geode

Geode turns your photos into a night light

Instead of leaving your favorite snaps to languish virtually, the folks at Ghost Nest have created an interesting way to show off your prized images.

The Geode is basically an oddly shaped picture frame that illuminates specially printed versions of your chosen snapshots. Just send your images in and the company will print them for you. This unique picture frame comes with a rechargeable battery and will glow for up to 6 hours on a full charge. … Read more

iPhone cover acts as digital wallet, packs a programmable credit card

NEW ORLEANS--Paying for goods or services at the checkout counter with your phone is the holy grail of mobile payments, something Google, the credit card companies, and the wireless providers are all trying to figure out.

But until that goes mainstream, startup iCache has a pretty novel approach for people who want to leave their wallet at home. The company's Geode product acts as both an iPhone cover and digital wallet, while packing a single programmable smart card.

It works like this: a user enters in their debit and credit card information through an included mag stripe reader, which … Read more

OLPC laptop drops AMD for Via

The One Laptop per Child project's XO laptop will switch to a Via processor as part of a general hardware refresh.

Generation 1.5 of the XO machine will have the same industrial design as the original model, but will use a Via C7-M processor, John Watlington, OLPC's vice president of hardware development, wrote in a post on Friday. Currently the XO, which is aimed at educational markets in developing countries, uses an AMD Geode processor.

"The design goal is to provide an overall update of the system within the same ID and external appearance," Watlington … Read more

AMD: Netbooks? No thanks

Updated at 9:00 p.m. with additional comments on Netbooks at bottom.

In case you missed it, Advanced Micro Devices is passing on Netbooks. At least as Intel and its partners have defined the category.

In fact, a lot of the media outlets missed this point completely, insisting that AMD is going to go head-to-head with Intel on Netbook processors--apparently because it satisfies a journalistic boilerplate that AMD must, just must, have a direct response to Intel's Atom.

Just to set the record straight, here's what AMD Chief Executive Dirk Meyer said Thursday: "We're ignoring … Read more

AMD 'Yukon' looks beyond Netbooks

Updated at 3:20 p.m. PST throughout with clarification of Yukon and Congo technologies

An AMD-based Netbook? Maybe, maybe not.

On Thursday at an analyst meeting, AMD disclosed "Yukon" and "Congo"--the names that AMD is giving to its silicon technology, due in 2009, that will target the "ultraportable" market. (The meeting was streamed live from the event.)

The company is being very careful to parse this as a more full-featured ultraportable PC play not a strict Netbook play.

The ideal ultraportable form factor is a MacBook Air-style design: very thin with a … Read more

AMD will show tilt toward ultraportables Thursday

Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday plans to discuss its strategy for ultraportables, a market where the chipmaker is a self-professed laggard.

Whether AMD targets Netbooks specifically or a different design isn't clear. But the company must contend with the fact that Netbooks have become a market sensation during the last year. The Asus Eee PC demonstrated quickly that there was latent demand for a small, low-cost, lightweight laptop-style computer.

Every major PC maker--with the exception of Sony--followed suit, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, and Acer. And Microsoft has made it clear that a version of Windows 7 will be stripped … Read more

Moziilla unleashes location-aware Geode browser extension

In a week in which Mozilla's CEO confirmed the imminent alpha release of its mobile Firefox browser, codenamed "Fennec", Mozilla was also busy talking up a cool extension to its desktop browser: Geode.

What is Geode? Perhaps the best question is "Where?" Geode makes your browser location-aware, adding intelligence to applications like search and more:

The potential here is for more than just restaurant lookups. For example, imagine an RSS reader that knows the difference between home and work and automatically changes its behavior appropriately. Or a news site whose local section is, in fact, … Read more

Firefox Geode: Web sites know where you are

As expected, Mozilla Labs released a Firefox plug-in Tuesday called Geode that lets Web sites figure out a person's approximate geographic location and use it in online services--as long as you grant the software permission to access the information.

Geode, a preview of technology to arrive in Firefox 3.1, taps into technology called Loki from Skyhook that deduces a computer's location from the signals of nearby wireless networks, according to a Mozilla Labs blog post on Geode.

To show the technology off, Mozilla shared an application called Food Finder that shows the user's approximate location and … Read more