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Freaked out by Mideast militarization of social media? Don't be

Let's not act so shocked if Frankenstein's invention is on the loose.

A couple of days ago the Israel Defense Forces began live-tweeting as the newest round of hostilities broke out along Israel's already hot border with Gaza. The IDF Twitter stream included the video recording of a missile attack that killed Hamas military leader Ahmed Jabari, along with an in your face taunt: "We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead." For its part, the military wing of Hamas used its … Read more

Israel, Hamas using Twitter to report on Gaza skirmishes

Update: 1:42 PM PT The Israel Defense Force has been using Twitter to offer updates on the latest round of fighting along with border with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

But Hamas is fighting back with its own volley in the information war. The organization's military wing is also using Twitter today as the pace of cross-border violence picked up. The sides have been locked in low-level violence for several days. The fighting intensified today following the assassination of Ahmed Jabri, a senior military leader accused by Israel of being responsible for several terror attacks.

A cyber sampler of … Read more

USB cables could power PCs, peripherals

Today, you likely charge your phone with a USB cable. Tomorrow, you might well use one to charge your laptop and other devices.

With a new Universal Serial Bus technology called Power Delivery (USB PD), Intel and its allies hope the ubiquitous cable will become even more widespread. "One USB cable does it all," said Brad Saunders and Bob Dunstan, two Intel architects in a presentation at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco this week.

USB 2.0 can carry 2.5 watts of power. USB 3.0, which is just catching on now, can handle 4.… Read more

Intel's even thinner ultrabook of the future

So, just how thin will future touch screen ultrabooks get? Intel provides plenty of guidance on how to get there.

Ultrabooks these days typically range between 17mm (0.66 inches) and 20mm (0.78 inches) in thickness. With the emergence of Windows 8 tablet-esque ultrabooks with touchscreens, Intel wants to shave off a few more millimeters.

At its annual conference today, Intel released a slide (above) showing a touch screen ultrabook with a thinly-sliced 2.5mm keyboard (Microsoft's Surface tablet has a keyboard that is 3mm thin by comparison), a sub 0.5mm touch panel, and a 5mm hard … Read more

Ultrabooks, 'every screen' eventually touch, says Intel

Apple take note. An Intel executive says everything is going the way of touch.

"Intel has put its money where its conviction is" and invested heavily in touch screens, Rob DeLine, director of Ultrabook product marketing at Intel, said in an interview.

DeLine pointed out that although there are plenty of touch screens that are 10 inches and smaller avaialable, that isn't the case for larger sizes.

The larger-screen ecosystem "really didn't exist," he said. "The ecosystem for 10-inch and below for tablets is pretty mature. So, we've made investments to ensure … Read more

Intel: Count us in for 'human-like senses' in computing

SAN FRANCISCO -- As technology becomes more "intuitive," Intel is working to add "human-like senses" to computing by enabling touch and speech functionality across all devices, according to chief product officer David Perlmutter.

The general manager of the Intel architecture group opened Intel Developer Forum 2012 on Tuesday morning by noting that this is the 15th year the conference has taken place, asserting that Intel has "been evolving since then and launched a lot of great technologies."

But this year, Perlmutter said that the big discussion this week is about experience and how Intel … Read more

Intel to chat up 'Haswell' chip at conference

With Intel's annual conference just around the corner, its next-gen silicon is always a hot topic.

And this year, that's Haswell. Why should you be interested in Haswell? Well, it's going to be inside some of the thinnest, lightest, most powerful ultrabooks, MacBooks, and tablet-ultrabook hybrids to date. (And throw Microsoft's next-gen Surface tablets into that mix too).

Haswell's marquee feature -- besides being a new microarchitecture -- is that versions of the processor will put more of the PC's core functions inside one chip package than any Intel processor to date. And that … Read more

Is this the future of Windows 8 ultrabooks?

Intel showed off the latest hybrid ultrabook concept at company confab this week. But it's been preaching this best-of-both-worlds religion for a while now.

Intel's new PC business chief, Kirk Skaugen, is making the case for hybrids this week in Beijing at an Intel conference. But CEO Paul Otellini has been proselytizing the hybrid experience since last fall and other Intel executives, like Erik Reid, have been chiming in at every opportunity too.

Here's the pitch: in "consumption" mode, it's a tablet (see photos) and in productivity mode it's a standard laptop. And throw in the fact that hybrids use the latest high-performance Intel Ivy Bridge processors and run the Windows 8 Metro interface. … Read more

Intel's 'Centerton' is first Atom chip for servers

Intel announced its first Atom chip for microservers at a major company confab in Beijing today.

The new Atom, codenamed Centerton, is a system-on-a-chip, which makes it even more power efficient than less-integrated older Atom chips.

Centerton's power envelope -- what the industry sometimes calls TDP or thermal design power -- is six watts. While not as low as the power envelope for Intel's smartphone Atom, six watts is still a lot more power efficient than Intel's more mainstream chips. Those have power envelopes of 15 watts or higher. To date, Atom has been aimed at small … Read more