TiVo Releases Super Bowl Stats

Remember last year when TiVo really made it well known how they were collecting aggregate usage statistics by saying that Janet Jackson’s “costume malfunction” was the most instant-replayed moment in TiVo history? Well, this year’s TiVo Super Bowl stats are out, and you’ll be interested to know that the three most watched and replayed moments were the GoDaddy.com commercial, MVP-voting instructions, and that interception in the 4th quarter. The low point (pre-game excepted) seemed to be after Paul McCartney finished Hey Jude.

Sony, Toshiba and IBM (STI Group) Unveil Cell Processor

Let the hype begin. Sony set loose the PR marketing gorilla today when they showed off their prototype “Cell” processor (really a nine core, 64-bit PowerPC chip) at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco. The chip, which was co-developed with IBM and Toshiba, is said to perform miracles like parting the sea and making water turn into blood... ok, just kidding. The developers claim that the chip provides as much as 10 times better performance in handling entertainment and rich-media applications than current PC processors, and will be “operating system neutral,” meaning it can run one or multiple operating systems simultaneously from various distributors.

Intel Announces Dual-Core Production, 945 and 955 Chipsets

Santa Clara (CA) - Intel today said it has completed initial production runs of dual-core processors, which will be introduced during the second quarter of this year. The company also announced the 955X chipset for the dual-core Pentium Extreme Edition and the 945 chipset for the mainstream dual-core processor "Smithfield". On the opening day of the ISSCC 2005 conference Intel surprised with several announcements providing more details for the upcoming launch of the firm's dual-core processors. While the first run of production is in time for a broad commercial launch in the second quarter of this year, the company said that the launch of the technology would not only include the desktop dual-cores "Smithfield" which are likely to carry a 8xx sequence number, but also an "Extreme Edition" of the processor. [HardFeed]

Hokkaido Japan Installs Musical Roads

Japan has already dabbled here and there with road surfaces that keep drivers awake by using appropriately-placed troughs to play rhythms through your tires. Now the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute has gone a step further, with grooved sections of road that boom a melody up through your car. The grooves are a few millimetres deep and 6-12 mm wide; unsurprisingly, the closer they're grouped together the higher the pitch of the note produced. They're planning to use different melodies for different areas, picking songs that have some association to the locale.

CompUSA - 20% Off All MP3 Players

CompUSA has a code 'BEADS2' that gives you 20% off all MP3 players, including the iPod (everything except the shuffle), the Creative Zen Micro [in store only], and a bunch of different flash players. Technically, the code isn't supposed to work with the iPods, but Gizmodo reports that it does.
[Gizmodo via Slick Deals]

VoIP Over Voice Wiring

There isn't much difference between an Ethernet cable and your in-house telephone wire (the RJ-11 jack that your phones use even plugs into most RJ-45 Ethernet ports, albeit on 4 wires instead of 8). But it still takes a little bit of a leap of faith to patch in your Voice-over-IP service to your home phone lines, —not because it's technologically that difficult (it's not), but because it means you've well and truly left the land-line carriers behind for good. Jake Ludington has a quick write-up of how he patched his Vonage box into his home phone lines and maybe it will serve as some inspiration to you.
[Media Blab]

IBM, Sony, Toshiba to Reveal ‘Superbrain Chip’

Semiconductor designers from International Business Machines, Sony and Toshiba will reveal on Monday the inner workings of a “supercomputer on a chip” they claim could revolutionise communications, multimedia and consumer electronics. The Cell microprocessor has been under development by the three companies since 2001 in a laboratory in Austin, Texas. Its unveiling at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco has been eagerly awaited and products containing Cell including Sony's PlayStation 3 games console are expected as early as next year. Advance reports suggest the chip is significantly more powerful and versatile than the next generation of micro-processors announced by the consortium's competitors, Intel and AMD. The two leading chipmakers are just moving from 32-bit to 64-bit computing and to dual-core processors essentially two “brains” on a single chip.Cell is understood to have at least four cores and be significantly faster than Intel and AMD chips. “This is probably going to be one of the biggest industry announcements in many years,” said Richard Doherty, president of the Envisioneering research firm. “It's going to breathe new life into the industry and trigger fresh competition.” Cell is being presented as an architecture capable of wide-ranging functions and powerful parallel processing that will allow it to distribute its work among the different cores in order to perform many tasks at once. Full Story - [Financial Times.com]

Coral reefs create clouds to control the climate

When the temperature soars, coral reefs might cool off by creating their own clouds. Research from the Great Barrier Reef off the Australian coast shows that corals are packed full of the chemical dimethyl sulphide, or DMS. When released into the atmosphere, DMS helps clouds to form, which could have a large impact on the local climate. In the air, DMS is transformed into an aerosol of tiny particles on which water vapour can condense to form clouds. This sulphur compound is also produced in large amounts by marine algae and gives the ocean its distinctive smell. Algae play a vital part in regulating Earth's climate, but no one had looked at whether coral reefs might have a similar role. Graham Jones of the Southern Cross University in Lismore, Australia, and colleagues measured DMS concentrations in corals in the Great Barrier Reef and its surrounding water. They found that the mucus exuded by the coral contained the highest concentrations of DMS so far recorded from any organism. A layer rich in DMS formed at the sea surface above the reef, where it was picked up by the wind. "Although globally the emission of DMS from the Great Barrier Reef is not huge, on a regional basis it is very significant," says Jones. Full story at New Scientist

New Scientist Breaking News - Software bots could menace Google ads

New Scientist Breaking News - Software bots could menace Google ads The adverts that Google bundles with its search results can be sabotaged using a simple programming trick, claim US computer security researchers. Experts at US company Clickrisk say the vulnerability threatens to undermine the success of the search engine's advertising service. The adverts, known as AdWords, are automatically added to the page that displays Google search results and are tailored to suit the words entered into the original search query. Companies register an advert along with certain keywords with Google and can select how many times they want the advert to be displayed. The scheme allows a company to promote its business to people who are already seeking related information and also provides a revenue source to underpin Google's hugely popular search service. Full story at New Scientist

Family Guy Game Coming

The Family Guy. The show that wouldn’t die. Fox cancelled it, then brought it back, then cancelled it again. Then the show came out on DVD, sold about a billion copies. Then the show started airing on the Adult Swim segment on Cartoon Network and pulled in higher ratings than it ever did on Fox… And now the show is returning to TV for a third time. New episodes start airing in May. Unsurprisingly, since the show quite clearly won’t die, despite Fox’s best efforts, there’s a Family Guy game coming. The game will be from the game company of the moment, Take Two. Very few details right now, but let’s hope it’s better than some of the dire Simpsons efforts. [Joystiq]

Superbowl Sunday

Well, it's super Super Bowl Sunday... not much news to report today. But, if you haven't heard of Digg.com, it's a great new interactive site for tech related news. Be sure to check the FAQ to learn how it works. You can read news stories that I have dug in myUser Profile

Help support this site... click a google ad link if you have the time

Playing Mobile Games on Buildings

Tetris
Arcade is the brand new light installation of Project Blinkenlights. Following up on the original Blinkenlights installation in Berlin, Arcade marks a new step in interactive light installations in public space.

Arcade is an interactive light installation. Using your mobile phone, you can become a part of the event at any time. Stand in front of the Bibliothèque nationale de France y dial +33 (1) 44 24 73 50. The current light show will be interrupted and the text "TETRIS" announces that the game can begin. Visit Arcade Games for more...

Pong is one of the first Arcade games that was already center of the Blinkenlights installation in Berlin. Pong gets activated by calling +33 (1) 44 24 73 51. With the keys 5 and 8 you control your paddle up and down. Always try to push back the ball to the other side. Pong can be played by up to two players. The first caller plays against the computer. The second caller automatically takes over the computer's paddle so that both callers play against each other.

Pacman is yet another Arcade classic everybody knows. Go for a pixel hunt and avoid the monsters. Pacman gets activated by calling +33 (1) 44 24 73 53. Keys 2 and 8 direct Pacman upwards and downwards, the keys 4 and 6 move it to the left and right. By moving Pacman throught the openings and the border you can change to the respective opposite side of the playground.

Microsoft Hires Writer = Halo 2 Movie

Microsoft has hired Alex Garland, he wrote the excellent bio-horror 28 Days Later, to pen the script for the big screen adaptation of Halo. Microsoft plans to offer the rights and the script as a "turnkey" package to studios. We'll see. [Joystiq]