logical for Apple to work on this anyway, and for people to talk about it.
There was no leak. The hype and guessing was just correct on something obvious.

And lo, Voodoo PC shows the world more really expensive computers that I want but cannot possibly afford. At the Connecting Your World event. In Germany.

First off is the laptop, the Envy. It’s a clean-lined laptop with an “Instant On Solution” that makes me drool. Very thin and good looking as far as laptops go. It also has as other features:

• Voodoo Aura PowerConnect – establishes a one-to-one wireless connection between the Envy 133 notebook and an Ethernet connector located on the power supply, allowing users to roam free from the wired connection.⁽³⁾
• Multiple gesture touchpad – more than a standard touchpad, the Envy 133 also provides capabilities such as a circular gesture called chiral scroll and pinch options.
• Durability – the carbon fibre casing and fused composite glass covering the display provide surprising strength and durability.
• External optical disk drive – an ID-coordinated external eSATA optical drive is included with every unit.
• Professional backlit keyboard – reminiscent of old-school tactile desktop keyboards with just enough “click” to get even the most die-hard tech enthusiast smiling.
• Ports – extensive usability via a variety of I/O ports, including headphone/microphone, HDMI, USB 2.0 (1x) and a shared e-SATA/USB (1x).

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