memorial

First, an admission: I preordered an iPad Mini. But I wasn't happy about the price I was paying.

You see, I've been around iOS devices long enough to know that 16GB of storage space just doesn't cut it -- throw a couple of high-res games and an HD movie or two on the thing, and you're starting to hit the limit. That put me at $429 for the 32GB model. Tack on the extra dough for sales tax and suddenly I was over $450. And that doesn't include the $29 Apple wants for Lightning-to-30-pin adapter … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- New Captcha system uses empathy to distinguish humans from bots.

- Watch Pornhub to donate money to breast cancer research.

- Meet the man that invented the Escape key.… Read more

COLOGNE, Germany -- There's room for a higher-end flash card format that's faster and more capacious than SD Card, and for years, CompactFlash has occupied that market niche.

But CompactFlash is running out of steam, and finding a successor to CompactFlash just got a lot messier courtesy of a new standard that arrived this week at the Photokina trade show here.

Last year, Nikon and Sony carried the XQD format to market as the would-be CompactFlash successor, with Nikon's flagship D4 camera accepting the cards and Sony making the cards. But Canon and professional camera maker Phase … Read more

Italian artist Leonardo Ulian's mesmerizing piece "Technological mandala 02," doesn't look like the average sacred art commonly seen in Buddhism and Hinduism.

Ulian, based in London, created the mandala with hundreds of microchips, circuits, resistors, and other components found within everyday electronics.… Read more

The iPhone 5 sports 1GB of system memory, twice the amount of the iPhone 4S, a chip review site claims.

And it's faster too, said Anandtech in a post on Saturday.

"Roughly 33 percent more peak memory bandwidth than the iPhone 4S, which can definitely help feed the faster [graphics processing unit] and drive the higher resolution display," Anandtech said.

So, how does Anandtech know this? Apple did not hide the markings (see image above) at the Wednesday event, which revealed a Samsung -- manufacturer of the A6 -- part number.

We'll know for sure that … Read more

For some people, old circuit boards and computer components needlessly fill up space, awaiting a proper sendoff to the electronics recycling facility. Italian artist Franco Recchia sees opportunity in those old parts, though, and instead creates fascinating miniature city skylines with the pieces of forgotten technology.

The artist covers an array of major cities, including New York, Chicago, Detroit, and more. In an interview with the Agora art gallery, Recchia reveals that he often finds parts in "trash heaps" and that it takes four different styles of welding to make the techno cities. … Read more

USB disks let you add unlimited storage to your desktop or laptop (especially laptops!) for movies, songs, images, backups, and other bulky data. USB thumbdrives and portable storage devices let you carry gigabytes of data with you. The USB interface means compatibility with almost every PC. And here's the problem: huge capacity, total portability, universal compatibility, and absolute indispensability work together to render your USB disks and devices especially vulnerable to viruses and other malware. USB Disk Security from Zbshareware Lab is an effective solution for securing your USB disks and data. This easy-to-use shareware is widely compatible with … Read more

Apple has cut its orders for memory chips from Samsung for its next-generation iPhone as it tries to reduce its dependence on its legal foe and competitor, according to industry sources.

Samsung has been a primary supplier of both DRAM and NAND storage for iPhones, iPads, and iPhones, but Apple has been reducing its orders to the South Korean electronics giant in an effort to diversify its supply lines, according to a Reuters report.

Meanwhile, the Korea Economic Daily reported that Apple had completely dropped Samsung from its list of memory chip suppliers for the first shipment of the new … Read more

Nokia's new Lumia 920 smartphone is missing an SD card slot, but that was intentional.

Speaking with tech news site PC Pro, Nokia executive VP Kevin Shields said that a memory card slot would have ruined the clean design of the phone.

"We started with the premise that we wanted an uncompromised physical form," Shields told PC Pro. "To put an SD card slot in it would have defiled it."

The Lumia 820 comes with only 8GB of internal storage but includes a microSD card slot that can handle up to 32GB worth of data. … Read more