computers

Dell gets rugged to pump up sales

The Latitude XFR D630 from Dell is not sexy.

But that's not the point. The PC maker's first ruggedized notebook isn't having a New York coming-out party with runway models a la the colorful Inspiron and XPS laptops from last summer. But the company does hope that an option for a tough exterior whets the appetites of some of its most loyal customers, large IT departments.

The Latitude XFR D630 is basically a Latitude D630 in full body armor built to withstand extreme temperatures, falls, moisture, dust, and more.

Dell isn't really breaking any new ground … Read more

Cleaning 400 years of dust from books

DUBLIN, Ireland--There isn't quite an inch of dust on top of Institutione Catholica, a two-volume theological set of books dating back a few centuries. But it looks close.

The entire top of the volumes is coated in a thick, brown mass. Some of the dust has formed into balls about the size of beetles. When a graduate student picks up one of the volumes, part of the frayed binding falls off. It will be glued back on later.

The Long Room in the Old Library at Dublin's Trinity College houses one of the most extensive collections of antique … Read more

Photo industry braces for another revolution

Think of it as digital photography 2.0.

In the last decade, photography has been transformed by one revolution, the near-total replacement of analog film cameras by digital image sensors. Now researchers and companies are starting to stretch their wings by taking advantage of what a computer can do with sensor data either within the camera or on a full-fledged PC.

Some elements of this new era, which researchers often call computational photography, are refinements of existing technology. For example, some cameras can wait to take the photo only when subjects are smiling and not blinking, in effect placing the … Read more

Microsoft's Google killer strategy: Finally on the way?

With Google beefing up its app business, we've been wondering when Microsoft would respond. We've been reporting on Microsoft's intention to support a mix of Web-based services and on-premise software. Now Nick Carr has word that the news may come down quite soon.

"The new strategy will, I'm told, lay out a roadmap of moves across three major areas: the transformation of the company's portfolio of enterprise applications to a web-services architecture, the launch of web versions of its major PC applications, and the continued expansion of its data center network. I expect that … Read more

On a Licklider anniversary, can we guess at tech's likely future?

Every March, my PIM alerts me to call up a decades-old research paper by a computer scientist named J.C.R. Licklider. In a piece I wrote last year, I called Licklider perhaps the most important computer theorist you've never heard about.

So while this effort on my part remains woefully inadequate, it's more important than ever to spotlight the man and his work. This month marks the March 1960 anniversary of the publication of "Man-Computer Symbiosis" and I recommend it to anyone not familiar with the paper. This was one of those "present at … Read more

Visions of the universe's most violent events

Astronomers are using the world's largest supercomputers to transform theories and formulas into animated 3D simulations of black holes colliding, stars being born, and gamma-ray bursts blowing everything else away.

Check out the story and image gallery at Popsci.com: "Cutting edge visions of cosmic extremes"

EMC to buy cloud computing start-up Pi

EMC on Thursday said it will acquire Pi, a cloud computing start-up founded by former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz.

Financial terms of the all-cash transaction were not disclosed.

Maritz will join the storage company as president and general manager of a newly created Cloud Infrastructure and Services division.

Privately held Pi, which has about 100 employees, is now beta-testing an online personal information management service (Pi stands for "personal information").

The software Pi is working on is designed to let people control, share, and publish information that is online or locally stored, according to the company's Web … Read more

Homeland Security seizes electronics and information at border

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Asian Law Caucus are suing the Department of Homeland Security over aggressive searches and seizures of travelers' property and information at U.S. borders.

As reported on BoingBoing:

ALC, a San Francisco-based civil rights organization, received more than 20 complaints from Northern California residents last year who said they were grilled about their families, religious practices, volunteer activities, political beliefs, or associations when returning to the United States from travels abroad. In addition, customs agents examined travelers' books, business cards collected from friends and colleagues, handwritten notes, personal photos, laptop computer files, and cell … Read more

Chrome modders take a shine to iMacs

This may be the best news all year in the flawed world of gadget fashion: Gold could be facing a serious challenge as the luxury look of choice. And the pretender to the throne may not be a precious metal at all.

Witness this brewing battle in custom Macs. Only a few months ago, an outfit called Chromac offered some fetching photos of an iMac with a mirrored patina worthy of the company's name. But now there's a rival service from Computer Choppers, which showed off its Midas touch with the MacBook around the same time but has … Read more